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 259

PART I.

EARLIER FAITH.

CHAPTER I.

The Origin, Prevalence, and Variety of Superstition--The
Belief in Witchcraft the most horrid Form of
Superstition--Most flourishing in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries--The Sentiments of Addison,
Blackstone, and the Lawyers of the Eighteenth Century upon
the Subject--Chaldean and Persian Magic--Jewish
Witchcraft--Its important Influence on Christian and Modern
Belief--Greek Pharmacy and Sorcery--Early Roman Laws against
Conjuration and Magic Charms--Crimes perpetrated, under the
Empire, in connection with Sorceric Practices--The general
Persecution for Magic under Valentinian and Valens--German
and Scandinavian Sagae--The probable Origin of the general
Belief in an Evil Principle.

Superstition, the product of ignorance of causes, of the
proneness to seek the solution of phenomena out of and beyond
nature, and of the consequent natural but unreasoning dread of
the Unknown and Invisible (ignorantly termed the supernatural),
is at once universal in the extent, and various in the kinds,
of its despotism. Experience and reason seem to prove that,
inherent to and apparently coexistent with the human mind, it
naturally originates in the constitution of humanity: in ignorance
and uncertainty, in an instinctive doubt and fear of the
_Unknown_. Accident may moderate its power among particular peoples
and persons; and there are always exceptional minds whose
natural temper and exercise of reason are able to free them from
the servitude of a delusive imagination. For the mass of mankind,
the germ of superstition, prepared to assume always a new shape
and sometimes fresh vigour, is indestructible. The s