Glanvil, F.R.S. (circ. 1666), a more careful examination of evidence came
into use. Among the marvels of Glanvil's and other tracts usually
published together in his 'Sadducismus Triumphatus' will be found letters
which show that he and his friends, like Henry More and Boyle, laboured to
collect first-hand evidence for second sight, haunted houses, ghosts, and
wraiths. The confessed object was to procure a 'Whip for the Droll,' a
reply to the laughing scepticism of the Restoration. The result was to
bring on Glanvil a throng of bores--he was 'worse haunted than Mr.
Mompesson's house,' he says-and Mr. Pepys found his arguments 'not very
convincing.' Mr. Pepys, however, was alarmed by 'our young gib-cat,'
which he mistook for a 'spright.' With Henry More, Baxter, and Glanvil
practically died, for the time, the attempt to investigate these topics
scientifically, though an impression of doubt was left on the mind of
Addison. Witchcraft ceased to win belief, and was abolished, as a crime,
in 1736. Some of the Scottish clergy, and John Wesley, clung fondly
to the old faith, but Wodrow, and Cotton Mather (about 1710-1730) were
singularly careless and unlucky in producing anything like evidence for
their narratives. Ghost stories continued to be told, but not to be
investigated.

Then one of the most acute of philosophers decided that investigation
ought never to be attempted. This scientific attitude towards X phenomena,
that of refusing to examine them, and denying them without examination,
was fixed by David Hume in his celebrated essay on 'Miracles.' Hume
derided the observation and study of what he called 'Miracles,' in the
field of experience, and he looked for an _a priori_ argument which would
for ever settle the question without examination of facts. In an age of
experimental philosophy, which derided _a priori_ methods, this was Hume's
great contribution to knowledge. His famous argument, the joy of many an
honest breast, is a tissue of fallacies which might be given for exposure