And it is doubly sad, to contemplate that the Temples of Justice were peopled by these fears of fantasy and the imagination—like some of the fetishes that modern critics of our present judicial system erect in some places—and that the high priests of the temples blindly followed the mad cry of the mob and laid aside the scales of justice to interpret the unjust ideals of an intoxicated public sentiment, following only the red flag of murder. These jurists of the past centuries who participated in this wholesale slaughter of individual right, may have feared their recall, if they withstood the frenzy of a wrought-up public clamor, and in this a lesson can be learned, of the danger of following the demands of public sentiment, in courts of justice, instead of the proper ideals of equality and justice. It is fortunate that only the small percent of the densely ignorant now-a-days, account for the misunderstood facts and phenomena of nature by the fears and delusions of witchcraft and sorcery and that in the progress of the race, the delusion of witchcraft has been crowded into the dark, remote and rugged sections where alone the foot of civilization can find no resting-place. There are few, if any, more deplorable episodes, in human history than that of the persecutions for witchcraft. They illustrate to what an extreme degree of relentless cruelty human nature will go, when fanned to a fever-heat of excitement by some fanatical delusion. On the other hand, the history of the persecutions for witchcraft show how little reliance can be placed upon the credibility of witnesses, influenced by some general excitement, or acting under a mistaken belief of duty, based upon the attainment of some popular object. Thousands of witnesses who appeared against the poor victims charged with this hated crime of witchcraft and sorcery, honestly believed in the fantastical delusions and tricks of fancy that they described as actual occurrences, which in fact had no better foundation than their own fervid imaginations. Regarding man’s self, alone, it is difficult to reconcile the beneficent laws taught by the church, with the sad “scope and scheme” of things, as disclosed by the pathetic facts of history, in connection with this subject. And yet: “You cry ‘the cruelty of things’ is mystery to your purblind eye, Which fixed upon a point in space, the general project passes by. ... The dreadest sound man’s ear can hear, the war and rush of stormy wind Depures the stuff of human life, breeds health and strength for humankind. And thus the race of Being runs, till haply, in the time to be, Earth shifts her pole, and Mushtari men another falling star shall see.” FOOTNOTES: [1] II. Mackay’s “Memoirs of Delusions,” pp. 169, 170. [2] _Ante idem._ [3] Johns’ “Oldest Code of Laws,” 1; Scheil’s “Tome IV. Textes Elamites-Semitiques,” etc., Johns’ “Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters.” [4] _Ante idem._