Imperial Rome deluded herself with the idea that she could stamp
out Christianity with punishments and tortures, which, however,
only seemed to fan the flame. In the same way Catholic Europe
hoped to extinguish Protestantism by means of vindictive
persecution, and only produced the opposite effect, as always
happens. If the Reformed faith does not strike root in Italy,
France, and Spain, that must be explained by psychological reasons
proper to those nations, independently of the stake and of
massacres, for it did not strike root even when religious belief
was liberated from its fetters. This does not prevent all
governments in every land from continuing to believe that, in
order to arrest the spread of certain political or social
doctrines, there is nothing better than to pass exceptional penal
laws, forgetting that, with ideas and prejudices just as with
steam, compression increases the expansive force.
Popular education has swept away the so-called crimes of magic and
witchcraft, though they had withstood the most savage punishments
of antiquity and mediaeval times.
Blasphemy, in spite of the slitting of the nose, tongue, and
lips, enacted by the penal laws, and continued in France from
Louis XI.
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