Thomas Northcote

“ Thus, the Koreans go far beyond the Eskimo and number their demons by thousands of billions; they fill the chimney, the shed, the living-room, the kitchen, they are on every shelf and jar; in thousands they waylay the traveller as he leaves his home, beside him, behind him, dancing in front of him, whirring over his head, crying out upon him from air, earth and water. ”

“ If we are entitled to conclude from the fact that a man's wife bears the same name for him as all the other women whom he might have married, that he at one time was the husband of them all, then we are obviously equally entitled to conclude, from the fact that a woman's son is known to her by the same name as the sons of other women, either that during the period of group marriage she actually bore the sons of the other women or that the whole group of women produced their sons by their joint efforts. ”

“ If the aggrieved husband proves the weaker, he necessarily abandons his wife, and she becomes ipso facto the wife of the aggressor; divorce is in fact pronounced by the issue of an ordeal by combat. So far the matter is clear to the observer. ”

“ The river speeding on its course to the sea, the sun and moon, if not the stars also, on their never-ceasing daily round, the lightning, fire, the wind, the sea, all are in motion and therefore animate ”

“ Locke replied to this that men are not always conscious of dreaming, and it is hard to be conceived that the soul of the sleeping man should this moment be thinking, while the soul of the waking man cannot recollect in the next moment a jot of all those thoughts. ”

“ Seeing the phantasmic figures of friends at the moment when they were, whether at the point of death or in good health, many miles distant, must have led the savage irresistibly to the dualistic theory. ”

“ It is singular that anyone should regard this savage view of life as anything but natural. For the Australian the due observance of the marriage regulations is a tribal matter; their breach, whether the connection be by marriage or free love, is a matter of more than private concern. The relations of a man with his legal wife however concern other members of the tribe but little. ”

“ In the second place it is perfectly obvious that the savage has, as a matter of fact, no names for the quite unmistakeable relationship of mother and child. The name which an Australian mother applies to her son, she applies equally to the sons of all other women of her own status; the name which a son applies to his mother, he applies equally to all the women of her status, whether married or unmarried, in old age, middle life, youth, or infancy. ”

“ Thus, kings and chiefs are possessed of great power, and it is death for their subjects to address them directly; but a minister or other person of greater mana than common can approach them unharmed, and can in turn be approached by their inferiors without risk. ”

“ Although it frequently happens that the children belong to the kin which through one of the parents or otherwise exercises the supreme authority in the family, it is far from being the case that there is invariable agreement between the principles on which kinship and authority are determined. ”

“ We find moreover a semi-scientific conception of the basis of divination; the whole of nature is linked together; just as the variations in the height of a column of mercury serve to foretell the weather, so the flight of birds or behaviour of cattle may help to prognosticate its changes; for the uncultured it is merely a step to the assumption that animals know things which are hidden from man. ”

“ ANIMAL WORSHIP, an ill-defined term, covering facts ranging from the worship of the real divine animal, commonly conceived as a “god-body,” at one end of the scale, to respect for the bones of a slain animal or even the use of a respectful name for the living animal at the other end. ”

“ Medieval Witchcraft.—We know less of early and medieval witchcraft than of modern savage and popular beliefs; our knowledge of it is drawn partly from secular sources—the laws against, and in later times the trials for the offence—partly from ecclesiastical sources; but in each case the popular creed is filtered through the mind of a writer who did not necessarily understand or share the belief. ”

“ Greek philosophers like Porphyry, no less than the fathers of the Church, held that the world was pervaded with spirits; side by side with the belief in witchcraft, we can trace through the middle ages the survival of primitive animistic views; and in our own day even these beliefs subsist in unsuspected vigour among the peasantry of the more uneducated European countries. ”

“ It has been pointed out more than once that there are grave difficulties in the way of any hypothesis which assumes that terms of relationship, properly so called, were evolved in a state of pure promiscuity. ”

“ If in the third place, it was proposed to prevent children of sisters or of brothers from intermarrying, it is completely mysterious why children of brothers and sisters should not only not have been prevented in the same way, but absolutely be regarded as the proper mates for each other. ”

“ Dr Frazer has thus defined the character of the animistic pantheon, “they are restricted in their operations to definite departments of nature; their names are general, not proper; their attributes are generic rather than individual; in other words, there is an indefinite number of spirits of each class, and the individuals of a class are much alike; they have no definitely marked individuality; no accepted traditions are current as to their origin, life and character.” ”

“ In a homogeneous mass like the population of Australia, and especially in a mass whose level of culture is so low as to leave no remains behind which we could use for the purposes of chronology, it is hopeless to expect any solution of any of the problems connected with drift of population. ”

“ So she released him and then he tried to kill her, and she said it was not right. So the leopard fears the tortoise now and runs away; and the tortoise beat his wife and said she must catch the leopard. But she could not; but she spoils men. ”

“ Her eyes were bright; her features, each of which seemed to add a personal brilliancy to her expression, had a lustre at once naïve and opulent, as becomes one who accepts greedily all the thousand and one glittering and delightful minutiæ that money adds to life; who has both hands outstretched to receive them; who carries them joyously, like a child, to her bosom; who presses them to her lips.
“His name is Northcote,” said the solicitor, patting her white arm. “From the window of his [96] garret in Fleet Street he surveys the universe with the haughtiest eyes imaginable.” ”

“ But though it may be taken as a mark of matrilineal institutions, often associated with matria potestas or its analogue the rule of the mother's brother, that the husband should remove and live with the wife, we are by no means entitled to say that the removal of the wife to the husband implies a different state of things. ”

“ Even should they find the already existing terminology insufficient, the knowledge of the phenomena enables them to introduce suitable modifications or innovations without fear of causing misunderstanding. It is true that terminology is often loose, but it exists and can be made to express what is meant. ”

“ Even where this idea of the magician-king or chief is not found, his position is an expression of the more powerful mana dwelling within him; consequently the king or chief may not come in contact with the common folk, for fear his touch should blast them, as lightning withers the life of the oak. We can usually see why a king or chief must hold aloof from those whom he might injure, but it is not always easy to see the basic idea of the taboos, if such they be, which aim at protecting the potentate, or ensuring his due regulation of the course of nature. Some African kings may not see the sea ”

“ William of Paris (c. 1230) agrees that lamiae and strigae eat children, but they are allied to the dominae nocturnae; that they are real women is a foolish belief. Scholastic ingenuity, however, soon disposed of rationalistic objections to human flights through the air; the ride of disembodied spirits, led by the devil, Diana, Herodias (the Aradia of modern Italy) , &c., became the assemblies of witches to do homage to the devil. But this fusion was not the work of the scholastics alone; for the church, witchcraft had long consisted in the recognition of demons. ”

“ A sensation of awe began to surmount the pity and the patronage that the outer semblance of his visitor had first aroused in the breast of the young man.
“With your permission, sir,” he said, “I will go back to my original question, and I will frame it with a deeper sincerity: To what does Henry Northcote owe the honor of this visit?”
“This visit is paid to you, my friend, because for [10] some inscrutable reason Nature mixed blood and fire with your brains. You, too, will go down into the depths of the sea and ascend also into the mountain places.” ”

“ Taboos of the Sick.—Both disease and death are unnatural in the eyes of the savage; they are often the result of the magic of some enemy; but they may also be the result of an infraction of a taboo. Some part of the funerary taboos may perhaps be referred to this belief; whatever be the case with taboos of the dead, there can be no question that the sick are secluded or even abandoned, subjected to rites of purification and to restrictions of various sorts, not because their malady is contagious in our sense, but because they are temporarily taboo and dangerous to the health of the community. ”

“ But God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”
“Yes,” said Northcote, rising from the breakfast-table, “there we have the fruit of all that our curiosity can yield to us. The power may be given to us to show that blue is green, but what does it stand for in the presence of the dread materialism of our religions?”
The advocate took three sovereigns from his pocket, three sovereigns which he had yet to earn, and placed them in the palm of the old charwoman.
“Mrs. Brown,” he said, “in the bleak and uncomfortable eyes of science your virtue will not bear inquiry ”

“ They probably wandered about, as do the young males of some existing species, in droves of a dozen or more, and at certain seasons of the year, one or more of them would, as they felt their powers mature, engage the lord of their own or of another herd in single combat, until with the lapse of time the latter either succumbed or was driven from the herd to end his days in solitary ferocity, his hand against everyone, just as we see the rogue elephant wage war indiscriminately on all who approach him. ”

“ It is true that a vast amount of authority for the belief in witchcraft may be quoted; but the testimony for the occurrence of marvels is small in quantity, if we except the valueless declaration of the victims of torture; testimony as to the pathological side of witchcraft is abundant, but affords no proof of the erroneous inferences drawn from the genuine phenomena. If this uncritical attitude is found in our own day, it is not surprising that the rationalistic spirit was long in making its appearance and slow in gaining the victory over superstition. ”

“ The wide and curving nostrils of the prostitute were the mansion of a subtle but brutally dominating power.
For the moment, however, Northcote was only aware that a splendid, supple, and entrancing thing had stolen unperceived, like a beast of prey, into the room. The strong, fine, and beautiful line that had been traced along the convergence of the thin but full lips addressed him like an unexpected but supreme artifice of a great painter, who has learned to use his pigments with effrontery. ”

“ Witchcraft in Classical Times.—Our knowledge of witchcraft in pagan antiquity is slight, but Horace has left us an elaborate description of the proceedings of two witches in the Esquiline cemetery. At the new moon they steal into it to gather bones and noxious herbs, their feet bare, their hair loose and their robes tucked up. So far from aiming at secrecy, however, they alarm their neighbours with their cries. Making a hollow in the ground they rend a black lamb over it to summon the dead. ”

“ Personality.—As a rule the personality of the dreamer is unchanged; but it also happens that the confusion of identity observed with regard to other objects embraces the dreamer himself; he imagines himself to be some one else; he is alternately actor and observer; he may see himself playing a part or may divest himself of his body and wander incorporeally. Ordinary dreams, however, do not go beyond a splitting of personality; we hold conversations, and are intensely surprised at the utterances of a dream figure, which, however, is merely an alter ego. ”

“ Weekes rose excitedly.
“My lord,” he cried, “this blasphemous travesty has gone too far. It must be carried no farther. It must cease.”
“Mr. Weekes,” said Northcote, turning to confront him, while a wave of emotion swept over the court which seemed to make the air vibrate, “I must ask you resume your seat.” He pointed with a finger with sorrowful sternness. “I cannot submit to interruption at such a moment as this. You hold your brief for the Crown; I hold mine for God and human nature.”
The hush which followed was broken by a poor actor among the jury. ”

“ The student of primitive sociology, on the other hand, is called upon to digest the reports of other observers, who have not always understood the conditions which they describe, who have failed to define to themselves what they are endeavouring to make clear to others, and who make use of a terminology created for an entirely different set of conditions, as if exact definition and care in the use of terms were the last and not the first duty of the observer when he frames his report. ”

“ Those who have their doubts always end by failing miserably.”
“So they do, old woman, so they do!” cried Northcote fervently, in spite of being stabbed by consternation. Yet he never conversed with his mother on the most trivial topics without feeling that her simplicity rendered her invulnerable.
“I see your table is laid for two, Henry,” said the girl. “Are you expecting a friend?”
“If he comes, he comes,” said Northcote, with a clever assumption of carelessness, “and if he don’t he stops away. ”