witches."

"Witches they are by nature." It is a gift peculiar to woman and her
temperament. By birth a fay, by the regular recurrence of her ecstasy
she becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchantress. By her
subtlety, by a roguishness often whimsical and beneficent, she becomes
a Witch; she works her spells; does at any rate lull our pains to rest
and beguile them.

All primitive races have the same beginning, as so many books of
travel have shown. While the man is hunting and fighting, the woman
works with her wits, with her imagination: she brings forth dreams and
gods. On certain days she becomes a seeress, borne on boundless wings
of reverie and desire. The better to reckon up the seasons, she
watches the sky; but her heart belongs to earth none the less. Young
and flower-like herself, she looks down toward the enamoured flowers,
and forms with them a personal acquaintance. As a woman, she beseeches
them to heal the objects of her love.

In a way so simple and touching do all religion and all science begin.
Ere long everything will get parcelled out; we shall mark the
beginning of the professional man as juggler, astrologer, or prophet,
necromancer, priest, physician. But at first the woman is everything.

A religion so strong and hearty as that of Pagan Greece begins with
the Sibyl to end in the Witch. The former, a lovely maiden in the
broad daylight, rocked its cradle, endowed it with a charm and glory
of its own. Presently it fell sick, lost itself in the darkness of the
Middle Ages, and was hidden away by the Witch in woods and wilds:
there, sustained by her compassionate daring, it was made to live
anew. Thus, of every religion woman is the mother, the gentle
guardian, the faithful nurse. With her the gods fare like men: they
are born and die upon her bosom.

* * * * *

Alas! her loyalty costs her dear. Ye magian queens of Persia;
bewitching Circe; sublime Sibyl! Into what have ye grown, and how
cruel the change that has come upon you! She who from her throne in
the East taught men the virtues of plants and the courses of the
stars; who, on her Delphic tripod beamed over with the god of light,
as she gave forth her oracle to a world upon its knees;--she also it
is whom, a thousand years later, people hunt down like a wild beast;
following her into the public places, where she is dishonoured,
worried, stoned, or set upon the burning coals!

For this poor wret