uned to the
civilisation around them. The resistance of agriculturists to change
is well known.[247] The crooked ridges of the open-field system were
believed to be necessary because they were supposed to deceive the
devil,[248] while a superstitious dislike was entertained against
winnowing machines, because they were supposed to interfere with the
elements.[249] This is nothing but a modern example of sympathetic
magic produced by the introduction of the new machine.

I need not go through the researches of the masters of anthropology to
explain what the psychological evidence exactly amounts to, and the
realms of primitive thought and experience which it connotes.[250] It
will, however, be useful for the purpose of our present study, if we
can find among the peasantry of our country (perchance from those
districts where we have noted conditions under which primitive thought
might retain a continuous hold) examples of belief or superstition
which belongs rather to psychological than to traditional influences.
The interpretation of dreams, the belief in spirit apparitions, the
practice of charms, all belong to this branch of our subject, though I
shall illustrate the points I wish to bring out by reference to less
common departments.

It was only in the seventeenth century that a learned divine of the
Church of England was shocked to hear one of his flock repeat the
evidence of his pagan beliefs in language which is as explicit as it
is amusing; and I shall not be accused of trifling with religious
susceptibilities if I quote a passage from a sermon delivered and
printed in 1659--a passage which shows not a departure from
Christianity either through ignorance or from the result of
philosophic study or contemplation, but a sheer non-advance to
Christianity, a passage which shows us an English pagan of the
seventeenth century.

"Let me tell you a story," says the Reverend Mr. Pemble, "that I have
heard from a reverend man out of the pulpit, a place where none should
dare to tell a lye, of an old man above sixty, who lived and died in a
parish where there had bin preaching almost all his time.... On his
deathbed, being questioned by a minister touching his faith and hope
in God, you would wonder to hear what answer he made: being demanded
what he thought of God, he answers that he was a good old man; and
what of Christ, that he was a towardly youth; and of his soule, that
it was a great bone in his body; and what shou