THE RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR. 159 



or trifling spirit the saddest of all episodes in the ik)1)1c an- 

 nals of a noble race." 



Prof. Barrett Wendell of Harvard College was first in- 

 troduced by Mr. Rantoul. 



Mr. Wendell's paper/ while carefully disclaiming the 

 scientific and historical learning that should give his views 

 authority, suggested that his observation of modern oc- 

 cultism revealed so many points of likeness to matters 

 testified to in the trials of the Salem witches as to lead 

 him to believe that the witchcraft was really something 

 resembling an epidemic of hypnotism. He further ex- 

 pressed belief that whoever practised hypnotism in the 

 seventeenth century could hardly have failed to believe 

 himself in league with the devil. From this would fol- 

 low a strong probability that some of the witches may have 

 been morally guilty. 



Professor Wendell spoke of his own psychic researches. 

 He had studied the work of the materializing mediums, 

 which he had no doubt were indubitably frauds, and had 

 observed the trance mediums and tried automatic writing. 

 He dwelt especially upon the debasing and degenerating 

 eifect that all of these had upon the operator. He cited 

 one case of an undoubtedly honest young woman who was 

 capable of going into a trance, and who in that condition 

 undoul)tedly did things of pure charlatanry and subtle 

 untruth. He had himself found the automatic writing to 

 leave him in such a state of nervous irritability that at 

 times he was almost ready to admit that he himself had 

 partially helped the pencil along, and yet when charged 

 with it was at once eager and ready to deny it. 



He had taken Mr. Upham's admirable books and had 

 studied the life of Cotton Mather and found him not at 



iSee HlBt. Coll. Essex Inst., Vol. xxix, p. 45. 



