"However strange it seems, it is quite worthy of observation, that the
actors in that tragedy, the 'afflicted children,' and other witnesses,
in their various statements and operations, embraced about the whole
circle of popular superstition. How those young country girls, some of
them mere children, most of them wholly illiterate, could have become
familiar with such fancies, to such an extent, is truly surprising. They
acted out, and brought to bear with tremendous effect, almost all that
can be found in the literature of that day, and the period preceding it,
relating to such subjects. Images and visions which had been portrayed
in tales of romance, and given interest to the pages of poetry, will
be made by them, as we shall see, to throng the woods, flit through
the air, and hover over the heads of a terrified court. The ghosts of
murdered wives and children will play their parts with a vividness
of representation and artistic skill of expression that have hardly
been surpassed in scenic representations on the stage. In the
Salem-witchcraft proceedings, the superstition of the middle ages
was embodied in real action. All its extravagant absurdities and
monstrosities appear in their application to human experience. We see
what the effect has been, and must be, when the affairs of life, in
courts of law and the relations of society, or the conduct or feelings
of individuals, are suffered to be under the control of fanciful or
mystical notions. When a whole people abandons the solid ground of
common sense, overleaps the boundaries of human knowledge, gives itself
up to wild reveries, and lets loose its passions without restraint,
it presents a spectacle more terrific to behold, and becomes more
destructive and disastrous, than any convulsion of mere material
nature,--than tornado, conflagration, or earthquake." (Vol. i. p. 468.)