r demon. The
object may be a building, a tree, an animal, a particular kind of
food, or indeed anything. Unfortunately this belief is not peculiar to
savages. A degraded form of it is exhibited by the so-called
neo-mystical school of modern France, and in the baser types of Roman
Catholicism everywhere[332].

Primitive Animism believes in no natural laws. The next stage is to
believe in laws which are frequently suspended by the intervention of
an independent and superior power. Mediaeval dualism regarded every
breach of natural law as a vindication of the power of spirit over
matter--not always, however, of Divine power, for evil spirits could
produce very similar disturbances of the physical order. Thus arose
that persistent tendency to "seek after a sign," in which the religion
of the vulgar, even in our own day, is deeply involved. Miracle, in
some form or other, is regarded as the real basis of belief in God. At
this stage people never ask themselves whether any spiritual truth, or
indeed anything worth knowing, could possibly be communicated or
authenticated by thaumaturgic exhibitions. What attracts them at first
is the evidence which these beliefs furnish, that the world in which
they live is not entirely under the dominion of an unconscious or
inflexible power, but that behind the iron mechanism of cause and
effect is a will more like their own in its irregularity and
arbitrariness. Afterwards, as the majesty of law dawns upon them,
miracles are no longer regarded as capricious exercises of power, but
as the operation of higher physical laws, which are only active on
rare occasions. A truer view sees in them a materialisation of
mystical symbols, the proper function of which is to act as
interpreters between the real and the apparent, between the spiritual
and material worlds. When they crystallise as portents, they lose all
their usefulness. Moreover, the belief in celestial visitations has
its dark counterpart in superstitious dread of the powers of evil,
which is capable of turning life into a long nightmare, and has led to
dreadful cruelties[333]. The error has still enough vitality to
create a prejudice against natural science, which appears in the light
of an invading enemy wresting province after province from the empire
of the supernatural.

But we are concerned with thaumaturgy only so far as it has affected
Mysticism. At first sight the connexion may seem very slight; and
slight indeed it is. But j