Certainly when we compare the two intellectual periods, there is a wide difference between the age in which Sekesa could be perplexed by such inquiries, and that of more primitive peoples, which still believe without question in the soul and informing spirit or shade of stones, sticks, weapons, food, water, springs—­in short, of every object and phenomenon.  This is still the case with the Algonquins, the Fijians, the Karens, the Caribbees, the negroes of Guinea, the New Zealanders, the Tongusians, the Greenlanders, the Esthonians, the Australians, the Peruvians, and a host of other savage and barbarous peoples.  They not only animate and personify material objects, but even diseases and their remedies.

The incubus, for example, termed Mara in Northern mythology, was the spirit which tormented sleepers.  This is the Mar of the German proverb:  Dich hat greitten der Mar.  The word is derived from Mar, a horse, and becomes nightmare in English, Cauchemar in French, [Greek:  Ephialtes] in Greek, meaning one which rides upon another.  So with epilepsy, which signifies the act of being seized by any one; it was, like all nervous diseases, held to be a sacred evil, and those afflicted by it were supposed to be possessed.  Insanity was regarded in the same way, as we see in the Bible where Saul’s melancholy is said to be an evil spirit sent from God.  A furious madman was supposed to have been carried off by a demon, and in Persia the insane were said to be God’s fools.  In Tahiti they were called Eatooa, that is, possessed by a divine spirit; and in the Sandwich Isles they were worshipped as men into whom a divinity had entered.  In German the plica polonica is called Alpzopf, or hobgoblin’s tail.  All nations believed that the malign beings which animated diseases could, like men, be propitiated by ceremonies and incantations.  The Redskins are always in fear of the assaults of evil spirits, and have recourse to incantations, and to the most absurd sacerdotal rites, or to the influence of their manitu, in order to be safe.  Their devotions and sacrifices are prompted by fear rather than by gratitude.

Tanner mentions, in his “Narrative of a Captivity among the Indians,” that he once heard a convalescent patient reproved for his imprudence in exposing himself to the air, since his shade had not altogether come back to abide within him.  For this purpose, and in conformity with such ideas, when the sorcerer Malgaco wishes to cure a sick man, he makes a hole in a tomb to let out the spirit, which he then takes in his cap, and constrains it to enter the patient’s head.  The process of disease is supposed to be a struggle between the sick person and the evil spirit of sickness.  The Greek-word, prophylake signifies the arrangements of outposts. Agonia is the hottest moment of conflict, and krisis the decisive day of battle, as we see in Polybius, liii., c. 89.  Medicine