ve soon assumed the
substantial forms of personal and contending deities.[32] Such
seems to be the origin of the personifications in the Vedic hymns
of Indra and Vritra with their subordinate ministers (the Ormuzd
and Ahriman, &c., of the Zend-Avesta), and of the first religious
conceptions of other peoples. After this attempt to reconcile the
contradictions, the irregularities of nature, by establishing a
duality of gods whose respective provinces are the happiness and
unhappiness of the human race, the step was easy to the
conviction of the superior activity of a malignant god. The
benevolent but epicurean security of the first deity might seem
to have little concern in defeating or preventing the malicious
schemes of the other. All the infernal apparatus of later ages
was easy to be supplied by a delusive and an unreasoning
imagination.

[32] The despotism of language and its immense influence on
the destiny, as well as on the various opinions, of mankind,
is well shown by Professor Max Mueller. 'From one point of
view,' he declares, 'the true history of religion would be
neither more nor less than an account of the various
attempts at expressing the Inexpressible' (_Lectures on the
Science of Language_, Second Series). The witch-creed may be
indirectly referred, like many other absurdities, to the
perversion of language.

PART II.

MEDIAEVAL FAITH.

CHAPTER I.

Compromise between the New and the Old Faiths--Witchcraft
under the Early Church--The Sentiments of the Fathers and
the Decrees of Councils--Platonic Influences--Historical,
Physiological, and Accidental Causes of the Attribution of
Witchcraft to the Female Sex--Opinions of the Fathers and
other Writers--The Witch-Compact.

It might appear, in a casual or careless observation, surprising
that Christianity, whose original spirit, if not universal
practice, was to enlighten; whose professed mission was 'to
destroy the works of the devil,' failed to disprove as well as to
dispel some of the most pernicious beliefs of the pagan world:
that its final triumph within the limits of the Roman empire, or
as far as it extended without, was not attended by the extinction
of at least the most revolting practices of superstition.
Experience, and a more extended view of the progress of human
ideas, will teach that the growth of religious perception is
fitful and gradual: that the education of collecti