The magic system--interesting to us as having influenced the later Jewish creed and mediately the Christian--referred like most developed creeds to a particular founder, Zerdusht (Zarathustra of the Zend), may have thus originated. Mankind, in seeking a solution for that most interesting but unsatisfactory problem, the cause of the predominance of evil on the earth, were obliged by their ignorance and their fears to imagine, in addition to the idea of a single supreme existence, the author and source of good, antagonistic influence--the source and representative of evil. Physical phenomena of every day experience; the alternations of light and darkness, of sunshine and clouds; the changes and oppositions in the outer world, would readily supply an analogy to the moral world. Thus the dawn and the sun, darkness and storms, in the wondering mind of the earlier inhabitants of the globe, may have 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.