istory,
has never got quit of experiences which, whatever their cause, drive
it back on the belief in the marvellous. {26b}

It is a noteworthy circumstance that (setting apart Church miracles,
and the epidemic of witchcraft which broke out simultaneously with
the new learning of the Renaissance, and was fostered by the
enlightened Protestantism of the Reformers, the Puritans, and the
Covenanters, in England, Scotland and America) the minor miracles,
the hauntings and knockings, are not more common in one age than in
another. Our evidence, it is true, does not quite permit us to
judge of their frequency at certain periods. The reason is obvious.
We have no newspapers, no miscellanies of daily life, from Greece,
Rome, and the Middle Ages. We have from Greece and Rome but few
literary examples of 'Psychical Research,' few collections of books
on 'Bogles' as Scott called them. We possess Palaephatus, the life
of Apollonius of Tyana, jests in Lucian, argument and exposition
from Pliny, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Plutarch, hints from Plato,
Plautus, Lucretius, from St. Augustine and other fathers. Suetonius
chronicles noises and hauntings after the death of Caligula, but,
naturally, the historian does not record similar disturbances in the
pauperum tabernaae.

Classical evidence on these matters, as about Greek and Roman
folklore in general, we have to sift painfully from the works of
literary authors who were concerned with other topics. Still, in
the region of the ghostly, as in folklore at large, we have relics
enough to prove that the ancient practices and beliefs were on the
ordinary level of today and of all days: and to show that the
ordinary numbers of abnormal phenomena were supposed to be present
in the ancient civilisations. In the Middle Ages--the 'dark ages'--
modern opinion would expect to find an inordinate quantity of
ghostly material. But modern opinion would be disappointed.
Setting aside saintly miracles, and accusations of witchcraft, the
minor phenomena are very sparsely recorded. In the darkest of all
'dark ages,' when, on the current hypothesis, such tales as we
examine ought to be most plentiful, even witch-trials are
infrequent. Mr. Lecky attributes to these benighted centuries
'extreme superstition, with little terrorism, and, consequently,
little sorcery'. The world was capable of believing anything, but
it believed in the antidote as well as in the bane, in the efficacy
of holy water as