Demonology and Devil-Lore Book Reviews

Demonology and Devil-Lore by Moncure Daniel Conway Book Summary

Demonology and Devil-Lore, by Moncure D. Conway (1879). In this scholarly history of a superstition, the author has set before himself the task of finding “the reason of unreason, the being and substance of unreality, the law of folly, and the logic of lunacy.” His business is not alone to record certain dark vagaries of human intelligence, but to explain them; to show them as the inevitable expression of a mental necessity, and as the index to some spiritual facts with large inclusions. He sees that primitive man has always personified his own thoughts in external personal forms; and that these personifications survive as traditions long after a more educated intelligence surrenders them as facts. He sets himself, therefore, to seek in these immature and grotesque imaginings the soul of truth and reality that once inspired them. From anthropology, history, tradition, comparative mythology and philology; from every quarter of the globe; from periods which trail off into prehistoric time, and from periods almost within our own remembrance; from savage and from cultivated races; from extinct peoples and those now existing; from learned sources and the traditions of the unlearned, he has sought his material. This vast accumulation of facts he has so analyzed and synthesized as to make it yield its fine ore of truth concerning spiritual progress. Related beliefs he has grouped either in natural or historical association; migrations of beliefs he has followed, with a keen sense for their half-obliterated trail; through diversities his trained eye discovers likenesses. He finds that devils have always stood for the type of pure malignity; while demons are creatures driven by fate to prey upon mankind for the satisfaction of their needs, but not of necessity malevolent. The demon is an inference from the physical experience of mankind; the devil is a product of his moral consciousness. The dragon is a creature midway between the two. Through two volumes of difficulties Mr. Conway picks his dexterous way, courageous, ingenious, frank, full of knowledge and instruction, and not less full of entertainment. So that the reader who follows him will find that he has studied a profound chapter of human experience, and has acquired new standards for measuring the spiritual progress of the race.

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