Though young when attentive to witchcraft scenes, Mather was learned and influential. Probably few other persons, if any, in the colonies were then his equals in those respects. His duties as a clergyman and a citizen, and his inclination also, led him to be an extensive observer of marvelous manifestations; he obviously was a lover of such. And his records show that he was either a closer observer of the minutiæ of transpiring events of that nature, or a more willing and careful specifier of little things pertaining to them, full of important meaning to some readers now, yet probably meaningless to many others, than were most of his cotemporaries; though Lawson, Hale, and Willard were good at specification, and were more cautious commentators than Mather. An ignoring of any participation by spirits in witchcraft scenes has blinded historians in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to some decided merits in the writings of Mather. The assumption by later commentators that no occurrences whatsoever, which required more than mortal agency for their production, ever actually transpired in cases witnessed and described by Mather, has apparently caused them, consciously or otherwise, to impute to his fancy, credulity, or other untrustworthy attributes, many things which a moderate acquaintance on their part with modern manipulations of occult forces by invisible intelligences would have suggested to them that possibly, and even probably, his statements of facts were based on positive observations by his own physical senses, and by the external senses of other observers. A class of agents are now at work whose cognition may some day turn the laugh upon overweeningly wise laughers at Cotton Mather. This circumscribed view as to the actual extent and variety of _natural_ intelligent agents, and _natural_ laws and forces, has caused them to draw inferences disparaging to Mather's accuracy in places where more knowledge of the outworkings of laws and forces which spirits obey and use, would have given them trust in the essential naturalness and consequent probable occurrence of nearly or quite all the facts stated in his narrative of personal observations and experiences--we do not say in the pervading wisdom and value of his comments and inferences, but in the naturalness and consequent credibility of his _facts_.