d; and, in spite of his threatenings,
about twenty years after we find a remarkable evidence of this progress
in the fact that this scepticism has seized upon no less a personage
than that colossus of orthodoxy, his thrice illustrious son, Cotton
Mather himself; and him we find, in 1726, despite the arguments of his
father, declaring in his Manuductio: "Perhaps there may be some need for
me to caution you against being dismayed at the signs of the heavens,
or having any superstitious fancies upon eclipses and the like.... I am
willing that you be apprehensive of nothing portentous in blazing stars.
For my part, I know not whether all our worlds, and even the sun itself,
may not fare the better for them."(114)

(114) For Cotton Mather, see the Manuductio, pp. 54, 55.

Curiously enough, for this scientific scepticism in Cotton Mather there
was a cause identical with that which had developed superstition in the
mind of his father. The same provincial tendency to receive implicitly
any new European fashion in thinking or speech wrought upon both,
plunging one into superstition and drawing the other out of it.

European thought, which New England followed, had at last broken away in
great measure from the theological view of comets as signs and wonders.
The germ of this emancipating influence was mainly in the great
utterance of Seneca; and we find in nearly every century some evidence
that this germ was still alive. This life became more and more evident
after the Reformation period, even though theologians in every Church
did their best to destroy it. The first series of attacks on the old
theological doctrine were mainly founded in philosophic reasoning. As
early as the first half of the sixteenth century we hear Julius Caesar
Scaliger protesting against the cometary superstition as "ridiculous
folly."(115) Of more real importance was the treatise of Blaise de
Vigenere, published at Paris in 1578. In this little book various
statements regarding comets as signs of wrath or causes of evils are
given, and then followed by a very gentle and quiet discussion, usually
tending to develop that healthful scepticism which is the parent of
investigation. A fair example of his mode of treating the subject is
seen in his dealing with a bit of "sacred science." This was simply
that "comets menace princes and kings with death because they live more
delicately than other people; and, therefore, the air thickened and
corrupted