"[...]contemptuous indifference on the other. Witchcraft, Swedenborgianism, Mesmerism, Spiritism—these especially, amid many minor phenomena, stood out in turn as precursory of the inevitable
wider inquiry. A very few words on each of these four movements may suffice here to show their connection with my present theme. Witchcraft.—The lesson which witchcraft teaches with regard to
the validity of human testimony is the more remarkable because it was so long and so completely misunderstood. The belief in witches long passed—as well it might—as the culminant example of
human ignorance and folly; and in so comparatively recent a book as Mr. Lecky’s "History of Rationalism," the sudden decline of this popular conviction, without argument or disapproval, is used
to illustrate the irresistible melting away of error and falsity in the "intellectual climate" of a wiser age. Since about 1880, however, when French experiments especially had afforded
conspicuous examples of what a hysterical woman could come to believe[...]".
