seems to him much less of a prodigy that men should lie, or
that their imaginations should deceive them, than that a human body
should be carried through the air on a broomstick, or up a chimney by
some unknown spirit. He thinks it a sad business to persuade oneself
that the test of truth lies in the multitude of believers--"en une prosse
ou les fols surpassent de tant les sages en nombre." Ordinarily, he has
observed, when men have something stated to them as a fact, they are more
ready to explain it than to inquire whether it is real: "ils passent
pardessus les propositions, mais ils examinent les consequences; _ils
laissent les choses_, _et courent aux causes_." There is a sort of
strong and generous ignorance which is as honorable and courageous as
science--"ignorance pour laquelle concevoir il n'y a pas moins de science
qu'a concevoir la science." And _a propos_ of the immense traditional
evidence which weighed with such men as Bodin, he says--"As for the
proofs and arguments founded on experience and facts, I do not pretend to
unravel these. What end of a thread is there to lay hold of? I often
cut them as Alexander did his knot. _Apres tout_, _c'est mettre ses
conjectures a bien haut prix_, _que d'en faire cuire un homme tout dif_."

Writing like this, when it finds eager readers, is a sign that the
weather is changing; yet much later, namely, after 1665, when the Royal
Society had been founded, our own Glanvil, the author of the "Scepsis
Scientifica," a work that was a remarkable advance toward the true
definition of the limits of inquiry, and that won him his election as
fellow of the society, published an energetic vindication of the belief
in witchcraft, of which Mr. Lecky gives the following sketch:

"The 'Sadducismus Triumphatus,' which is probably the ablest book
ever published in defence of the superstition, opens with a striking
picture of the rapid progress of the scepticism in England.
Everywhere, a disbelief in witchcraft was becoming fashionable in the
upper classes; but it was a disbelief that arose entirely from a
strong sense of its antecedent improbability. All who were opposed
to the orthodox faith united in discrediting witchcraft. They
laughed at it, as palpably absurd, as involving the most grotesque
and ludicrous conceptions, as so essentially incredible that it would
be a waste of time to examine it. This spirit had arisen since the
Res