Gaspar Schott, S.J. (1608-66), physicist, doctor, and divine, “one of the most learned men of his day, his simple life and deep piety making him an object of veneration to the Protestants as well as to the Catholics of Augsburg,” where his declining years were spent, lays down: “So many writers of such high authority maintain this opinion, that it were impossible to reject it.”[62] Bodin, de Lancre, Boguet, Görres, Bizouard,[63] Gougenot des Mousseaux,[64] insist upon the same sad facts. And above all sounds the solemn thunder of the Bull of Innocent VIII announcing in no ambiguous phrase: “It has indeed come to our knowledge and deeply grieved are we to hear it, that many persons of both sexes, utterly forgetful of their souls’ salvation and straying far from the Catholic Faith, have (had commerce) with evil spirits, both incubi and succubi.”[65] I have quoted many and great names, men of science, men of learning, men of authority, men to whom the world yet looks up with admiration, nay, with reverence and love, inasmuch as to-day it is difficult, wellnigh inconceivable in most cases, for the modern mind to credit the possibility of these dark deeds of devilry, these foul lusts of incubi and succubi.[66] They seem to be some sick and loathly fantasy of dim mediæval days shrieked out on the rack by a poor wretch crazed with agony and fear, and written down in long-forgotten tomes by fanatics credulous to childishness and more ignorant than savages. “Even if such horrors ever could have taken place in the dark ages,”—those vague Dark Ages!—men say, “they would never be permitted now.” And he who knows, the priest sitting in the grated confessional, in whose ears are poured for shriving the filth and folly of the world, sighs to himself, “Would God that in truth it were so!” But the sceptics are happier in their singleness and their simplicity, happy that they do not, will not, realize the monstrous things that lie only just beneath the surface of our cracking civilization.