the evidence that we had about men of
other occupations was less encouraging. It looked as if those who
dispensed justice were in advance of the clergy, of the scholars,
physicians, and scientists of their time. Had the Master of Trinity, or
the physician of Norwich, or the discoverer of the air pump been the
justices of the peace for England, it is not incredible that
superstition would have flourished for another generation. Was it
because the men of the law possessed more of the matter-of-factness
supposed to be a heritage of every Englishman? Was it because their
special training gave them a saner outlook? No doubt both elements help
to explain the difference. But is it not possible to believe that the
social grouping of these men had an influence? The itinerant justices
and the justices of the peace were recruited from the gentry, as none of
the other classes were. Men like Reresby and North inherited the
traditions of their class; they spent part of the year in London and
knew the talk of the town. Can we doubt that their decisions were
influenced by that fact? The country justice of the peace was removed
often enough from metropolitan influences, but he was usually quick to
catch the feelings of his own class.

If our theory be true that the jurists were in advance of other
professions and that they were sprung of a higher stock, it is of course
some confirmation of the larger theory that witchcraft was first
discredited among the gentry. Yet, as we have said before, this is at
best a guess as to how the decline of belief took place and must be
accepted only provisionally. We have seen that there are other
assertions about the progress of thought in this period that may be
ventured with much confidence. There had been great changes of opinion.
It would not be fair to say that the movement towards skepticism had
been accelerated. Rather, the movement which had its inception back in
the days of Reginald Scot and had found in the last days of James I a
second impulse, which had been quietly gaining force in the thirties,
forties, and fifties, was now under full headway. Common sense was
coming into its own.

[1] Ferris Greenslet, _Joseph Glanvill_ (New York, 1900), 153. The
writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Greenslet's
excellent book on Glanvill.

[2] The _Scepsis Scientifica_ was really _The Vanity of Dogmatising_
(1661) recast.

[3] See, for example, the introductory essay by John Owen i