From the middle of the third century onward, Europe had been subject to wave after wave of religious fanaticism. All along, religious belief had been verified and strengthened by the occurrence of phenomena that now admittedly fall within the purview of the pathologist. And from one point of view the secularisation of life served but to emphasise the dependence of religion upon the occurrence of these abnormal conditions. For the more surely the phenomena of nature and of social life were brought within the scope of a scientific generalisation, the more people began to look for the life of religion in conditions that were removed from the normal. But, above all, this long succession of waves of fanaticism served to permeate the general mind with supernaturalism. Each one cleared the way for a successor. And in the next chapter we have to deal with one that, in some respects, is the most remarkable of all, viz., that of the belief in witchcraft. FOOTNOTES: [176] It is estimated that 275,000 people formed the van of the first crusade. [177] L. O. Pike, _History of Crime in England_, i. pp. 164-9. [178] _History of Latin Christianity_, iv. p. 188. [179] _History of the Holy War_, bk. iii. [180] _Intellectual Development of Europe_, 1872, p. 425. [181] Milman, iv. p. 199. [182] _Holy Roman Empire_, p. 164. [183] See Bloch, _Sexual Life of our Time_, pp. 568-74. [184] _Epidemics of the Middle Ages_, pp. 87-8. [185] Hecker, p. 91. [186] _Epidemics_, p. 105. CHAPTER TEN THE WITCH MANIA In all stages of religious history the witch and the wizard are familiar figures. It is of no importance to our present enquiry whether magic precedes religion or not. It is at all events certain that they are very closely connected, and that conditions which foster the belief in magic likewise serve to strengthen religious belief. Witchcraft, as Tylor says, is part and parcel of savage life. Death is very frequently attributed to the magical action of wizards, and the savage lives in perpetual fear lest some of his belongings, or some part of his person, should be bewitched by malevolent sorcerers. Sir Richard Burton says that in East Africa his experience taught him that among the negroes, what with slavery and what with black magic, no one, especially in old age, is safe from being burnt at a day's notice. When from savage life we mount to societies enjoying a higher culture, we still find the witch and the wizard in evidence. Both in Greece and Rome the belief in witchcraft existed. There were made direct laws against its practice, although neither the Greeks nor the Romans stained their civilisation with the judicial murder of thousands of victims such as occurred later in Christian Europe.