Our _Literati_ will readily recognise some parts of this horrible superstition--perhaps the main features, as Oriental--going back to the dimmest dawn of tradition, and to the early and grotesque forms of the human imagination, dark and uninstructed. The _Hell_, however, is a terrific expansion of the horrible, suited to these Strange Barbarians.
Besides these great deities, there are Arch-angels, Angels, Saints male and female, Spirits good and bad--the latter _Imps_ of Satan (whatever the word may mean), who enter into human beings, and take on the human form: in this disguise, called Ghosts, Wizards, Bogies, Witches. However, good people can tell these devilish _Imps_, and avoid them (so they be _good_, that is, true worshippers of the Idols of the Superstition); for the smell of brimstone sticks to them, and the tail and cleft-hoof--inseparable from devil-imps--will always show somewhere to _the good_. But, if unawares the Imps catch them, they are only to say _Christ_, or _Jehovah_, or call on some Saint, and the Imp will at once vanish like a vapor!
It will be seen that this Superstition is as populous with gods and spirits as are any in the East, and some of the forms more frightful and ridiculous.
There are dissentients--some, who, not dissenting to the chief gods, yet conjecture that the good and bad _spirits_ merely symbolize good and bad propensities in human nature. But real objectors are few and timid, afraid of punishment--if not here, then after death. For the Superstition so long rooted has engrafted its terrors in the very blood, and men are born with the _Horror_ in them; they can never free themselves from it. A few, however, do dissent; but, like our _Literati_, they do not care to oppose vulgar ignorance openly, nor is it safe; they feel a contempt, but repress its too-marked expression. "Why render themselves uselessly odious?" they say. The Priests, very likely, often disbelieve much of what they say; but not unlikely their emoluments (_livings_) have some effect upon their conduct, though not upon their private convictions. In our Flowery Land there is a maxim: "A common man's brain is in his belly."
I have had a High Bonze say to me, when I have suggested some objections, "Oh, we do not know anything about such things; the morality is good, and we need a devil for women, children, and the common people: it is safer to let things alone."