So much for the apparent reasonableness of the belief, since every man's
logic is satisfied with a legitimate deduction from his own postulates.
Causes for the cruelty to which the belief led are not further to seek.
Toward no crime have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in
punishing difference of belief, and the first systematic persecutions for
witchcraft began with the inquisitors in the South of France in the
thirteenth century. It was then and there that the charge of sexual
uncleanness with demons was first devised. Persecuted heretics would
naturally meet in darkness and secret, and it was easy to blacken such
meetings with the accusation of deeds so foul as to shun the light of day
and the eyes of men. They met to renounce God and worship the Devil. But
this was not enough. To excite popular hatred and keep it fiercely alive,
fear must be mingled with it; and this end was reached by making the
heretic also a sorcerer, who, by the Devil's help, could and would work
all manner of fiendish mischief. When by this means the belief in a
league between witch and demon had become firmly established, witchcraft
grew into a well-defined crime, hateful enough in itself to furnish
pastime for the torturer and food for the fagot.
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