onelie she, but the accuser, and also the
Justice are fowlie deceived and abused."[21] Such indeed was the epitome
of many cases. The process from beginning to end was never better
described; the ease with which confessions were dragged from
weak-spirited women was never pictured more truly. With quite as keen
insight he displayed the motives that animated witnesses and described
the prejudices and fears that worked on jurors and judges. It was,
indeed, upon these factors that he rested the weight of his argument for
the negative.[22]

The affirmative opinion was grounded, he believed, upon the ignorance of
the common people, "assotted and bewitched" by the jesting or serious
words of poets, by the inventions of "lowd liers and couseners," and by
"tales they have heard from old doting women, or from their mother's
maids, and with whatsoever the grandfoole their ghostlie father or anie
other morrow masse preest had informed them."[23]

By the same method by which he opposed the belief in witchcraft he
opposed the belief in possession by an evil spirit. The known cases,
when examined, proved frauds. The instances in the New Testament he
seemed inclined to explain by the assumption that possession merely
meant disease.[24]

That Scot should maintain an absolute negative in the face of all
strange phenomena would have been too much to expect. He seems to have
believed, though not without some difficulty, that stones had in them
"certaine proper vertues which are given them of a speciall influence of
the planets." The unicorn's horn, he thought, had certain curative
properties. And he had heard "by credible report" and the affirmation of
"many grave authors" that "the wound of a man murthered reneweth
bleeding at the presence of a deere freend, or of a mortall enimie."[25]

His credulity in these points may be disappointing to the reader who
hopes to find in Scot a scientific rationalist. That, of course, he was
not; and his leaning towards superstition on these points makes one ask,
What did he really believe about witchcraft? When all the fraud and
false testimony and self-deception were excluded, what about the
remaining cases of witchcraft? Scot was very careful never to deny _in
toto_ the existence of witches. That would have been to deny the Bible.
What were these witches, then? Doubtless he would have answered that he
had already classified them under two heads: they were either
"couseners" or "poor doting women"-