His implied position that all the works were nothing more than natural acts and sufferings of children, magnified and made formidable by popular credulity, fails to yield satisfactory revealment of the nature and origin of such facts as he himself presents and leaves uncontroverted.
What was the character of the Goodwin children themselves? They were bright, religiously educated, and free from guile. The account shows that four _such_ children, of a sudden, without previous training for it, all join at first, and three of them long unitedly continue, in a course of most distressing imposition upon their own family, upon physicians, clergymen, magistrates, and the neighborhood; also that the imposition is manifested by astounding physical feats, and simultaneous, identical signs and complaints of suffering, even though the sufferers are in separate apartments. If, possibly, by their own wills and powers they could perform the tricks, how incongruous it would be with their alleged traits and ages! How inconceivable that four such children, from the boy of sixteen down to the girl of seven, or from the girl of thirteen down to the boy of five, should conspire, and three of them co-operate thoroughly, effectively, and long, in voluntarily and purposely producing such mischief and misery as were there experienced! _Suspicion_ of fraud no doubt arose. But the appearance is, that facts soon put the case beyond any powers of fraud which such children, or any embodied human beings, could put forth. Without previous practice and training in concert, a successful attempt by themselves at what was done through and upon them is incredible. No hint is given that they ever practiced in preparation. Had they have done so, seemingly their father, the "grave man and good liver," must have known it, and would have been governed by his knowledge of it in judging and treating his children. Who doubts that it would be shameful to charge or suspect that man, and his friends and physicians, with such credulity, _at the first coming on of the fits_, that they could not judge fairly and sensibly of what nature of cause the actions and sufferings indicated?
"O, star-eyed" Fancy, "hast thou wandered there, To waft us back the message of"--_credulity_?