Platonist, and other persons interested in mystical studies. Thus
at Ragley there was convened the nucleus of an unofficial but active
Society for Psychical Research, as that study existed in the
seventeenth century.

The object of this chapter is to compare the motives, methods, and
results of Lady Conway's circle, with those of the modern Society
for Psychical Research. Both have investigated the reports of
abnormal phenomena. Both have collected and published narratives of
eye-witnesses. The moderns, however, are much more strict on points
of evidence than their predecessors. They are not content to watch,
but they introduce 'tests,' generally with the most disenchanting
results. The old researchers were animated by the desire to
establish the tottering faith of the Restoration, which was
endangered by the reaction against Puritanism. Among the fruits of
Puritanism, and of that frenzied state of mind which accompanied the
Civil War, was a furious persecution of 'witches'. In a rare little
book, Select Cases of Conscience, touching Witches and Witchcraft,
by John Gaule, 'preacher of the Word at Great Staughton in the
county of Huntington' (London, 1646), we find the author not denying
the existence of witchcraft, but pleading for calm, learned and
judicial investigation. To do this was to take his life in his
hand, for Matthew Hopkins, a fanatical miscreant, was ruling in a
Reign of Terror through the country. The clergy of the Church of
England, as Hutchinson proves in his Treatise of Witchcraft (second
edition, London, 1720), had been comparatively cautious in their
treatment of the subject. Their record is far from clean, but they
had exposed some impostures, chiefly, it is fair to say, where
Nonconformists, or Catholics, had detected the witch. With the
Restoration the general laxity went so far as to scoff at