ends strongly to shew that the grand evil which
the festivals aimed at combating was witchcraft, and that they were
conceived to attain their end by actually burning the witches, whether
visible or invisible, in the flames. If that was so, the wide prevalence
and the immense popularity of the fire-festivals provides us with a
measure for estimating the extent of the hold which the belief in
witchcraft had on the European mind before the rise of Christianity or
rather of rationalism; for Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant,
accepted the old belief and enforced it in the old way by the faggot and
the stake. It was not until human reason at last awoke after the long
slumber of the Middle Ages that this dreadful obsession gradually passed
away like a dark cloud from the intellectual horizon of Europe.

Yet we should deceive ourselves if we imagined that the belief in
witchcraft is even now dead in the mass of the people; on the contrary
there is ample evidence to show that it only hibernates under the
chilling influence of rationalism, and that it would start into active
life if that influence were ever seriously relaxed. The truth seems to
be that to this day the peasant remains a pagan and savage at heart; his
civilization is merely a thin veneer which the hard knocks of life soon
abrade, exposing the solid core of paganism and savagery below. The
danger created by a bottomless layer of ignorance and superstition under
the crust of civilized society is lessened, not only by the natural
torpidity and inertia of the bucolic mind, but also by the progressive
decrease of the rural as compared with the urban population in modern
states; for I believe it will be found that the artisans who congregate
in towns are far less retentive of primitive modes of thought than their
rustic brethren. In every age cities have been the centres and as it
were the lighthouses from which ideas radiate into the surrounding
darkness, kindled by the friction of mind with mind in the crowded
haunts of men; and it is natural that at these beacons of intellectual
light all should partake in some measure of the general illumination. No
doubt the mental ferment and unrest of great cities have their dark as
well as their bright side; but among the evils to be apprehended from
them the chances of a pagan revival need hardly be reckoned.

Another point on which I have changed my mind is the nature of the great
Aryan god whom the Romans called Jupit