Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/291

WENDELL'S "COTTON MATHER", that the annals and relics of so forceful a being might not perish from among men.

With respect to Mather's share in the witchcraft tragedies of 1692, and his homicidal belief in the activity of Satan and his fiends throughout New England at that time,—as set forth in the "Magnalia" and "Perentator" and the diaries,—Professor Wendell has ideas which he presents briefly but with much effect. These are not at all inconsonant with the note of our closing century, or with the chances of the next century's demonstrations. They are certainly suggestive now that we are already familiar with "More Wonders of the Invisible World," which even Robert Calef, for all his cool-headed traverse of Matherian credulity, would not be able to gainsay. Our biographer not only accredits Mather with absolute honesty of conviction, but thinks there may have been scientific ground for the confused statements and charges of the "afflicted," young and old, in Salem. In the light of ancient and modern instances, and of our psychical research, he is not prepared to deny that there were at that time, and may now be, sensitives who do "hear a voice" and "see a hand" beyond ordinary hearing or seeing. He would look upon these as less developed natures, retaining the senses of archaic progenitors—senses akin to those of brute creatures whose quality of sight and hearing is certainly different from, if not finer than, our own. The latter-day psychologist and evolutionist more readily will believe that mankind is to acquire the future power of taking in what is now imperceptible [277]