other terrestrial solid bodies capable of performing these functions.[1]
No wonder that men should attack such material beings by material means, and even sometimes try to rid themselves by a general clearance from the legion of ethereal beings hovering around them. As the Australians annually drive from their midst the accumulated ghosts of the last year's dead, so the Gold Coast negroes from time to time turn out with clubs and torches to drive the evil spirits from their towns; rushing about and beating the air with frantic howling, they drive the demons into the woods, and then come home and sleep more easily, and for a while afterwards enjoy better health.[2] When a baby was born in a Kalmuk horde, the neighbours would rush about crying and brandishing cudgels about the tents, to drive off the harmful spirits who might hurt mother and child.[3] Keeping up a closely allied idea in modern Europe, the Bohemians at Pentecost, and the Tyrolese on Walpurgisnacht, hunt the witches, invisible and imaginary, out of house and stall.[4]
Closely allied to the doctrine of souls, and almost rivalling it in the permanence with which it has held its place through all the grades of animism, is the doctrine of patron, guardian, or familiar spirits. These are beings specially attached to individual men, soul-like in their nature, and sometimes considered as actually being human souls. These beings have, like all others of the spiritual world as originally conceived, their reason and purpose. The special functions which they perform are twofold. First, while man's own proper soul serves him for the ordinary purposes of life and thought, there are times when powers
- ↑ Tertullian, De Carne Christi, vi.; Adv. Marcion, ii.; Origen, De Princip. i. 7. See Horst, l.c. Calmet, 'Dissertation,' vol. i. ch. xlvi.
- ↑ J. L. Wilson, 'W. Afr.' p. 217. See Bosman, 'Guinea,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 402.
- ↑ Pallas, 'Reisen,' vol. i. p. 360.
- ↑ Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 1212; Wuttke, 'Volksaberglaube,' p. 119; see Hyltén-Cavallius, part i. p. 178 (Sweden).
