Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/205

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
INCUBI AND SUCCUBI.
191

accepted accusation against 'many persons of both sexes, forgetful of their own salvation, and falling away from the Catholic faith.' The practical outcome of this belief is known to students who have traced the consequence of the Papal Bull in the legal manual of the witchcraft tribunals, drawn up by the three appointed Inquisitors, the infamous Malleus Maleficarum; and have followed the results of this again into those dreadful records which relate in their bald matter-of-fact phraseology the confessions of the crime of diabolic intercourse, wrung from the wretched victims worked on by threat and persuasion in the intervals of the rack, till enough evidence was accumulated for clear judgment, and sentence of the stake.[1] I need not dwell on the mingled obscenity and horror of these details, which here only have their bearing on the history of animism. But it will aid the ethnographer to understand the relation of modern to savage philosophy, if he will read Richard Burton's seriously believing account in the 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' where he concludes with acquiescence in a declaration lately made by Lipsius, that on the showing of daily narratives and judicial sentences, in no age had these lecherous demons appeared in such numbers as in his own time — and this was about A.D. 1600.[2]

In connexion with the nightmare and the incubus, another variety of nocturnal demon requires notice, the vampire. Inasmuch as certain patients arc seen becoming day by day, without apparent cause, thin, weak, and bloodless, savage animism is called upon to produce a satisfactory explanation, and does so in the doctrine that there exist certain demons which cat out the souls or hearts or suck the blood of their victims. The Polynesians said that it was the

1 The 'Malleus Maleficarum' was published about 1489. See on the general subject, Horst, 'Zauber-Bibliothek,' vol. vi.; Ennemoser, 'Magic,' vol. ii.; Maury, 'Magie,' &c. p. 256; Lecky, 'Hist. of Rationalism,' vol. i.

2 Burton, 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' iii. 2. 'Unum dixero, non opinari me ullo retro ævo tantam copiam Satyrorum, et salacium istorum Geniorum se ostendisse, quantum nunc quotidianæ narrationes, et judiciales sententiæ proferunt.'

  1. 1
  2. 2