ject, who was perfectly sane and rational in his general
conduct, describe a series of interviews that he had had with the
devil with a precision and an absolute belief in the evidence of
his senses equal to anything that I ever read in the records of the
witches' compacts. And further, we know now that there is a
condition, capable often of being induced in uneducated and simple
persons with extreme ease, in which any idea that is suggested may
at once take sensory form, and may be projected as an actual
hallucination. To those who have seen robust young men, in an early
stage of hypnotic trance, staring with horror at a figure which
appears to them to be walking on the ceiling, or giving way to
strange convulsions under the impression that they have been
changed into birds or snakes, there will be nothing very surprising
in the belief of hysterical girls that they were possessed by some
alien influence, or that their distinct persecutor was actually
present to their senses. It is true that in hypnotic experiments
there is commonly some preliminary process by which the peculiar
condition is induced, and that the idea which originates the
delusion has then to be suggested _ab extra_. But with sensitive
'subjects' who have been much under any particular influence, a
mere word will produce the effect; nor is there any feature in the
evidence for witchcraft that more constantly recurs than the
_touching_ of the victim by the witch. Moreover, no hard and fast
lines exist between the delusions of induced hypnotism and those
of spontaneous trance, or of the grave hystero-epileptic crises
which mere terror is now known to develop."

Unquestionably, hypnotism and hallucination played their part; also
perhaps telepathy; and, as Gurney points out elsewhere, "The imagination
which may be unable to produce, even in feeble-minded persons, the
belief that they _see_ things that are not there, may be quite able to
produce the belief that they _have seen_ them, which is all, of course,
that their testimony implies" (p. 118).

Doubtless a large part of witchcraft, particularly that portion of it
which relates to the Sabbath and the scenes said to be enacted there,
can be explained as being due to the morbid workings of the mind while
in a trance state. It is asserted on good authority that salves and
ointments we