Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
hallucination as a component in the persecution of witches was
seriously entertained; Bishop Francis Hutchinson, in his Historical
Essay Concerning Witchcraft (1718), wrote
Many a man hath verily believed he hath seen a spirit
externally before him, when it hath been only an internal
image dancing in his own brain.
Because of the courage of these opponents of the witch mania, its
extension to the privileged classes, the danger it posed to the growing
institution of capitalism, and especially the spread of the ideas of the
European Enlightenment, witch burnings eventually disappeared.
The last execution for witchcraft in Holland, cradle of the Enlightenment,
was in 1610; in England, 1684; America, 1692; France, 1745;
Germany, 1775; and Poland, 1793. In Italy, the Inquisition was
condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century,
and inquisitorial torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church
until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft
and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches.
The witch mania is shameful. How could we do it? How could we
be so ignorant about ourselves and our weaknesses? How could it
have happened in the most 'advanced', the most 'civilized' nations
then on Earth? Why was it resolutely supported by conservatives,
monarchists and religious fundamentalists? Why opposed by liberals,
Quakers and followers of the Enlightenment? If we're absolutely
sure that our beliefs are right, and those of others wrong; that we are
motivated by good, and others by evil; that the King of the Universe
speaks to us, and not to adherents of very different faiths; that it is
wicked to challenge conventional doctrines or to ask searching
questions; that our main job is to believe and obey - then the witch
mania will recur in its infinite variations down to the time of the last
man. Note Friedrich von Spee's very first point, and the implication
that improved public understanding of superstition and scepticism
might have helped to short-circuit the whole train of causality. If we
fail to understand how it worked in the last round, we will not
recognize it as it emerges in the next.
'It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of
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