Note 281 — LECTURE VI. The Lines of Development of Primitive Religions.

There were, of course, some hobgoblins always ready to eat up or injure man; but not for any moral or ethical reason. “They afflict men, not out of anger or to punish sin, but because it is their nature to do so,” as Dalton says of the devils of the Oraons. Ethnology of Bengal, p. 256.