IX.] THE WITCH MANIA. 225 



her quicker instincts, her readier wit, which seem to 

 him to have in them somewhat prophetic and super- 

 human, which entangled him as in an invisible net, 

 and rule him against his will. He dreads her very 

 tongue, more crushing than his heaviest club, more 

 keen than his poisoned arrows. He dreads those 

 habits of secrecy and falsehood, the weapons of the 

 weak, to which savage and degraded woman always 

 has recourse. He dreads the very medicinal skill 

 which she has learnt to exercise, as nurse, comforter, 

 and slave. He dreads those secret ceremonies, those 

 mysterious initiations which no man may witness, 

 which he has permitted to her in all ages, in so many 

 if not all barbarous and semi-barbarous races, 

 whether Negro, American, Syrian, Greek, or Roman, 

 as a homage to the mysterious importance of her who 

 brings him into the world. If she turns against him 

 she, with all her unknown powers, she who is the 

 sharer of his deepest secrets, who prepares his very 

 food day by day what harm can she not, may she 

 not, do ? And that she has good reason to turn 

 against him, he knows too well. What deliverance is 

 there from this mysterious house-fiend, save brute 

 force ? Terror, torture, murder, must be the order of 

 the day. Woman must be crushed, at all price, by the 

 blind fear of the man. 



I shall say no more. I shall draw a veil, for very 

 pity and shame, over the most important and most 

 significant facts of this, the most hideous of all human 

 follies. I have, I think, given you hints enough to 

 show that it, like all other superstitions, is the child 

 the last born and the ugliest child of blind dread of 

 the unknown. 



SC. Q 



