he whole force of public opinion was directed constantly
and earnestly to the question for many centuries, and although there was
some controversy concerning the details of witchcraft, the fact of its
existence was long considered undoubted.

For many centuries the ablest men were not merely unwilling to repudiate
the superstition, but they often pressed forward earnestly and with the
utmost conviction to defend it. Indeed, during the period when
witchcraft was most prevalent there were few writers of real eminence
who did not, on some occasion, take especial pains to throw the weight
of their authority into the scales.

St. Thomas Aquinas was probably the ablest writer of the thirteenth
century, and he assures us that diseases and tempests are often the
direct act of the Devil; and the Devil can transform men into any shape
and transport them through the air.

Gerson, the chancellor of the University of Paris, and, as many think,
the author of "The Imitation," is justly regarded as one of the master
minds of his age; he too, wrote in defense of this belief. "These men,"
he wrote, "should be treated with scorn, and indeed, sternly corrected,
who ridicule theologians whenever they speak of demons, or attribute to
demons any effects, as if these things were entirely fabulous. This
error has arisen among some learned men, partly through want of faith,
and partly through weakness and imperfection of intellect."

Bodin was unquestionably the most original political philosopher who had
arisen since Machiavelli, and he devoted all his learning and acuteness
to crushing the rising scepticism on the subject of witches. The truth
is that in those ages ability was no guarantee against error; for the
single employment of the reason was to develop and expand premises that
were furnished by the Church. And this statement is as valid today as it
was three hundred years ago.

Bodin was esteemed, by many of his contemporaries, the ablest man who
had then arisen in France, and the verdict has been but little
qualified by later writers. Amid all the distractions of a dissipated
and an intriguing court, and all the labors of a judicial position, he
had amassed an amount of learning so vast and so various as to place him
in the very first rank of the scholars of his nation. He has also the
greater merit of being one of the chief founders of political philosophy
and political history, and of having anticipated on these subjects many
of