Various authorities in Ethnology and Anthropology concur in their description and testimony as to the superstitious fears that obsess primitive man.

Professor Baldwin Spencer, the anthropologist, writes of the Australian aborigines that they have “an intense belief in evil magic. The natives have no idea of disease or pain as being due to anything but evil magic, except that which is caused by an actual accident which they can see.... Anything they do not understand they associate with evil magic.... You have only to tell a native that he is the victim of evil magic, and he succumbs at once, and can only be cured by the exercise of counter magic.

“The number of supernatural beings feared by aborigines of Australia is exceedingly great. For not only are the heavens peopled with such, but the whole face of the country swarms with them; every thicket, most watering places abound with evil spirits. In like manner, every natural phenomenon is believed to be the work of demons, none of which[288] seem to be of a benign nature, one and all apparently striving to do all imaginable mischief to the poor black fellow.”

The same is true of the negro. “The negro is wont to regard the whole world around him as peopled with envious beings, to whom he imputes every misfortune that happens to him, and from whose harmful influence he seeks to protect himself by all kinds of magic means.” “The religion of the Bolok (of the Upper Congo River),” writes an observer, “has its basis in their fear of those numerous invisible spirits which surround them on every side, and are constantly trying to compass them in their sickness, misfortune and death; and the Boloki’s sole object in practising their religion is to cajole, or appease, cheat or conquer or kill those spirits that trouble them, by their Nganga (medicine men), their rites, their ceremonies, and their charms. If there were no evil spirits to circumvent there would be no need of medicine men and their charms.... The Boloki folk believe that they are surrounded by spirits which try to thwart them at every twist and turn, and to harm them every hour of day and night.... I never met among them a man daring enough to go at night through the forest that divided Monsembe from the upper villages even though a large reward was offered. Their invariable reply was: ‘There are too many spirits in the bush and forest.’ The spirits whom the people dread so[289] much are the mingoli, or disembodied souls of the dead; the life of the Boloki is described as ‘one long drawn out fear of what the mingoli may next do to them.’ Those dangerous beings dwell everywhere, land and water are full of them; they are ever ready to pounce on the living and carry them away, or to smite them with disease, and kill them.... The belief in witchcraft affects their lives in a vast number of ways. It regulates their actions, modifies their mode of thought and speech, controls their conduct towards each other, causes cruelty and callousness in a people not naturally cruel, and sets the various members of a family against each other.... Belief in witches is interwoven into the very fiber of every Bantu speaking man and woman; and the person who does not believe in them is a monster, a witch to be killed.”

The fear of evil spirits, the fear of witchcraft, and the fear of malicious spiritual agencies have been the pests of credulous, fear-obsessed humanity in all the ages of its existence. The crusades, and religious wars have shown us the blight suffered by humanity, obsessed by the impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct. Fear or pretended Love of the great spirit, under whatever name, is used for the avoidance of fears and evils.

Sir E. F. im Thurn describes the Indian of Guiana as haunted by the omnipresence of malicious ghosts and spirits. “The whole world of the Indian swarms[290] with these beings. If by a mental effort, we could for a moment revert to a similar mental position, we should find ourselves surrounded everywhere by a host of harmful beings.... It is not therefore, wonderful that the Indian fears to move beyond the light of his camp-fire after dark ... nor is it wonderful that occasionally the air round the settlement seems to the Indian to grow so full of beings, that a sorcerer is employed.”

The Indians of Paraguay “live in constant dread of supernatural beings and if nothing else contributed to make their life miserable, this ever present dread would be in itself quite sufficient to rob it of most of its joys.”

Professor Powell writes of the Indians: “The Indians believed that diseases were caused by unseen evil beings and by witchcraft, and every cough, every toothache, every headache, every fever, every boil and every wound, in fact all their ailments were attributed to such a cause. Their so-called medical practice was a horrible system of sorcery and to such superstition human life was sacrificed on an enormous scale....”

Similarly, the malignant spirits of the Maori are “so numerous as to surround the living in crowds.” The Maori claims: “the spirits throng like mosquitoes, ever watching to inflict harm.” The Melanesian “sees himself surrounded at every step by evil spirits and their influences.” The Papuans[291] “people land and sea with mysterious, malignant powers which take up their abode in stones and trees or in men, and cause all kinds of misfortunes, especially sickness and death.” The Bakua of New Guinea are in constant fear of spirits.... “Of forest spirits the number is infinite; for it is above all in the mysterious darkness, the tangled wilderness of the virgin forests that the spirits love to dwell.... The spirits are never bent on good, they live in evil places. At night-fall the native hears the voices of the spirits, they make inroads into human habitations, and drive man crazy.”

In Java, the people are firmly convinced that “the number of spirits is innumerable, they are a source of fear and anxiety.” The natives of Sumatra are possessed of “fear of unknown powers.... Every misfortune bespeaks the ill-will of hostile spirits. The whole world is a meeting place of demons.” The Batakas “live in perpetual fear of evil spirits.”

Professor M. Williams writes of the Hindoos: “The great majority of the inhabitants of India are, from the cradle to the burning ground, victims of a form of mental disease which is best explained by the term demonophobia. They are haunted and oppressed by a perpetual dread of demons. They are firmly convinced that evil spirits of all kinds, from malignant fiends to mischievous imps and elves, are ever on the watch to harm, harass and torment them, to cause plague, sickness,[292] famine, and disaster, to impede, injure and mar every good work. The worship of at least ninety per cent of the people of India in the present day is a worship of fear. The simple truth is that evil of all kinds, difficulties, dangers and disasters, famines, diseases, pestilences and death, are thought by an ordinary Hindoo to proceed from demons, or more properly speaking, from devils, and from devils alone.” “The underlying principle (of the religion of the Kacharis of Assam) is characteristically one of fear or dread.”

“The Thibetans,” writes an observer, “are thorough-going demon worshippers. In every nook, path, big tree, rock, spring, waterfall and lake there lurks a devil,—for which reason few individuals will venture out alone after dark. The sky, the ground, the house, the field, the country, have each their special demons; and sickness is always attributed to malign demoniacal influence.”

The Burmese, the Laosians of Siam, the Thay of Indo-China are in all their activities controlled by the fear instinct which is at the bottom of all their beliefs. “The Thay cannot take a single step without meeting a demon on the path.... Spirits watch him, ready to punish negligence, and he is afraid. Fear is not only for him, the beginning of wisdom, it is the whole of his wisdom.”

The Koreans may be regarded as the most superstitious[293] people among the Orientals. Before me lies a Korean book full of superstitions which can only be matched in their absurdities with those of Australian aborigines who, in their savage culture, belong to the paleolithic period. The whole course of the Korean’s life is controlled to the very minutiae by the terrors and horrors of demoniacal, invisible, deadly, malignant powers of demons, spirits, ghosts, hobgoblins, specters, and witches. According to the Korean belief the earth is a pandemonium in which witches and evil spirits hold high carnival.

J. M. de Groot writes “In Korean belief, earth, air, and sea are peopled by demons. They haunt every umbrageous tree, shady ravine, spring and mountain crest.... They make a sport of human destinies. They are on every roof, ceiling, oven and beam. They fill the chimney, shed, the living room, the kitchen, they are on every shelf and jar. In thousands they waylay the traveler 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. They are numbered by thousands of billions, and it has been well said that their ubiquity is an unholy travesty of Divine Omnipresence. This belief, and it seems to be the only one he possesses, keeps the Korean in a perpetual state of nervous apprehension, it surrounds him with indefinite terrors, and it may be[294] truly said of him that he passes the time of his sojourning here in fear.... The spirits keep the Korean in bondage from birth to death.”

Im Bang, a Korean writer on Korean beliefs, has a characteristic story of a poor relative of some Korean dignitary. This poor relative of the high official once a year gathered hundreds of thousands of spirits whom he checked off, so as to keep their malignant disposition under control. And this gentleman was but one of the many clerks; he was but one census man of the vast bureaucratic spiritistic machinery for the regulation and control of evil demons.

The same holds true of the other tribes in Asia. Thus the Gyliaks think that all the places on earth are filled with malicious demoniacal agencies. Similarly, the Koryaks on the Amoor are terrorized by the malignancy of evil spirits that dog their steps. W. Jochelson tells of the Koryaks that “when visiting the houses to cause diseases and to kill people, they (the spirits or demons) enter from under the ground.... They are invisible to human beings............