Meanwhile, though the stories above related are extracted from books
purely and properly of fiction, they exhibit so just a delineation of
Eastern manners and habits of mind, that, in the defect of materials
strictly historical, they may to a certain degree supply the place.
The principal feature they set before us is credulity and a love of
the marvellous. This is ever found characteristic of certain ages of
the world; but in Asia it prevails in uninterrupted continuity.
Wherever learning and the exercise of the intellectual faculties first
shew themselves, there mystery and a knowledge not to be communicated
but to the select few must be expected to appear. Wisdom in its
natural and genuine form seeks to diffuse itself; but in the East on
the contrary it is only valued in proportion to its rarity. Those who
devoted themselves to intellectual improvement, looked for it rather
in solitary abstraction, than in free communication with the minds of
others; and, when they condescended to the use of the organ of speech,
they spoke in enigmas and ambiguities, and in phrases better adapted
to produce wonder and perplexity, than to enlighten and instruct. When
the more consummate instructed the novice, it was by slow degrees only,
and through the medium of a long probation. In consequence of this
state of things the privileged few conceived of their own attainments
with an over-weening pride, and were puffed up with a sense of
superiority; while the mass of their fellow-creatures looked to them
with astonishment; and, agreeably to the Oriental creed of two
independent and contending principles of good and of evil, regarded
these select and supernaturally endowed beings anon as a source of the
most enviable blessings, and anon as objects of unmingled apprehension
and terror, before whom their understandings became prostrate, and
every thing that was most appalling and dreadful was most easily
believed. In this state superstition unavoidably grew infectious; and
the more the seniors inculcated and believed, the more the imagination
of the juniors became a pliant and unresisting slave.
The Mantra, or charm, consisting of a few unintelligible words
repeated again and again, always accompanied, or rather preceded, the
supposed miraculous phenomenon that was imposed on the ignorant. Water
was flung over, or in the face of, the thing or person upon whom the
miraculous effect was to be produced. Incense was burned; and such
chemical substances were set on fire, the dazzling appearance of which
might confound the senses of the spectators. The whole consisted in
the art of the juggler. The first business was to act on the passions,
to excite awe and fear and curiosity in the parties; and next by a
sort of slight of hand, and by changes too rapid to be followed by an
unpractised eye, to produce phenomena, wholly unanticipated, and that
could not be accounted for. Superstition was further an essential
ingredient; and this is never perfect, but where the superior and more
active party regards himself as something more than human, and the
party acted upon beholds in the other an object of religious reverence,
or tingles with apprehension of he knows not what of fearful and
calamitous. The state of the party acted on, and indeed of either, is
never complete, till the senses are confounded, what is imagined is so
powerful as in a manner to exclude what is real, in a word, till, as
the poet expresses it, "function is smothered in surmise, and nothing
is, but what is not."
It is in such a state of the faculties that it is entirely natural and
simple, that one should mistake a mere dumb animal for one's relative
or near connection in disguise. And, the delusion having once begun,
the deluded individual gives to every gesture and motion of limb and
eye an explanation that forwards the deception. It is in the same way
that in ignorant ages the notion of changeling has been produced. The
weak and fascinated mother sees every feature with a turn of
expression unknown before, all the habits of the child appear
different and strange, till the parent herself denies her offspring,
and sees in the object so lately cherished and doated on, a monster
uncouth and horrible of aspect.