The Queen Elizabeth

From Works by Jeremy Bentham

      In the time of the English Philosopher, the mind was annoyed and oppressed by terrors which in the time of his French disciple* had lost, though not the whole, the greater part of their force.  In Bacon's time—in the early part of the seventeenth century—everything in nature that was, or was supposed to be, extraordinary, was alarming ; alarming, and in some shape or other, if not productive, predictive at least of human misery.  In this place, as in other places—at this time, as at other times—Ghosts and Witches composed a constant part of the populations.  Devils an occasional one.  Patronized by Queen Elizabeth, Dee had not long ceased to hold converse with his disembodied intimates : Lilly was preparing for the connexion he succeeded in forming with his.  To burn heretics, to hang witches, and to combat devils, were operations, for all which Bacon's Royal Patron held himself in equal and constant readiness.¹

¹ [Vol. VIII], p. 78

Bentham's Theory of Fictions by Charles Kay Ogden
New York     London : Harcourt etc., ; Kegan Paul etc., 1932, pp. xix - xx.

* d'Alembert.   (WPT).