insane delusion, which, by reason of its novelty, gained a
footing and attracted followers.

Humanity, they say, has ever been the same; and any fresh idea--no
matter how bizarre or monstrous, so long as it is monstrous enough--has
always met with support and won credence.

In favour of this argument it is pointed out that in many of the cases
of persons accused of werwolfery, tried in France, and elsewhere, in the
middle of the sixteenth century, when belief in this species of
lycanthropy was at its zenith, there was an extraordinary readiness
among the accused to confess, and even to give circumstantial evidence
of their own metamorphosis; and that this particular form of
self-accusation at length became so popular among the leading people in
the land, that the judicial court, having its suspicions awakened, and,
doubtless, fearful of sentencing so many important personages, acquitted
the majority of the accused, announcing them to be the victims of
delusion and hysteria.

Now, if it were admitted, argue these sceptics, that the bulk of
so-called werwolves were impostors, is it not reasonable to suppose that
all so-called werwolves were either voluntary or involuntary
impostors?--the latter, _i.e._, those who were not self-accused, being
falsely accused by persons whose motive for so doing was revenge. For
parallel cases one has only to refer to the trials for sorcery and
witchcraft in England. And with regard to false accusations of
lycanthropy--accusations founded entirely on hatred of the accused
person--how easy it was to trump up testimony and get the accused
convicted. The witnesses were rarely, if ever, subjected to a searching
examination; the court was always biased, and a confession of guilt,
when not voluntary--as in the case of the prominent citizen, when it was
invariably pronounced due to hysteria or delusion--could always be
obtained by means of torture, though a confession thus obtained,
needless to say, is completely nullified. Moreover, we have no record of
metamorphosis taking place in court, or before witnesses chosen for
their impartiality. On the contrary, the alleged transmutations always
occurred in obscure places, and in the presence of people who, one has
reason to believe, were both hysterical and imaginative, and therefore
predisposed to see wonders. So says this order of sceptic, and, to my
mind, he says a great deal more than his facts justify; for although
contemporary writers general