e by the forms in which they
appeared upon the earth. They could not admit that devils could actually
enter into and possess the body of a man in those latter days, although
during the earlier history of the Church such things had been permitted
by Divine Providence for some inscrutable but doubtless satisfactory
reason:--that was Catholicism. On the other hand, they could not for an
instant tolerate or even sanction the doctrine that devils had no power
whatever over humanity:--that was Atheism. But it was quite possible
that evil spirits, without actually entering into the body of a man,
might so infest, worry, and torment him, as to produce all the symptoms
indicative of possession. The doctrine of obsession replaced that of
possession; and, once adopted, was supported by a string of those
quaint, conceited arguments so peculiar to the time.[1]

[Footnote 1: Dialogicall Discourses, by Deacon and Walker, 3rd
Dialogue.]

61. But, as in all other cases, the refinements of the theologians had
little or no effect upon the world outside their controversies. To the
ordinary mind, if a man's eyes goggled, body swelled, and mouth foamed,
and it was admitted that these were the work of a devil, the question
whether the evil-doer were actually housed within the sufferer, or only
hovered in his immediate neighbourhood, seemed a question of such minor
importance as to be hardly worth discussing--a conclusion that the lay
mind is apt to come to upon other questions that appear portentous to
the divines--and the theory of possession, having the advantage in time
over that of obsession, was hard to dislodge.

62. One of the chief causes of the persistency with which the old belief
was maintained was the utter ignorance of the medical men of the period
on the subject of mental disease. The doctors of the time were mere
children in knowledge of the science they professed; and to attribute a
disease, the symptoms of which they could not comprehend, to a power
outside their control by ordinary methods, was a safe method of
screening a reputation which might otherwise have suffered. "Canst thou
not minister to a mind diseased?" cries Macbeth to the doctor, in one of
those moments of yearning after the better life he regrets, but cannot
return to, which come over him now and again. No; the disease is beyond
his practice; and, although this passage has in it a deeper meaning than
the one attributed to it here, it well illustrates the pos