DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE BY MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY, M.A. B. D. OF DIVINITY COLLEGE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. THE indications given in the body of this work of its general scheme and scope are so liable to be overlooked, that I avail myself of this opportunity to give them prominence in a brief preface. It has been my purpose to follow the phantasms which man has conjured up from obstacles encountered in his progressive adaptation to the conditions of existence on his planet. These obstacles, at first mainly physical, have been imaginatively associated with preternatural powers so long as they were not comprehended by intelligence or mastered by skill. In the proportion in which they have been so understood and mastered, their preternatural vestments have to some extent been reduced to shreds, preserved among the more ignorant as 'survivals,' while in other cases they have been inherited and worn by the next series of unmastered obstructions or uncomprehended phenomena. The adaptation of man to his physical environment antedates his social, moral, and religious evolutions; consequently the phantasms that fade from his outer world have a tendency to pass into his inner world, undergoing such modifications as enable them to describe the pains and perils which beset his progress beyond mere animal needs and aims. |