Witchcraft in the English Colonies in North America--Puritan
Intolerance and Superstition--Cotton Mather's 'Late
Memorable Providences'--Demoniacal Possession--Evidence
given before the Commission--Apologies issued by
Authority--Sudden Termination of the
Proceedings--Reactionary Feeling against the Agitators--The
Salem Witchcraft the last Instance of Judicial Prosecution
on a large Scale in Christendom--Philosophers begin to
expose the Superstition--Meritorious Labours of Webster,
Becker, and others--Their Arguments could reach only the
Educated and Wealthy Classes of Society--These only
partially Enfranchised--The Superstition continues to
prevail among the Vulgar--Repeal of the Witch Act in England
in 1736--Judicial and Popular Persecutions in England in the
Eighteenth Century--Trial of Jane Wenham in England in
1712--Maria Renata burned in Germany in 1749--La Cadiere in
France--Last Witch burned in Scotland in 1722--Recent Cases
of Witchcraft--Protestant Superstition--Witchcraft in the
Extra-Christian World.
A review of the superstitions of witchcraft would be incomplete
without some notice of the Salem witches in New England.
An equally melancholy and mischievous access of fanatic
credulity, during the years 1688-1692, overwhelmed the colony of
Massachusetts with a multitude of demons and their human
accomplices; and the circumstances of the period were favourable
to the vigour of the delusion. In the beginning of their
colonisation the New Englanders were generally a united
community; they were little disturbed by heresy; and if they had
been thus infected they were too busily engaged in contending
against the difficulties and dangers of a perilous position to be
able to give much attention to differences in religious belief.
But soon the _purity_ of their faith was in danger of being
corrupted by heretical immigrants. The Puritans were the most
numerous and powerful of the fugitives from political and
religious tyranny in England, and the dominant sect in North
America almost as severely oppressed Anabaptists and Quakers
in the colonies as they themselves, religious exiles from
ecclesiastical despotism, had suffered in the old world. They
proved themselves worthy followers of the persecutors of
Servetus. Other enemies from without also were active in seeking
the destruction of the true believers. Fierce wars and struggles
were continuously being waged with the surrounding savages, who
regarded the increasing prosperity and number of the intruders
with just fear and resentment.
Imbued as the colonists were with demoniacal prepossessions, it
is not so surprising that they deemed their rising State beset by
spiritual enemies; and it is fortunate, perhaps, that the wilds
of North America were not still more productive of fiends and
witches, and more destructive massacres than that of 1690-92 did
not disgrace their colonial history. From the pen of Dr. Cotton
Mather, Fellow of Harvard College, and his father (who was the
Principal), we have received the facts of the history. These two
divines and their opinions obtained great respect throughout the
colony. They devoutly received the orthodox creed as expounded in
the writings of the ancient authorities on demonology, firmly
convinced of the reality of the present wanderings of Satan 'up
and down' in the earth; and Dr. Cotton Mather was at the same
time the chief supporter and the historian of the demoniacal war
now commenced. It was significantly initiated by the execution of
a papist, an Irishman named Glover, who was accused of having
bewitched the daughters of a mason of Boston, by name Goodwin.
These girls, of infantile age, suffered from convulsive fits, the
ordinary symptom of 'possession.' Mather received one of them
into his house for the purpose of making experiments, and, if
possible, to exorcise the evil spirits. She would suddenly, in
presence of a number of spectators, fall into a trance, rise up,
place herself in a riding attitude as if setting out for the
Sabbath, and hold conversation with invisible beings. A peculiar
phase of this patient's case was that when under the influence of
'hellish charms' she took great pleasure in reading or hearing
'bad' books, which she was permitted to do with perfect freedom.
Those books included the Prayer Book of the English Episcopal
Church, Quakers' writings, and popish productions. Whenever the
Bible was taken up, the devil threw her into the most fearful
convulsions.
As a result of this _diagnosis_ appeared the publication of 'Late
Memorable Providences relating to Witchcraft and Possession,'
which, together with Baxter's 'Certainty of the World of
Spirits,' a work Mather was careful to distribute and recommend
to the people, increased the fever of fear and fanaticism to the
highest pitch. The above incidents were the prelude only to the
proper drama of the Salem witches. In 1692, two girls, the
daughter and niece of Mr. Parvis, minister, suffering from a
disease similar to that of the Goodwins, were pronounced to be
preternaturally afflicted. Two miserable Indians, man and wife,
servants in the family, who indiscreetly attempted to cure the
witch-patients by means of some charm or drug, were suspected
themselves as the guilty agents, and sent to execution. The
physicians, who seem to have been entirely ignorant of the origin
of these attacks, and as credulous as the unprofessional world,
added fresh testimony to the reality of 'possession.'[157] At
first, persons of the lower classes and those who, on account of
their ill-repute, would be easily recognised to be diabolic
agents, were alone incriminated. But as the excitement increased
others of higher rank were pointed out. A _black_ man was
introduced on the stage in the form of an Indian of terrible
aspect and portentous dimensions, who had threatened the
christianising colonists with extermination for intruding their
faith upon the reluctant heathen. In May 1692, a new governor,
Sir William Phipps, arrived with a new charter (the old one
had been suspended) from England; this official, far from
discouraging the existing prejudices, urged the local authorities
on to greater extravagance. The examinations were conducted in
the ordinary and most approved manner, the Lord's Prayer and the
secret marks being the infallible tests. Towards the end of May
two women, Bridget Bishop and Susannah Martin, were hanged.
[157] A phenomenon of apparently the same sort as that which
was of such frequent occurrence in the Middle Age and in the
seventeenth century, is said to have been lately occupying
considerable attention in the South of France. The _Courrier
des Alpes_ narrates an extraordinary scene in one of the
churches in the _Commune_ of Morzine, among the women, on
occasion of the visitation of the bishop of the district. It
seems that the malady in question attacks, for the most
part, the female population, and the patients are
confidently styled, and asserted to be, _possessed_. It
'produces all the effects of madness, without having its
character,' and is said to baffle all the resources of
medical science, which is ignorant of its nature. There had
been an intermission of the convulsions for some time, but
they have now reappeared with greater violence than
ever.--_The Times_ newspaper, June 6, 1864.
On June 2, a formal commission sat, before which the most
ridiculous evidence was gravely given and as gravely received.
John Louder deposed against Bridget Bishop, 'that upon some
little controversy with Bishop about her fowls going well to bed,
he did awake in the night by moonlight, and did see clearly the
likeness of this woman grievously oppressing him, in which
miserable condition she held him unable to help himself till next
day. He told Bishop of this, but she denied it, and threatened
him very much. Quickly after this, being at home on a Lord's day
with the doors shut about him, he saw a black pig approach him,
at which he going to kick, it vanished away. Immediately after
sitting down he saw a black thing jump in at the window and come
and stand before him. The body was like that of a monkey, the
feet like a cock's, but the face much like that of a man.[158] He
being so extremely affrighted that he could not speak, this
monster spoke to him and said, "I am a messenger sent unto you,
for I understand that you are in some trouble of mind, and if you
will be ruled by me you shall want for nothing in this world."
Whereupon he endeavoured to clap his hands upon it, but he could
feel no substance; and it jumped out of window again, but
immediately came in by the porch (though the doors were shut) and
said, "You had better take my counsel." He then struck at it with
a stick, and struck only the ground and broke the stick. The arm
with which he struck was presently disabled, and it vanished
away. He presently went out at the back door, and spied this
Bishop in her orchard going towards her house, but he had no
power to set one foot forward to her; whereupon, returning into
the house, he was immediately accosted by the monster he had seen
before, which goblin was now going to fly at him; whereat he
cried out, "The whole armour of God be between me and you!" so it
sprung back and flew over the apple-tree, shaking many apples off
the tree in its flying over. At its leap, it flung dirt with its
feet against the stomach of the man, whereupon he was then struck
dumb, and so continued for three days together.' Another witness
declared in court; that, 'being in bed on the Lord's day, at
night he heard a scrambling at the window; whereat he then saw
Susanna Martin come in and jump down upon the floor. She took
hold of this deponent's foot, and, drawing his body into a heap,
she lay upon him nearly two hours, in all which time he could
neither speak nor stir. At length, when he could begin to move,
he laid hold on her hand, and, pulling it up to his mouth, he bit
some of her fingers, as he judged into the bone; whereupon she
went from the chamber down stairs out at the door,' &c.
[158] 'Rara avis in terris.' A mongrel and anomalous species
like the German _Meerkatzen_--monkey-cats.
On July 19 five women, and on August 19, six persons, were sent
to the gallows, among whom was Mr. George Burroughs, minister,
who had provoked his judges by questioning the very existence of
witchcraft. At the last moments he so favourably impressed the
assembled spectators by an eloquent address, that Dr. Mather, who
was present, found it necessary to prevent the progress of a
reactionary feeling by asserting that the criminal was no
regularly ordained minister, and the devil has often been
transformed into an angel of light. So transparently iniquitous
and absurd had their mode of procedure become, that one of the
subordinates in the service of the authorities, whose office it
was to arrest the accused, refused to perform any longer his
hateful office, and being himself denounced as an accomplice, he
sought safety in flight. He was captured and executed as a
recusant and wizard. Eight sorcerers suffered the extreme penalty
of the law on September 22. Giles Gory, a few days before,
indignantly refusing to plead, was 'pressed to death,' an
accustomed mode of punishing obstinate prisoners; and in the
course of this torture, it is said, when the tongue of the victim
was forced from his mouth in the agony of pain, the presiding
sheriff forced it back with his cane with much _sang froid_. At
this stage in the proceedings, the magistrates considered that a
justificatory memoir ought to be published for the destruction of
twenty persons of both sexes, and, at the express desire of the
governor, Cotton Mather drew up an Apology in the form of a
treatise, 'More Wonders of the Invisible World,' in which the
Salem, executions are justified by the precedent of similar and
notorious instances in the mother-country, as well as by the
universally accepted doctrines of various eminent authors of all
ages and countries. Increase Mather, Principal of Harvard
College, was also directed to solve the question whether the
devil could sometimes assume the shape of a saint to effect his
particular design. The reverend author resolved it affirmatively
in a learned treatise, which he called (a seeming plagiarism)
'Cases of Conscience concerning Witchcraft and Evil Spirits
personating Men,' an undertaking prompted by an unforeseen and
disagreeable circumstance. The wife of a minister, one of the
most active promoters of the prosecution, was involved in the
indiscriminate charges of the informers, who were beginning to
aim at more exalted prey. The minister, alarmed at the unexpected
result of his own agitation, was now convinced of the falseness
of the whole proceeding. It was a fortunate occurrence. From that
time the executions ceased.[159]
[159] If, however, individuals of the human species were at
length exempt from the penalty of death, those of the canine
species were sacrificed, perhaps vicariously. Two dogs,
convicted, as it is reported, of being accessories, were
solemnly hanged!
The dangerously increasing class of informers who, like the
'delatores' of the early Roman Empire, made a lucrative
profession by their baseness, and spared not even reluctant or
recusant magistrates themselves, more than anything else, was the
cause of the termination of the trials. If they would preserve
their own lives, or at least their reputations, the authorities
and judges found it was necessary at once to check the progress
of the infection. About one hundred and fifty witches or wizards
were still under arrest (two hundred more being about to be
arrested), when Governor Phipps having been recalled by the Home
Government, was induced by a feeling of interest or justice to
release the prisoners, to the wonder and horror of the people.
From this period a reaction commenced. Those who four years
before originated the trials suddenly became objects of hatred or
contempt. Even the clergy, who had taken a leading part in them,
became unpopular. In spite of the strenuous attempts of Dr.
Cotton Mather and his disciples to revive the agitation, the tide
of public opinion or feeling had set the other way, and people
began to acknowledge the insufficiency of the evidence and the
possible innocence of the condemned. Public fasts and prayers
were decreed throughout the colony. Judges and juries emulated
one another in admitting a misgiving 'that we were sadly deluded
and mistaken.' Dr. Mather was less fickle and less repentant. In
one of his treatises on the subject, recounting some of the
signs and proofs of the actual crime, he declares: 'Nor are these
the tenth part of the prodigies that fell out among the
inhabitants of New England. _Fleshy_ people may burlesque these
things: but when hundreds of the most solemn people, in a country
where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of
mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the froward spirit of
Sadduceeism can question them. I have not yet (he confidently
asserts) mentioned so much as one thing that will not be
justified, if it be required, by the oaths of more considerate
persons than any that can ridicule these odd phenomena.'[160]
[160] _Narratives of Sorcery and Magic_, chap. xxxi. The
faith of the Fellow of Harvard College, we may be inclined
to suppose, was quickened in proportion to his doubts. To do
him justice, he admitted that _some_ of the circumstances
alleged might be exaggerated or even imaginary.
So ended the last of public and judicial persecutions of
considerable extent for witchcraft in Christendom. As far as the
superior intellects were concerned, philosophy could now dare to
reaffirm that reason 'must be our last judge and guide in
everything.' Yet Folly, like Dulness, 'born a goddess, never
dies;' and many of the higher classes must have experienced some
silent regrets for an exploded creed which held the reality of
the constant personal interference of the demons in human
affairs. The fact that the great body of the people of every
country in Europe remained almost as firm believers as their
ancestors down to the present age, hardly needs to be insisted
on; that theirs was a _living_ faith is evidenced in the
ever-recurring popular outbreaks of superstitious ignorance,
resulting both in this country and on the Continent often in the
deaths of the objects of their diabolic fear.
Such arguments as those of Webster in England, of Becker and
Thomasius in Germany, on the special subject of witchcraft, and
the general arguments of Locke or of Bayle, could be addressed
only to the few.[161] Nor indeed would it be philosophical to
expect that the vulgar should be able to penetrate an inveterate
superstition that recently had been universally credited by the
learned world.
[161] Dr. Balthazar Becker, theological professor at
Amsterdam, published his heretical work in Dutch, under the
title of 'The World Bewitched, or a Critical Investigation
of the commonly-received Opinion respecting Spirits, their
Nature, Power, and Acts, and all those extraordinary Feats
which Men are said to perform through their Aid;' 1691. 'He
founds his arguments on two grand principles--that from
their very nature spirits cannot act upon material beings,
and that the Scriptures represent the devil and his
satellites as shut up in the prison of hell. To explain away
the texts which militate against his system, evidently cost
him much labour and perplexity. His interpretations, for the
most part, are similar to those still relied on by the
believers in his doctrine' (Note by Murdock in Mosheim's
_Institutes of Ecclesiastical History_). The usually candid
Mosheim notices, apparently with contempt, '"The World
Bewitched," a prolix and copious work, in which he perverts
and explains away, with no little ingenuity indeed, but with
no less audacity, whatever the sacred volume relates of
persons possessed by evil spirits, and of the power of
demons, and maintains that the miserable being whom the
sacred writers call Satan and the devil, together with his
ministers, is bound with everlasting chains in hell, so that
he cannot thence go forth to terrify mortals and to plot
against the righteous.' Balthazar Becker, one of the most
meritorious of the opponents of diabolism, was deposed from
his ministerial office by an ecclesiastical synod, and
denounced as an atheist. His position, and the boldness of
his arguments, excited extraordinary attention and
animosity, and 'vast numbers' of Lutheran divines arose to
confute his atheistical heresy. The impunity which he
enjoyed from the vengeance of the devil (he had boldly
challenged the deity of hell to avenge his overturned
altars) was explained by the orthodox divines to be owing to
the superior cunning of Satan, who was certain that he would
be in the end the greatest gainer by unbelief. Christ.
Thomasius, professor of jurisprudence, was the author of
several works against the popular prejudice between the
years 1701 and 1720. He is considered by Ennemoser to have
been able to effect more from his professional position than
the humanely-minded Becker. But, after all, the overthrow of
the diabolic altars was caused much more by the discoveries
of science than by all the writings of literary
philosophers. Even in Southern Europe and in Spain (as far
as was possible in that intolerant land) reason began to
exhibit some faint signs of existence; and Benito Feyjoo,
whose Addisonian labours in the eighteenth century in the
land of the Inquisition deserve the gratitude of his
countrymen (in his _Teatro Critico_), dared to raise his
voice, however feeble, in its behalf.
The cessation of legal procedure against witches was negative
rather than positive: the enactments in the statute-books were
left unrepealed, and so seemed not to altogether discountenance a
still somewhat doubtful prejudice. It was so late as in the ninth
year of the reign of George II., 1736, that the Witch Act of 1604
was formally and finally repealed. By a tardy exertion of sense
and justice the Legislature then enacted that, for the future, no
prosecutions should be instituted on account of witchcraft,
sorcery, conjuration, enchantment, &c., against any person or
persons. Unfortunately for the credit of civilisation, it would
be easy to enumerate a long list of _illegal_ murders both before
and since 1736. One or two of the most remarkable cases plainly
evincing, as Scott thinks, that the witch-creed 'is only asleep,
and might in remote corners be again awakened to deeds of blood,'
are too significant not to be briefly referred to. In 1712 Jane
Wenham, a poor woman belonging to the village of Walkern, in the
county of Hertford, was solemnly found guilty by the jury on the
evidence of sixteen witnesses, of whom three were clergymen;
Judge Powell presiding. She was condemned to death as a witch in
the usual manner; but was reprieved on the representation of the
judge. She had been commonly known in the neighbourhood of her
home as a malicious witch, who took great pleasure in afflicting
farmers' cattle and in effecting similar mischief. The incumbent
of Walkern, the Rev. Mr. Gardiner, fully shared the prejudice of
his parishioners; and, far from attempting to dispel, he entirely
concurred with, their suspicions. A warrant was obtained from the
magistrate, Sir Henry Chauncy, for the arrest of the accused: and
she was brought before that local official; depositions were
taken, and she was searched for 'marks.' The vicar of Ardley, a
neighbouring village, tested her guilt or innocence with the
Lord's Prayer, which was repeated incorrectly: by threats and
other means he forced the confession that she was indeed an agent
of the devil, and had had intercourse with him.
But, even in the middle of the eighteenth century, witches were
occasionally tried and condemned by judicial tribunals. In the
year 1749, Maria or Emma Renata, a nun in the convent of
Unterzell, near Wuerzburg, was condemned by the spiritual, and
executed by the civil, power. By the clemency of the prince, the
proper death by burning alive was remitted to the milder sentence
of beheading, and afterwards burning the corpse to ashes: for no
vestige of such an accursed criminal should be permitted to
remain after death. When a young girl Maria Renata had been
seduced to witchcraft by a military officer, and was accustomed
to attend the witch-assemblies. In the convent she practised her
infernal arts in bewitching her sister-nuns.[162] About the same
time a nun in the south of France was subjected to the barbarous
imputation and treatment of a witch: Father Girard, discovering
that his mistress had some extraordinary scrofulous marks,
conceived the idea of proclaiming to the world that she was
possessed of the _stigmata_--impressions of the marks of the
nails and spear on the crucified Lord, believed to be reproduced
on the persons of those who, like the celebrated St. Francis,
most nearly assimilated their lives to His. The Jesuits eagerly
embraced an opportunity of producing a miracle which might
confound their Jansenist rivals, whose sensational miracles were
threatening to eclipse their own.[163] Sir Walter Scott states
that the last judicial sentence of death for witchcraft in
Scotland was executed in 1722, when Captain David Ross, sheriff
of Sutherland, condemned a woman to the stake. As for illegal
persecution, M. Garinet ('Histoire de la Magie en France') gives
a list of upwards of twenty instances occurring in France between
the years 1805 and 1818. In the latter year three tribunals were
occupied with the trials of the murderers.
[162] Ennemoser relates the history of this witch from 'The
Christian address at the burning of Maria Renata, of the
convent of Unterzell, who was burnt on June 21, 1749, which
address was delivered to a numerous multitude, and
afterwards printed by command of the authorities.' The
preacher earnestly insisted upon the divine sanction and
obligation of the Mosaic law, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch
to live,' which was taken as the text; and upon the fact
that, so far from being abolished by Christianity, it was
made more imperative by the Christian Church.
[163] The victim of the pleasure, and afterwards of the
ambition, of Father Girard, is known as La Cadiere. She was a
native of Toulon, and when young had witnessed the
destructive effects of the plague which devastated that city
in 1720. Amidst the confusion of society she was
distinguished by her purity and benevolence. The story of La
Cadiere and Father Girard is eloquently narrated by M.
Michelet in _La Sorciere_. The convulsions of the Flagellants
of the thirteenth century, and of the Protestant Revivalists
of the present day, exhibit on a large scale the paroxysms of
the French convents and the Dutch orphan-houses of the
seventeenth century. Nor is diabolical 'possession' yet
extinct in Christendom, if the reports received from time to
time from the Continent are to be credited. Recently, a
convent of Augustinian nuns at Loretto, on the authority of
the _Corriere delle Marche_ of Ancona, was attacked in a
similar way to that of Loudun. A vomiting of needles and
pins, the old diabolical torture, and a strict examination of
the accused, followed.
If a belief should be entertained that the now 'vulgar' ideas of
witchcraft have been long obsolete in England, it would be
destroyed by a perusal of a few of the newspapers and periodicals
of the last hundred years; and a sufficiently voluminous work
might be occupied with the achievements of modern Sidrophels, and
the records of murders or mutilations perpetrated by an ignorant
mob.[164]
[164] Without noticing other equally notorious instances of
recent years, it may be enough (to dispel any such possible
illusion) to transcribe a paragraph from an account in _The
Times_ newspaper of Sept. 24, 1863. 'It is a somewhat
singular fact,' says the writer, describing a late notorious
witch-persecution in the county of Essex, 'that nearly all
the sixty or seventy persons concerned in the outrage which
resulted in the death of the deceased _were of the small
tradesmen class_, and that none of the agricultural
labourers were mixed up in the affair. It is also stated
that none of those engaged were in any way under the
influence of liquor. The whole disgraceful transaction arose
out of a deep belief in witchcraft, which possesses to a
lamentable extent the tradespeople and the lower orders of
the district.' Nor does it appear that the village of
Hedingham (the scene of the witch-murder) claims a
superiority in credulity over other villages in Essex or in
England. The instigator and chief agent in the Hedingham
case was the wife of an innkeeper, who was convinced that
she had been bewitched by an old wizard of reputation in the
neighbourhood: and the mode of punishment was the popular
one of drowning or suffocating in the nearest pond. Scraps
of written papers found in the hovel of the murdered wizard
revealed the numerous applications by lovers, wives, and
other anxious inquirers. Amongst other recent revivals of
the 'Black Art' in Southern Europe already referred to, the
inquisition at Rome upon a well-known English or American
'spiritualist,' when, as we learn from himself, he was
compelled to make a solemn abjuration that he had not
surrendered his soul to the devil, is significant.
Nor would it be safe to assume, with some writers, that
diabolism, as a vulgar prejudice, is now entirely extirpated from
Protestant Christendom, and survives only in the most orthodox
countries of Catholicism or in the remoter parts of northern or
eastern Europe. Superstition, however mitigated, exists even in
the freer Protestant lands of Europe and America; and if
Protestants are able to smile at the religious creeds or
observances of other sects, they may have, it is probable,
something less pernicious, but perhaps almost as absurd, in their
own creed.[165] But, after a despotism of fifteen centuries,
Christendom has at length thrown off the hellish yoke, whose
horrid tyranny was satiated with innumerable holocausts. The once
tremendous power of the infernal arts is remembered by the higher
classes of society of the present age only in their proverbial
language, but it is indelibly graven in the common literature of
Europe. With the savage peoples of the African continent and of
the barbarous regions of the globe, witchcraft or sorcery, under
the name of Fetishism, flourishes with as much vigour and with as
destructive effects as in Europe in the sixteenth century; and
every traveller returning from Eastern or Western Africa, or from
the South Pacific, testifies to the prevalence of the practice of
horrid and bloody rites of a religious observance consisting of
charms and incantations. With those peoples that have no further
conception of the religious sentiment there obtains for the most
part, at least, the magical use of sorcery.[166] Superstition,
ever varying, at some future date may assume, even in Europe, a
form as pernicious or irrational as any of a past or of the
present age; for in every age 'religion, which should most
distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate
us as rational creatures above brutes, is that wherein men
often appear most irrational and more senseless than beasts
themselves.'[167]
[165] A modern philosopher has well illustrated this obvious
truth (_Natural History of Religion_, sect. xii.). 'The age
of superstition,' says an essayist of some notoriety, with
perfect truth, 'is not past; nor,' he adds, a more
questionable thesis, 'ought we to wish it past.' Some of the
most eminent writers (e.g. Plutarch, Francis Bacon, Bayle,
Addison) have rightly or wrongly agreed to consider
fanatical superstition more pernicious than atheism. When it
is considered that the scientific philosophy of Aristotle,
of more than 2,000 years ago, was revived at a comparatively
recent date, it may be difficult not to believe in a
_cyclic_ rather than really progressive course of human
ideas, at least in metaphysics. The fact, remarked by
Macaulay, that the two principal sections of Christendom in
Europe remain very nearly in the limits in which they were
in the sixteenth, or in the middle of the seventeenth
century, is incontestable. Nor, indeed, are present facts
and symptoms so adverse, as is generally supposed, to the
probability of an ultimate reaction in favour of Catholic
doctrine and rule, even among the Teutonic peoples, in the
revolutions to which human ideas are continually subject.
[166] Among the numerous evidences of recent travellers may
be specially mentioned that of the well-known traveller R. F.
Burton (_The Lake Regions of Central Africa_) for the
practices of the Eastern Africans. On the African continent
and elsewhere, as was the case amongst the ancient Jews, the
demons are propitiated by human sacrifices. To what extent
witch-superstition obtains among the Hindus, the historian of
British India bears witness. 'The belief of witchcraft and
sorcery,' says Mr. Mill, 'continues universally prevalent,
and is every day the cause of the greatest enormities. It not
unfrequently happens that Brahmins tried for murder before
the English judges assign as their motive to the crime that
the murdered individual had enchanted them. No fewer than
five unhappy persons in one district were tried and executed
for witchcraft so late as the year 1792. The villagers
themselves assume the right of sitting in judgment on this
imaginary offence, and their sole instruments of proof are
the most wretched of all incantations (_History of British
India_, book ii. 7). A certain instinctive or traditional
dread of evil spirits excites the terrors of those peoples
who have no firm belief in the providence or existence of a
benevolent Divinity. Even among the Chinese--the least
religious nation in the world, and whose trite formula of
scepticism, 'Religions are many: Reason is one,' expresses
their indifferentism to every form of religion--there exists
a sort of demoniacal fear (Huc's _Chinese Empire_, xix.). The
diabolic and magic superstitions of the Moslem are displayed
in Sale's _Koran_ and Lane's _Modern Egyptians_.
[167] _Essay concerning the Human Understanding_, book iv.
18.
* * * * *
Transcriber's notes
Page 27: Deleted extra "the"
Page 39: Removed comma after "Scandinavians."
Page 90: Added missing quotation mark.
Page 107: Corrected typo "Hutchison's."
Page 165: Corrected typo "transsubstantiated."
Page 278: Added period after "xix."