As for the dark side of superstition, it needs no other explanation than crime, fanaticism and insanity: which also are diseases of the imagination. Jealousy, hatred, greed, ferocious pride and the lust of power are amongst the causes that mould belief. Any calling pursued in secret, like that of the sorcerer, under a social ban, is of course demoralised. Where the interest of an organised profession stands in a certain degree of antagonism to the public interest, it may become the starting-point of unlimited abominations; and of this truth the interests of magicians and priests have supplied the most terrific examples. Dwelling upon what you know of black magic and red religion, the retrospect of human culture fills you with dismay; but need not excite astonishment; for human nature is less adapted to its environment (chiefly social) than anything else in the world; the development of the mind and of society has been too recent for us reasonably to expect anything better. FOOTNOTES: [85] _Treatise of Human Nature_, Part III. § 7. For the recent psychology of Belief see James Sully’s _The Human Mind_, ch. xiii., and James Ward’s _Psychological Principles_, ch. xiv. [86] See below, ch. viii. § 5. [87] _Logique des Sentiments_, II. § 4. [88] _Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieures_, p. 40. [89] _British Journal of Psychology_, Vol. I. p. 393. [90] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 462. [91] _The Melanesians_, p. 247. [92] Below, ch. viii. § 4. [93] Ch. iv. § 8. [94] In assuming that there are no magical powers I do not mean that the magician has no professional powers, but that such real powers as he has are not magical. [95] Czaplicka, _My Siberian Year_, p. 94. Other examples in Romanes, _Mental Evolution in Man_, pp. 351-3. [96] _The Mind of Primitive Man_, V. pp. 150-52. [97] _Sociological Review_, January 1910, p. 9. [98] Quoted by Frazer, _Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild_, I. p. 105. [99] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, II. p. 216 [100] F. M. Cornford in Miss Jane Harrison’s _Themis_, ch. vii. CHAPTER IV MAGIC “The histories I borrow, I refer them to the consciences of those I take them from.”—_Montaigne_, I. 20. § 1. ANTIQUITY OF MAGIC