of a barbarous people that he is not going to die
of a boil; fire refused to burn; water positively declined to seek its
level, but stands up like a wall; grains of sand become lice; common
walking-sticks, to gratify a mere freak, twist themselves into
serpents, and then swallow each other by way of exercise; murmuring
streams, laughing at the attraction of gravitation, run up hill for
years, following wandering tribes from a pure love of frolic; prophecy
becomes altogether easier than history; the sons of God become enamored
of the world's girls; women are changed into salt for the purpose of
keeping a great event fresh in the minds of man; an excellent article
of brimstone is imported from heaven free of duty; clothes refuse to
wear out for forty years, birds keep restaurants and feed wandering
prophets free of expense; bears tear children in pieces for laughing at
old men without wigs; muscular development depends upon the length of
one's hair; dead people come to life, simply to get a joke on their
enemies and heirs; witches and wizards converse freely with the souls
of the departed, and God himself becomes a stone-cutter and engraver,
after having been a tailor and dressmaker.

The veil between heaven and earth was always rent or lifted. The
shadows of this world, the radiance of heaven, and the glare of hell
mixed and mingled until man became uncertain as to which country he
really inhabited. Man dwelt in an unreal world. He mistook his ideas,
his dream, for real things. His fears became terrible and malicious
monsters. He lived in the midst of furies and fairies, nymphs and
naiads, goblins and ghosts, witches and wizards, sprites and spooks,
deities and devils. The obscure and gloomy depths were filled with
claw and wing--with beak and hoof--with leering look and sneering
mouths--with the malice of deformity--with the cunning of hatred, and
with all the slimy forms that fear can draw and paint upon the shadowy
canvas of the dark.

It is enough to make one almost insane with pity to think what man in
the long night has suffered: of the tortures he has endured,
surrounded, as he supposed, by malignant powers and clutched by the
fierce phantoms of the air. No wonder that he fell upon his trembling
knees--that he built altars and reddened them even with his own blood.
No wonder that he implored ignorant priests and impudent magicians for
aid. No wonder that he crawled groveling in the dust to the temple's
d