flowers, the honey, which the slaves left there by night? Pure food for some pure nymph. The wasp-gods would be forgotten; probably smoked out as sacrilegious intruders. The lucky seer or poet who struck out the fancy would soon find imitators; and it would become, after a while, a common and popular superstition that Hamadryads haunted the hollow forest trees, Naiads the wells, and Oreads the lawns. Somewhat thus, I presume, did the more cheerful Hellenic myths displace the darker superstitions of the Pelasgi, and those rude Arcadian tribes who offered, even as late as the Roman Empire, human sacrifices to gods whose original names were forgotten.

But even the cultus of nymphs would be defiled after a while by a darker element. However fair, they might be capricious and revengeful, like other women. Why not? And soon, men going out into the forest would be missed for a while. They had eaten narcotic berries, got sun-strokes, wandered till they lost their wits. At all events, their wits were gone. Who had done it? Who but the nymphs? The men had seen something they should not have seen; done something they would not have done; and the nymphs had punished the unconscious rudeness by that frenzy. Fear, everywhere fear, of Nature-the spotted panther, as some one calls her, as fair as cruel, as playful as treacherous. Always fear of Nature, till a Divine light

arise, and show men that they are not the puppets of Nature, but her lords; and that they are to fear God, and fear naught else.

And so ends my true myth of the wasp-tree. No, it need not end there; it may develop into a yet darker and more hideous form of superstition, which Europe has often seen; which is common now among the Negros ; which, we may hope, will soon be exterminated.

*

This might happen. For it, or something like it, has happened too many times already.

That to the ancient women who still kept up the irrational remnant of the wasp-worship, beneath the sacred tree, other women might resort; not merely from curiosity, or an excited imagination, but from jealousy and revenge. Oppressed, as woman has always been under the reign of brute force; beaten, outraged, deserted, at best married against her will, she has too often gone for comfort and help-and those of the very darkest kind-to the works of darkness; and there never were wanting-there are not wanting, even now, in remote parts of these isles-wicked old women who would, by help of the old superstitions, do for her what she wished. Soon would follow mysterious deaths of

* For an account of Sorcery and Fetishism among the African Negros, see Burton's 'Lake Regions of Central Africa,' vol. ii. pp. 341.360.

rivals, of husbands, of babes; then rumours of dark rites connected with the sacred tree, with poison, with the wasp and his sting, with human sacrifices; lies mingled with truth, more and more confused and frantic, the more they were misinvestigated by men mad with fear: till there would arise one of those witch-manias, which are too common still among the African Negros, which were too common of old among the men of our race.

I say, among the men. To comprehend a witchmania, you must look at it as-what the witch-literature confesses it unblushingly to be-man's dread of Nature excited to its highest form, as dread of woman.

She is to the barbarous man-she should be more and more to the civilised man-not only the most beautiful and precious, but the most wonderful and mysterious of all natural objects, if it be only as the author of his physical being. She is to the savage a miracle to be alternately adored and dreaded. He dreads her more delicate nervous organisation, which often takes shapes to him demoniacal and miraculous; ; her quicker instincts, her readier wit, which seem to him to have in them somewhat prophetic and superhuman, which entangle him as in an invisible net, and rule him against his will. He dreads her very tongue, more crushing than his heaviest club, more keen than his poisoned arrows. He dreads those habits

of secresy and falsehood, the weapons of the weak, to which savage and degraded woman always has recourse. He dreads the very medicinal skill which she has learnt to exercise, as nurse, comforter, and slave. He dreads those secret ceremonies, those mysterious initiations which no man may witness, which he has permitted to her in all ages, in so many-if not all— barbarous and semi-barbarous races, whether Negro, American, Syrian, Greek, or Roman, as a homage to the mysterious importance of her who brings him into the world. If she turn against him-she, with all her unknown powers, she who is the sharer of his deepest secrets, who prepares his very food day by day -what harm can she not, may she not do? And that she has good reason to turn against him, he knows too well. What deliverance is there from this mysterious house-fiend, save brute force? Terror, torture, murder, must be the order of the day. Woman must be crushed, at all price, by the blind fear of the man.

I shall say no more. I shall draw a veil, for very pity and shame, over the most important and most significant facts of this, the most hideous of all human follies. I have, I think, given you hints enough to show that it, like all other superstitions, is the child— the last born and the ugliest child-of blind dread of the unknown.

SCIENCE.

A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.

I SAID, that Superstition was the child of Fear, and Fear the child of Ignorance; and you might expect me to say antithetically, that Science was the child of Courage, and Courage the child of Knowledge.

But these genealogies-like most metaphors-do not fit exactly, as you may see for yourselves.

If fear be the child of ignorance, ignorance is also the child of fear; the two react on, and produce each other. The more men dread Nature, the less they wish to know about her. Why pry into her awful secrets? It is dangerous; perhaps impious. She says to them, as in the Egyptian temple of old-"I am Isis, and my veil no mortal yet hath lifted." And why should they try or wish to lift it? If she will leave them in peace, they will leave her in peace. It is enough that she does not destroy them. So as ignorance bred fear, fear breeds fresh and willing ignorance.