lato speaks of a lower grade of
Orphic priests, Orpheotelestai, "who used to come before the doors
of the rich, and promise, by sacrifices and expiatory songs, to
release them from their own sins, and those of their forefathers;"
and such would be but too likely to get a hearing from the man who
was afraid of a weasel or an owl.

Now, this same bodily fear, I verily believe, will be found at the
root of all superstition whatsoever.

But be it so. Fear is a natural passion, and a wholesome one.
Without the instinct of self-preservation, which causes the sea-
anemone to contract its tentacles, or the fish to dash into its
hover, species would be extermined wholesale by involuntary suicide.

Yes; fear is wholesome enough, like all other faculties, as long as
it is controlled by reason. But what if the fear be not rational,
but irrational? What if it be, in plain homely English, blind fear;
fear of the unknown, simply because it is unknown? Is it not
likely, then, to be afraid of the wrong object? to be hurtful,
ruinous to animals as well as to man? Any one will confess that,
who has ever seen, a horse inflict on himself mortal injuries, in
his frantic attempts to escape from a quite imaginary danger. I
have good reasons for believing that not only animals here and
there, but whole flocks and swarms of them, are often destroyed,
even in the wild state, by mistaken fear; by such panics, for
instance, as cause a whole herd of buffaloes to rush over a bluff,
and be dashed to pieces. And remark that this capacity of panic,
fear--of superstition, as I should call it--is greatest in those
animals, the dog and the horse for instance, which have the most
rapid and vivid fancy. Does not the unlettered Highlander say all
that I want to say, when he attributes to his dog and his horse, on
the strength of these very manifestations of fear, the capacity of
seeing ghosts and fairies before he can see them himself?

But blind fear not only causes evil to the coward himself: it makes
him a source of evil to others; for it is the cruellest of all human
states. It transforms the man into the likeness of the cat, who,
when she is caught in a trap, or shut up in a room, has too low an
intellect to understand that you wish to release her: and, in the
madness of terror, bites and tears at the hand which tries to do her
good. Yes; very cruel is blind fear. When a man dreads he knows
not what, he will do he cares not what. When