bage-worms. The writer who relates this incident believes that it actually occurred, and ascribes it to " the force of human faith, the magnetic powerof a firm will over nature." This, too, is the theory held by Paracel sus, who maintained that the effectiveness of a curse lay in the energy of the will, the wish being thereby transformed into a deed, just as anger directs the arm and actualizes itself in a blow. By " fervent desire " merely, without any physical effort or aggressive act, he thought it possible to wound a man's body, or to pierce it through as with a sword. He also declared that brutes were more easily exorcised or accursed than men, " for the spirit of man resists more than that of the brute." Similar notions were entertained nearly a century later by Jacob Boehme, who defines magic as " doing in the spirit of the will "; an idea which finds more re cent and more scientific expression in Schopenhauer's doctrine of " the objectivation of the will." Indeed, Schopenhauer's postulation of the will as the sole energy and reality in the universe is only the philo sophic statement of an assumption upon which magicians and medicine-men, enchan ters, exorcists, and anathematizers have acted more or less, in all ages. It is natural that a religion of individual initiative and personal responsibility like Pro testantism should put less confidence in theurgic machinery and formularies of ex ecration than a religion like Catholicism, in which man's spiritual concerns are intrusted to a corporation, to be managed according to traditional and infallible methods. We have an illustration of this tendency in a decree published at Dresden, in 1559, by "Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector," wherein he commends the " Christian zeal" of the " worthy and pious parson Daniel Greysser " for having " put under ban the sparrows, on account of their unceasing, vexatious and great clamor, and scandalous unchastity during the sermon, to the hin drance of God's word and of Christian devo
tion." But the Dresden parson, unlike the Bishop of Trier, did not expect that his ban would cause the offending birds to avoid the church or to fall dead on entering it. He relied less on the directly coercive or wither ing action of the curse than on the human agencies which he might thereby set at work to accomplish his purpose. He put them out of the pale of public sympathy and protection, and gave them over as a prey to the spoiler. He enjoined upon the hunter and the fowler to lie in wait for them with guns and with snares; and the elector issued his decree in order to enforce this duty as imperative on all good Christians. Not only were insects, reptiles and small mammals, such as rats and mice, legally prosecuted and formally excommunicated, but judicial penalties including capital pun ishment, were also inflicted upon the larger quadrupeds. In the Report and Researches on this subject, published by Berriat-SaintPrix in the " Memoirs of the Royal Society of the Antiquaries of Prance," numerous ex tracts from the original records of such proceedings are given, and also a list of the animals thus tried and executed, extending from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the eighteenth century. The culprits are a miscellaneous crew, consisting chiefly of caterpillars, flies, locusts, leeches, snails, slugs, worms, weevils, rats, mice, moles, turtle-doves, pigs, bulls, cows, cocks, dogs, asses, mules, mares, and goats. Only those cases are reported in which the accused were found guilty. Three belong to the twelfth century, four to the fourteenth, twenty to the fifteenth, seventeen to the sixteenth, thirty-seven to the seventeenth, and one to the eighteenth century. It would be incorrect to infer from this list that no judicial punishments of animals occurred in the thirteenth century, or that the seventeenth century was particular ly addicted to such practices. During some periods the registers of the courts were very imperfectly kept, and in many instances the archives were entirely destroyed.
