Yet such is undoubtedly the case. Even the saddle-bags you buy at Jerusalem--those gorgeous labyrinths of shells and tassels--have a blue bead concealed somewhere in them to return the stare of any evil eye that may look upon your horse. To avert the same danger you will see little boys dressed in girls’ clothes, and specially pretty children kept dirty and untidy. Lest the dreaded eye should blight the fortunes of a newborn babe the Jewish Rabbis sometimes hang up the 121st Psalm on the wall over mother and child. Magic is as useful a substitute for science as it is for religion. It explains any phenomenon and clears up any mystery without the trouble of investigation. All great buildings must have been built by enchantment, so what is the use of speculating as to their architecture? Western civilisation is, no doubt, a remarkable affair, but it never occurs to an unsophisticated Syrian that it is a matter for energetic emulation. The Frank has only been lucky enough to learn the proper spell. It is easy to see how Syria, with such views as these, is doomed at once to moral and intellectual stagnation. The vivid mind of the East is fertile in poetic imagination. Restless and quick itself, it cannot conceive the Universe otherwise than as living around it. Everything is alive and aware. All inanimate things are personified; or, to speak more accurately, they are inhabited by spiritual beings. Natural phenomena express the purposes of minds hidden behind them. Every dangerous or adverse experience is regarded as the work of malice. Human life is beset with ambushed spiritual enemies. The advantage which their invisibility gives to these over the human combatants would be enough to put fighting out of the question, were it not that so many of the spirits are of feeble intelligence and may be hoodwinked; while all of them have other spirits for their enemies who may be enlisted on man’s side against them. These spirits are of many kinds, but they may be classed in two groups, according to their connection with natural phenomena or with death.