the weather, the old view can hardly be very influential.

Significant of this was the feeling of the American people during the
fearful droughts a few years since in the States west of the Missouri.
No days were appointed for fasting and prayer to bring rain; there was
no attribution of the calamity to the wrath of God or the malice of
Satan; but much was said regarding the folly of our people in allowing
the upper regions of their vast rivers to be denuded of forests, thus
subjecting the States below to alternations of drought and deluge.
Partly as a result of this, a beginning has been made of teaching forest
culture in many schools, tree-planting societies have been formed, and
"Arbor Day" is recognised in several of the States. A true and noble
theology can hardly fail to recognise, in the love of Nature and care
for our fellow-men thus promoted, something far better, both from a
religious and a moral point of view, than any efforts to win the Divine
favour by flattery, or to avert Satanic malice by fetichism.

CHAPTER XII. FROM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.

I.

In all the earliest developments of human thought we find a strong
tendency to ascribe mysterious powers over Nature to men and women
especially gifted or skilled. Survivals of this view are found to
this day among savages and barbarians left behind in the evolution
of civilization, and especially is this the case among the tribes of
Australia, Africa, and the Pacific coast of America. Even in the most
enlightened nations still appear popular beliefs, observances, or
sayings, drawn from this earlier phase of thought.

Between the prehistoric savage developing this theory, and therefore
endeavouring to deal with the powers of Nature by magic, and the modern
man who has outgrown it, appears a long line of nations struggling
upward through it. As the hieroglyphs, cuneiform inscriptions, and
various other records of antiquity are read, the development of this
belief can be studied in Egypt, India, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, and
Phoenicia. From these civilizations it came into the early thought of
Greece and Rome, but especially into the Jewish and Christian sacred
books. Both in the Old Testament and in the New we find magic,
witchcraft, and soothsaying constantly referred to as realities.(266)

(266) For magic in prehistoric times and survivals of it since, with
abundant citation of authorities, see Tylor, Primitive Culture, chap.