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It is true that contemporary sceptics attributed the phenomena to potheen, but, as Lady Conway asks, how could potheen tell Hunter about the ghost's debt, and reveal that the money to discharge it was hidden under her hearthstone? The scope of the Ragley inquiries may now be understood. It must not be forgotten that witchcraft was a topic of deep interest to these students.
Rowdy noblemen, intemperate country gentlemen, sterile lawyers, cynical but wealthy sceptics who maintain religion as another fence round their property, hereditary Nonconformists whose God is respectability and whose goal a baronetcy, contrive, with a score or two of bigots thrown in, to make a carnival of folly, a veritable devil's dance of blasphemy.
We might have led the world into a new epoch if at that moment we had laid down our sword, taken up our cross, and followed the Prince of Peace. But we were cold, cold. We had no idealism. We were poor sceptics trusting to economics the economics of a base materialism.
The great John Locke in his familiar letters, says, "I greatly esteem all those who faithfully defend their opinions; but there are so few persons who, according to the manner they do defend them, appear fully convinced of the opinions they profess, that I am tempted to believe there are more sceptics in the world than are generally imagined."
Plato's state of mind gives the atmosphere of the first phase after the catastrophe. For the second phase the conquest of the East and the struggle for the spoils the reader may be referred to Mr. Edwyn Bevan's Lectures on the Stoics and Sceptics and to Professor Gilbert Murray's Conway Memorial lecture on The Stoic Philosophy.
Stutter and Wibberly, two of the sceptics, happened to be caught that very afternoon by Bloomfield in the act of "skulking" dinner that is, of answering to their names at the call-over, and then slipping off unobserved to enjoy a rather more elaborate clandestine meal in their own study.
It is singular enough, that this vain credulity may often be discovered among the profane sceptics, who impiously doubt, or deny, the existence of a celestial power." Part III.
The reason is because the author takes nothing for granted, propounds difficulties common to all non-Catholics, sceptics as well as professing Protestants, and offers solutions verifiable by inspection of every-day Catholicity and by evidences right at hand.
They were polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage.
Reason had failed. The old civilization was a dismal mockery of the aspirations of man. The schools of Athens could make Sophists, rhetoricians, dialecticians, and sceptics. But the faith of the Fathers could bring philosophers to the foot of the Cross. What were material conquests to these conquests of the soul, to this spiritual reign of the invisible principles of the kingdom of Christ?
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