But how is the Fire-walk done? That remains a mystery, and perhaps no
philologist, folk-lorist, anthropologist, or physiologist, has seriously
asked the question. The medicamentum of Varro, the green frog fat of
India, the diluted sulphuric acid of Mr. Clodd, are guesses in the air,
and Mr. Clodd has made no experiment. The possibility of plunging the
hand, unhurt, in molten metal, is easily accounted for, and is not to the
point. In this difficulty Psychical Research registers, and no more, the
well-attested performances of D. D. Home (entranced, like the
Nistinares); the well observed and timed Miracle du Cierge at
Lourdes--Bernadette being in an ecstatic condition; the Biblical story of
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace; the researches of
Iamblichus; the case of Madame Shchapoff, carefully reported, {175} and
other examples. There is no harm in collecting examples, and the
question remains, are all those rites, from those of Virgil's Hirpi to
Bulgaria of to-day, based on some actual but obscure and scientifically
neglected fact in nature? At all events, for the Soranus-Feronia rite
philology only supplies her competing etymologies, folk-lore her modern
rural parallels, anthropology her savage examples, psychical research her
'cases' at first-hand. Anthropology had neglected the collection of
these, perhaps because the Fire-walk is 'impossible.'