a that individual lunatics are "possessed by devils,"
in establishing the truth that insanity is physical disease, and in
substituting for superstitious cruelties toward the insane a treatment
mild, kindly, and based upon ascertained facts.

The Satan who had so long troubled individual men and women thus became
extinct; henceforth his fossil remains only were preserved: they
may still be found in the sculptures and storied windows of medieval
churches, in sundry liturgies, and in popular forms of speech.

But another Satan still lived--a Satan who wrought on a larger
scale--who took possession of multitudes. For, after this triumph of
the scientific method, there still remained a class of mental disorders
which could not be treated in asylums, which were not yet fully
explained by science, and which therefore gave arguments of much
apparent strength to the supporters of the old theological view: these
were the epidemics of "diabolic possession" which for so many centuries
afflicted various parts of the world.

When obliged, then, to retreat from their old position in regard to
individual cases of insanity, the more conservative theologians promptly
referred to these epidemics as beyond the domain of science--as clear
evidences of the power of Satan; and, as the basis of this view, they
cited from the Old Testament frequent references to witchcraft,
and, from the New Testament, St. Paul's question as to the possible
bewitching of the Galatians, and the bewitching of the people of Samaria
by Simon the Magician.

Naturally, such leaders had very many adherents in that class, so large
in all times, who find that

"To follow foolish precedents and wink With both our eyes, is easier
than to think."(384)

(384) As to eminent physicians' finding a stumbling-block in hysterical
mania, see Kirchhoff's article, p. 351, cited in previous chapter.

It must be owned that their case seemed strong. Though in all human
history, so far as it is closely known, these phenomena had appeared,
and though every classical scholar could recall the wild orgies of
the priests, priestesses, and devotees of Dionysus and Cybele, and the
epidemic of wild rage which took its name from some of these, the great
fathers and doctors of the Church had left a complete answer to any
scepticism based on these facts; they simply pointed to St. Paul's
declaration that the gods of the heathen were devils: these examples,
then, could be transfo