Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism Part 10

Did he intend to say that credulity caused the senses of our fathers to see, hear, and feel erroneously, so that they would testify less accurately than those of the generation in which he was living? Perhaps he did; and yet on what rational grounds could he? None that we perceive. Was the former generation less truthful than his own? Probably not. Had it less sagacity than his own? We can think of no evidence that it had. Were its senses less reliable? Probably not. Was its belief in the testimony of its own senses a proof of its _credulity_? No. Was clear statement of what its senses had witnessed evidence of its credulity? It seems to have been so to the historian, but is not to us. The fathers told of witnessing things, which, if they occurred, were seemingly "more than natural." What then? Does that prove that the things they described did not occur, and thus prove a generation of the fathers to have been, as a whole, either dolts or liars? No. The appearance is, that the historian was obliged to admit that valid testimony to occurrence of facts around the Goodwin children, which seemed more than natural, must be conceded; and yet he could not account for the facts; he was mentally baffled, non-plussed, and could only say, "It was a time of great credulity." That explains nothing, while it tempts us to suspect its author of such credulity in his own penetration, that he apprehended that a whole line of ancestry through successive generations had been fatuous and exaggerative, since it continuously described and swore to occurrences which conflicted with his own theoretical limits to things credible. A credulity which caused him to regard himself a better knower and judge of what actually transpired in preceding ages, than were the very persons who lived in that past, and were eye and ear witnesses of what then occurred, impelled the pen of this witchcraft historian to ascribe the marvels of other days to causes or to conditions absolutely incompetent to produce them.

We can extend much leniency to Hutchinson, because he lived and wrote when the pendulum of belief, recently wrenched from the disturbing grasp of witchcraft, and allowed to swing back toward extreme Sadduceeism, had not acquired its legitimate movements under the action of mesmerism, Spiritualism, psychology, and other regulating forces. Witchcraft's unnatural devil had died from the blow he received at Salem Village in 1692, and for a long time afterward there was seeming non-intercourse between men and dwellers in spirit realms; partially man was forgetting that there are spirits, and doubting whether they had ever acted overtly among men. Probably Hutchinson's thoughts were never led to inquire whether the forces and realms of nature may not extend far above, below, and around the confines of palpable matter,--extend beyond where man's external senses take cognizance,--or where his natural science has penetrated. His thoughts, perhaps, were never led to inquire whether there exists natural provision for mesmeric and varied psychological operations, nor to inquire whether, under possible fitting conditions, unseen intelligences could possess and control certain peculiar physical human forms. Lacking not only knowledge, but also circ.u.mstances which would naturally generate any conjecture that both good spirits and bad alike might sometimes come to earth in freedom, and work wonders on its external surface and among its living inhabitants, Hutchinson, cornered and baffled in search for an adequate cause for facts which he felt called upon to state, could only credulously say, in _quasi_ explanation of them, "_It was a time of great credulity_"!

His implied position that all the works were nothing more than natural acts and sufferings of children, magnified and made formidable by popular credulity, fails to yield satisfactory revealment of the nature and origin of such facts as he himself presents and leaves uncontroverted.

What was the character of the Goodwin children themselves? They were bright, religiously educated, and free from guile. The account shows that four _such_ children, of a sudden, without previous training for it, all join at first, and three of them long unitedly continue, in a course of most distressing imposition upon their own family, upon physicians, clergymen, magistrates, and the neighborhood; also that the imposition is manifested by astounding physical feats, and simultaneous, identical signs and complaints of suffering, even though the sufferers are in separate apartments. If, possibly, by their own wills and powers they could perform the tricks, how incongruous it would be with their alleged traits and ages! How inconceivable that four such children, from the boy of sixteen down to the girl of seven, or from the girl of thirteen down to the boy of five, should conspire, and three of them co-operate thoroughly, effectively, and long, in voluntarily and purposely producing such mischief and misery as were there experienced! _Suspicion_ of fraud no doubt arose. But the appearance is, that facts soon put the case beyond any powers of fraud which such children, or any embodied human beings, could put forth. Without previous practice and training in concert, a successful attempt by themselves at what was done through and upon them is incredible. No hint is given that they ever practiced in preparation. Had they have done so, seemingly their father, the "grave man and good liver,"

must have known it, and would have been governed by his knowledge of it in judging and treating his children. Who doubts that it would be shameful to charge or suspect that man, and his friends and physicians, with such credulity, _at the first coming on of the fits_, that they could not judge fairly and sensibly of what nature of cause the actions and sufferings indicated?

"O, star-eyed" Fancy, "hast thou wandered there, To waft us back the message of"--_credulity_?

Look still more closely at the circ.u.mstances of this case. The bright girl of "great ingenuity of temper, of religious education, and without guile," _was just out from under the infuriated las.h.i.+ngs of a wild Irish tongue_, when she commenced her--what? her frolic? her course of fraud and imposture? Was that a _playful_ moment? Was that the time for a general mood which would start a whole family of guileless little children to unite spontaneously and instantly for a guileful and distressing imposition upon relatives and friends? When she fell in fits, _from such a cause_, was it a credible time for her bright brother to recklessly increase the family excitement by imitating the sufferer's movements and tones of distress? Was that a condition of things in which the younger two would join the elder in sly additions to the distress around them? No; most surely, No.

"Is it possible," asks the historian, "that the mind of man should be capable of such strong prejudices as that suspicion of fraud should not immediately arise?" We answer for him and say, No; emphatically, No. Such suspicion must have been felt. And we ask in turn, is it possible that an historian's mind can be capable of such strong prejudices as that suspicion that such a family as he described, circ.u.mstanced as he made it, was absolutely incapable of practicing fraud and imposition competent to the results which he indicates were wrought out? Yes, his mind failed to receive such a suspicion, and therefore reveals its own blinding prejudices. Skepticism in one direction generated credulity in another with him, as it does with many to-day.

Four children of the "grave man" were simultaneously and excruciatingly racked and tortured precisely alike, and in the same parts of their bodies, although being, some of them, in separate apartments, and ignorant of one another's complaints. Such are the alleged and uncontested facts. The citizens of Boston, two or three years ago, were permitted to see, and we saw, even more than four, yes, eight or ten boys, strangers to the operator, and mostly to each other, volunteer to go upon a stage, where, in a few minutes, after two or three out of a dozen had been requested to leave the stage, all the others were made to move, and act, and suffer precisely and simultaneously alike, many of them standing often back to back, and no one among them perceptibly looking at any other. This was all occasioned by the mental, magnetic or psychological force of Professor Cadwell.

If we presume (and why may we not?) that the wild Irish woman possessed strong psychological powers; that Martha Goodwin was easily subjectible to psychological control; that her brothers and sister were so too, and that they were all naturally sympathetic, then we can see that nothing more occurred, even if the whole that is told be literally true, than falls within the scope of such psychological forces as have in recent years been manifested by embodied, and, we may add, by disembodied minds. If in her anger the old woman forced or found rapport between her own sphere or aura and that of Martha Goodwin, way was opened for injection of germs of suffering to the girl's system, and the systems of others in rapport with her. Way was opened through which the tormentor could, though absent, send upon the child ugly wishes that would keep torturing her so long as the old woman kept the wishes active; as perhaps she did in many of her waking hours. The account says, "One or two things were _very remarkable_. All their complaints were _in the daytime_, and they slept comfortably _all night_." When the old woman was asleep, and her resentful feelings were dormant, the children also slept.

A pa.s.sage-way so opened as to admit the entrance of one, usually admits others of the same kind to follow. Where the old woman's subduing will-force had entered and gained sway, that of her sympathetic, and many other spirits, might do the same; and could make the children's outer forms either accept or reject, at the controller's pleasure, any books or cla.s.s of literature which should be offered for perusal. Catholic spirits, or any spirit, liking a little fun, might keenly relish the work of astonis.h.i.+ng Cotton Mather and his ilk, by showing preferences antagonistic to his own righteous ones.

The case of Philip Smith, a very intelligent, efficient, and highly respected citizen of Hadley, Ma.s.s., exhibits a.n.a.logous phenomena. We shall not go into that case in detail. It occurred 1685, and is very instructive. Being sick, sensitive, clairvoyant, and pining away, "he uttered a hard suspicion" that one old Mrs. Webster, _who had once been tried for witchcraft_, and also had taken offense at some of Smith's official acts, "had made impressions with enchantments upon him." His "suspicion" and sufferings fired the minds of young men in the town to go "three or four times" and give that old woman disturbance. Drake, in Woodward's "Hist. Series," No. VIII. p. 179, presents the following account: "It is said by a reliable historian that the young miscreants went to her house, dragged her out, and hung her up till she was almost dead. They then cut her down, rolled her some time in the snow, and then buried her up in it, leaving her, as they supposed, for dead. But by a miracle, as it were, she survived this barbarity. Still more miraculous it was, that the sick man was greatly relieved during the time the helpless old woman was being so beastly abused." Mather, in his account (ib. p.

177) says, "All the while they were disturbing her, he was at ease, and slept as a weary man." This is all possible, and not improbable. The man was obviously very susceptible to psychological influences, and could trace felt malignant forces to their source. She, no doubt, was a turbulent and odd old woman, for she had been tried for witchcraft, and was probably a natural psychologist. As long as rough handling caused her to call in, and keep at home, and concentrate all her thoughts and forces for self-defence and protection, no emanations from her went out to the sick man, who then consequently dropped into quiet sleep.

One of these Goodwins, says Hutchinson, "I knew many years after. She had the character of a very sober, virtuous woman, and never made any acknowledgment of fraud in the transaction." Probably, therefore, there was no fraud. This sober, virtuous woman, a party concerned, years subsequently made profession of religion, continued long to live a useful and respected life, and never made acknowledgment of fraud. The probability is near to certainty that she never acted any.

And how was it with the others? "They returned to their ordinary behavior, lived to adult age, and made profession of religion." Look at the case.

Four guileless, bright little sisters and brothers, residing together under their father's watch, in the twinkling of an eye, flash upon the gaze of the town in which they lived, seemingly as adroit and proficient tricksters as were ever known, and all of them alike competent to their several parts. They remain the town's wonder for months, and then all return to their former behavior, grow up and live Christian lives among the witnesses of their strange doings, and never make confession of fraud.

Was there any _fraud_? Only the over-credulous in self-powers of divination backward will believe that there was.

In the process of watching these children, and the annoyances and sufferings they endured, it was discovered that when absent from home they were in great measure exempt from the special evils; therefore arrangements were made for their abode elsewhere; and probably not for all of them together in any one family. We find that the girl Martha became a resident in Cotton Mather's family not many weeks after the commencement of the great consternation. And it is stated that for a time none of her extraordinary demeanor was manifested there; yet subsequently the fits and antics revealed themselves abundantly, even under the roof of the devil-fighting clergyman. Some sayings and doings while she was residing there, manifested more frolicsome and quizzical motives than prompted the manifestations described by Hutchinson.

Turning to a much later historian, we quote from Upham as follows:--

"One of the children seems to have had a genius scarcely inferior to that of Master Burke himself; there was no part nor pa.s.sion she could not enact. She would complain that the old Irish woman had tied an invisible noose round her neck, and was choking her; and her complexion and features would instantly a.s.sume the various hues and violent distortions natural to a person in such a predicament. She would declare that an invisible chain was fastened to one of her limbs, and would limp about precisely as though it were really the case. She would say that she was in an oven; the perspiration would drop from her face, and she would produce every appearance of being roasted; then she would cry out that cold water was being thrown upon her, and her whole frame would s.h.i.+ver and shake. She pretended that the evil spirit came to her in the shape of an invisible horse; and she would canter, gallop, trot, and amble round the rooms and entries in such admirable imitation, that an observer could hardly believe that a horse was not beneath her, and bearing her about. She would go up stairs with exactly such a toss and bound as a person on horseback would exhibit."

Such is a general summary of her feats as presented by this historian.

Does he believe that such things were actually performed either by or through her? Does he believe that such were the literal facts even in appearance? He nowhere, so far as we notice, till he sums up the case, _distinctly_ charges fraud on the one side, or such credulity on the other, as made witnesses falsify as to appearances. He seems to admit the facts as _appearances_, and charge them all to the girl's extra cunning and skillful acting. "She _pretended_ that the evil [?] spirit came to her." Was it only her _pretense_? Who knows? Why say _pretended_? Was she so generous as to give credit to another, and that other an "evil spirit," for help which she did not receive? Are expert tricksters accustomed to disown their own powers to astonish? Especially do they ever spontaneously avow that the devil or any _evil spirit_ is helping them? We think not. And yet it is stated that Martha Goodwin's own lips declared that some invisible spirit was acting through her, or was helping her perform her marvelous feats. Why call that a _pretense_, and make her a liar? Why not put some confidence in the words of this religiously educated girl?

The historian says that while she was residing with Mather, "the cunning and ingenious child"--please mark the adjectives of the modern expounder, applied by him to one whom the earlier records put among those who "had been religiously educated and thought _to be without guile_"--"the cunning and ingenious child," he says, "seems to have taken great delight in perplexing and playing off her tricks upon the learned man. Once he wished to say something in her presence to a third person, which he did not intend she should understand. She had penetration enough to _conjecture_"

(why say _conjecture_?) "what he had said. He was amazed. He then tried Greek; she was equally successful. He next spoke in Hebrew; she instantly detected his meaning. He resorted to the Indian language, and that she pretended not to know." Such are facts as deduced from Mather's account by Upham and put forth by the latter, and which he attempts to account for by supposition that the girl's own _conjectures_ enabled her to get at the meaning of sentences put forth in languages of which she had no knowledge.

No doubt she was bright, but not competent to all that. Fancy and imagination ply their wings needlessly when they rise from the ground of fact and fly off to the lands of conjecture and pretense, thinking to bring thence true solution of such a marvel. The girl avowed the presence of a spirit with herself, and that he helped her. That explains the whole transaction. Upon full separation from the body, each human mind loses all knowledge of earth language, having no further use for it, because the mind then enters conditions in which the thoughts of any other spirit, whatsoever its native language, may be read at a glance. Whatever language Mather might have spoken in, he would have been intelligible by any disembodied spirit. For not words, but the thought, irrespective of its dress, could be read. The Indian language she _pretended_ not to know.

Perhaps so; but probably that was no _pretense_. It is not probable that the girl herself, as such, had much acquaintance with any other language than English; any departed spirit who controlled her would have no knowledge of any earth language whatsoever, nor need he have, for unclothed thought was perceptible by him. A roguish mind behind the scenes--and such a one may have played many a trick at the parsonage--would be likely, at his own pleasure, to bother, astonish, or confound the Rev. Polyglot by seeming either to comprehend or not, just according to his own whims or varying moods as the play went on from step to step. Mather's attempt to conceal his meaning from the girl might very naturally be amusing to the thought-reading intellect then lurking in and controlling the girl's organs, and quite as naturally would incite him to play the wag a while. Martha neither _conjectured_ nor _pretended_ at all; she was then quiescent, while other eyes looked through hers and saw what was inside the mill-stone.

We have stated essentially that each mortal upon departing from this life enters into conditions where human language is not only not needed, but is unusable; therefore we may be asked how returning spirits can possibly speak to us in our language, which is no longer at their command. They measurably rechange or change back their conditions when they reconnect themselves with a mortal form; they then come back to where earth language is needful, and where fitting instrumentality for revival of knowledge and use of such language exist. They, however, do not reconnect themselves with their own former forms, nor often with forms which they can use as well as they formerly did their own; in many, very many instances, those who, in their own forms, were eminent for polished diction and fervid eloquence, either get such slight control or get hold of such rickety or such rigid vocal apparatus, that they can make no perceptible approximation to their former productions. The reincarnated spirit is a somewhat mystical being, half spirit, half man, and as a spirit can read the thoughts of man, and as man can use human language.

Flattery was sometimes poured over the minister through the lips of Martha, with a lavishness indicative of its flowing from some ensconsed waggish spirit, amusing himself by tickling the vanity of the egotistical black coat, much more than from a guileless miss speaking to her consequential minister.

A special scene is thus described by Mather:--

"There stood open the study of one belonging to the family, into which entering, she stood immediately on her feet, and cried out, 'They are gone! They are gone! They say they cannot. G.o.d won't let 'em come here!'

adding a reason for it which the owner of the study thought more kind than true; and she presently and perfectly came to herself, so that her whole discourse and carriage was altered into the greatest measure of sobriety."

Very likely Mather was then egregiously cajoled by _some_ one.

Observation, together with information otherwise obtained, renders it obvious that one essential condition of psychological control is, that the magnetisms or auras of the controlling mind shall, at the time, be, in the ma.s.s of its operative qualities and powers, stronger than, or positive to, any other person's spheres, auras, or emanations amid which the control is either to be taken or held on to. Suppose, then, what would be necessary under the circ.u.mstances, that the atmosphere, walls, and furniture of that study were highly charged with emanations from the vigorous minded Mather, who was then present, and consequently his own halo was radiating there and keeping his surroundings fully charged with himself. Physical and also external mental and emotional effluvia from him might then be so repulsive to magnetisms pertaining to spirits of any moral quality whatsoever, that no visitant from unseen realms would try to withstand the repulsion. If such was the condition of things, the parting exclamation of the last to remain, might well be, "They are gone; G.o.d won't let 'em come here!" Such statement would be in full harmony with the most common use of language to-day by spirits, for they are accustomed to say that G.o.d won't let them do this or that, when, according to their own oft-repeated explanation, they mean only that the forces of nature oppose or control them. G.o.d and natural forces with them generally mean one and the same all-dominating power--G.o.d's forces as well as himself are called by his name by visitants who read his operations with more than mortal accuracy.

"She presently and perfectly came to herself, so that her whole discourse and carriage was altered into the greatest measure of sobriety." Yes, naturally so; for Martha Goodwin herself resumed control of her own body, and re-exhibited the religiously educated and guileless girl which she in fact was, just as soon as usurping visitants vacated her legitimate premises. So long as her form was dominated by another's mind, her existence was either a blank to herself, or, if conscious, she was powerless.

Upham teaches that once, according to Mather, when people attempted to drag this girl up stairs, "the demons would pull her out of the people's hands, and _make her heavier_ than perhaps three times herself." Did the historian himself who quoted those words and let them appear to be accurately descriptive of facts, believe that they were such? Did he believe that _demons_ acted within her, held her back, and made her something like three times heavier than she normally was? Such things were adduced by him as being _facts_, and it would be pleasant to know whether he believed that the girl herself was those demons, and by her own action made her own body three times heavier than common gravitation would make it. Did such observable effects occur as Mather described? Probably they did, and the historian's process of accounting for them implies that by her own cunning, ingenuity, and histrionic skill, the child made herself three times heavier than she actually was. If the allegations were not in his estimation facts, why did he let them stand unaccounted for in his summary of things accomplished by his "cunning and ingenious child"?

Perhaps he presumed that readers to-day are generally as ignorant as himself of the vast many cases in which the present generation has tested and proved by the best of Fairbanks's scales, that spirits augment or diminish the weight of material substances at pleasure, and to as great and sometimes greater extent than either demons or Martha Goodwin are alleged to have done in the case above cited. He perhaps presumed that the reading world at large was as ignorant and prejudiced as himself on this subject, and that the world's clearing and opening eyes will continue to see, as his glamoured ones did, only fibs in Mather's facts. This was a sad oversight. Light from Spiritualism (see Dr. Hare, Dr. Luther V. Bell, William Crookes, Alfred R. Wallace, and many others) has already substantiated facts which prove that nature infolds forces by which agents unseen can at their pleasure produce either levitation or increase of the weight of material objects. Therefore such action may have been put forth upon the body of Martha Goodwin. Yes, we now may _rationally_ believe that there existed too much sagacity and truth among the men of witchcraft times, and too little deviltry among the guileless children of that day, to permit that fictions and rhetoric shall long be suffered to malign our forefathers because they recorded true accounts of what transpired among them.

Mather states that this girl, at times, by whistling, yelling, and in other ways, disturbed him when at family prayers. Upham says, "She would strike him," Mather, "with her fist and try to kick him"--probably meaning, try both to strike and kick him, for he adds, "her hand or foot would always recoil when within an inch or two of his body; thus giving the idea that there was an invisible coat of mail, of heavenly temper, and proof against the a.s.saults of the devil around his sacred person." That "_idea_" looks much more like a child born within the historian's own mind than a gift to him by Mather. A statement by the latter that her hand or foot would always recoil when within an inch or two of his body, hardly justifies the slurring innuendo which seems to be appended to it. But ignorance of many operating laws, forces, and agents pertaining to the subject discussed by the modern historian, let him sometimes become as tempting a target for the shafts of ridicule as he found Mather to be.

Without presuming that Mather perceived that natural laws generated repulsion between matter animated and moved by a disembodied spirit and matter in its normal conditions, we can state that extensive observation has generated the conclusion that unless there exists rapport with, or at least an absence of repulsion between, the sphere of the spirit using the borrowed hand or foot, and the sphere of the normal person aimed at, natural law forbids their contact. William Morse made such observation as caused him to say in his deposition that "the wedge and spade flying on his wife _did not touch her_." Forceful and rapid approximations of hands and feet under control of invisibles, toward the bodies of surrounding witnesses, and marvelous arrestings of those moving limbs so that no contact ensues, are of very frequent occurrence. Very many parlor ornaments and household utensils, hard and soft, light and heavy, are, by spirits, not unfrequently set in rapid motion back and forth, and crosswise, promiscuously over and amid a crowd of people in a room, and yet but few persons are ever hit, and the few sensitives in rapport with the performers, and contributors to their apparatus, if hit, are never hurt. The temper of Mather's s.h.i.+elding coat of mail was just as heavenly as that of each other human being's coat which the Master Armorer in nature's boundless shop forges and furnishes for the protection of each human child who is sent forth to fight the battles of life in gross flesh and bones. Not his own holiness, but either nature's antipathies or spirit forbearance saved Mather from the blows, and the historian wronged him perhaps when he intimated that the divine thought otherwise; for that man, halting as his steps were, and small as his advance was, made nearer approach toward a fair comprehension and exposition of our witchcraft than any other American who wrote upon that subject, till since the publication of "History of Witchcraft."

Many other pranks, not less marvelous than the ones already presented, are ascribed to this girl; but notice of them may be omitted here, because the general character of the operations around her are all that this work proposes to exhibit. We must, however, give the reader opportunity to peruse the historian's concluding comments upon this case. He says,--

"There is nothing in the annals of the histrionic art more ill.u.s.trative of the infinite versatility of the human faculties, both physical and mental, and of the amazing extent to which cunning, ingenuity, contrivance, quickness of invention, and presence of mind can be cultivated, even in very young persons, than such cases as just related. It seems, at first, incredible that a mere child could carry on such a complex piece of fraud and imposture as that enacted by the little girl whose achievements have been immortalized by the famous author of the 'Magnalia.'"

We are glad to note the author's frank and distinct confession that his own solution seems _at first_ incredible. Why he put in the phrase "at first" needs explanation, which he fails to furnish. He makes no attempt to show why the _first_ seeming should not be the permanent one. It is permanent. It will continue permanent to the end of time. It is and forever will be _incredible_ that the Goodwin girl herself performed all the feats which the evidence proves were performed through her organism.

If her body was the organ of all the performances which are distinctly ascribed to her, she was not the author of them all, but only a channel for the occurrence of many of them. Can reflection find her competent to all that was ascribed to her? Incredible. Incredible not only _at first_, but also on and on to the latest last.

Ingenious fancy, while weaving over this case a dazzling web of rhetoric, may have deluded the eyes that overlooked the loom, and caused them to discern other seemings than the first ones; but such delusion will never become epidemic.

Hutchinson, usually a scornful handler of aught that emitted any odor of witchcraft, we now requote where he said, concerning the family which included this Martha, that "they all had been religiously educated, and were thought to be without guile;... they returned to their ordinary behavior, lived to adult age, made profession of religion.... One of them I knew many years after. She had the character of a very sober, virtuous woman, and never made any acknowledgment of fraud in this transaction."

Such is the testimony of one whose views and feelings obviously inclined him, as far as possible, to consider all witchcraft works the products of imposture and fraud; and who, therefore, was not likely to a.s.sign to this family any good qualities which they were not widely and well known to possess. He spoke of them as above, and refrained from any direct imputation of fraud to them. He hinted at fraud, it is true, but probably both lacked any historical or traditionary evidence of it, and was conscious that if fraud were alleged, and even proved, it would fail to meet the case in all its parts--in those especially that "seemed more than natural." Nonplussed in the way of solution, he could only say "it was a time of great credulity"! In one important respect he had better facilities for judging this case correctly than can be obtained to-day. He had listened to conversations of many persons who were living at the time of its occurrence, and yet refrained from direct charge of fraud or imposture. Also he intimated that such causes, even if alleged, would be inadequate, because some of the transactions "seemed more than natural."

The later historian, unhampered by need to move in harmony with the knowledge and beliefs of any cotemporaries of those Goodwins, and abandoning historic grounds which furnish supermundane agencies for solving the occurrence of acts which filled the town and colony with consternation, delved into the composition of man, and fancied that he found therein enormous capabilities for credulity, fraud, imposture, infatuation, spontaneous out-flas.h.i.+ngs of highest, and more than highest, feats of histrionic art, for self-generated triplication of personal weight, for aviarial flittings, for equine antics, for self-induced roastings, self-induced showerings, for comprehension of languages never learned, &c.; fancied that he had found how one little girl, "religiously educated, and thought to be without guile," could execute to admiration each of those many things "seeming to be more than natural," and could mimic with admirable exactness most astounding feats, and such as always before had been supposed to require the powers of disembodied intelligences. That was an astounding discovery. But the present are times of great credulity, and in the infatuation of these days mental optics have been molded, which, looking back nearly two hundred years, see the brightest, most vigorous, and keen-sighted men of Boston--the "solid men of Boston"--see them stolid and gullible, and see, too, among the people there three or four little children, bright and religiously educated, and yet malignant and agile as the very devil. What a contrast between the old and the young then! Was there ever a day when Boston's wisest adults were prevailingly blockheads easily befooled, and when those of her children who had "great ingenuity of temper" metamorphosed themselves into devil-like incendiaries, and set the town ablaze with sulphurous fires?

Alas! one modern eye has penetration enough to convince its owner that such a day once was. That eye, "by the aid of"--something, seems "gifted with supernatural insight;" certainly with very uncommon back-sight.

Grant to the Goodwin children all the natural human endowments which imagination can conjure up and embody, also grant to them skillful training and long-continued practice, which there is no probability they had, and even then it was impossible for them, when in separate rooms, to have voluntarily and designedly acted, and seemingly suffered, precisely and simultaneously alike, as they are alleged to have done, and as they would have naturally been made to do if all of them were under and controlled by the psychologic influence of the single mind of the resentful wild Irish woman, because then the same mental impulses would move them all like machines, and simultaneously.

After their separation, the girl at Mr. Mather's house could never have accomplished single-handed what is ascribed to her. The internal evidence of the narrative of events which transpired there combines with common sense in p.r.o.nouncing it farcical--distinctly _farcical_--to regard that young girl as the contriver and performer of all the works and pranks which history says transpired through her physical organism, and, therefore, to external eyes, seemed to be products of her own volitions.

The nature, quality, and extent of those performances bespeak producing powers both different from and greater than such a girl possessed; bespeak just such powers as departed spirits are now putting forth all around us through living human forms.

It is not only at first, but _permanently_ incredible, "that a mere child could carry on such a complex piece of fraud and imposture as that enacted" through "the little girl whose achievements have been immortalized by the famous author of the Magnalia;" and therefore the world demands, and will yet obtain, a simpler, more rational, and more satisfactory solution of this and kindred cases; solution that will admit all the amazing feats of witchcraft to be embraced within the scope of forces that finite human beings, the seen and the unseen in conjunction, could in the past and can now so apply as to execute all the world's marvels without aid from either the One Great Devil, from fraud, or from imposture. Neither of these need ever have any connection whatever with, or complicity in, such matters. The records teach, and man's recent experience divines, that other, more befitting, and more competent actors than mere children were on hand and at work in Cotton Mather's presence.

Though justice would have us a.s.sign to any Great Dull his honest dues, it also permits us to pull off from his sable brows any unearned wreaths which Cotton Mather and others credulously placed upon them. It also and especially requires us to tear off from the fair head of guileless Martha Goodwin that badge labeled _Fraud and Imposture_--that emblem of deviltry--which _modern delusion_ has most cruelly, and yet most artistically, wreathed around temples that seem worthy of a pure _martyr's honoring crown_.

RETROSPECTION.

From among the works of witchcraft that occurred from 1648 to 1688, we have now presented six cases, which bring into view some phenomena that are very like many which are now called spirit manifestations. The efficient touch of Margaret Jones, of Charlestown, the extraordinary efficacy of her hands and simple medicines, her prophetic powers, the keenness of her hearing, and the materialization of a spirit-child in her arms, brought her to the gallows in 1648. Ann Hibbins, of Boston, seemingly because of the wit-sharpening acuteness of her hearing, was hanged in 1656. Ann Cole, of Hartford, Conn., in 1662, had her vocal organs "improved" by some intelligence not her own for the utterance of thoughts which were never in her mind, and some of the utterances through her contributed to the conviction and consequent execution of the two Greensmiths, husband and wife. At Groton, a spirit controlling the form of Elizabeth Knap, in 1671, made avowal that he was "a pretty black boy, and not Satan." At Newbury, in 1679, the wild dance of pots, kettles, andirons, and things in general, came off on the premises of William Morse. And at Boston, in 1688, inflictions upon the Goodwin children led to the execution of Mrs. Glover, "one of the wild Irish."

Cases thus scattered in both time and s.p.a.ce, half of them limited each to a single actor or sufferer, and each differing widely from any other in many of its prominent features, cannot satisfactorily be ascribed to acquired skill in legerdemain, histrionic art, magic, or necromancy, unattended by help from the living dead.

The name of the wild Irish woman, whose harsh language was speedily followed by the distortions and sufferings of the Goodwin children, was Glover. Calef calls her "a despised, crazy, ill-conditioned old woman--an Irish Roman Catholic." The public believed that she put forth criminal action upon that family, arrested her therefor, received at her trial some indications that she had dealings with invisible beings, p.r.o.nounced her guilty of witchcraft, and hanged her. She doubtless forsensed retention of power to act either directly or through others upon the objects of her resentment, even after the gallows should have done its utmost work upon herself. For it is stated that "at her execution she said the children would not be relieved by her death ... and ... the three children continued in their furnace as before, and it grew rather seven times hotter than it was, and their calamities went on till they barked at one another like dogs, and then purred like so many cats; would complain that they were in a red-hot oven, and sweat and pant as if they had been really so. Anon they would say cold water was thrown on them, at which they would s.h.i.+ver very much. They would complain of being roasted on an invisible spit; and then that their heads were nailed to the floor, and it was beyond an ordinary strength to pull them from it."--_Annals of Witchcraft_, p. 185.

Such facts were gathered from Cotton Mather's account; they come to us from one whose influences and writings are alleged to have been most strongly provocative of executions for witchcraft. Perhaps some of them became so. But his presentation of both the momentous fact and its confirmation by observed experiences, that the spirit of an executed psychologist could act back from beyond the gallows, involved a crus.h.i.+ng argument against the wisdom of suspending her or any one else with a view to stop bewitchment. The liberation of one's spirit increases its powers for action upon surviving mortals. Mather's facts argued that.