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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion,
which should teach us, among its other morals, that the influential
classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the
people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever
characterized the maddest mob. Clergymen, judges, statesmen,--the
wisest, calmest, holiest persons of their day stood in the inner
circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of
blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived. If any
one part of their proceedings can be said to deserve less blame
than another, it was the singular indiscrimination with which
they persecuted, not merely the poor and aged, as in former
House of Seven Gables |
