CHAPTER I.

DECLINE OF DEMONS.

The Holy Tree of Travancore--The growth of Demons in India and
their decline--The Nepaul Iconoclast--Moral Man and unmoral
Nature--Man's physical and mental migrations--Heine's 'Gods in
Exile'--The Goban Saor--Master Smith--A Greek caricature of
the Gods--The Carpenter v. Deity and Devil--Extermination of
the Werewolf--Refuges of Demons--The Giants reduced to Little
People--Deities and Demons returning to nature.


Having indicated, necessarily in mere outline and by selected
examples, the chief obstacles encountered by primitive man, and his
apprehensions, which he personified as demons, it becomes my next
task to show how and why many of these demons declined from their
terrible proportions and made way for more general forms, expressing
comparatively abstract conceptions of physical evil. This will involve
some review of the processes through which man's necessary adaptation
to his earthly environment brought him to the era of Combat with
multiform obstruction.

There was, until within a few recent years, in a mountain of
Travancore, India, an ancient, gigantic Tree, regarded by the natives
as the residence of a powerful and dangerous deity who reigned over
the mountains and the wild beasts. [210] Sacrifices were offered to
this tree, sermons preached before it, and it seems to have been the
ancient cathedral of the district. Its trunk was so large that four
men with outstretched arms could not compass it.

This tree in its early growth may symbolise the upspringing of natural
religion. Its first green leaves may be regarded as corresponding
to the first crude imaginations of man as written, for instance,
on leaves of the Vedas. Perceiving in nature, as we have seen, a
power of contrivance like his own, a might far superior to his own,
man naturally considered that all things had been created and were
controlled by invisible giants; and bowing helplessly beneath them
sang thus his hymns and supplications.

'This earth belongs to Varuna, the king, and the wide sky, with its
ends far apart: the two seas (sky and ocean) are Varuna's loins;
he is also contained in this drop of water. He who would flee far
beyond the sky even he would not be rid of Varuna. His spies proceed
from heaven towards this earth.'

'Through want of strength, thou ever strong and bright god, have I
gone wrong: have mercy, have mercy!'

'However we break thy laws from day to day, men as we are, O god
Varuna, do not deliver us to death!'

'Was it an old sin, Varuna, that thou wished to destroy the friend
who always praises thee!'

'O Indra, have mercy, give me my daily bread! Raise up wealth to the
worshipper, thou mighty Dawn!'

'Thou art the giver of horses, Indra, thou art the giver of cows,
the giver of corn, the strong lord of wealth: the old guide of
man disappointing no desires: to him we address this song. All this
wealth around here is known to be thine alone: take from it conqueror,
bring it hither!'

In these characteristic sentences from various hymns we behold
man making his first contract with the ruling powers of nature:
so much adoration and flattery on his part for so much benefit on
theirs. But even in these earliest hymns there are intimations that
the gods were not fulfilling their side of the engagement. 'Why is
it,' pleads the worshipper, 'that you wish to destroy one who always
praises you? Was it an old sin?' The simple words unconsciously report
how faithfully man was performing his part of the contract. Having
omitted no accent of the prayer, praise, or ritual, he supposes the
continued indifference of the gods must be due to an old sin, one he
has forgotten, or perhaps one committed by some ancestor.

In this state of mind the suggestion would easily take root that
words alone were too cheap to be satisfactory to the gods. There must
be offerings. Like earthly kings they must have their revenues. We
thus advance to the phase of sacrifices. But still neither in answer
to prayer, flattery, or sacrifice did the masses receive health or
wealth. Poverty, famine, death, still continued their remorseless
course with the silent machinery of sun, moon, and star.

But why, then, should man have gone on fulfilling his part of
the contract--believing and worshipping deities, who when he
begged for corn gave him famine, and when he asked for fish gave
him a serpent? The priest intervened with ready explanation. And
here we may consult the holy Tree of Travancore again? Why should
that particular Tree--of a species common in the district and not
usually very large--have grown so huge? 'Because it is holy,' said
the priest. 'Because it was believed holy,' says the fact. For ages
the blood and ashes of victims fed its roots and swelled its trunk;
until, by an argument not confined to India, the dimensions of
the superstition were assumed to prove its truth. When the people
complained that all their offerings and worship did not bring
any returns the priest replied, You stint the gods and they stint
you. The people offered the fattest of their flocks and fruits:
More yet! said the priest. They built fine altars and temples for
the gods: More yet! said the priest. They built fine houses for the
priests, and taxed themselves to support them. And when thus, fed by
popular sacrifices and toils, the religion had grown to vast power,
the priest was able to call to his side the theologian for further
explanation. The theologian and the priest said--'Of course there must
be good reasons why the gods do not answer all your prayers (if they
did not answer some you would be utterly consumed); mere mortals must
not dare to inquire into their mysteries; but that there are gods,
and that they do attend to human affairs, is made perfectly plain
by this magnificent array of temples, and by the care with which
they have supplied all the wants of us, their particular friends,
whose cheeks, as you see, hang down with fatness.'

If, after this explanation, any scepticism or rebellion arose among
the less favoured, the priest might easily add--'Furthermore, we and
our temples are now institutions; we are so strong and influential
that it is evident that the gods have appointed us to be their
representatives on earth, the dispensers of their favours. Also, of
their disfavours. We are able to make up for the seeming indifference
of the gods, rewarding you if you give us honour and wealth, but
ruining you if you turn heretical.'

So grew the holy Tree. But strong as it was there was something
stronger. Some few years ago a missionary from London went to
Travancore, and desired to build a chapel near the same tree, no
doubt to be in the way of its worshippers and to borrow some of
the immemorial sanctity of the spot. This missionary fixed a hungry
eye upon that holy timber, and reflected how much holier it would
be if ending its career in the beams of a christian chapel. So one
day--English authorities being conveniently near--he and his workmen
began to cut down the sacred Tree. The natives gradually gathered
around, and looked on with horror. While the cutting proceeded a
tiger drew near, but shouts drove him off: the natives breathed freer;
the demon had come and looked on, but could not protect the Tree from
the Englishman. They still shuddered, however, at the sacrilege, and
when at last the Holy Tree of Travancore fell, its crash was mingled
with the cries and screams of its former worshippers. The victorious
missionary may be pointing out in his chapel the cut-up planks which
reveal the impotence of the deity so long feared by the natives; and
perhaps he is telling them of the bigness of his Tree, and claiming
its flourishing condition in Europe as proof of its supernatural
character. Possibly he may omit to mention the blood and ashes which
have fattened the root and enlarged the trunk of his Holy Tree!

That Tree in Travancore could never have been so destroyed if the
primitive natural religion in which lay its deeper root had not
previously withered. The gods, the natural forces, which through
so many ages had not heeded man's daily martyrdoms, had now for a
long time been shown quite as impotent to protect their own shrines,
images, holy trees, and other interests. The priests as vainly invoked
those gods to save their own country from subjugation by other nations
with foreign gods, as the masses had invoked their personal aid. For
a long time the gods in some parts of India have received only a
formal service, coextensive with their association with a lingering
order, or as part of princely establishments; but they topple down
from time to time, as the masses realise their freedom to abandon
them with impunity. They are at the mercy of any strong heretic
who arises. The following narrative, quoted by Mr. Herbert Spencer,
presents a striking example of what some Hindoos had been doing before
the missionary cut down the Tree at Travancore:--

'A Nepaul king, Rum Bahâdur, whose beautiful queen, finding her
lovely face had been disfigured by smallpox, poisoned herself,
cursed his kingdom, her doctors, and the gods of Nepaul, vowing
vengeance on all. Having ordered the doctors to be flogged, and
the right ear and nose of each to be cut off, he then wreaked his
vengeance on the gods of Nepaul, and after abusing them in the most
gross way, he accused them of having obtained from him 12,000 goats,
some hundred-weights of sweetmeats, 2000 gallons of milk, &c., under
false pretences. He then ordered all the artillery, varying from
three to twelve-pounders, to be brought in front of the palace. All
the guns were then loaded to the muzzle, and down he marched to
the headquarters of the Nepaul deities. All the guns were drawn up
in front of the several deities, honouring the most sacred with the
heaviest metal. When the order to fire was given, many of the chiefs
and soldiers ran away panic-stricken, and others hesitated to obey
the sacrilegious order; and not till several gunners had been cut down
were the guns opened. Down came the gods and the goddesses from their
hitherto sacred positions; and after six hours' heavy cannonading,
not a vestige of the deities remained.'

However panic-stricken the Nepaulese may have been at this ferocious
manifestation, it was but a storm bred out of a more general mental and
moral condition. Rum Bahâdur only laid low in a few moments images of
gods who, passing from the popular interest, had been successively
laid to sleep on the innumerable shelves of Hindu mythology. The
early Dualism was developed into Moral Man on one side, and Unmoral
Nature on the other. Man had discovered that moral order in nature
was represented solely by his own power: by his culture or neglect the
plant or animal grew or withered, and where his control did not extend,
there sprang the noxious weed or beast. So far as good gods had been
imagined they were respected now only as incarnate in men. But the
active powers of evil still remained, hurtful and hateful to man, and
the pessimist view of nature became inevitable. To man engaged in his
life-and-death struggle with nature many a beauty which now nourishes
the theist's optimism was lost. The fragrant flower was a weed to
the man hungry for bread, and he viewed many an idle treasure with
the disappointment of Sâdi when, travelling in the desert, he found a
bag in which he hoped to discover grain, but found only pearls. Fatal
to every deity not anthropomorphic was the long pessimistic phase of
human faith. Each became more purely a demon, and passed on the road
to become a devil.

Many particular demons man conquered as he progressively carried
order amid the ruggedness and wildness of his planet. Every new weapon
or implement he invented punctured a thousand phantoms. Only in the
realms he could not yet conquer remained the hostile forces to which
he ascribed præternatural potency, because not able to pierce them and
see through them. Nevertheless, the early demonic forms had to give
way, for man had discovered that they were not his masters. He could
cut down the Upas and root up the nightshade; he had bruised many a
serpent's head and slain many a wolf. In detail innumerable enemies
had been proved his inferiors in strength and intelligence. Important
migrations took place: man passes, geographically, away from the region
of some of his worst enemies, inhabits countries more fruitful, less
malarious, his habitat exceeding that of his animal foe in range;
and, still better, he passes by mental migration out of the stone
age, out of other helpless ages, to the age of metal and the skill to
fashion and use it. He has made the fire-fiend his friend. No longer
henceforth a naked savage, with bit of stone or bone only to meet
the crushing powers of the world and win its reluctant supplies!

There is a sense far profounder than its charming play of fancy in
Heine's account of the 'Gods in Exile,' an essay which Mr. Pater
well describes as 'full of that strange blending of sentiment which
is characteristic of the traditions of the Middle Age concerning
the Pagan religions.' [211] Heine writes: 'Let me briefly remind
the reader how the gods of the older world, at the time of the
definite triumph of Christianity, that is, in the third century,
fell into painful embarrassments, which greatly resembled certain
tragical situations of their earlier life. They now found themselves
exposed to the same troublesome necessities to which they had once
before been exposed during the primitive ages, in that revolutionary
epoch when the Titans broke out of the custody of Orcus, and, piling
Pelion on Ossa, scaled Olympus. Unfortunate gods! They had, then,
to take flight ignominiously, and hide themselves among us here on
earth under all sorts of disguises. Most of them betook themselves to
Egypt, where for greater security they assumed the form of animals,
as is generally known. Just in the same way they had to take flight
again, and seek entertainment in remote hiding-places, when those
iconoclastic zealots, the black brood of monks, broke down all the
temples, and pursued the gods with fire and curses. Many of these
unfortunate emigrants, entirely deprived of shelter and ambrosia,
had now to take to vulgar handicrafts as a means of earning their
bread. In these circumstances, many, whose sacred groves had been
confiscated, let themselves out for hire as wood-cutters in Germany,
and had to drink beer instead of nectar. Apollo seems to have been
content to take service under graziers, and as he had once kept the
cows of Admetus, so he lived now as a shepherd in Lower Austria. Here,
however, having become suspected, on account of his beautiful singing,
he was recognised by a learned monk as one of the old pagan gods,
and handed over to the spiritual tribunal. On the rack he confessed
that he was the god Apollo; and before his execution he begged that
he might be suffered to play once more upon the lyre and to sing a
song. And he played so touchingly, and sang with such magic, and was
withal so beautiful in form and feature that all the women wept, and
many of them were so deeply impressed that they shortly afterwards
fell sick. And some time afterwards the people wished to drag him
from the grave again, that a stake might be driven through his body,
in the belief that he had been a vampire, and that the sick women
would by this means recover. But they found the grave empty.'

Naturally: it is hard to bury Apollo. The next time he appeared was, no
doubt, as musical director in the nearest cathedral. The young singers
and artists discovered by such severe lessons that it was dangerous
to sing Pagan ballads too realistically; that a cowl is capable of a
high degree of decoration; that Pan's pipe sounds well evolved into
an organ; that Cupids look just as well if called Cherubs. It is odd
that it should have required Robert Browning three centuries away to
detect the real form and face beneath the vestment of the Bishop who
orders his tomb at Saint Praxed's Church:--


The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,
And Moses with the tables....


So in one direction grew the hermitage to the Vatican; so Zeus regained
his throne by exchanging his thunderbolts for Peter's keys, and Mars
regained his steed as St. George, and Hercules as Christ wrestles with
Death once more. But while these artificial restorations were going on
in one direction, in another some of the gods were passing through many
countries, outwitting and demolishing their former selves as lowered
to demons. There are many legends which report this strange phase of
development, one of the finest being that of The Goban Saor, told by
Mr. Kennedy. The King of Munster sent for this wonderful craftsman to
build him a castle. The Goban could fashion a spear with three strokes
of his hammer--St. Patrick, who found the Trinity in the shamrock,
may have determined the number of strokes,--and when he wished to drive
in nails high up, had only to throw his hammer at them. On his way to
work for the King, Goban, accompanied by his son, passed the night at
the house of a farmer, whose daughters--one dark and industrious, the
other fair and idle--received from him (Goban) three bits of advice:
'Always have the head of an old woman by the hob; warm yourselves
with your work in the morning; and some time before I come back take
the skin of a newly-killed sheep to the market, and bring itself and
the price of it home again.' As Goban, with his son, journeyed on,
they found a poor man vainly trying to roof his house with three
joists and mud; and by simply making one end of each joist rest on
the middle of another, the other ends being on the wall, the structure
was perfect. He relieved puzzled carpenters by putting up for them the
pegless and nailless bridge described in Cæsar's Commentaries. Having
done various great things, Goban returns to the homestead of the
girls who had received his three bits of advice. The idle one had,
of course, blundered at each point, and been ridiculed in the market
for her proposition to bring back the sheep's skin and its price. The
other, by kindly taking in an aged female relative, by working till
she was warm, and by plucking and selling the wool of the sheep's
skin and bringing home the latter, had obeyed the Goban's advice,
and was selected as his daughter-in-law--the prince attending the
wedding. Now, as to building the castle, Goban knew that the King had
employed on previous castles four architects and then slain them, so
that they should never build another palace equal to his. He therefore
says he has left at home a necessary implement which his wife will
only give to himself or one of royal blood. The King sends his son,
who is kept as hostage till the husband's safe return.

This is the Master Smith of Norse fable, who has a chair from which
none can rise, and who therein binds the devil; which again is the
story of Hephaistos, and the chair in which he entrapped Hera until
she revealed the secret of his birth. The 'devil' whom the Master
Smith entraps is, in Norse mythology, simply Loki: and as Loki is a
degraded Hephaistos, fire in its demonic forms, we have in all these
legends the fire-fiend fought with fire.

This re-dualisation of the gods into demonic and saintly forms
had a long preparation. The forces that brought it about may be
seen already beginning in Hesiod's representations of the gods, in
their presentation on the stage by Euripides, in a manner certain
to demonise them to the vulgar, and to subject them to such laughter
among scholars as still rings across the ages in the divine dialogues
of Lucian. What the gods had become to the Lucians before they
reached the Heines may be gathered from the accompanying caricature
(Fig. 21). [212] Nothing can be more curious than the encounters of the
gods with their dead selves, their Manes. What unconscious ingenuity
in the combinations! St. Martin on his grey steed divides with the
beggar the cloud-cloak of Wodan on his black horse, treading down
just such paupers in his wild hunt; as saint he now shelters those
whom as storm-demon he chilled; but the identity of Junker Martin
is preserved in both titles and myths, and the Martinhorns (cakes),
twisted after fashion of the horns of goat or buck pursued by Wodan,
are deemed potent like horse-shoes to defend house or stable from
the outlawed god. [213]

The more impressive and attractive myths transferred to christian
saints--as the flowers sacred to Freyja became Our Lady's-glove,
or slipper, or smock--there remained to the old gods, in their own
name, only the repulsive and puerile, and by this means they were
doomed at once to become unmitigated knaves and fools. If Titans,
Jötunn or Jinni, they were giant humbugs, whom any small Hans or Jack
might outwit and behead. Our Fairy lore is full of stories which show
that in the North as well as in Latin countries there had already
been a long preparation for the contempt poured by Christianity
upon the Norse deities. Many of the stories, as they now stand in
Folktales, speak of the vanquished demon or giant as the devil,
but it is perfectly easy to detach the being meant from the name
so indiscriminately bestowed by christian priests upon most of the
outlawed deities. In Lithuania, where survived too much reverence for
some of the earlier deities to admit of their being identified with
the devil, we still find them triumphed over by the wit and skill of
the artisan. Such is the case in a favourite popular legend of that
country in which Perkunas--the ancient Thunder-god, corresponding to
Perun in Russia--is involved in disgrace along with the devil by the
sagacity and skill of a carpenter. The aged god, the venerable Devil,
and the young Carpenter, united for a journey. Perkun kept the beasts
off with thunder and lightning, the Devil hunted up food, the Carpenter
cooked. At length they built a hut and lived in it, and planted the
ground with vegetables. Presently a thief invaded their garden. Perkun
and the Devil successively tried to catch him, but were well thrashed;
whereas the Carpenter by playing the fiddle fascinated the thief,
who was a witch, a hag whose hand the fiddler managed to get into
a split tree (under pretence of giving her a music lesson), holding
her there till she gave up her iron waggon and the whip which she had
used on his comrades. After this the three, having decided to separate,
disputed as to which should have the hut; and they finally agreed that
it should be the possession of him who should succeed in frightening
the two others. The Devil raised a storm which frightened Perkun, and
Perkun with his thunder and lightning frightened the Devil; but the
Carpenter held out bravely, and, in the middle of the night, came in
with the witch's waggon, and, cracking her whip, the Devil and Perkun
both took flight, leaving the Carpenter in possession of the hut. [214]

So far as Perkun is concerned, and may be regarded as representative
of the gods, the hut may be symbol of Europe, and the Carpenter
type of the power which conquered all that was left of them after
their fair or noble associations had been transferred to christian
forms. Somewhat later, the devil was involved in a like fate, as we
shall have to consider in a future chapter.

The most horrible superstitions, if tracked in their popular
development, reveal with special impressiveness the progressive
emancipation of man from the phantasms of ferocity which represented
his primal helplessness. The universal werewolf superstition, for
instance, drew its unspeakable horrors from deep and wide-spreading
roots. Originating, probably, in occasional relapses to cannibalism
among tribes or villages which found themselves amid circumstances as
urgent as those which sometimes lead a wrecked crew to draw lots which
shall die to support the rest, it would necessarily become demonised
by the necessity of surrounding cannibalism with dangers worse than
starvation. But it would seem that individuals are always liable,
by arrest of development which usually takes the form of disease
or insanity, to be dragged back to the savage condition of their
race. In the course of this dark history, we note first an increasing
tendency to show the means of the transformation difficult. In the
Volsunga Saga it is by simply putting on a 'wolf-shirt' (wolfskin)
that a man may become a wolf. Then it is said it is done by a belt
made of the skin of a man who has been hung--all executed persons
being sacred to Wodan (because not dying a natural death), to whom
also the wolf was sacred. Then it is added, that the belt must be
marked with the signs of the zodiac, and have a buckle with seven
teeth. Then it is said that 'only a seventh son' is possessed of
this diabolical power; or others say one whose brows meet over his
nose. The means of detecting werewolves and retransforming them to
human shape multiplied as those of transformation diminished in number,
and such remedies reflected the advance of human skill. The werewolf
could be restored by crossing his path with a knife or polished
steel; by a sword laid on the ground with point towards him; by a
silver ball. Human skill was too much for him. In Posen mothers had
discovered that one who had bread in his or her mouth could by even
such means discover werewolves; and fathers, to this hint about keeping
'the wolf from the door,' added that no one could be attacked by any
such monster if he were in a cornfield. The Slav levelled a plough
at him. Thus by one prescription and another, and each representing a
part of man's victory over chaos, the werewolf was driven out of all
but a few 'unlucky' days in the year, and especially found his last
refuge in Twelfth Night. But even on that night the werewolf might
be generally escaped by the simple device of not speaking of him. If
a wolf had to be spoken of he was then called Vermin, and Dr. Wuttke
mentions a parish priest named Wolf in East Prussia who on Twelfth
Night was addressed as Mr. Vermin! The actual wolf being already out
of the forests in most places by art of the builder and the architect;
the phantasmal wolf driven out of fear for most of the year by man's
recognition of his own superiority to this exterminated beast; even
the proverbial 'ears' of the vanishing werewolf ceased to be visible
when on his particular fest-night his name was not mentioned.

The last execution of a man for being an occasional werewolf was,
I believe, in 1589, near Cologne, there being some evidence of
cannibalism. But nine years later, in France, where the belief in
the Loup-garou had been intense, a man so accused was simply shut
up in a mad-house. It is an indication of the revolution which has
occurred, that when next governments paid attention to werewolves
it was because certain vagabonds went about professing to be able
to transform themselves into wolves, in order to extort money from
the more weak-minded and ignorant peasants. [215] There could hardly
be conceived a more significant history: the werewolf leaves where
he entered. Of ignorance and weakness trying, too often in vain,
'to keep the wolf from the door,' was born this voracious phantom;
with the beggar and vagabond, survivals of helplessness become
inveterate, he wanders thin and crafty. He keeps out of the way of all
culture, whether of field or mind. So is it indeed with all demons
in decline--of which I can here only adduce a few characteristic
examples. So runs the rune--


When the barley there is,
Then the devils whistle;
When the barley is threshed,
Then the devils whine;
When the barley is ground,
Then the devils roar;
When the flour is produced,
Then the devils perish.


The old Scottish custom, mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, of leaving
around each cultivated field an untilled fringe, called the Gude
Man's Croft, is derived from the ancient belief that unless some
wild place is left to the sylvan spirits they will injure the grain
and vegetables; and, no doubt, some such notion leads the farmers of
Thurgau still to graft mistletoe upon their fruit-trees. Many who can
smile at such customs do yet preserve in their own minds, or those of
their servants or neighbours, crofts which the ploughshare of science
is forbidden to touch, and where the præternatural troops still hide
their shrivelled forms. But this wild girdle becomes ever narrower,
and the images within it tend to blend with rustling leaf and straw,
and the insects, and to be otherwise invisible, save to that second
sight which is received from Glam. As in some shadow-pantomime, the
deities and demons pursue each other in endless procession, dropping
down as awe-inspiring Titans, vanishing as grotesque pigmies--vanishing
beyond the lamp into Nothingness!

So came most of the monsters we have been describing--Animals,
Volcanoes, Icebergs, Deserts, though they might be--by growing culture
and mastery of nature to be called 'the little people;' and perhaps
it is rather through pity than euphemism when they were so often
called, as in Ireland (Duine Matha), 'the good little people.' [216]
At every step in time or space back of the era of mechanic arts
the little fairy gains in physical proportions. The house-spirits
(Domovoi) of Russia are full-sized, shaggy human-shaped beings. In
Lithuania the corresponding phantoms (Kaukas) average only a foot
in height. The Krosnyata, believed in by the Slavs on the Baltic
coast, are similarly small; and by way of the kobolds, elves, fays,
travelling westward, we find the size of such shapes diminishing, until
warnings are given that the teeth must never be picked with a straw,
that slender tube being a favourite residence of the elf! In Bavaria
a little red chafer with seven spots (Coccinella septempunctata) is
able to hold Thor with his lightnings, and in other regions is a form
of the goddess of Love! [217] Our English name for the tiny beetle
'Lady-bug' is derived from the latter notion; and Mr. Karl Blind has
expressed the opinion that our children's rune--


Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home,
Thy house is on fire, thy children will roam--


is last echo of the Eddaic prophecies of the destruction of the
universe by the fire-fiend Loki! [218] Such reductions of the ancient
gods, demons, and terrors to tiny dimensions would, of course, be
only an indirect result of the general cause stated. They were driven
from the great world, and sought the small world: they survived in
the hut and were adapted to the nerves of the nursery. So alone can
Tithonos live on: beyond the age for which he is born he shrinks to
a grasshopper; and it is now by only careful listening that in the
chirpings of the multitudinous immortals, of which Tithonos is type,
may be distinguished the thunders and roarings of deities and demons
that once made the earth to tremble.