From the Spectator.
WERE WOLVES.*

for a moment the faith of a man so calm as the Resident, Colonel Sleeman, and induced wolves might suckle and rear the children him to give currency to a theory that of human beings, who thenceforward would be wolves. Ultimately, we believe, he abandoned that notion, but not before he

In this remarkable little book, remarkable for a power its external aspect does not promise and an interest its name will not create, Mr. Baring-Gould, an author known hitherto chiefly by his researches in North-had puzzled all India with his collection of ern literature, investigates a belief, once general in Europe, and even now enter-exceptional facts, and riveted the superstition of the people of Oude. tained by the majority of the uneducated class. In widely separated places, and among races the most distinct, a belief has been traced in the existence of beings who

combine the human and the animal char

acter, who are in fact men changed either in form or in spirit into beasts of prey. The belief, though strong still, was strongest in the Middle Ages, when men were more unrestrained both in their acts and their cre

A belief so universal and so lasting suggests some cause more real than a superstitious idea, and Mr. Baring-Gould believes he has discovered one. He holds that in every human being there is some faint trace of the wild-beast nature, the love of destruction and of witnessing the endurance of suffering. Else why do children display cruelty so constantly, string flies on knittinganimal? In the majority this disposition is pins, and delight in the writhings of any eradicated either by circumstances. by training, or by the awakening of the great the desire remains intact but latent, liable influence we call sympathy. In a minority to be called out only by extraordinary inciof their minds. In a few it becomes a pasdents or some upset of the ordinary balance sion, a sovereign desire, or even a mania entitled to be ranked as a form, and an extreme form, of mental disease. It was the latter exhibition which gave rise to the belief in the were-wolves, who were, in Mr. Baring-Gould's opinion, simply raving maniacs, whose wildness took the form either of

dulities. In the extreme North it was so powerful that Norwegians and Icelanders had a separate name for the transformation, calling men gifted with the power or afflicted with the curse men "not of one skin." Mr. Baring-Gould pushes his theory far when he connects the story of the Berserkir with the theory of were wolves, the Berserkir being extant to this day in Asia, calling themselves Ghazis, and keeping up their fury as the Berserkir probably did, with drugs; but all Scandinavia undoubtedly believed that men had upon occasion changed into animals, and exhibited animal bloodthirstiness and power. So did the Livonians. So down to the very end of the sixteenth century did all Southern Europe, where the a desire to murder or of a belief in their own Holy Office made cases of metempsychosis power of becoming beasts of prey. So late subject of inquiry and of punishment. The as 1848 an officer of the garrison in Paris was brought to trial on a charge of rifling very victims often believed in their own guilt. One man in 1598, Jacques Roulet, graves of their bodies and tearing them to of Angers, stated in his confession that pieces, and the charge having been proved though he did not take a wolf's form he was included, was sentenced to one year's imon conclusive evidence, his own confession a wolf, and as a wolf committed murders, chiefly of children. Even now the peasants before madness was understood he would prisonment. He was mad, but had he lived in Norway believe as firmly in persons who have been pronounced either a vampire or can change themselves into wolves as the a loup garou. Madness miscomprehended peasants in Italy do in the evil eye, the was the cause of the facts which supported Danes think persons with joined eye brows liable to the curse, the people of Schleswig-monstrated by the history of the case of the monstrous belief, a theory almost deHolstein keep a charm to cure it, the Slovaks, Greeks, and Russians have popular the story is complete:— Jacques Roulet. The extract is long, but words for the were wolf, and Mr. BaringGould was himself asked at Vienne to as

sist in hunting a loup garou, or wolf who ought to have been a human being. In India the belief is immovable, more particularly in Oude, where the mass of evidence collected is so extraordinary that it shook

*Were Wolves. By Sabine Baring-Gould. London: Smith, Elder, and Co.

"In 1598, a rear memorable in the annals of lycanthropy, a trial took place in Angers, the details of which are very terrible. In a wild and unfrequented spot near Caude, some countrymen came one day upon the corpse of a boy of fifteen, horridly mutilated and bespattered with blood. As the men approached, two Wolves, which had been rending the body, bounded away into the thicket. The men gave

chase immediately, following their bloody tracks till they lost them; when suddenly crouching among the bushes, his teeth chattering with fear, they found a man half naked, with long hair and beard, and with his hands dyed in blood. His nails were long as claws, and were clotted with fresh gore and shreds of human flesh. This is one of the most puzzling and peculiar cases which come under our notice. The wretched man, whose name was Roulet, of his own accord stated that he had fallen upon the lad and had killed him by smothering him, and that he had been prevented from devouring the body completely by the arrival of men on the spot. Roulet proved on investigation to be a beggar from house to house, in the most abject state of poverty. His companions in mendicity were his brother John and his cousin Julien. He had been given lodging out of charity in a neighbouring village, but before his apprehension he had been absent for eight days. Before the judges, Roulet acknowledged that he was able to transform himself into a wolf by means of a salve which his parents had given him. When questioned about the two wolves which had been seen leaving the corpse, he said that he knew perfectly well who they were, for they were his companions, Jean and Julien, who possessed the same secret as himself. He was shown the clothes he had worn on the day of his seizure, and he recognized them immediately; he described the boy whom he had murdered, gave the date correctly, indicated the precise spot where the deed had been done, and recognized the father of the boy as the man who had first run up when the screams of the lad had been heard. In prison, Roulet behaved like an idiot. When seized, his belly was distended and hard; in prison he drank one evening a whole pailful of water, and from that moment refused to eat or drink. His parents, on inquiry, proved to be respectable and pious people, and they proved that his brother John and his cousin Julien had been engaged at a distance on the day of Roulet's apprehension. What is your name, and what your estate?' asked the judge, Pierre Hérault. My name is Jacques Roulet, my age thirty-five; I am poor, and a mendicant.' -What are you accused of having done?'. Of being a thief- of having offended God. My parents gave me an ointment; I do not know its composition.'-When rubbed with The thirst for domination is the this ointment, do you become a wolf?'-No; most common impulse, but in well known but for all that, I killed and ate the child Cor- instances jealousy, fear, hatred, religious nier: I was a wolf.' - Were you dressed as a bigotry, and even vanity, have been equalwolf?'-'I was dressed as I am now. I had ly efficacious. At all events the passion my hands and my face bloody, because I had been eating the flesh of the said child.'Do your hands and feet become paws of a wolf?''Yes, they do.' 'Does your head become like that of a wolf - your mouth become larger?'. 'I do not know how my head was at the time; used my teeth; my head was as it is to-day. I have wounded and eaten many other little children; I have also been to the sabbath."" THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. 1477.

Jacques Roulet would have been found insane by any modern jury, and there is scarcely in medieval literature a case of lycanthropy which cannot be explained upon this simple theory, the one at last adopted, and in our judgment proved, by Colonel Sleeman in Oude, but a more difficult question remains behind. Is it quite certain that all cases of long-continued and outrageous cruelty presuppose madness? Is cruelty in fact a natural quality, which can be cultivated, or an abnormal desire, the result of extreme and gradual depravation of the passions and the reason? Take the well known case of Gilles de Retz in 1440. If evidence can prove anything it is certain that this man, head of the mighty House of Laval, lord of entire counties and of prodigious wealth, did throw up a great position in the public service to wander from town to town and seat to seat kidnapping children, whom he put slowly to death to delight himself with their agonies. He confessed himself to eight hundred such murders, and his evidence was confirmed by the relics found. He was betrayed by his own agents, and in the worst age of a cruel cycle his crimes excited a burst of horror so profound that he, a noble of the class which was beyond the law, so powerful that he never attempted to escape, was burnt alive. Was he mad, or only bad beyond all human experience? Mr. Baring-Gould inclines evidently to the former theory, and it is at all events a pleasing one, but it is difficult for thinking men to forget that power has in other instances produced this capacity of cruelty, to refuse credence to all stories of the cruelty of Cæsars, and Shahs, and West Indian slaveholders. It is possible, and we hope true, that the genuine enjoyment of pain is rare among the sane, though the Roman populace felt something like it, and though we are ever and anon startled by cases of wilful cruelty to animals, but genuine indifference to it is frequent, and granted the indifference, any motive may give it an active form.

I

differs from madness in that it is restrainable. Hardly one genuine case on a great scale has been recorded in a civilized country for many years, and it seems certain that the restraints of order prevent it from acquiring its full sway, and that therefore it is rather the depravation of nature than nature itself which is its origin. Gilles de

Retz is possible, if he were sane, only in a Now it is a matter worth a little consideraclass which can indulge every impulse with tion how far men of pure science are trustimpunity, and at a time when law is no worthy on matters of this kind, how far longer to be feared. It may be true that he their evidence is what we should call on belonged to the were-wolf genus, the men other subjects the evidence of experts, or afflicted with homicidal mania, but he may not. On a medical subject, we should nevalso have belonged to a class now almost as er think of adopting absolutely any theory exceptional, the men in whom unrestricted rejected by a very large and, perhaps inpower has developed that thirst for testing creasing, number of the most eminent men it in its highest, its most frequent, and its in the medical profession. On a historical most visible form, the infliction of slow subject, we should think it absurd to take death-agonies upon powerless human beings. up with a view against which every fresh It was, we fear, the madness of a Cæsar historian of learning and eminence began rather than of a were wolf which influenced with clearer and clearer conviction to proGilles de Retz, and Mr. Baring-Gould test. How far, then, even if it be true, as would, we think, have exemplified his theo- it possibly may be, that the tendency of ry more perfectly had he excluded stories the highest and calmest scientific thought is which testify not so much to the instability increasingly anti-supernatural, can we conof human reason as to the depths of evil sider this the tendency of a class entitled lurking in the human heart. He argues in- to special intellectual deference, or the redeed that Gilles de Retz is the link between verse? Mr. Brooke Foss Westcott, in a the citizen and the were wolf, but then in so very thoughtful volume which he has just doing he assumes one tremendous datum, published on the Gospel of the Resurrecthat madness always shows itself in the ex- tion,”* freely admits that "a belief in treme development of the latent heart, and miracles decreases with the increase of not in its radical perversion. One of its civilization," but maintains, amidst other commonest forms nevertheless is intense weaker and less defensible positions, that hatred of those whom the patient has most the accuracy of comprehensive views of genuinely and fondly loved, and the bal- nature as a whole, is not only not secured, ance of probability is that insanity as often but may be even specially endangered, by perverts as intensifies the secret instincts of too special and constant a study of given its victim. Mr. Baring-Gould has, we parts of nature. "The requirements," he think, demonstrated that madness misap- says, "of exact science bind the attention prehended was the root of the were-wolf of each student to some one small field, delusion, but not that homicidal mania is and this little fragment almost necessarily the ultimate expression of an inherent ten- becomes for him the measure of the whole, dency in universal human nature. if indeed he has ever leisure to lift his eyes to the whole at all." And undoubtedly the man who has been studying, say, for the sake of a definite example, the chemical effects of light all his life, and who knows that every different substance when burnt yields a different spectrum, so that you may know by the number and situation of the dark lines exactly what substance it is that PROFESSOR HUXLEY, in the remarkable is burning, might be inclined to look at the lecture on "improving natural knowledge" possibility of miracle, and at faith in the delivered to the working classes at St. Mar- supernatural will, from a narrow point of tin's Hall, and since published in the Fort- view. He will say to himself, 'If one of nightly Review, states with a candour and these spectra were suddenly to change its moderation worthy of all praise, certain appearance, if such a dark line vanished, notions destructive of all worship,- -ex- and such others appeared, should I not cept that very impossible kind of worship know with a certainty to me infallible, recommended by Professor Huxley, worship certainty on the absoluteness of which I of the Unknown and Unknowable, which should never hesitate to risk my own life have been gaining more and more hold of or that of my family, that some other merely scientific men for many generations, element had been introduced into the burnand which, we need not say, are absolutely ing substance? Could anything persuade inconsistent with admitting the activity of me that the change was due to divine any supernatural will in the Universe, and volition apart from the presence of a new still more the actual occurrence of miracle.

From the Spectator.

SCIENCE AND MIRACLE.

* Macmillan.

a

Now this is, we take it, something less than conjecture, indeed demonstrable scientific error, if science be taken to include anything more than the laws of physical phenomena. It is probably true indeed that in some sense the physical forces of the Universe are an invariable quantity, which only alter their forms, and not their sum total. If I move my arm, the motion, says the physiologist, is only the exact equivalent of a certain amount of heat which has disappeared and taken the form of that motion. If I do not move it, the heat remains for use in some other way. In either case the stock of force is unchanged. This is the conviction of almost all scientific men, and is probably true. But whether the stock of physical force is constant or not, the certainty that human will can change its direction and application - can transfer it from one channel to another is just the same. And what that really means, if Will be ever free and uncaused, though of course not unconditioned, which is, we take it, as ultimate and scientific a certainty as any in the Universe, — is no less than this, that a strictly supernatural power alters the order and constitution of nature, - takes a stock of physical force lying in a reservoir here and transfers it to a stream of effort there, in short, that the supernatural can change the order and constitution of the natural, — in its essence pure miracle, though miracle of human, and not of divine origin. For example, almost every physiologist will admit the enormous power that pure Will has over the nervous system, that it can prolong consciousness and even life itself for certain short spaces, by the mere exertion of vehement purpose. Physicians tell you constantly that such and such a patient may no doubt, if it be sufficiently important, by a great effort command his mind sufficiently to settle his affairs, but that it will be at the expense of his animal force,

element or new elements in the burning be equivalent to the positive alteration in substance? Must not the Almighty him- the essence of a mighty whole, as really self, if He chose to make the change, make astounding in itself as the change which it by providing the characteristic element could made oxygen burn (that is, oxidize) for the purpose, just as if He chose to or two and two equal to five. alter the moral traits of a human character, He could only do it by a process that would alter the character itself, and not by making a stupid and ignorant man give out all the characteristic signs of wisdom and learning, or a malignant and cruel man put forth all the moral symptoms of warm benevolence and charity.' So the scientific man would argue, and we are disposed to think would argue rightly. For, admitting that the physical qualities of things are realities at all, we should say that to make the physical qualities of one thing interchange with the physical qualities of another, without interchanging the things, is, if it be logically and morally possible, as the Transubstantiationists believe and most other men disbelieve, a piece of divine magic or conjuring, and not a miracle. But then, do not many great scientific men like Professor Huxley really infer from such trains of reasoning far more than they will warrant? All that such reasonings do tend to show, is, that if you truly conceive the natural constitutions of things, there are changes which you cannot make without destroying those very things altogether, and substituting new ones. As a miracle which should make two and two five is intrinsically impossible (Mr. Mill and the Saturday Review in anywise notwithstanding), so also (though less certainly) a miracle which should make oxygen a combustible gas instead of a supporter of combustion, and quite certainly a miracle which should make it right to do what is known to be wrong, or wrong to do what is known to be right, is intrinsically impossible. But the modern scientific inference goes much further than this, and immediately extends the conception of these inherent constitutions of certain things and qualities to the whole Universe, assuming, for instance, that it is just as impossible, just as much a breach in the inherent constitution of some one or more things, for one who has been dead to live again, for the phenomena of decomposition to be arrested, the heart once silent to begin to beat, as for oxygen itself to burn without ceasing to be oxygen. The way in which this view would be defended would be that all matter and all its qualities are now almost proved to be modes of force, and all force indestructible, so that any kind of supernatural change in the phenomena of matter would appear to

in short, that it will be a free transfer of force from the digestive and so to say vegetating part of his system, to that part of his physical constitution, his nervous system, which lies closest, as it were, to the will. Nay, we have heard physicians say that patients, by a great effort of pure will, have, as they believe, prolonged their own life for a short space, that is, have imparted, we suppose, through the excitement pro