philosopher; but with the changed meaning brought by centuries of philosophizing, Oken hit upon a definition almost identical in form, that 'What sounds, announces its spirit' ('Was tönt, gibt seinen Geist kund').[1] What the savage would have meant, or Porphyry after him did mean, was that the brass was actually animated by a spirit of the brass apart from its matter, but when a modern philosopher takes up the old phrase, all he means is the qualities of the brass. As in other animistic phrases of thought and feeling such as 'animal spirits,' or being in 'good and bad spirits,' the term only recalls with an effort the long-past philosophy which it once expressed. The modern theory of the mind considers it capable of performing even exalted and unusual functions without the intervention of prompting or exciting demons ; yet the old recognition of such beings crops up here and there in phrases which adapt animistic ideas to commonplaces of human disposition, as when a man is still said to be animated by a patriotic spirit, or possessed by a spirit of disobedience. In old times the ἐγγαστρίμυθος, or 'ventriloquus' was really held to have a spirit rumbling or talking from inside his body, as when Eurykles the soothsayer was inspired by such a familiar; or when a certain Patriarch mentioning a demon heard to speak out of a man's belly, remarks on the worthy place it had chosen to dwell in. In the time of Hippokrates, the giving of oracular responses by such ventriloquism was practised by certain women as a profession. To this day in China one may get an oracular response from a spirit apparently talking out of a medium's stomach, for a fee of about twopence-halfpenny. How changed a philosophy it marks, that among ourselves the word 'ventriloquist' should have sunk to its present meaning.[2] Nor is that
2 Suidas, s.v. ἐγγαστρίμυθος; Isidor. Gloss. s.v. 'præcantatores'; Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 578. Maury, 'Magie,' &c. p. 269. Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. ii. p. 115.
