582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



days of the Salem persecution down to the " camp-meetings " of 

 the present time.* 



At various times, from the days of St. Agobard of Lyons 

 through the Reformation period, protests had been made by 

 thoughtful men against this system. Medicine had made some 

 advance toward a better view, but the theological torrent had 

 generally overwhelmed all who supported a scientific treatment. 

 At last, toward the end of the sixteenth century, two men made a 

 beginning of a much more serious attack upon this venerable 

 superstition. The revival of learning and the impulse to thought 

 on material matters given during the " age of discovery " un- 

 doubtedly produced an atmosphere which made the work of these 

 men possible. In the year 1563, in the midst of demonstrations of 

 demoniacal possession by the most eminent theologians and 

 judges — who sat in their robes and looked wise, while women, 

 shrieking, praying, and blaspheming, were put to the torture — a 

 man arose who dared to protest effectively that some of the per- 

 sons thus charged might be simply insane, and this man was 

 John Wier, of Cleves. 



His protest does not at this day strike us as particularly bold. 

 In his books, " De Prestigiis Deemonum " and"De Lamiis," he 

 did his best not to offend religious or theological susceptibilities, 

 but he felt obliged to tell certain truths, to call attention to the 

 mingled fraud and delusion of those who claimed to be bewitched, 

 and to point out that it was often not their accusers but the 

 alleged witches themselves who were really ailing, and he urged 

 that these be brought first of all to a physician. 



His book was at once attacked by the most eminent theologi- 

 ans. One of the greatest men of genius of his time, John Bodin, 

 also wrote with especial power against it, and by a plentiful use 

 of Scriptural texts gained, to all appearance, a complete victory : 

 superstition seemed fastened upon Europe for a thousand years 

 more. But skepticism was in the air, and, about a quarter of a 

 century after the publication of Wier's book, there were pub- 

 lished in France the essays of a man, by no means so noble, but 

 of far greater genius — Michel de Montaigne. The general skepti- 

 cism which his work promoted among the French people did 

 much to strengthen an atmosphere in which the belief in witch- 

 craft and demoniacal possession must inevitably wither. But this 

 process, though real, was hidden, and the victory still seemed on 

 the theological side. 



The development of the new truth and its struggle against the 

 old error still went on. In Holland, Balthazar Bekker wrote his 

 book against the worst forms of the superstition, and attempted 

 to help the scientific side by a text from the Second Epistle of St. 



* This branch of the subject will be discussed more at length in a future chapter. 



