584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The theological current, thus re-enforced, seemed to become 

 again irresistible ; but it was only so in appearance. In spite of 

 it, French skepticism continued to develop ; signs of quiet change 

 among the mass of thinking men were appearing more and more ; 

 and in 1672 came one of great significance, for the Parliament of 

 Rouen having doomed fourteen sorcerers to be burned, their ex- 

 ecution was delayed for two years, evidently on account of skep- 

 ticism among officials ; and at length the great minister of Louis 

 XIV, Colbert, issued an edict checking such trials, and ordering 

 the convicted to be treated for madness.* 



Victory seemed now to incline to the standard of science, and 

 in 1725 no less a personage than St. Andr^, a court physician, 

 dared to publish a work virtually showing " demoniacal posses- 

 sion"' to be lunacy, f 



The French philosophy, from the time of its early develop- 

 ment in the eighteenth century under Montesquieu and Voltaire, 

 naturally strengthened the movement ; the results of ijost-mortem 

 examinations of the brains of the " possessed " confirmed it ; and 

 in 1768 we see it take form in a declaration by the Parliament of 

 Paris that possessed persons were to be considered as simply dis- 

 eased. 



In England the same warfare went on. John Locke had 

 asserted the truth, but the theological view continued to control 

 public opinion. Most prominent among those who exercised 

 great power against the truth was John Wesley, and the great- 

 ness and beauty of his character made his influence in this respect 

 all the more unfortunate. The same servitude to the mere letter 

 of Scripture which led him to declare that " to give up witchcraft 

 is to give up the Bible and to take ground against the funda- 

 mental truths of theology/' controlled him in regard to insanit5^ 

 He insisted, on the authority of the Old Testament, that bodily 

 diseases are sometimes caused by devils, and, upon the authority 

 of the New Testament, that the gods of the heathen were demons ; 

 he believed that dreams, while in some cases caused by bodily 

 conditions and passions, are shown by Scripture to be also caused 

 by occult powers of evil ; he cites a physician to prove that 

 "most lunatics are really demoniacs." In his great sermon on 

 " Evil Angels," he dwells upon this point especially ; resists the 

 idea that "possession" may be epilepsy, even though ordinary 

 symptoms of epilepsy be present ; protests against " giving up to 

 infidels such proofs of an invisible world as are to be found in 

 diabolic possession," and evidently believes that some who have 



daily in astronomy, geology, and political economy, sec my previous chapters in " The War- 

 fare of Science." 



* See Dagron, p. 8 ; also Rambaud, as above, ii, 155, 



f For.St. Andre, see Lacroix, as above, pp. 189, 190. 



