Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum: it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other. Within the compass of five generations we find the Puritan first an uncompromising believer in demonology and magic, and then a scoffer at everything involving the play of fancy.
Eugene Field, The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field: The love affairs of a Bibliomaniac (1896), “The Mania of Collecting Seizes Me,” (chapter 4), p. 44.