The above seems a sufficient explanation of the testimony which to the eyes of contemporaries appeared the strongest - the testimony of "possessed" persons, and of the professed participators in the incantation scenes and nocturnal orgies. As regards the alleged statements of independent persons who testified to having witnessed the aerial rides, transformations into animal forms, and such-like marvels, I would remark in the first place that the literature of witchcraft may be searched far and wide without encountering half-a-dozen first-hand statements of the sort;3 and in the second place, that there is a characteristic of uneducated minds which is only exceptionally observed in educated adults - the tendency to confound mental images, pure and simple, with matters of fact. This tendency naturally allies itself with any set of images which is prominent in the beliefs of the time; and it is certain now and then to give to what are merely vivid ideas the character of bond fide memories. 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.1

3If "first-hand" be restricted (as it is throughout this book) to statements in the witness's own words, I cannot point to a single such statement; but in the above phrase I mean merely the author's statement of what was told directly to himself. The circumstantial evidence (also very meagre) for these miracles stands on different ground; as there the facts recorded are quite credible, and only the inference need be rejected. For example, the external evidence relied on for the supposed transformations was usually that the accused proved to have some bodily hurt on the same day as a wolf or some other animal had been wounded. [In "Additions and Corrections" Gurney adds: - ] After this note had been printed off, I came across a passage from Die Christliche Mystik, by J. J. von Goerres, in which a learned bishop, Prudencio de Sandoval, is made to describe a witch's journey through the air as though he had himself been a judicial spectator of it. A reference to Sandoval's own account, however, in his Historia de la vida y hechos del Emperador Carlos V. (Pamplona, 1618), vol. i., p. 830, shows that the trial of the witch in question took place in 1527. Now Sandoval died in 1621; clearly, therefore, he could not have been a first-hand witness, as represented.

Nor does he even name his authority; and discredit is thrown on his sources of information by Llorente, in his Anales de la Inquisicion de Espana (Madrid, 1812), p. 319. As the passage from Goerres was quoted in a first-class scientific review, and, if accurate, would have told against my statements as to the absence of first-hand evidence for alleged magical occurrences, I have thought it worth while to forestall a possible objection.

The only instance that I can find, during the witch-epoch, of definite first-hand evidence for a marvel of a type which our present knowledge of abnormal bodily and mental states will not explain, is, as it happens, not part of the history of so-called magic, but is connected with the extraordinary epidemic of religious excitement which took place in the Cevennes at the beginning of the eighteenth century. [Gurney then gives the facts concerning an alleged case of standing in a fire unburnt; the evidence going to show that the first-hand witnesses were untrustworthy persons. - Ed].

There is, however, one small class of phenomena connected with witchcraft which stands on different ground, as regards the quality of the evidence adduced for it. A few cases are recorded, on really respectable authority, of a remarkable susceptibility, shown by persons whom we might now recognise as hypnotic "subjects," to the conscious or unconscious influence of some absent person supposed to be a witch; and perhaps also of abnormal powers of discernment on the part of the supposed witches themselves. These alleged telepathic cases naturally fell into discredit along with all the other phenomena of occult agency. For the belief in witchcraft faded and ultimately died as a whole; not because each sort of phenomenon was in turn exposed or explained, or because any critical account of hallucinations and popular delusions was forthcoming, or even because a certain amount of distinct fraud was proved, but because the general tide of uncritical opinion took a turn towards scepticism as to matters supernatural. Now we are certainly not concerned to maintain that this or that influence of alleged telepathic influence ought to have been allowed to stand as genuine, when belief in the more phantastic phenomena was undermined.

It is probable that in the former, as in the latter, the influence of imagination was not allowed for, and that the different items of evidence were never tested and compared in the manner that true scientific scepticism would dictate. We, at any rate, have difficulty enough in testing the accuracy of contemporary evidence, and certainly are not going to rest any part of our case on the records of a bygone age. But if anyone who has studied the evidence for witchcraft urges these cases as a proof that the more recent telepathic evidence is unworthy of attention, it is reasonable to remark that if telepathy is in operation now, it was probably in operation then; and that the only cases of supposed magic with which persons of sense and education seem, at the time, to have come to close quarters were similar in character to cases for which persons of sense and education are still found to offer their personal testimony.1

1Another explanation might be attempted, if (on the analogy of certain Indian juggling tricks) we could suppose the spectator to have been unawares subjected to a "mesmeric glamour," whereby the suggestion of the magical occurrence was enabled to develop in his mind into an actual vision of it. One story in the Malleus Maleficarum, where a girl appeared to herself and to her friends to be a mare, while a priest (over whom the evil influence had no power) saw her as a girl, strongly recalls some of the Indian stories. See also the curious account of imps which appears in Witches of Huntingdon, Renfrew, and Essex (London, 1646). Such a result would, however, enormously transcend the range of mesmeric influence as so far recognised in the West; and we certainly need not strain hypotheses to save the credit of writers like Sprenger.

But in whatever light these residual cases be regarded, the general conclusion remains the same - that the phenomena which were characteristic of witchcraft, and which are an accepted type of exploded superstitions, never rested on the first-hand testimony of educated and intelligent persons; and the sweeping assertion which is often made that such persons were, in their day, witnesses to the truth of these absurdities needs, therefore, to be carefully guarded. What the educated and intelligent believers did was to accept from others, as evidence of objective facts, statements which were really only evidence of subjective facts. And they did this naturally and excusably, because they lived at a time when the science of psychology was in its infancy, and the necessary means of correction were not within their reach.2