general are, like the crocodile, ready to weep on every
light occasion.

Reginald Scot gives the reasons alleged by the apologists of
witchcraft. 'This gift and natural influence of fascination
may be increased in man according to his affections and
perturbations, as through anger, fear, love, hate, &c. For by
hate, saith Varius, entereth a fiery inflammation into the eye of
man, which being violently sent out by beams and streams infect
and bewitch those bodies against whom they are opposed. And
therefore (he saith) that is the cause that women are oftener
found to be witches than men. For they have such an unbridled
force of fury and concupiscence naturally, that by no means is it
possible for them to temper or moderate the same. So as upon
every trifling occasion they, like unto the beasts, fix their
furious eyes upon the party whom they bewitch.... Women also
(saith he) are oftenlie filled full of superfluous humours, and
with them the melancholike blood boileth, whereof spring vapours,
and are carried up and conveyed through the nostrils and mouth,
to the bewitching of whatsoever it meeteth. For they belch up a
certain breath wherewith they bewitch whomsoever they list. And
of all other women lean, hollow-eyed, old, beetle-browed women
(saith he) are the most infectious.'[44] Why _old_ women are
selected as the most proper means of doing the devil's will may
be discovered in their peculiar characteristics. The repulsive
features, moroseness, avarice, malice, garrulity of his hags are
said to be appropriate instruments. Scot informs us, 'One sort of
such as are said to be witches are women which be commonly old,
lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles, poor, sullen,
superstitious, and _papists_, or such as know no religion, in
whose drowsy minds the devil hath got a fine seat. They are lean
and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of
all that see them. They are doting, scolds, mad, devilish ...
neither obtaining for their service and pains, nor yet by their
art, nor yet at the devil's hands, with whom they are said to
make a perfect visible bargain, either beauty, money, promotion,
wealth, worship, pleasure, honour, knowledge, or any other
benefit whatsoever.' As to the preternatural gifts of these hags,
he sensibly argues: 'Alas! what an unapt instrument is a
toothless, old, impotent, unwieldy woman to fly in the air;
truly, the devil little needs such instruments to bring his