GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

NATURE OF THE MORAL FACULTY 297
that in some cases burning at the stake had to be aban-
doned, and roasting in an oven was substituted. Ovens, it
is obvious, were more economical, since one oven would
serve for an indefinite number of witches.
The question inevitably arises, on what grounds these
women were accused and condemned. Nobody, it is to
be presumed, had seen them passing through key-holes,
riding on broom-sticks, or indulging in intercourse with
the Devil. They were, it appears, in every case condemned
on their own confession. All these things they said that
they had done, and they said that they had done them
because they were tortured and retortured, until they
reached a pitch of suffering at which they preferred being
roasted to death in an oven to further torture. One woman
was tortured and retortured in this way on fifty-six separate
occasions. During torture, each woman was pressed to
name her accomplices, and in hope of obtaining some
remission of her agony, this she invariably did. Thus each
accused became a little centre of infection from which fresh
accusations, tortures and confessions spread out in every
direction.
According
to the moral consciousness of the twentieth
century this procedure was an offence both against goodness
and against truth. Yet it was unhesitatingly approved
by the moral opinion of the times. So far as morality was
concerned, the authorities who accused, tortured and
condemned the witches appear to have acted from motives
of the most creditable kind. Their conviction was, that
women who were tortured on earth would be less tortured
hereafter in hell. An earthly fire was no doubt
painful, especially if slow, but it was not so painful as an
infernal one, and even the slowest oven that ever roasted
did in fact make an end of its roasting in time, whereas
in hell one burned for ever. It was, therefore, with the
object of diminishing the amount of suffering which the
alleged witches would otherwise undergo that these
appalling torments were inflicted. So far as the offence
against' truth is concerned, it would not be generally
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