, in the peasant class, under the veneer of
civilisation. Now and again these elements of superstition would
break through the veneer, would come to the surface among the
educated classes, and would 'carry silly women captive,' and silly
men. They, too, though born in the educated class, would attest
impossible occurrences.

In all this, we might only see survival, wonderfully vivacious, and
revival astonishingly close to the ancient savage lines.

We are unable to state the case for survival and revival more
strenuously, and the hypothesis is most attractive. This hypothesis
appears to be Dr. Carpenter's, though he does not, in the limits of
popular lectures, unfold it at any length. After stating (p. 1)
that a continuous belief in 'occult agencies' has existed, he adds:--

'While this very continuity is maintained by some to be an evidence
of the real existence of such [occult] agencies, it will be my
purpose to show you that it proves nothing more than the wide-spread
diffusion, alike amongst minds of the highest and lowest culture, of
certain tendencies to thought, which have either created ideal
marvels possessing no foundation whatever in fact, or have, by
exaggeration and distortion, invested with a preternatural character
occurrences which are perfectly capable of a natural explanation'.

Here Dr. Carpenter does not attempt to show cause why the
'manifestations' are always the same, for example, why spirits rap
in the Australian Bush, among blacks not influenced by modern
spiritualism: why tables moved, untouched, in Thibet and India,
long before 'table-turning' was heard of in modern Europe. We have
filled up the lacuna in the doctor's argument, by suggesting that
the phenomena (which are not such as a civilised taste would desire)
were invented by savages, and handed on in an unbroken catena, a
chain of tradition.

But, in following Dr. Carpenter, we are brought up short at one of
our old obstacles, we trip on one of our old stumbling-blocks.
Granting that an epileptic patient made strange bounds and springs,
we can conceive savages going farther in fancy, and averring that he
flew, or was levitated, or miraculously transported through space.
Let this become matter of traditional belief, as a thing possible in
epilepsy, i.e., in 'diabolical,' or 'angelical possession'. Add the
honest but hallucinatory persuasion of the patient that he was so
levitated, and let him be a person of honour and of sanc