’Tis now some years ago that I travelled through the territories of a sovereign prince, who, in my favour, and to abate my incredulity, did me the honour to let me see, in his own presence, and in a private place, ten or twelve prisoners of this kind, and amongst others, an old woman, a real witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in that profession.  I saw both proofs and free confessions, and I know not what insensible mark upon the miserable creature:  I examined and talked with her and the rest as much and as long as I would, and gave the best and soundest attention I could, and I am not a man to suffer my judgment to be made captive by prepossession.  In the end, and in all conscience, I should rather have prescribed them hellebore than hemlock;

     “Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis similis visa;”

     ["The thing was rather to be attributed to madness, than malice.” 
     ("The thing seemed to resemble minds possessed rather than guilty.”)
     —­Livy, viii, 18.]

justice has its corrections proper for such maladies.  As to the oppositions and arguments that worthy men have made to me, both there, and often in other places, I have met with none that have convinced me, and that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions.  It is true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon experience and fact, I do not go about to untie, neither have they any end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot.  After all, ’tis setting a man’s conjectures at a very high price upon them to cause a man to be roasted alive.

We are told by several examples, as Praestantius of his father, that being more profoundly, asleep than men usually are, he fancied himself to be a mare, and that he served the soldiers for a sumpter; and what he fancied himself to be, he really proved.  If sorcerers dream so materially; if dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with effects, still I cannot believe that therefore our will should be accountable to justice; which I say as one who am neither judge nor privy councillor, and who think myself by many degrees unworthy so to be, but a man of the common sort, born and avowed to the obedience of the public reason, both in its words and acts.  He who should record my idle talk as being to the prejudice of the pettiest law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more; for, in what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but that ’tis what I had then in my thought, a tumultuous and wavering thought.  All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice: 

          “Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam;”

     ["Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what
     I do not know.”—­Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., i. 25.]