ot bring
bad luck to a whole tribe, and that a weather-cock is not a magical
machine for securing unpleasant weather. The Hurons, however, knowing
less of natural causes and nothing of modern machinery, were as
convinced that his clock was ruining the luck of the tribe and his
weather-cock spoiling the weather, as Father Charlevoix could be of
the truth of his own inferences. One or two other anecdotes in the good
father's history and letters help to explain the difference between the
philosophies of wild and of Christian men. The Pere Brebeuf was once
summoned at the instigation of a Huron wizard or "medicine-man" before
a council of the tribe. His judges told the father that nothing had gone
right since he appeared among them. To this Brebeuf replied by "drawing
the attention of the savages to the absurdity of their principles". He
admitted(3) the premise that nothing had turned out well in the tribe
since his arrival. "But the reason," said he, "plainly is that God is
angry with your hardness of heart." No sooner had the good father thus
demonstrated the absurdity of savage principles of reasoning, than the
malignant Huron wizard fell down dead at his feet! This event naturally
added to the confusion of the savages.

(1) Histoire de la France-Nouvelle.

(2) Vol. i. p. 191.

(3) Vol. i. p. 192.

Coincidences of this sort have a great effect on savage minds. Catlin,
the friend of the Mandan tribe, mentions a chief who consolidated his
power by aid of a little arsenic, bought from the whites. The chief used
to prophesy the sudden death of his opponents, which always occurred at
the time indicated. The natural results of the administration of arsenic
were attributed by the barbarous people to supernatural powers in the
possession of the chief.(1) Thus the philosophy of savages seeks causas
cognoscere rerum, like the philosophy of civilised men, but it flies
hastily to a hypothesis of "supernatural" causes which are only guessed
at, and are incapable of demonstration. This frame of mind prevails
still in civilised countries, as the Bishop of Nantes showed when, in
1846, he attributed the floods of the Loire to "the excesses of the
press and the general disregard of Sunday". That "supernatural" causes
exist and may operate, it is not at all our intention to deny. But
the habit of looking everywhere for such causes, and of assuming their
interference at will, is the main characteristic of savage speculation.
The pe