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- (c) There is Biblical authority for the idea of spirits interested in man, as involved in the grand contest between good and evil: spirits ministering and tempting—this falls in with the impression of unseen agency in human experience, where natural causes seem insufficient—imagination fills in the details to such conception, especially note:
- (aa) Interposition of evil Spirits invited by man, and looseness of life a mode of inviting [adventure of Father Philip]—on the other hand they are powerless before firmness of will (xvii. 33)—further, their gifts turn to evil or good according as they are used (xvii. 47).
- (bb) The idea of tempting to good is suggested (heading to chapter xxx).
4. Even abstruse metaphysical speculation may sometimes take a plastic form—thus: investigation of boundaries and dividing lines suggests a region of middle points and negatives as a speculative location for the supernatural, or a mode of shading off its nature and attributes to the proper degree of indefiniteness. [Compare ix. 52, xii. 3.]
5. From speculation it is a short step to aspiration.
- (a) Intellectual aspiration: rebellion against human limitations—e.g. motion [compare: ix. 54, xii. 2], insight into the future—the 'uniformity of nature' creates by repulsion an interest in phenomena divorced from causes [compare: xxxvii. 120 (sixth line of verse)].—Perhaps with this is partly connected a sense of sin as attaching to commerce with the supernatural.
- (b) Moral aspiration: we feel our lower nature as a weight—imagination catches the feeling in the form of beings free from the grosser influences of earth. [Compare xvii. 33 (last four lines), heading to chapter xii.]
The central interest of speculation is supported by others.
1. Mystery is a primary human interest—with which ignorance does not interfere, but assists it, serving as a sort of dark back-ground.
- (a) Natural scenery often favours the mysterious: mists and fantastic resemblances (iii. 32)—ravines, groves, sense of loneliness: distance from the real becomes nearness to hidden possibilities (chapter ii, particularly paragraph 8)—thus the general idea of haunting: every such idea a centre of imaginative activity. [Compare xx. 47.]
- (b) Dream experience—phenomena connected with delirium and opiates—optical delusions—apparitions and unceasing interest in the relations between the worlds of matter and spirit—and generally: the residuum of unexplained phenomena in the wake of scientific discovery [which properly makes 'superstition'].
- (c) Science itself is the greatest of all wonder-workers. [Compare the Introduction: Answer to Clutterbuck, paragraph 2.]
2. Tradition assists.
- (a) Popular and universal: folk-lore—part awe, part gossip, and part trickery—the Nameless Dean, the Good Neighbours, All-Hallow E'en (iv. 11 to end)—spells and charms (viii. 25).—The humorous presentation of the lower supernatural assists the conception of the higher.
- (b) Mythological: the deities of defunct religions become literary property as imaginative creations—especially: Pantheism (in the sense of deification of every conceivable individuality) assists the notion of 'middle spirits' (neither angels nor tempters) such as the White Lady.
