Fiends, Ghosts, and Sprites / Including an Account of the Origin and Nature of Belief in the Supernatural

INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF BELIEF IN THE SUPERNATURAL.
By JOHN NETTEN RADCLIFFE.
LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1854.
PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SONS, LONDON GAZETTE OFFICE, ST. MARTIN'S LANE.
A belief in the supernatural has existed in all ages and among all nations.
To trace the origin of this belief, the causes of the various modifications it has undergone, and the phases it has assumed, is, perhaps, one of the most interesting researches to which the mind can be given,—interesting, inasmuch as we find pervading every part of it the effects of those passions and affections which are most powerful and permanent in our nature.
But many theologists maintain that the knowledge of a Deity, and of the existence of supernatural beings, is derived solely from revelation; and stern and prolonged have been the struggles in this country between the upholders of the rival tenets.
That no idea of a Deity, such as that which the Christian entertains, is to be found among the vague and undefined notions of supernatural power which are contained in the mythologies of pagan nations; that even the conceptions of Plato are to be summed up in the phrase the unknown God; and that the perfect idea of the Godhead is to be derived solely from Scripture, can be satisfactorily shown. But the conclusion sought to be established from this, that all our ideas of the supernatural are derived from this source, does not necessarily follow.
The postulate that man can derive a knowledge of the supernatural from the exercise of his mental powers alone, cannot either be affirmed or denied, but it is not improbable.
Perhaps the nearest approach to correctness which we are as yet capable of on this subject is as follows:—
After the creation of man, God revealed himself. The perfect knowledge of the Deity thus obtained, was perpetuated by a fragment of the human race, notwithstanding the baneful effects of the fall; and at the epoch of the deluge, the solitary family which escaped that mighty cataclysm, formed a centre from which anew the attributes and powers of the Godhead were made known in all their truth and purity. But again sin prevailed, and with the exception of one race, who alone treasured the true knowledge of the Deity, mankind lost by degrees the pure faith of their fathers; and as they receded from the light, the idea of the Godhead became obscured, and in the progress of time well nigh lost, and the vague and imperfect ideas of a supernatural Power derived from tradition, prompted to a terror and awe of some invisible yet mighty influence, unknown and inexplicable, but which was manifested to man in the more striking objects and the incomprehensible phenomena of nature, which were regarded and worshipped as the seats of this unknown Power, forming the substratum of those wonderful systems of mythology which have characterised successive eras and races.