PLANS AND PROJECTS-1838-1905 497 



ture. So, too, a ghastly light was thrown into the whole 

 subject by the executioners tariffs in the various German 

 states, especially those under ecclesiastical rule. One 

 of several in my possession, which was published by the 

 Elector Archbishop of Cologne in 1757 and stamped with 

 the archbishop s seal, specifies and sanctions every form 

 of ingenious cruelty which one human being can exercise 

 upon another, and, opposite each of these cruelties, the 

 price which the executioner was authorized to receive for 

 administering it. Thus, for cutting off the right hand, 

 so much ; for tearing out the tongue, so much ; for tear 

 ing the flesh with hot pincers, so much; for burning a 

 criminal alive, so much; and so on through two folio 

 pages. Moreover, I had collected details of witchcraft 

 condemnations, which, during more than a century, went 

 on at the rate of more than a thousand a year in Germany 

 alone, and not only printed books but the original manu 

 script depositions taken from the victims in the torture- 

 chamber. Of these were the trial papers of Dietrich 

 Flade, who had been, toward the end of the sixteenth cen 

 tury, one of the most eminent men in eastern Germany, 

 chief justice of the province and rector of the University 

 of Treves. Having ventured to think witchcraft a de 

 lusion, he was put on trial by the archbishop, tortured 

 until in his agony he acknowledged every impossible thing 

 suggested to him, and finally strangled and burned. In 

 his case, as in various others, I have the ipsissima verba 

 of the accusers and accused: the original report in the 

 handwriting of the scribe who was present at the torture 

 and wrote down the questions of the judges and the an 

 swers of the prisoner. 



On this material I based a short course of lectures on 

 &quot;The Evolution of Humanity in Criminal Law,&quot; and 

 have often thought of throwing these into the form of 

 a small book to be called &quot;The Warfare of Humanity 

 with Unreason&quot;; but this will probably remain a mere 

 project. I mention it here, hoping that some other per 

 son, with more leisure, will some day properly present 



II. 32 



