Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/15

xii blemish in Professor Notestein’s work, and in view of his industry much to be regretted.

Miss does not for a moment countenance any such summary dismissal and uncritical rejection of evidence. Her careful reading of the writers upon Witchcraft has justly convinced her that their statements must be accepted. Keen intelligences and shrewd investigators such as Gregory XV, Bodin, Guazzo, De Lancre, D’Espagnet, La Reynie, Boyle, Sir Matthew Hale, Glanvill, were neither deceivers nor deceived. The evidence must stand, but as Miss Murray finds herself unable to admit the logical consequence of this, she hurriedly starts away with an arbitrary, “the statements do not bear the construction put upon them,” and in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) proceeds to develop a most ingenious, but, as I show, a wholly untenable hypothesis. Accordingly we are not surprised to find that many of the details Miss Murray has collected in her painstaking pages are (no doubt unconsciously) made to square with her preconceived theory. However much I may differ from Miss Murray in my outlook, and our disagreement is, I consider, neither slight nor superficial, I am none the less bound to commend her frank and courageous treatment of many essential particulars which are all too often suppressed, and in consequence a false and counterfeit picture has not unseldom been drawn.

So vast a literature surrounds modern Witchcraft, for frankly such is Spiritism in effect, that it were no easy task to mention even a quota of those works which seem to throw some real light upon a complex and difficult subject. Among many which I have found useful are Surbled, Spiritualisme et spiritisme and Spirites et médiums; Gutberlet, Der Kampf um die Seele; Dr. Marcel Viollet, Le spiritisme dans ses rapports avec la folie; J. Godfrey Raupert, Modern Spiritism and Dangers of Spiritualism; the Very Rev. Alexis Lépicier, O.S.M., The Unseen World; the Rev. A. V. Miller, Sermons on Modern Spiritualism; Lapponi, Hypnotism and Spiritism; the late Monsignor Hugh Benson’s Spiritualism (The History of Religions); Elliot O’Donnell’s The Menace of Spiritualism; and Father Simon Blackmore’s Spiritism: Facts and Frauds, 1925. My own opinion of this movement has been formed not only from reading studies and mono-