nce and observation to
demonism. Uncleanness is a very rude and primary expression of the
unsanitary and contagious. It undoubtedly often happens that calamity
befalls in the hour of success and rejoicing. A number of people were
trodden to death on the Brooklyn bridge when it was opened. A few
centuries ago, and in all ancient times, such an incident would have
been accepted as the obvious chastisement of the superior powers on the
overweening pride of men. The same might be said of the death of Mr.
Huskisson at the opening of the first railroad. The sum of such
incidents stands in some relation to fundamental superstitions about
demons, if such are believed. The incidents can be fitted into the
doctrines very easily. The whole aleatory interest is a field for this
kind of general dogmas of the application of fundamental principles to
classes of cases. The folkways, deeply concerned in the aleatory
interest, work out the applications.

+557. Universality of primitive demonism.+ Demonism is the broadest and
most primitive form of religion. All the higher religions show a
tendency to degenerate back to it. Brahminism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism,
Mohammedanism, and mediaeval Christianity show this tendency. Greek
religion is most remarkable because we find in Homer very little
demonism. It appears, therefore, that in his time primitive demonism had
been overcome. In the fifth century B.C. we find it coming in again, and
in the fourth century it became the ruling form of popular religion. It
predominated in late Greek religion, mixed with demonism from western
Asia and Egypt, and passed to Rome, where it entered into primitive
Christianity, combining with highly developed demonism from rabbinical
Judaism. Religion always arises out of the mores. Changes in religion
are produced by changes in the mores. Religious ideas, however, in the
next stage, are brought back to the mores as controlling dogmas. The
product of the first stage becomes the seed in the second. Goblinism and
demonism have great effect on the mores, probably because demonism is so
original and universal in all religions, and so popular in its hold on
the minds of all. Demonism furnishes devices of magic, sorcery,
sortilege, divination, augury, oracles, etc., by which it is believed
that men can get from the superior powers (spirits, demons, etc.) what
they want, and can learn what is to be in the future. It therefore has
the greatest apparatus by which to sati