“There is nothing in the annals of the histrionic art more illustrative of the infinite versatility of the human faculties, both physical and mental, and of the amazing extent to which cunning, ingenuity, contrivance, quickness of invention, and presence of mind can be cultivated, even in very young persons, than such cases as just related. It seems, at first, incredible that a mere child could carry on such a complex piece of fraud and imposture as that enacted by the little girl whose achievements have been immortalized by the famous author of the ‘Magnalia.’”
We are glad to note the author’s frank and distinct confession that his own solution seems at first incredible. Why he put in the phrase “at first” needs explanation, which he fails to furnish. He makes no attempt to show why the first seeming should not be the permanent one. It is permanent. It will continue permanent to the end of time. It is and forever will be incredible that the Goodwin girl herself performed all the feats which the evidence proves were performed through her organism. If her body was the organ of all the performances which are distinctly ascribed to her, she was not the author of them all, but only a channel for the occurrence of many of them. Can reflection find her competent to all that was ascribed to her? Incredible. Incredible not only at first, but also on and on to the latest last.
Ingenious fancy, while weaving over this case a dazzling web of rhetoric, may have deluded the eyes that overlooked the loom, and caused them to discern other seemings than the first ones; but such delusion will never become epidemic.
Hutchinson, usually a scornful handler of aught that emitted any odor of witchcraft, we now requote where he said, concerning the family which included this Martha, that “they all had been religiously educated, and were thought to be without guile;... they returned to their ordinary behavior, lived to adult age, made profession of religion.... One of them I knew many years after. She had the character of a very sober, virtuous woman, and never made any acknowledgment of fraud in this transaction.” Such is the testimony of one whose views and feelings obviously inclined him, as far as possible, to consider all witchcraft works the products of imposture and fraud; and who, therefore, was not likely to assign to this family any good qualities which they were not widely and well known to possess. He spoke of them as above, and refrained from any direct imputation of fraud to them. He hinted at fraud, it is true, but probably both lacked any historical or traditionary evidence of it, and was conscious that if fraud were alleged, and even proved, it would fail to meet the case in all its parts—in those especially that “seemed more than natural.” Nonplussed in the way of solution, he could only say “it was a time of great credulity”! In one important respect he had better facilities for judging this case correctly than can be obtained to-day. He had listened to conversations of many persons who were living at the time of its occurrence, and yet refrained from direct charge of fraud or imposture. Also he intimated that such causes, even if alleged, would be inadequate, because some of the transactions “seemed more than natural.”
The later historian, unhampered by need to move in harmony with the knowledge and beliefs of any cotemporaries of those Goodwins, and abandoning historic grounds which furnish supermundane agencies for solving the occurrence of acts which filled the town and colony with consternation, delved into the composition of man, and fancied that he found therein enormous capabilities for credulity, fraud, imposture, infatuation, spontaneous out-flashings of highest, and more than highest, feats of histrionic art, for self-generated triplication of personal weight, for aviarial flittings, for equine antics, for self-induced roastings, self-induced showerings, for comprehension of languages never learned, &c.; fancied that he had found how one little girl, “religiously educated, and thought to be without guile,” could execute to admiration each of those many things “seeming to be more than natural,” and could mimic with admirable exactness most astounding feats, and such as always before had been supposed to require the powers of disembodied intelligences. That was an astounding discovery. But the present are times of great credulity, and in the infatuation of these days mental optics have been molded, which, looking back nearly two hundred years, see the brightest, most vigorous, and keen-sighted men of Boston—the “solid men of Boston”—see them stolid and gullible, and see, too, among the people there three or four little children, bright and religiously educated, and yet malignant and agile as the very devil. What a contrast between the old and the young then! Was there ever a day when Boston’s wisest adults were prevailingly blockheads easily befooled, and when those of her children who had “great ingenuity of temper” metamorphosed themselves into devil-like incendiaries, and set the town ablaze with sulphurous fires? Alas! one modern eye has penetration enough to convince its owner that such a day once was. That eye, “by the aid of”—something, seems “gifted with supernatural insight;” certainly with very uncommon back-sight.
Grant to the Goodwin children all the natural human endowments which imagination can conjure up and embody, also grant to them skillful training and long-continued practice, which there is no probability they had, and even then it was impossible for them, when in separate rooms, to have voluntarily and designedly acted, and seemingly suffered, precisely and simultaneously alike, as they are alleged to have done, and as they would have naturally been made to do if all of them were under and controlled by the psychologic influence of the single mind of the resentful wild Irish woman, because then the same mental impulses would move them all like machines, and simultaneously.
After their separation, the girl at Mr. Mather’s house could never have accomplished single-handed what is ascribed to her. The internal evidence of the narrative of events which transpired there combines with common sense in pronouncing it farcical—distinctly farcical—to regard that young girl as the contriver and performer of all the works and pranks which history says transpired through her physical organism, and, therefore, to external eyes, seemed to be products of her own volitions. The nature, quality, and extent of those performances bespeak producing powers both different from and greater than such a girl possessed; bespeak just such powers as departed spirits are now putting forth all around us through living human forms.
It is not only at first, but permanently incredible, “that a mere child could carry on such a complex piece of fraud and imposture as that enacted” through “the little girl whose achievements have been immortalized by the famous author of the Magnalia;” and therefore the world demands, and will yet obtain, a simpler, more rational, and more satisfactory solution of this and kindred cases; solution that will admit all the amazing feats of witchcraft to be embraced within the scope of forces that finite human beings, the seen and the unseen in conjunction, could in the past and can now so apply as to execute all the world’s marvels without aid from either the One Great Devil, from fraud, or from imposture. Neither of these need ever have any connection whatever with, or complicity in, such matters. The records teach, and man’s recent experience divines, that other, more befitting, and more competent actors than mere children were on hand and at work in Cotton Mather’s presence.
Though justice would have us assign to any Great Dull his honest dues, it also permits us to pull off from his sable brows any unearned wreaths which Cotton Mather and others credulously placed upon them. It also and especially requires us to tear off from the fair head of guileless Martha Goodwin that badge labeled Fraud and Imposture—that emblem of deviltry—which modern delusion has most cruelly, and yet most artistically, wreathed around temples that seem worthy of a pure martyr’s honoring crown.