Scepticism had been born into the world, almost more hateful than heresy,
because it had the manners of good society and contented itself with a
smile, a shrug, an almost imperceptible lift of the eyebrow,--a kind of
reasoning especially exasperating to disputants of the old school, who
still cared about victory, even when they did not about the principles
involved in the debate.
The Puritan emigration to New England took place at a time when the
belief in diabolic agency had been hardly called in question, much less
shaken. The early adventurers brought it with them to a country in every
way fitted, not only to keep it alive, but to feed it into greater vigor.
The solitude of the wilderness (and solitude alone, by dis-furnishing the
brain of its commonplace associations, makes it an apt theatre for the
delusions of imagination), the nightly forest noises, the glimpse,
perhaps, through the leaves, of a painted savage face, uncertain whether
of redman or Devil, but more likely of the latter, above all, that
measureless mystery of the unknown and conjectural stretching away
illimitable on all sides and vexing the mind, somewhat as physical
darkness does, with intimation and misgiving,--under all these
influences, whatever seeds of superstition had in any way got over from
the Old World would find an only too congenial soil in the New.
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