Witches & Warlocks [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONBy Arthur MachenA FEW weeks ago, some serious and responsible personage writing to the paper about delusions past and present, dwelt with especial fervour on ^ the witchcraft prosecutions of the Seventeenth Century. He was horrified at the iniquity of such proceedings, at the wickedness of executing these poor women for crimes which, as he said, they could not possibly have committed.He meant, I take it, that there was no such thing as witchcraft, that there never had been such a thing, that in the nature of things there never could be any such thing. He meant that when the Seventeenth Century accused people of witchcraft it might just as well have accused them of breeding Wyverns and Gorgons.Very well. But I would remark, in the frequent phrase of an old Yorkshire friend of mine : "A don't know about that."Let me go again to the newspaper, and to the issue of this very day of writing. Here I read :" A nerve specialist told a representative of the Daily Telegraph yesterday that an unusual number of people were going to him for treatment, and there was a big demand for tonics. . . ." * My experience is ' (said the doctor) ' that busy people do not need tonics. They are demanded by people with a good deal of leisure, and no satisfactory way of filling it. I have told some of my patients that a visit to a cinema would probably do them more good than a bottle of medicine.' "One can imagine the symptoms of the sort of patient that the consulting physician had in mind. They are very distinctly physical. The sufferer feels that his joints have