EVIL SPIRITS. 371 



can once more behold the dread procession wending its way amid 

 jeers and scoffs and pitiless execration to what is still " The Gal- 

 lows-hill of Salem." 



It is, in fact, impossible to exaggerate the sufferings produced 

 throughout Christendom by this superstition. "It is probable 

 that no class of victims endured sufferings so unalloyed and so 

 intense. Not for them the wild fanaticism that nerves the soul 

 against danger and almost steels the body against torments. Not 

 for them the assurance of a glorious eternity that has made the 

 martyr look with exultation upon the rising flame as on Elijah's 

 chariot that is to bear his soul to heaven. Not for them the sol- 

 ace of lamenting friends or the consciousness that their memories 

 would be cherished and honored by posterity. They died alone, 

 hated and unpitied; their very kinsmen shrank from them as 

 tainted and accursed. The superstitions they had imbibed in 

 childhood, blending with the illusions of age and with the horrors 

 of their position, persuaded them in many cases that they were 

 indeed the bond-slaves of Satan, and were about to exchange 

 their torments on earth for an agony that was as excruciating, but 

 was eternal." And it is wonderful how long this delusion lasted 

 after judicial punishment in most countries had ceased. In Spain 

 a witch was burned in 1780 ; in 1807 a beggar was tortured and 

 burned in France ; in 1850, in France, a man and wife tortured 

 and killed a woman suspected of witchcraft, and it was with some 

 difficulty that they were punished at all, on account of the linger- 

 ing belief in sorcery ; in 1860 a woman was burned in Mexico, as 

 was the case with several persons in 1874; in 1879 and 1880 

 witches were burned in Russia ; while up to that date, and possi- 

 bly later, regular judicial trials were held in Austria and Prussia. 

 It is needless to say that almost up to the present, even in Eng- 

 land and the United States, persons have been attacked by mobs 

 and private individuals, because it was believed that they were 

 in league with Satan. 



But, roughly speaking, this superstition has entirely disap- 

 peared ; and it has disappeared, not so much through religion as 

 through enlightenment and rationalism. The crushing of this 

 hydra-headed monster of superstition is one small part of the 

 debt the world owes to science. 



Some drawings recently found by Herr J. Naue at a prehistoric station near 

 Schaffhausen, Germany, comprise, on one side of a piece of limestone, a horse, a 

 foal, and a reindeer, and on the other side several horses. The style is not so 

 fine as that of the Thayngen drawings of France, hut the pictures, according to 

 the finder, display a power of keen observation. Herr Naue also remarks that it 

 was more difficult to work on stone than on a bone still fresh. 



