(1877.)
Dedication to Ebon C. Ingersoll--Preface--Mendacity of the Religious
Press--"Materialism"--Ways of Pleasing the Ghosts--The Idea of
Immortality not Born of any Book--Witchcraft and Demon-ology--Witch
Trial before Sir Matthew Hale--John Wesley a Firm Believer in
Ghosts--"Witch-spots"--Lycanthropy--Animals Tried and Convicted--The
Governor of Minnesota and the Grasshoppers--A Papal Bull against
Witchcraft--Victims of the Delusion--Sir William Blackstone's
Affirmation--Trials in Belgium--Incubi and Succubi--A Bishop
Personated by the Devil--The Doctrine that Diseases are caused by
Ghosts--Treatment--Timothy Dwight against Vaccination--Ghosts as
Historians--The Language of Eden--Leibnitz, Founder of the Science
of Language--Cosmas on Astronomy--Vagaries of Kepler and Tycho
Brahe--Discovery of Printing, Powder, and America--Thanks to the
Inventors--The Catholic Murderer and the Meat--Let the Ghosts Go