Polytheism was in fact tolerant so long as an enemy had not declared himself; it was no sooner conscious of an enemy than it persecuted, and the persecution was no less a persecution because it was prompted by mixed motives. There may have been good reason for mistrusting the influence of the diviners upon persons of weak mind, for suspecting them of helping to bring about the accomplishment of their predictions by the use of poisons, and of prompting plots in whose success they had a personal interest; but it was also inevitable that the emergence of a new religious attitude should alarm, and that its professors should be subject to attack. In times of popular excitement the monotheists were persecuted by the enlightened rationalists no less than by the orthodox polytheists, and many motives over and above religious intolerance contributed to sharpen the laws against the Jew and the diviner. Not the least of these was the dread of poison, a very lively terror even in modern times, till the accumulations of chemical and medical knowledge restricted the sphere of operations of mysterious drugs; and there may well have been some foundation for the superstitious dread of secret poisoning by which many of the ancients were affected. Not only was the charlatan ready to magnify his own powers, and to ascribe to his spells and incantations deaths from purely natural causes, but the older civilizations of the East had doubtless preserved many secrets of pharmacy which were skilfully used by adepts to impress the imagination of the vulgar. At this very day the medicine men and women, the Papaloi and Mamaloi of the Black Republic of Hayti, exert a power above the laws by their knowledge and use of poisons, from which even the educated white man cannot escape. Before we condemn the Roman Senate for its intolerance of magicians and its superstitious dread of their powers, we must place ourselves in their position, limit ourselves to their knowledge; and again we must be modest enough to remember that we still consider it necessary to protect the ignorant dupe from the fortune-teller, that the law is not unfrequently called into action in such cases, and that the clients of the spiritualist and diviner of to-day are to be found in all classes, and not exclusively among the poor and ignorant.