disbelief, does not depend on education, enlightenment, pure reason,
but on personal character and genius. The same proportionate
distribution of these is likely to recur in any age.

Once more, Rome in the late Republic, the Rome of Cicero, was
'enlightened,' as was the Greece of Lucian; that is the educated
classes were enlightened. Yet Lucretius, writing only for the
educated classes, feels obliged to combat the belief in ghosts and
the kind of Calvinism which, but for his poem, we should not know to
have been widely prevalent. Lucian, too, mocks frequently at
educated belief in just such minor and useless miracles as we are
considering, but then Lucian lived in an age of cataclysm in
religion. Looking back on history we find that most of historical
time has either been covered with dark ignorance, among savages,
among the populace, or in all classes; or, on the other hand, has
been marked by enlightenment, which has produced, or accompanied,
religious or irreligious crises. Now religious and irreligious
crises both tend to beget belief in abnormal occurrences. Religion
welcomes them as miracles divine or diabolical. Scepticism produces
a reaction, and 'where no gods are spectres walk'. Thus men cannot,
or, so far, men have not been able to escape from the conditions in
which marvels flourish. If we are savages, then Vuis and Brewin
beset the forest paths and knock in the lacustrine dwelling perched
like a nest on reeds above the water; tornaks rout in the Eskimo
hut, in the open wood, in the gunyeh, in the Medicine Lodge. If we
are European peasants, we hear the Brownie at work, and see the
fairies dance in their grassy ring. If we are devoutly Catholic we
behold saints floating in mid-air, or we lay down our maladies and
leave our crutches at Lourdes. If we are personally religious, and
pass days in prayer, we hear voices like Bunyan; see visions like