investigation, what more was done in England, until the day when Mr.
Crookes offered himself in atonement for the sins of the learned
body? Why, Mr. Faraday, some twenty years ago, actually condescended
to be spoken to once or twice upon the subject. Faraday, whose name
is pronounced by the anti-spiritualists in every discussion upon
the phenomena, as a sort of scientific charm against the evil-eye
of Spiritualism, Faraday, who “blushed” for having published his
researches upon such a degrading belief, is now proved on good
authority to have never sat at a tipping table himself at all! We
have but to open a few stray numbers of the _Journal des Debats_,
published while a noted Scotch medium was in England, to recall
the past events in all their primitive freshness. In one of these
numbers, Dr. Foucault, of Paris, comes out as a champion for the
eminent English experimenter. “Pray, do not imagine,” says he, “that {63}
the grand physicist had ever himself condescended so far as to sit
prosaically at a jumping table.” Whence, then, came the “blushes”
which suffused the cheeks of the “Father of Experimental Philosophy?”
Remembering this fact, we will now examine the nature of Faraday’s
beautiful “Indicator,” the extraordinary “Medium-Catcher,” invented by
him for the detection of mediumistic fraud. That complicated machine,
the memory of which haunts like a nightmare the dreams of dishonest
mediums, is carefully described in Comte de Mirville’s _Question des
Esprits_.
The better to prove to the experimenters the reality of their own
impulsion, Professor Faraday placed several card-board disks, united to
each other and stuck to the table by a half-soft glue, which, making
the whole adhere for a time together, would, nevertheless, yield to
a continuous pressure. Now, the table having turned—yes, actually
_having dared to turn before Mr. Faraday_, which fact is of some value,
at least—the disks were examined; and, as they were found to have
gradually displaced themselves by slipping in the same direction as the
table, it thus became an unquestionable proof that the experimenters
had _pushed_ the tables themselves.
Another of the so called scientific tests, so useful in a phenomenon
alleged to be either spiritual or psychical, consisted of a small
instrument which immediately warned the witnesses of the slightest
personal impulsion on their part, or rather, according to Mr. Faraday’s
own expression, “it warned them when they changed from the passive to
the active state.” This needle which betrayed the active motion proved
but one thing, viz.: the action of a force which either emanated from
the sitters or controlled them. And who has ever said that there is
no such force? Every one admits so much, whether this force passes
through the operator, as it is generally shown, or acts independently
of him, as is so often the case. “The whole mystery consisted in the
disproportion of the force employed by the operators, who pushed
because they were forced to push, with certain effects of rotation, or
rather, of a really marvellous race. In the presence of such prodigious
effects, how could any one imagine that the Lilliputian experiments
of that kind could have any value in this newly discovered Land of
Giants?”[139]
Professor Agassiz, who occupied in America nearly the same eminent
position as a scientist which Mr. Faraday did in England, acted with a
still greater unfairness. Professor J. R. Buchanan, the distinguished
anthropologist, who has treated Spiritualism in some respects more
scientifically than any one else in America, speaks of Agassiz, in a {64}
recent article, with a very just indignation. For, of all other men,
Professor Agassiz ought to believe in a phenomenon to which he had been
a subject himself. But now that both Faraday and Agassiz are themselves
_disembodied_, we can do better by questioning the living than the dead.
Thus a force whose secret powers were thoroughly familiar to the
ancient theurgists, is denied by modern skeptics. The antediluvian
children—who perhaps played with it, using it as the boys in
Bulwer-Lytton’s _Coming Race_, use the tremendous “_vril_” called it the
“Water of Phtha;” their descendants named it the _Anima Mundi_, the
soul of the universe; and still later the mediæval hermetists termed it
“sidereal light,” or the “Milk of the Celestial Virgin,” the “Magnes,”
and many other names. But our modern learned men will neither accept
nor recognize it under such appellations; for it pertains to _magic_,
and magic is, in their conception, a disgraceful superstition.
Apollonius and Iamblichus held that it was not “in the knowledge of
things _without_, but in the perfection of the soul _within_, that lies
the empire of man, aspiring to be more than men.”[140] Thus they had
arrived at a perfect cognizance of their godlike souls, the powers of
which they used with all the wisdom, outgrowth of esoteric study of
the hermetic lore, inherited by them from their forefathers. But our
philosophers, tightly shutting themselves up in their shells of flesh,
cannot or dare not carry their timid gaze beyond the _comprehensible_.
For them there is no future life; there are no godlike dreams, they
scorn them as unscientific; for them the men of old are but “ignorant
ancestors,” as they express it; and whenever they meet during their
physiological researches with an author who believes that this
mysterious yearning after spiritual knowledge is inherent in every
human being, and cannot have been given us utterly in vain, they regard
him with contemptuous pity.
Says a Persian proverb: “The darker the sky is, the brighter the stars
will shine.” Thus, on the dark firmament of the mediæval ages began
appearing the mysterious Brothers of the Rosie Cross. They formed no
associations, they built no colleges; for, hunted up and down like
so many wild beasts, when caught by the Christian Church, they were
unceremoniously roasted. “As religion forbids it,” says Bayle, “to
spill blood,” therefore, “to elude the maxim, _Ecclesia non novit
sanguinem_, they burned human beings, as burning a man does not _shed
his blood_!”
Many of these mystics, by following what they were taught by some
treatises, secretly preserved from one generation to another, achieved
discoveries which would not be despised even in our modern days of
exact sciences. Roger Bacon, the friar, was laughed at as a quack, {65}
and is now generally numbered among “pretenders” to magic art; but
his discoveries were nevertheless accepted, and are now used by those
who ridicule him the most. Roger Bacon belonged by right if not by
fact to that Brotherhood which includes all those who study the occult
sciences. Living in the thirteenth century, almost a contemporary,
therefore, of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, his discoveries—such
as gunpowder and optical glasses, and his mechanical achievements—were
considered by every one as so many miracles. He was accused of having
made a compact with the Evil One.
In the legendary history of Friar Bacon, as “well as in an old play
written by Robert Green, a dramatist in the days of Queen Elizabeth,
it is recounted, that, having been summoned before the king, the friar
was induced to show” some of his skill before her majesty the queen.
So he waved his hand (_his wand_, says the text), and “presently was
heard such excellent music, that they all said they had never heard the
like.” Then there was heard a still louder music and four apparitions
suddenly presented themselves and danced until they vanished and
disappeared in the air. Then he waved his wand again, and suddenly
there was such a smell “as if all the rich perfumes in the whole world
had been there prepared in the best manner that art could set them
out.” Then Roger Bacon having promised a gentleman to show him his
sweetheart, he pulled a hanging in the king’s apartment aside and every
one in the room saw “a kitchen-maid with a basting-ladle in her hand.”
The proud gentleman, although he recognized the maiden who disappeared
as suddenly as she had appeared, was enraged at the humiliating
spectacle, and threatened the friar with his revenge. What does the
magician do? He simply answers: “Threaten not, lest I do you more
shame; and do you take heed how you give _scholars_ the lie again!”
As a commentary on this, the modern historian[141] remarks: “This may
be taken as a sort of exemplification of the class of exhibitions
which were probably the result of a _superior knowledge_ of natural
sciences.” No one ever doubted that it was the result of precisely such
a knowledge, and the hermetists, magicians, astrologers and alchemists
never claimed anything else. It certainly was not their fault that the
ignorant masses, under the influence of an unscrupulous and fanatical
clergy, should have attributed all such works to the agency of the
devil. In view of the atrocious tortures provided by the Inquisition
for all suspected of either black or white magic, it is not strange
that these philosophers neither boasted nor even acknowledged the fact
of such an intercourse. On the contrary, their own writings prove that {66}
they held that magic is “no more than the application of natural
active causes to passive things or subjects; by means thereof, many
tremendously surprising but yet natural effects are produced.”
The phenomena of the mystic odors and music, exhibited by Roger Bacon,
have been often observed in our own time. To say nothing of our
personal experience, we are informed by English correspondents of the
Theosophical Society that they have heard strains of the most ravishing
music, coming from no visible instrument, and inhaled a succession of
delightful odors produced, as they believed, by spirit-agency. One
correspondent tells us that so powerful was one of these familiar
odors—that of sandal-wood—that the house would be impregnated with
it for weeks after the seance. The medium in this case was a member
of a private family, and the experiments were all made within the
domestic circle. Another describes what he calls a “_musical_ rap.”
The potencies that are now capable of producing these phenomena must
have existed and been equally efficacious in the days of Roger Bacon.
As to the apparitions, it suffices to say that they are evoked now
in spiritualistic circles, and guarantied by scientists, and their
evocation by Roger Bacon is thus made more probable than ever.
Baptista Porta, in his treatise on _Natural Magic_, enumerates a
whole catalogue of secret formulæ for producing extraordinary effects
by employing the occult powers of nature. Although the “magicians”
believed as firmly as our spiritualists in a world of invisible
spirits, none of them claimed to produce his effects under their
control or through their sole help. They knew too well how difficult
it is to keep away the elementary creatures when they have once found
the door wide open. Even the magic of the ancient Chaldeans was but
a profound knowledge of the powers of simples and minerals. It was
only when the theurgist desired _divine_ help in spiritual and earthly
matters that he sought direct communication through religious rites,
with pure spiritual beings. With them, even, those spirits who remain
invisible and communicate with mortals through their awakened inner
senses, as in clairvoyance, clairaudience and trance, could only be
evoked _subjectively_ and as a result of purity of life and prayer. But
all physical phenomena were produced simply by applying a knowledge of
natural forces, although certainly not by the method of legerdemain,
practiced in our days by conjurers.
Men possessed of such knowledge and exercising such powers patiently
toiled for something better than the vain glory of a passing fame.
Seeking it not, they became immortal, as do all who labor for the
good of the race, forgetful of mean self. Illuminated with the light
of eternal truth, these rich-poor alchemists fixed their attention
upon the things that lie beyond the common ken, recognizing nothing
inscrutable but the First Cause, and finding no question unsolvable. {67}
To dare, to know, to will, and REMAIN SILENT, was their constant
rule; to be beneficent, unselfish, and unpretending, were, with them,
spontaneous impulses. Disdaining the rewards of petty traffic, spurning
wealth, luxury, pomp, and worldly power, they aspired to knowledge as
the most satisfying of all acquisitions. They esteemed poverty, hunger,
toil, and the evil report of men, as none too great a price to pay for
its achievement. They, who might have lain on downy, velvet-covered
beds, suffered themselves to die in hospitals and by the wayside,
rather than debase their souls and allow the profane cupidity of those
who tempted them to triumph over their sacred vows. The lives of
Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and Philalethes are too well known to
repeat the old, sad story.
If spiritualists are anxious to keep strictly dogmatic in their notions
of the “spirit-world,” they must not set _scientists_ to investigate
their phenomena in the true experimental spirit. The attempt would
most surely result in a partial re-discovery of the magic of old—that
of Moses and Paracelsus. Under the deceptive beauty of some of their
apparitions, they might find some day the sylphs and fair Undines of
the Rosicrucians playing in the currents of _psychic_ and _odic_ force.
Already Mr. Crookes, who fully credits the _being_, feels that under
the fair skin of Katie, covering a simulacrum of heart borrowed
partially from the medium and the circle, there is _no soul_! And
the learned authors of _The Unseen Universe_, abandoning their
“electro-biological” theory, begin to perceive in the universal ether
the _possibility_ that it is a photographic album of EN-SOPH—the
Boundless.
We are far from believing that all the spirits that communicate at
circles are of the classes called “Elemental,” and “Elementary.”
Many—especially among those who control the medium subjectively to
speak, write, and otherwise act in various ways—are human, disembodied
spirits. Whether the majority of such spirits are good or _bad_,
largely depends on the private morality of the medium, much on the
circle present, and a great deal on the intensity and object of their
purpose. If this object is merely to gratify curiosity and to pass
the time, it is useless to expect anything serious. But, in any case,
human spirits can _never_ materialize themselves in _propria personâ_.
These can never appear to the investigator clothed with warm, solid
flesh, sweating hands and faces, and grossly-material bodies. The most
they can do is to project their æthereal reflection on the atmospheric
waves, and if the touch of their hands and clothing can become upon
rare occasions objective to the senses of a living mortal, it will
be felt as a passing breeze gently sweeping over the touched spot,
not as a human hand or material body. It is useless to plead that the
“materialized spirits” that have exhibited themselves with beating {68}
hearts and loud voices (with or without a trumpet) are _human_ spirits.
The voices—if such sound can be termed a voice at all—of a spiritual
apparition once heard can hardly be forgotten. That of a pure spirit is
like the tremulous murmur of an Æolian harp echoed from a distance; the
voice of a suffering, hence impure, if not utterly bad spirit, may be
assimilated to a human voice issuing from an empty barrel.
This is not _our_ philosophy, but that of the numberless generations
of theurgists and magicians, and based upon their practical
experience. The testimony of antiquity is positive on this subject:
“Δαιμονιῶν φωναὶ ἄναρθροι εἰσί....”[142] The voices of spirits are not
articulated. The spirit-voice consists of a series of sounds which
conveys the impression of a column of compressed air ascending from
beneath upward, and spreading around the living interlocutor. The
many eye-witnesses who testified in the case of Elizabeth Eslinger,
namely:[143] the deputy-governor of the prison of Weinsberg, Mayer,
Eckhart, Theurer, and Knorr (sworn evidence), Düttenhöfer, and Kapff,
the mathematician, testified that they saw the apparition _like a
pillar of clouds_. For the space of eleven weeks, Doctor Kerner and
his sons, several Lutheran ministers, the advocate Fraas, the engraver
Düttenhöfer, two physicians, Siefer and Sicherer, the judge Heyd, and
the Baron von Hugel, with many others, followed this manifestation
daily. During the time it lasted, the prisoner Elizabeth prayed with
a loud voice uninterruptedly; therefore, as the “spirit” was talking
at the same time, it could be no ventriloquism; and that voice, they
say,“had nothing _human_ in it; no one could imitate its sounds.”
Further on we will give abundant proofs from ancient authors concerning
this neglected truism. We will now only again assert that no spirit
claimed by the spiritualists to be human was ever proved to be such
on sufficient testimony. The influence of the _disembodied_ ones
can be felt, and communicated _subjectively_ by them to sensitives.
They can produce _objective_ manifestations, but they cannot produce
_themselves_ otherwise than as described above. They can control the
body of a medium, and express their desires and ideas in various modes
well known to spiritualists; but not _materialize_ what is matterless
and purely spiritual—their _divine essence_. Thus every so-called
“materialization” when genuine—is either produced (_perhaps_) by the
will of that spirit whom the “appearance” is claimed to be but can
only personate at best, or by the elementary goblins themselves, which
are generally too stupid to deserve the honor of being called devils.
Upon rare occasions the spirits are able to subdue and control these {69}
soulless beings, which are ever ready to assume pompous names if left
to themselves, in such a way that the mischievous spirit “of the air,”
shaped in the real image of the _human_ spirit, will be moved by the
latter like a marionette, and unable to either act or utter other words
than those imposed on him by the “immortal soul.” But this requires
many conditions generally unknown to the circles of even spiritualists
most in the habit of regularly attending seances. Not every one can
attract _human_ spirits who likes. One of the most powerful attractions
of our departed ones is their strong affection for those whom they have
left on earth. It draws them irresistibly, by degrees, into the current
of the Astral Light vibrating between the person sympathetic to them
and the Universal Soul. Another very important condition is harmony,
and the magnetic purity of the persons present.
If this philosophy is wrong, if all the “materialized” forms emerging
in _darkened_ rooms from still _darker_ cabinets, are spirits of men
who once lived upon this earth, why such a difference between them
and the _ghosts_ that appear unexpectedly—_ex abrupto_—without either
cabinet or medium? Who ever heard of the apparitions, unrestful
“souls,” hovering about the spots where they were murdered, or coming
back for some other mysterious reasons of their own, with “warm hands”
feeling _like living flesh_, and but that they are known to be dead and
buried, not distinguishable from living mortals? We have well-attested
facts of such apparitions making themselves suddenly visible, but
never, until the beginning of the era of the “materializations,” did
we see anything like them. In the _Medium and Day Break_, of September
8, 1876, we read a letter from “a lady travelling on the continent,”
narrating a circumstance that happened in a haunted house. She says: “
... A strange sound proceeded from a darkened corner of the library ...
on looking up she perceived a _cloud or column of luminous vapor_; ...
the earth-bound spirit was hovering about the spot rendered accursed by
his evil deed....” As this spirit was doubtless a _genuine_ elementary
apparition, which made itself visible of its own free will—in short,
an _umbra_—it was, as every respectable shadow should be, visible but
impalpable, or if palpable at all, communicating to the feeling of
touch the sensation of a mass of water suddenly clasped in the hand, or
of condensed but cold steam. It was _luminous_ and _vapory_; for aught
we can tell it might have been the real personal umbra of the “spirit,”
persecuted, and earth-bound, either by its own remorse and crimes or
those of another person or spirit. The mysteries of after-death are
many, and modern “materializations” only make them cheap and ridiculous
in the eyes of the indifferent.
To these assertions may be opposed a fact well known among
spiritualists: _The writer has publicly certified to having seen such
materialized forms_. We have most assuredly done so, and are ready to {70}
repeat the testimony. We have recognized such figures as the visible
representations of acquaintances, friends, and even relatives. We have,
in company with many other spectators, heard them pronounce words in
languages unfamiliar not only to the medium and to every one else
in the room, except ourselves, but, in some cases, to almost if not
quite every medium in America and Europe, for they were the tongues
of Eastern tribes and peoples. At the time, these instances were
justly regarded as conclusive proofs of the genuine mediumship of the
uneducated Vermont farmer who sat in the “cabinet.” But, nevertheless,
these figures were _not_ the forms of the persons they appeared to be.
They were simply their portrait statues, constructed, animated and
operated by the elementaries. If we have not previously elucidated this
point, it was because the spiritualistic public was not then ready to
even listen to the fundamental proposition that there are elemental and
elementary spirits. Since that time this subject has been broached and
more or less widely discussed. There is less hazard now in attempting
to launch upon the restless sea of criticism the hoary philosophy of
the ancient sages, for there has been some preparation of the public
mind to consider it with impartiality and deliberation. Two years of
agitation have effected a marked change for the better.
Pausanias writes that four hundred years after the battle of Marathon,
there were still heard in the place where it was fought, the _neighing
of horses_ and the shouts of shadowy soldiers. Supposing that the
spectres of the slaughtered soldiers were their genuine spirits, they
looked like “shadows,” not materialized men. Who, then, or what,
produced the neighing of horses? _Equine_ “spirits?” And if it be
pronounced untrue that horses have spirits—which assuredly no one among
zoölogists, physiologists or psychologists, or even spiritualists, can
either prove or disprove—then must we take it for granted that it was
the “immortal souls” of men which produced the neighing at Marathon to
make the historical battle scene more vivid and dramatic? The phantoms
of dogs, cats, and various other animals have been repeatedly seen,
and the world-wide testimony is as trustworthy upon this point as
that with respect to human apparitions. Who or _what_ personates, if
we are allowed such an expression, the ghosts of departed animals? Is
it, again, human spirits? As the matter now stands, there is no side
issue; we have either to admit that animals have surviving spirits and
souls as well as ourselves, or hold with Porphyry that there are in the
_invisible_ world a kind of tricky and malicious demons, intermediary
beings between living men and “gods,” spirits that delight in appearing
under every imaginable shape, beginning with the human form, and ending
with those of multifarious animals.[144]
Before venturing to decide the question whether the spectral animal {71}
forms so frequently seen and attested are the returning spirits of dead
beasts, we must carefully consider their reported behavior. Do these
spectres act according to the habits and display the same instincts, as
the animals during life? Do the spectral beasts of prey lie in wait for
victims, and timid animals flee before the presence of man; or do the
latter show a malevolence and disposition to annoy, quite foreign to
their natures? Many victims of these obsessions—notably, the afflicted
persons of Salem and other historical witchcrafts—testify to having
seen dogs, cats, pigs, and other animals, entering their rooms, biting
them, trampling upon their sleeping bodies, and _talking_ to them;
_often inciting them to suicide and other crimes_. In the well-attested
case of Elizabeth Eslinger, mentioned by Dr. Kerner, the apparition of
the ancient priest of Wimmenthal[145] was accompanied by a large black
dog, which he called _his father_, and which dog in the presence of
numerous witnesses jumped on all the beds of the prisoners. At another
time the priest appeared with a lamb, and sometimes with two lambs.
Most of those accused at Salem were charged by the seeresses with
consulting and plotting mischief with yellow birds, which would sit on
their shoulder or on the beams overhead.[146] And unless we discredit
the testimony of thousands of witnesses, in all parts of the world,
and in all ages, and allow a monopoly of seership to modern mediums,
spectre-animals do appear and manifest all the worst traits of depraved
human nature, without themselves being human. What, then, can they be
but elementals?
Descartes was one of the few who believed and dared say that to occult
medicine we shall owe discoveries “destined to extend the domain of
philosophy;” and Brierre de Boismont not only shared in these hopes but
openly avowed his sympathy with “supernaturalism,” which he considered
the universal “grand creed” “ ... We think with Guizot,” he says,
“that the existence of society is bound up in it. It _is in vain_ that
modern reason, which, notwithstanding its _positivism_, cannot explain
the intimate cause of any phenomena, _rejects the supernatural_; it is
universal, and at the root of all hearts. The most elevated minds are
frequently its most ardent disciples.”[147]
Christopher Columbus discovered America, and Americus Vespucius reaped
the glory and usurped his dues. Theophrastus Paracelsus rediscovered
the occult properties of the magnet—“the bone of Horus” which, twelve
centuries before his time, had played such an important part in the
theurgic mysteries—and he very naturally became the founder of the {72}
school of magnetism and of mediæval magico-theurgy. But Mesmer, who
lived nearly three hundred years after him, and as a disciple of his
school brought the magnetic wonders before the public, reaped the glory
that was due to the fire-philosopher, while the great master died in a
hospital!
So goes the world: new discoveries, evolving from old sciences; new
men—the same old nature!
CHAPTER III. {73}
“The mirror of the soul cannot reflect both earth and heaven;
and the one vanishes from its surface, as the other is glassed
upon its deep.”
ZANONI.
“Qui, donc, t’a donné la mission d’annoncer au peuple que la
Divinité n’existe pas—quel avantage trouves tu à persuader à
l’homme qu’une force aveugle préside à ses destinées et frappe
au hazard le crime et la vertu?”
ROBESPIERRE (Discours), May 7, 1794.
We believe that few of those physical phenomena which are genuine
are caused by disembodied human spirits. Still, even those that
are produced by occult forces of nature, such as happen through a
few genuine mediums, and are consciously employed by the so-called
“jugglers” of India and Egypt, deserve a careful and serious
investigation by science; especially now that a number of respected
authorities have testified that in many cases the hypothesis of
fraud does not hold. No doubt, there are professed “conjurors” who
can perform cleverer tricks than all the American and English “John
Kings” together. Robert Houdin unquestionably could, but this did not
prevent his laughing outright in the face of the academicians, when
they desired him to assert in the newspapers, that he could make a
table move, or rap answers to questions, _without contact of hands_,
unless the table was a prepared one.[148] The fact alone, that a now
notorious London juggler refused to accept a challenge for £1,000
offered him by Mr. Algernon Joy,[149] to produce such manifestations
as are usually obtained through mediums, unless he was left _unbound_
and _free_ from the hands of a committee, negatives his _exposé_ of
the occult phenomena. Clever as he may be, we defy and challenge him
to reproduce, under the _same conditions_, the “tricks” exhibited
even by a common Indian _juggler_. For instance, the spot to be
chosen by the investigators at the moment of the performance, and the
juggler to know nothing of the choice; the experiment to be made in
broad daylight, without the least preparations for it; without any
confederate but a boy absolutely naked, and the juggler to be in a
condition of semi-nudity. After that, we should select out of a variety
three _tricks_, the most common among such public jugglers, and that
were recently exhibited to some gentlemen belonging to the suite of {74}
the Prince of Wales: I. To transform a rupee—firmly clasped in the
hand of a skeptic—into a living cobra, the bite of which would prove
fatal, as an examination of its fangs would show. 2. To cause a seed
chosen at random by the spectators, and planted in the first semblance
of a flower-pot, furnished by the same skeptics, to grow, mature, and
bear fruit in less than a quarter of an hour. 3. To stretch himself
on three swords, stuck perpendicularly in the ground at their hilts,
the sharp points upward; after that, to have removed first one of the
swords, then the other, and, after an interval of a few seconds, the
last one, the juggler remaining, finally, lying on _nothing_—on the
air, miraculously suspended at about one yard from the ground. When any
prestidigitateur, to begin with Houdin and end with the last trickster
who has secured gratuitous advertisement by attacking spiritualism,
does _the same_, then—but only then—we will train ourselves to believe
that mankind has been evolved out of the hind-toe of Mr. Huxley’s
Eocene _Orohippus_.
We assert again, in full confidence, that there does not exist a
professional wizard, either of the North, South or West, who can
compete with anything approaching success, with these untutored,
naked sons of the East. These require no Egyptian Hall for their
performances, nor any preparations or rehearsals; but are ever ready,
at a moment’s notice, to evoke to their help the hidden powers
of nature, which, for European prestidigitateurs as well as for
scientists, are a closed book. Verily, as Elihu puts it, “great men
are not always wise; neither do the aged understand judgment.”[150]
To repeat the remark of the English divine, Dr. Henry More, we may
well say: “ ... indeed, if there were any modesty left in mankind, the
histories of the Bible might abundantly assure men of the existence
of angels and spirits.” The same eminent man adds, “I look upon it as
a special piece of Providence that ... fresh examples of apparitions
may awaken our benumbed and lethargic minds into an assurance that
there are other intelligent beings besides those that are clothed in
heavy earth or clay ... for this evidence, showing that there are bad
spirits, will necessarily open a door to the belief that there are
good ones, and lastly, that there is a God.” The instance above given
carries a moral with it, not only to scientists, but theologians. Men
who have made their mark in the pulpit and in professors’ chairs, are
continually showing the lay public that they really know so little of
psychology, as to take up with any plausible schemer who comes their
way, and so make themselves ridiculous in the eyes of the thoughtful
student. Public opinion upon this subject has been manufactured by
jugglers and self-styled savants, unworthy of respectful consideration.
The development of psychological science has been retarded far more {75}
by the ridicule of this class of pretenders, than by the inherent
difficulties of its study. The empty laugh of the scientific nursling
or of the fools of fashion, has done more to keep man ignorant of his
imperial psychical powers, than the obscurities, the obstacles and the
dangers that cluster about the subject. This is especially the case
with spiritualistic phenomena. That their investigation has been so
largely confined to incapables, is due to the fact that men of science,
who might and would have studied them, have been frightened off by the
boasted exposures, the paltry jokes, and the impertinent clamor of
those who are not worthy to tie their shoes. There are moral cowards
even in university chairs. The inherent vitality of modern spiritualism
is proven in its survival of the neglect of the scientific body, and
of the obstreperous boasting of its pretended exposers. If we begin
with the contemptuous sneers of the patriarchs of science, such as
Faraday and Brewster, and end with the professional (?) _exposés_ of
the successful mimicker of the phenomena,——, of London, we will not
find them furnishing one single, well-established argument against
the occurrence of spiritual manifestations. “My theory is,” says this
individual, in his recent _soi-disant “exposé,”_ “that Mr. Williams
dressed up and personified John King and Peter. Nobody can prove that
it wasn’t so.” Thus it appears that, notwithstanding the bold tone of
assertion, it is but a theory after all, and spiritualists might well
retort upon the exposer, and demand that he should prove that it is so.
But the most inveterate, uncompromising enemies of Spiritualism are a
class very fortunately composed of but few members, who, nevertheless,
declaim the louder and assert their views with a clamorousness worthy
of a better cause. These are the _pretenders_ to science of young
America—a mongrel class of pseudo-philosophers, mentioned at the
opening of this chapter, with sometimes no better right to be regarded
as scholars than the possession of an electrical machine, or the
delivery of a puerile lecture on insanity and mediomania. Such men
are—if you believe them—profound thinkers and physiologists; there is
none of your metaphysical nonsense about them; they are Positivists—the
mental sucklings of Auguste Comte, whose bosoms swell at the thought
of plucking deluded humanity from the dark abyss of superstition, and
rebuilding the cosmos on improved principles. Irascible psychophobists,
no more cutting insult can be offered them than to suggest that they
may be endowed with immortal spirits. To hear them, one would fancy
that there can be no other souls in men and women than “scientific” or
“unscientific souls;” whatever that kind of soul may be.[151]
Some thirty or forty years ago, in France, Auguste Comte—a pupil {76}
of the _Ecole Polytechnique_, who had remained for years at that
establishment as a _repetiteur_ of Transcendant Analysis and
Rationalistic Mechanics—awoke one fine morning with the very irrational
idea of becoming a prophet. In America, prophets can be met with at
every street-corner; in Europe, they are as rare as black swans. But
France is the land of novelties. Auguste Comte became a prophet; and
so infectious is fashion, sometimes, that even in sober England he was
considered, for a certain time, the Newton of the nineteenth century.
The epidemic extended, and for the time being, it spread like wildfire
over Germany, England, and America. It found adepts in France, but the
excitement did not last long with these. The prophet needed money: the
disciples were unwilling to furnish it. The fever of admiration for a
religion without a God cooled off as quickly as it had come on; of all
the enthusiastic apostles of the prophet, there remained but one worthy
any attention. It was the famous philologist Littré, a member of the
French Institute, and a _would-be_ member of the Imperial Academy of
Sciences, but whom the archbishop of Orleans maliciously prevented from
becoming one of the “Immortals.”[152]
The philosopher-mathematician—the high-priest of the “religion of the
future” taught his doctrine as do all his brother-prophets of our modern
days. He deified “woman,” and furnished her with an altar; but the
goddess had to pay for its use. The rationalists had laughed at the
mental aberration of Fourier; they had laughed at the St. Simonists;
and their scorn for Spiritualism knew no bounds. The same rationalists
and materialists were caught, like so many empty-headed sparrows, by
the bird-lime of the new prophet’s rhetoric. A longing for some kind of
divinity, a craving for the “unknown,” is a feeling congenital in man;
hence the worst atheists seem not to be exempt from it. Deceived by the
outward brilliancy of this _ignus fatuus_, the disciples followed it
until they found themselves floundering in a bottomless morass.
Covering themselves with the mask of a pretended erudition, the
Positivists of this country have organized themselves into clubs and
committees with the design of uprooting Spiritualism, while pretending
to impartially investigate it.
Too timid to openly challenge the churches and the Christian doctrine,
they endeavor to sap that upon which all religion is based—man’s faith
in God and his own immortality. Their policy is to ridicule that which
affords an unusual basis for such a faith—phenomenal Spiritualism. {77}
Attacking it at its weakest side, they make the most of its lack of
an inductive method, and of the exaggerations that are to be found in
the transcendental doctrines of its propagandists. Taking advantage
of its unpopularity, and displaying a courage as furious and out of
place as that of the errant knight of La Mancha, they claim recognition
as philanthropists and benefactors who would crush out a monstrous
superstition.
Let us see in what degree Comte’s boasted religion of the future is
superior to Spiritualism, and how much less likely its advocates are
to need the refuge of those lunatic asylums which they officiously
recommend for the mediums whom they have been so solicitous
about. Before beginning, let us call attention to the fact that
three-fourths of the disgraceful features exhibited in modern
Spiritualism are directly traceable to the materialistic adventurers
pretending to be spiritualists. Comte has fulsomely depicted the
“artificially-fecundated” woman of the future. She is but elder sister
to the Cyprian ideal of the free-lovers. The immunity against the
future offered by the teachings of his moon-struck disciples, has
inoculated some pseudo-spiritualists to such an extent as to lead
them to form communistic associations. None, however, have proved
long-lived. Their leading feature being generally a materialistic
animalism, gilded over with a thin leaf of Dutch-metal philosophy and
tricked out with a combination of hard Greek names, the community could
not prove anything else than a failure.
Plato, in the fifth book of the _Republic_, suggests a method for
improving the human race by the elimination of the unhealthy or
deformed individuals, and by coupling the better specimens of both
sexes. It was not to be expected that the “genius of our century,” even
were he a prophet, would squeeze out of his brain anything entirely new.
Comte was a mathematician. Cleverly combining several old utopias, he
colored the whole, and, improving on Plato’s idea, materialized it, and
presented the world with the greatest monstrosity that ever emanated
from a human mind!
We beg the reader to keep in view, that we do not attack Comte as a
philosopher, but as a professed reformer. In the irremediable darkness
of his political, philosophical and religious views, we often meet
with isolated observations and remarks in which profound logic and
judiciousness of thought rival the brilliancy of their interpretation.
But then, these dazzle you like flashes of lightning on a gloomy
night, to leave you, the next moment, more in the dark than ever. If
condensed and repunctuated, his several works might produce, on the
whole, a volume of very original aphorisms, giving a very clear and
really clever definition of most of our social evils; but it would be
vain to seek, either through the tedious circumlocution of the six
volumes of his _Cours de Philosophie Positive_, or in that parody on {78}
priesthood, in the form of a dialogue—_The Catechism of the Religion
of Positivism_—any idea suggestive of even provisional remedies for
such evils. His disciples suggest that the sublime doctrines of their
prophet were not intended _for the vulgar_. Comparing the dogmas
preached by Positivism with their practical exemplifications by its
apostles, we must confess the possibility of some very achromatic
doctrine being at the bottom of it. While the “high-priest” preaches
that “woman must cease to be the _female_ of the man;”[153] while
the theory of the positivist legislators on marriage and the family,
chiefly consists in making the woman the “mere companion of man by
ridding her of every maternal function;”[154] and while they are
preparing against the future a substitute for that function by applying
“to the _chaste_ woman” “a _latent force_,”[155] some of its lay
priests openly preach polygamy, and others affirm that their doctrines
are the quintessence of spiritual philosophy.
In the opinion of the Romish clergy, who labor under a chronic
nightmare of the devil, Comte offers his “woman of the future” to
the possession of the “incubi.”[156] In the opinion of more prosaic
persons, the _Divinity_ of Positivism, must henceforth be regarded as a
biped broodmare. Even Littré made prudent restrictions while accepting
the apostleship of this marvellous religion. This is what he wrote in
1859:
“M. Comte not only thought that he found the principles, traced the
outlines, and furnished the method, but that he had deduced the
consequences and constructed the social and religious edifice of the
future. It is in this _second_ division that we make our reservations,
declaring, at the same time, that we accept as an inheritance, the
whole of the first.”[157]
Further, he says: “M. Comte, in a grand work entitled the _System
of the Positive Philosophy_, established the basis of a philosophy
[?] which must finally supplant every theology and the whole of
metaphysics. Such a work necessarily contains a direct application
to the government of societies; as it _has nothing arbitrary in it_
[?] and as we find therein a _real science_ [?], my adhesion to the
principles involves my adhesion to the essential consequences.”
M. Littré has shown himself in the light of a true son of his prophet.
Indeed the whole system of Comte appears to us to have been built on
a play of words. When they say “_Positivism_” read _Nihilism_; when
you hear the word _chastity_, know that it means _impudicity_; and so {79}
on. Being a religion based on a theory of negation, its adherents can
hardly carry it out practically without saying white when meaning black!
“Positive Philosophy,” continues Littré, “does not accept atheism, for
the atheist is not a really-emancipated mind, but is, in his own way, a
theologian still; he gives his explanation about the essence of things;
_he knows_ how they begun!... Atheism is Pantheism; this system is
quite theological yet, and thus belongs to the ancient party.”[158]
It really would be losing time to quote any more of these paradoxical
dissertations. Comte attained to the apotheosis of absurdity and
inconsistency when, after inventing his philosophy, he named it a
“Religion.” And, as is usually the case, the disciples have surpassed
the reformer—in absurdity. Supposititious philosophers, who shine in
the American academies of Comte, like a _lampyris noctiluca_ beside a
planet, leave us in no doubt as to their belief, and contrast “that
system of thought and life” elaborated by the French apostle with the
“idiocy” of Spiritualism; of course to the advantage of the former.
“To destroy, you must replace;” exclaims the author of the _Cathechism
of the Religion of Positivism_, quoting Cassaudiere, by the way,
without crediting him with the thought; and his disciples proceed to
show by what sort of a loathsome system they are anxious to replace
Christianity, Spiritualism, and even Science.
“Positivism,” perorates one of them, “is an _integral_ doctrine. It
rejects completely all forms of theological and metaphysical belief;
all forms of supernaturalism, and thus—Spiritualism. The true positive
spirit consists in substituting the study of the invariable laws of
phenomena for that of their so-called causes, whether proximate or
primary. On this ground it equally rejects atheism; _for the atheist is
at bottom a theologian_,” he adds, plagiarizing sentences from Littré’s
works: “the atheist does not reject the problems of theology, only the
solution of these, and so he is illogical. We _Positivists_ reject the
problem in our turn on the ground that it is utterly inaccessible to
the intellect, and we would only waste our strength in a vain search
for first and final causes. As you see, Positivism gives a complete
explanation [?] of the world, of man, his duty and destiny....”![159]
Very brilliant this; and now, by way of contrast, we will quote what a
really great scientist, Professor Hare, thinks of this system. “Comte’s
positive philosophy,” he says, “after all, is merely negative. It is
admitted by Comte, that he knows nothing of _the sources_ and _causes_
of nature’s laws; that their origination is so perfectly inscrutable as {80}
to make it idle to take up time in any scrutiny for that purpose....
Of course his doctrine makes him avowedly a thorough ignoramus, as to
the causes of laws, or the means by which they are established, and can
have no basis but the _negative_ argument above stated, in objecting
to the facts ascertained in relation to the spiritual creation. Thus,
while allowing the atheist his material dominion, Spiritualism will
erect within and above the same space a dominion of an importance as
much greater as eternity is to the average duration of human life, and
as the boundless regions of the fixed stars are to the habitable area
of this globe.”[160]
In short, Positivism proposes to itself to destroy Theology,
Metaphysics, Spiritualism, Atheism, Materialism, Pantheism, and
Science, and it must finally end in destroying itself. De Mirville
thinks that according to Positivism, “order will begin to reign in
the human mind only on the day when psychology will become a sort of
_cerebral physics_, and history a kind of social physics.” The modern
Mohammed first disburdens man and woman of God and their own soul, and
then unwittingly disembowels his own doctrine with the too sharp sword
of metaphysics, which all the time he thought he was avoiding, thus
letting out every vestige of philosophy.
In 1864, M. Paul Janet, a member of the Institute, pronounced a
discourse upon Positivism, in which occur the following remarkable
words:
“There are some minds which were brought up and fed on exact and
positive sciences, but which feel nevertheless, a sort of instinctive
impulse for philosophy. They can satisfy this instinct but with
elements that they have already on hand. Ignorant in psychological
sciences, having studied only the rudiments of metaphysics, they
nevertheless are determined to fight these same metaphysics as well as
psychology, of which they know as little as of the other. After this is
done, they will imagine themselves to have founded a Positive Science,
while the truth is that they have only built up a new mutilated and
incomplete metaphysical theory. They arrogate to themselves the
authority and infallibility properly belonging alone to the true
sciences, those which are based on experience and calculations; but
they lack such an authority, for their ideas, defective as they may be,
nevertheless belong to the same class as those which they attack. Hence
the weakness of their situation, the final ruin of their ideas, which
are soon scattered to the four winds.”[161]
The Positivists of America have joined hands in their untiring efforts
to overthrow Spiritualism. To show their impartiality, though, they
propound such novel queries as follows: “ ... how much rationality {81}
is there in the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception, the Trinity
and Transubstantiation, if submitted to the tests of physiology,
mathematics, and chemistry?” and they “undertake to say, that the
vagaries of Spiritualism do not surpass in absurdity these eminently
respectable beliefs.” Very well. But there is neither theological
absurdity nor spiritualistic delusion that can match in depravity
and imbecility that positivist notion of “artificial fecundation.”
Denying to themselves all thought on primal and final causes, they
apply their insane theories to the construction of an impossible woman
for the worship of future generations; the living, immortal companion
of man they would replace with the Indian female fetich of the Obeah,
the wooden idol that is stuffed every day with serpents’ eggs, to be
hatched by the heat of the sun!
And now, if we are permitted to ask in the name of common-sense, why
should Christian mystics be taxed with credulity or the spiritualists
be consigned to Bedlam, when a _religion_ embodying such revolting
absurdity finds disciples even among Academicians?—when such insane
rhapsodies as the following can be uttered by the mouth of Comte and
admired by his followers: “My eyes are dazzled;—they open each day more
and more to the increasing coincidence between the social advent of
the _feminine mystery_, and the mental decadence of the eucharistical
sacrament. Already the Virgin has dethroned God in the minds of
Southern Catholics! Positivism realizes the Utopia of the mediæval
ages, by representing all the members of the great family as the issue
of a _virgin mother without a husband_....” And again, after giving
the _modus operandi_: “The development of the _new process_ would soon
cause to spring up a caste without heredity, better adapted than vulgar
procreation to the recruitment of spiritual chiefs, or even temporal
ones, whose authority would then rest upon an origin truly superior,
which would not _shrink from an investigation_.”[162]
To this we might inquire with propriety, whether there has ever
been found in the “vagaries of Spiritualism,” or the mysteries of
Christianity, anything more preposterous than this ideal “coming race.”
If the tendency of materialism is not grossly belied by the behavior
of some of its advocates, those who publicly preach polygamy, we fancy
that whether or not there will ever be a sacerdotal stirp so begotten,
we shall see no end of progeny,—the offspring of “mothers without
husbands.”
How natural that a philosophy which could engender such a caste of
didactic incubi, should express through the pen of one of its most
garrulous essayists, the following sentiments: “This is a sad, a very {82}
sad age,[163] full of dead and dying faiths; full of idle prayers sent
out in vain search for the departing gods. But oh! it is a glorious
age, full of the golden light which streams from the ascending sun
of science! What shall we do for those who are shipwrecked in faith,
_bankrupt in intellect_, but ... who seek comfort in the _mirage of
spiritualism_, the delusions of transcendentalism, or the _will o’ the
wisp_ of mesmerism?...”
The _ignis fatuus_, now so favorite an image with many dwarf
philosophers, had itself to struggle for recognition. It is not so long
since the now familiar phenomenon was stoutly denied by a correspondent
of the London _Times_, whose assertions carried weight, till the work
of Dr. Phipson, supported by the testimony of Beccaria, Humboldt, and
other naturalists, set the question at rest.[164] The Positivists
should choose some happier expression, and follow the discoveries of
science at the same time. As to mesmerism, it has been adopted in many
parts of Germany, and is publicly used with undeniable success in more
than one hospital; its occult properties have been proved and are
believed in by physicians, whose eminence, learning, and merited fame,
the self-complacent lecturer on mediums and insanity cannot well hope
to equal.
We have to add but a few more words before we drop this unpleasant
subject. We have found Positivists particularly happy in the delusion
that the _greatest scientists_ of Europe were Comtists. How far their
claims may be just, as regards other _savants_, we do not know, but
Huxley, whom all Europe considers one of her greatest scientists,
most decidedly declines that honor, and Dr. Maudsley, of London,
follows suit. In a lecture delivered by the former gentleman in 1868,
in Edinburg, on _The Physical Basis of Life_, he even appears to be
very much shocked at the liberty taken by the Archbishop of York, in
identifying him with Comte’s philosophy. “So far as I am concerned,”
says Mr. Huxley, “the most reverend prelate might dialectically hew
Mr. Comte in pieces, as a modern Agag, and I would not attempt to stay
his hand. In so far as my study of what specially characterizes the
positive philosophy has led me, I find, therein, little or nothing
of any scientific value, and a great deal which is _as thoroughly
antagonistic to the very essence of science as anything in ultramontane
Catholicism_. In fact, Comte’s philosophy in practice might be
compendiously described as _Catholicism minus Christianity_.” Further,
Huxley even becomes wrathful, and falls to accusing Scotchmen of
ingratitude for having allowed the Bishop to mistake Comte for the
founder of a philosophy which belonged by right to Hume. “It was {83}
enough,” exclaims the professor, “to make David Hume turn in his
grave, that here, almost within earshot of his house, an interested
audience should have listened, without a murmur, whilst his most
characteristic doctrines were attributed to a French writer of fifty
years later date, in whose _dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the
vigor of thought and the clearness of style_....”[165]
Poor Comte! It appears that the highest representatives of his
philosophy are now reduced, at least in this country, to “one
physicist, one physician who has made a specialty of nervous diseases,
and one lawyer.” A very witty critic nicknamed this desperate trio,
“_an anomalistic triad_, which, amid its arduous labors, finds no time
to acquaint itself with the principles and laws of their language.”[166]
To close the question, the Positivists neglect no means to overthrow
Spiritualism in favor of their _religion_. Their high priests are
made to blow their trumpets untiringly; and though the walls of no
modern Jericho are ever likely to tumble down in dust before their
blast, still they neglect no means to attain the desired object. Their
paradoxes are unique, and their accusations against spiritualists
irresistible in logic. In a recent lecture, for instance, it was
remarked that: “The exclusive exercise of _religious_ instinct is
productive of sexual immorality. Priests, monks, nuns, saints, _media_,
ecstatics, and devotees are famous for their impurities.”[167]
We are happy to remark that, while Positivism loudly proclaims itself
a religion, Spiritualism has never pretended to be anything more than
a science, a growing philosophy, or rather a research in hidden and
as yet unexplained forces in nature. The objectiveness of its various
phenomena has been demonstrated by more than one genuine representative
of science, and as ineffectually denied by her “monkeys.”
Finally, it may be remarked of our Positivists who deal so
unceremoniously with every psychological phenomenon, that they are like
Samuel Butler’s rhetorician, who
“ ... could not ope
His mouth, but out there flew a _trope_.”
We would there were no occasion to extend the critic’s glance beyond
the circle of triflers and pedants who improperly wear the title of {84}
men of science. But it is also undeniable that the treatment of new
subjects by those whose rank is high in the scientific world but
too often passes unchallenged, when it is amenable to censure. The
cautiousness bred of a fixed habit of experimental research, the
tentative advance from opinion to opinion, the weight accorded to
recognized authorities—all foster a conservatism of thought which
naturally runs into dogmatism. The price of scientific progress is too
commonly the martyrdom or ostracism of the innovator. The reformer
of the laboratory must, so to speak, carry the citadel of custom
and prejudice at the point of the bayonet. It is rare that even a
postern-door is left ajar by a friendly hand. The noisy protests and
impertinent criticisms of the little people of the antechamber of
science, he can afford to let pass unnoticed; the hostility of the
other class is a real peril that the innovator must face and overcome.
Knowledge does increase apace, but the great body of scientists are not
entitled to the credit. In every instance they have done their best to
shipwreck the new discovery, together with the discoverer. The palm
is to him who has won it by individual courage, intuitiveness, and
persistency. Few are the forces in nature which, when first announced,
were not laughed at, and then set aside as absurd and unscientific.
Humbling the pride of those who had not discovered anything, the just
claims of those who have been denied a hearing until negation was no
longer prudent, and then—alas for poor, selfish humanity! these very
discoverers too often became the opponents and oppressors, in their
turn, of still more recent explorers in the domain of natural law!
So, step by step, mankind move around their circumscribed circle of
knowledge, science constantly correcting its mistakes, and readjusting
on the following day the erroneous theories of the preceding one. This
has been the case, not merely with questions pertaining to psychology,
such as mesmerism, in its dual sense of a physical and spiritual
phenomenon, but even with such discoveries as directly related to exact
sciences, and have been easy to demonstrate.
What can we do? Shall we recall the disagreeable past? Shall we point
to mediæval scholars conniving with the clergy to deny the Heliocentric
theory, for fear of hurting an ecclesiastical dogma? Must we recall
how learned conchologists once denied that the fossil shells, found
scattered over the face of the earth, were ever inhabited by living
animals at all? How the naturalists of the eighteenth century declared
these but mere _fac-similes_ of animals? And how these naturalists
fought and quarrelled and battled and called each other names, over
these venerable mummies of the ancient ages for nearly a century,
until Buffon settled the question by proving to the negators that they
were mistaken? Surely an oyster-shell is anything but transcendental,
and ought to be quite a palpable subject for any exact study; and if {85}
the scientists could not agree on that, we can hardly expect them to
believe at all that evanescent forms,—of hands, faces, and whole bodies
sometimes—appear at the seances of spiritual mediums, when the latter
are honest.
There exists a certain work which might afford very profitable reading
for the leisure hours of skeptical men of science. It is a book
published by Flourens, the Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy,
called _Histoire des Recherches de Buffon_. The author shows in it how
the great naturalist combated and finally conquered the advocates of
the _fac-simile_ theory; and how they still went on denying everything
under the sun, until at times the learned body fell into a fury, an
epidemic of negation. It denied Franklin and his refined electricity;
laughed at Fulton and his concentrated steam; voted the engineer
Perdonnet a strait-jacket for his offer to build railroads; stared
Harvey out of countenance; and proclaimed Bernard de Palissy “as stupid
as one of his own pots!”
In his oft-quoted work, _Conflict between Religion and Science_,
Professor Draper shows a decided propensity to kick the beam of the
scales of justice, and lay all such impediments to the progress
of science at the door of the clergy alone. With all respect and
admiration due to this eloquent writer and scientist, we must protest
and give every one his just due. Many of the above-enumerated
discoveries are mentioned by the author of the _Conflict_. In every
case he denounces the bitter resistance on the part of the clergy, and
keeps silent on the like opposition invariably experienced by every new
discoverer at the hands of science. His claim on behalf of science that
“knowledge is power” is undoubtedly just. But abuse of power, whether
it proceeds from excess of wisdom or ignorance is alike obnoxious in
its effects. Besides, the clergy are silenced now. Their protests
would at this day be scarcely noticed in the world of science. But
while theology is kept in the background, the scientists have seized
the sceptre of despotism with both hands, and they use it, like the
cherubim and flaming sword of Eden, to keep the people away from the
tree of immortal life and within this world of perishable matter.
The editor of the London _Spiritualist_, in answer to Dr. Gully’s
criticism of Mr. Tyndall’s fire-mist theory, remarks that if the entire
body of spiritualists are not roasting alive at Smithfield in the
present century, it is to science alone that we are indebted for this
crowning mercy. Well, let us admit that the scientists are indirectly
public benefactors in this case, to the extent that the burning of
erudite scholars is no longer fashionable. But is it unfair to ask
whether the disposition manifested toward the spiritualistic doctrine
by Faraday, Tyndall, Huxley, Agassiz, and others, does not warrant the
suspicion that if these learned gentlemen and their following had the {86}
unlimited power once held by the Inquisition, spiritualists would not
have reason to feel as easy as they do now? Even supposing that they
should not roast believers in the existence of a spirit-world—it being
unlawful to cremate people alive—would they not send every spiritualist
they could to Bedlam? Do they not call us “incurable monomaniacs,”
“hallucinated fools,” “fetich-worshippers,” and like characteristic
names? Really, we cannot see what should have stimulated to such extent
the gratitude of the editor of the London _Spiritualist_, for the
benevolent tutelage of the men of science. We believe that the recent
Lankester-Donkin-Slade prosecution in London ought at last to open the
eyes of hopeful spiritualists, and show them that stubborn materialism
is often more stupidly bigoted than religious fanaticism itself.
One of the cleverest productions of Professor Tyndall’s pen is his
caustic essay upon _Martineau and Materialism_. At the same time it
is one which in future years the author will doubtless be only too
ready to trim of certain unpardonable grossnesses of expression. For
the moment, however, we will not deal with these, but consider what he
has to say of the phenomenon of consciousness. He quotes this question
from Mr. Martineau: “A man can say ‘I feel, I think, I love;’ but how
does consciousness infuse itself into the problem?” And thus answers:
“The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts
of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a
molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess
the intellectual organ nor apparently any rudiments of the organ, which
would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from one to the
other. They appear together, but _we do not know why_. Were our minds
and senses so expanded, strengthened and illuminated, as to enable us
to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of
following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric
discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with
the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far
as ever from the solution of the problem, ‘How are these physical
processes connected with the facts of consciousness?’ The chasm
between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually
impassable.”[168]
This chasm, as impassable to Professor Tyndall as the fire-mist where
the scientist is confronted with his unknowable cause, is a barrier
only to men without spiritual intuitions. Professor Buchanan’s
_Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System of Anthropology_,
a work written so far back as 1854, contains suggestions that, if {87}
the sciolists would only heed them, would show how a bridge can be
thrown across this dreadful abyss. It is one of the bins in which the
thought-seed of future harvests is stored up by a frugal present.
But the edifice of materialism is based entirely upon that gross
sub-structure—the reason. _When they have stretched its capabilities
to their utmost limits, its teachers can at best only disclose to
us an universe of molecules animated by an occult impulse._ What
better diagnosis of the ailment of our scientists could be asked
than can be derived from Professor Tyndall’s analysis of the mental
state of the Ultramontane clergy by a very slight change of names.
For “spiritual guides” read “scientists,” for “prescientific past”
substitute “materialistic present,” say “spirit” for “science,” and in
the following paragraph we have a life portrait of the modern man of
science drawn by the hand of a master:
“ ... Their spiritual guides live so exclusively in the prescientific
past, that even the really strong intellects among them are reduced to
atrophy as regards scientific truth. Eyes they have and see not; ears
they have and hear not; for both eyes and ears are taken possession
of by the sights and sounds of another age. In relation to science,
the Ultramontane brain, through lack of exercise, is virtually the
undeveloped brain of the child. And thus it is that as children in
scientific knowledge, but as potent wielders of spiritual power among
the ignorant, they countenance and enforce practices sufficient to
bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of the more intelligent among
themselves.”[169] The Occultist holds this mirror up to science that it
may see how it looks itself.
Since history recorded the first laws established by man, there never
was yet a people, whose code did not hang the issues of the life and
death of its citizens upon the testimony of two or three credible
witnesses. “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall
he that is worthy of death be put to death,”[170] says Moses, the
first legislator we meet in ancient history. “The laws which put to
death a man on the deposition of one witness are fatal to freedom” says
Montesquieu. “Reason claims there should be two witnesses.”[171]
Thus the value of evidence has been tacitly agreed upon and accepted
in every country. But the scientists will not accept the evidence
of the million against one. In vain do hundreds of thousands of men
testify to facts. _Oculos habent et non vident!_ They are determined
to remain blind and deaf. Thirty years of practical demonstrations and
the testimony of some millions of believers in America and Europe are
certainly entitled to some degree of respect and attention. Especially {88}
so, when the verdict of twelve spiritualists, influenced by the
evidence testified to by any two others, is competent to send even
a scientist to swing on the gallows for a crime, perhaps committed
under the impulse supplied by a commotion among the cerebral molecules
unrestrained by a consciousness of future moral RETRIBUTION.
Toward science as a whole, as a divine goal, the whole civilized world
ought to look with respect and veneration; for science alone can enable
man to understand the Deity by the true appreciation of his works.
“Science _is the understanding of truth or facts_,” says Webster; “it
is an investigation of truth _for its own sake_ and a pursuit of pure
knowledge.” If the definition be correct, then the majority of our
modern scholars have proved false to their goddess. “Truth for its own
sake!” And where should the keys to every truth in nature be searched
for, unless in the hitherto unexplored mystery of psychology? Alas!
that in questioning nature so many men of science should daintily sort
over her facts and choose only such for study as best bolster their
prejudices.
Psychology has no worse enemies than the medical school denominated
_allopathists_. It is in vain to remind them that of the so-called
exact sciences, medicine, confessedly, least deserves the name.
Although of all branches of medical knowledge, psychology ought more
than any other to be studied by physicians, since without its help
their practice degenerates into mere guess-work and chance-intuitions,
they almost wholly neglect it. The least dissent from their promulgated
doctrines is resented as a heresy, and though an unpopular and
unrecognized curative method should be shown to save thousands,
they seem, as a body, disposed to cling to accepted hypotheses and
prescriptions, and decry both innovator and innovation until they get
the mint-stamp of _regularity_. Thousands of unlucky patients may die
meanwhile, but so long as professional honor is vindicated, this is a
matter of secondary importance.
Theoretically the most benignant, at the same time no other school of
science exhibits so many instances of petty prejudice, materialism,
atheism, and malicious stubbornness as medicine. The predilections
and patronage of the leading physicians are scarcely ever measured
by the usefulness of a discovery. Bleeding, by leeching, cupping,
and the lancet, had its epidemic of popularity, but at last fell
into merited disgrace; water, now freely given to fevered patients,
was once denied them, warm baths were superseded by cold water, and
for a while hydropathy was a mania. Peruvian bark—which a modern
defender of biblical authority seriously endeavors to identify with
the paradisiacal “Tree of Life,”[172] and which was brought to Spain {89}
in 1632—was neglected for years. The Church, for once, showed more
discrimination than science. At the request of Cardinal de Lugo,
Innocent X. gave it the prestige of his powerful name.
In an old book entitled _Demonologia_, the author cites many instances
of important remedies which being neglected at first afterward rose
into notice through mere accident. He also shows that most of the new
discoveries in medicine have turned out to be no more than “the revival
and reädoption of very ancient practices.” During the last century,
the root of the male fern was sold and widely advertised as a secret
nostrum by a Madame Nouffleur, a female quack, for the effective cure
of the tapeworm. The secret was bought by Louis XV. for a large sum of
money; after which the physicians discovered that it was recommended
and administered in that disease by Galen. The famous powder of the
Duke of Portland for the gout, was the _diacentaureon_ of Cælius
Aurelianus. Later it was ascertained that it had been used by the
earliest medical writers, who had found it in the writings of the old
Greek philosophers. So with the _eau medicinale_ of Dr. Husson, whose
name it bears. This famous remedy for the gout was recognized under
its new mask to be the _Colchicum autumnale_, or meadow saffron, which
is identical with a plant called _Hermodactylus_, whose merits as a
certain antidote to gout were recognized and defended by Oribasius,
a great physician of the fourth century, and Ætius Amidenus, another
eminent physician of Alexandria (fifth century). Subsequently it was
abandoned and fell into disfavor only because it was _too old_ to be
considered good by the members of the medical faculties that flourished
toward the end of the last century!
Even the great Magendie, the wise physiologist, was not above
discovering that which had already been discovered and found good
by the oldest physicians. His proposed remedy against consumption,
namely, the use of prussic acid, may be found in the works of Lumæus,
_Amenitates Academicæ_, vol. iv., in which he shows distilled laurel
water to have been used with great profit in pulmonary consumption.
Pliny also assures us that the extract of almonds and cherry-pits had
cured the most obstinate coughs. As the author of _Demonologia_ well
remarks, it may be asserted with perfect safety that “all the various
secret preparations of opium which have been lauded as the discovery of
modern times, may be recognized in the works of ancient authors,” who
see themselves so discredited in our days.
It is admitted on all hands that from time immemorial the distant
East was the land of knowledge. Not even in Egypt were botany and
mineralogy so extensively studied as by the savants of archaic Middle
Asia. Sprengel, unjust and prejudiced as he shows himself in everything
else, confesses this much in his _Histoire de la Médecine_. And yet, {90}
notwithstanding this, whenever the subject of magic is discussed, that
of India has rarely suggested itself to any one, for of its general
practice in that country less is known than among any other ancient
people. With the Hindus it was and is more esoteric, if possible,
than it was even among the Egyptian priests. So sacred was it deemed
that its existence was only half admitted, and it was only practiced
in public emergencies. _It was more than a religious matter, for it
was considered divine._ The Egyptian hierophants, notwithstanding the
practice of a stern and pure morality, could not be compared for one
moment with the ascetical Gymnosophists, either in holiness of life
or miraculous powers developed in them by the supernatural adjuration
of everything earthly. By those who knew them well they were held in
still greater reverence than the magians of Chaldea. Denying themselves
the simplest comforts of life, they dwelt in woods, and led the life
of the most secluded hermits,[173] while their Egyptian brothers at
least congregated together. Notwithstanding the slur thrown by history
on all who practiced magic and divination, it has proclaimed them as
possessing the greatest secrets in medical knowledge and unsurpassed
skill in its practice. Numerous are the volumes preserved in Hindu
convents, in which are recorded the proofs of their learning. To
attempt to say whether these Gymnosophists were the real founders of
magic in India, or whether they only practiced what had passed to them
as an inheritance from the earliest Rishis[174]—the seven primeval
sages—would be regarded as a mere speculation by exact scholars. “The
care which they took in educating youth, in familiarizing it with
generous and virtuous sentiments, did them peculiar honor, and their
maxims and discourses, as recorded by historians, prove that they were
expert in matters of philosophy, metaphysics, astronomy, morality, and
religion,” says a modern writer. They preserved their dignity under the
sway of the most powerful princes, whom they would _not_ condescend to
visit, or to trouble for the slightest favor. If the latter desired
the advice or the prayers of the holy men, they were either obliged
to go themselves, or to send messengers. To these men no secret power
of either plant or mineral was unknown. They had fathomed nature to
its depths, while psychology and physiology were to them open books,
and the result was that science or machagiotia that is now termed, so
superciliously, _magic_.
While the miracles recorded in the Bible have become accepted facts {91}
with the Christians, to disbelieve which is regarded as infidelity, the
narratives of wonders and prodigies found in the _Atharva-Veda_,[175]
either provoke their contempt or are viewed as evidences of
diabolism. And yet, in more than one respect, and notwithstanding the
unwillingness of certain Sanscrit scholars, we can show the identity
between the two. Moreover, as the Vedas have now been proved by
scholars to antedate the Jewish _Bible_ by many ages, the inference is
an easy one that if one of them has borrowed from the other, the Hindu
sacred books are not to be charged with plagiarism.
First of all, their cosmogony shows how erroneous has been the opinion
prevalent among the civilized nations that Brahma was ever considered
by the Hindus their chief or Supreme God. Brahma is a secondary deity,
and like Jehovah is “a _mover of the waters_.” He is the _creating_
god, and has in his allegorical representations four heads, answering
to the four cardinal points. He is the demiurgos, the _architect_ of
the world. “In the primordiate state of the creation,” says Polier’s
_Mythologie des Indous_, “the rudimental universe, submerged in water,
reposed in the bosom of the Eternal. Sprang from this chaos and
darkness, Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a lotus-leaf
floated (moved?) upon the waters, unable to discern anything but water
and darkness.” This is as identical as possible with the Egyptian
cosmogony, which shows in its opening sentences Athtor[176] or Mother
Night (which represents illimitable darkness) as the primeval element
which covered the infinite abyss, animated by water and the universal
spirit of the Eternal, dwelling alone in Chaos. As in the Jewish
Scriptures, the history of the creation opens with the spirit of God
and his creative emanation—another Deity.[177] Perceiving such a
dismal state of things, Brahma soliloquizes in consternation: “Who
am I? Whence came I?” Then he hears a voice: “Direct your prayer to
Bhagavant—the Eternal, known, also, as Parabrahma.” Brahma, rising from
his natatory position, seats himself upon the lotus in an attitude
of contemplation, and reflects upon the Eternal, who, pleased with
this evidence of piety, disperses the primeval darkness and opens
his understanding. “After this Brahma issues from the universal
egg—(infinite chaos) as _light_, for his understanding is now opened,
and he sets himself to work; he _moves_ on the eternal waters, with the
spirit of God within himself; in his capacity of _mover_ of the waters
he is _Narayana_.”
The lotus, the sacred flower of the Egyptians, as well as the Hindus,
is the symbol of Horus as it is that of Brahma. No temples in Thibet {92}
or Nepaul are found without it; and the meaning of this symbol is
extremely suggestive. The sprig of _lilies_ placed in the hand of the
archangel, who offers them to the Virgin Mary, in the pictures of
the “Annunciation,” have in their esoteric symbolism precisely the
same meaning. We refer the reader to Sir William Jones.[178] With the
Hindus, the lotus is the emblem of the productive power of nature,
through the agency of fire and water (spirit and matter). “Eternal!”
says a verse in the _Bhagaveda Gita_, “I see Brahma the creator
enthroned in _thee_ above the lotus!” and Sir W. Jones shows that the
seeds of the lotus contain—even before they germinate—perfectly-formed
leaves, the miniature shapes of what one day, as perfected plants,
they will become; or, as the author of _The Heathen Religion_,
has it—“nature thus giving us a specimen of _preformation_ of its
productions;” adding further that “the seed of all _phœnogamous_
plants bearing _proper_ flowers, contain _an embryo plantlet ready
formed_.”[179]
With the Buddhists, it has the same signification. Maha-Maya, or
Maha-Deva, the mother of Gautama Bhudda, had the birth of her son
announced to her by Bhôdisât (the spirit of Buddha), who appeared
beside her couch with a _lotus_ in his hand. Thus, also, Osiris and
Horus are represented by the Egyptians constantly in association with
the lotus-flower.
These facts all go to show the identical parentage of this idea in
the three religious systems, Hindu, Egyptian and Judaico-Christian.
Wherever the mystic water-lily (lotus) is employed, it signifies the
emanation of the objective from the concealed, or subjective—the
eternal thought of the ever-invisible Deity passing from the abstract
into the concrete or visible form. For as soon as darkness was
dispersed and “there was light,” Brahma’s understanding was opened, and
he saw in the ideal world (which had hitherto lain eternally concealed
in the Divine thought) the archetypal forms of all the infinite future
things that would be called into existence, and hence become visible.
At this first stage of action, Brahma had not yet become the architect,
the builder of the universe, for he had, like the architect, to first
acquaint himself with the plan, and realize the ideal forms which were
buried in the bosom of the Eternal One, as the future lotus-leaves
are concealed within the seed of that plant. And it is in this idea
that we must look for the origin and explanation of the verse in the
Jewish cosmogony, which reads: “And God said, Let the earth bring
forth ... the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, _whose seed is
in itself_.” In all the primitive religions, the “Son of the Father”
is the creative God—_i.e._, His thought made visible; and before the
Christian era, from the Trimurti of the Hindus down to the three {93}
kabalistic heads of the Jewish-explained scriptures, the triune godhead
of each nation was fully defined and substantiated in its allegories.
In the Christian creed we see but the artificial engrafting of a new
branch upon the old trunk; and the adoption by the Greek and Roman
churches of the lily-symbol held by the archangel at the moment of
the Annunciation, shows a thought of precisely the same metaphysical
significance.
The lotus is the product of fire (heat) and water, hence the dual
symbol of spirit and matter. The God Brahma is the second person of the
Trinity, as are Jehovah (Adam-Kadmon) and Osiris, or rather Pimander,
or the Power of the Thought Divine, of Hermes; for it is Pimander who
represents the root of all the Egyptian Sun-gods. The Eternal is the
Spirit of Fire, which stirs up and fructifies and develops into a
concrete form everything that is born of water or the primordial earth,
evolved out of Brahma; but the universe is itself Brahma, and he is the
universe. This is the philosophy of Spinoza, which he derived from that
of Pythagoras; and it is the same for which Bruno died a martyr. How
much Christian theology has gone astray from its point of departure,
is demonstrated in this historical fact. Bruno was slaughtered for the
exegesis of a symbol that was adopted by the earliest Christians, and
expounded by the apostles! The sprig of water-lilies of Bhôdisât, and
later of Gabriel, typifying fire and water, or the idea of creation
and generation, is worked into the earliest dogma of the baptismal
sacrament.
Bruno’s and Spinoza’s doctrines are nearly identical, though the words
of the latter are more veiled, and far more cautiously chosen than
those to be found in the theories of the author of the _Causa Principio
et Uno_, or the _Infinito Universo e Mondi_. Both Bruno, who confesses
that the source of his information was Pythagoras, and Spinoza, who,
without acknowledging it as frankly, allows his philosophy to betray
the secret, view the First Cause from the same standpoint. With them,
God is an Entity totally _per se_, an Infinite Spirit, and the only
Being utterly free and independent of either effects or other causes;
who, through that same Will which produced all things and gave the
first impulse to every cosmic law, perpetually keeps in existence and
order everything in the universe. As well as the Hindu Swâbhávikas,
erroneously called Atheists, who assume that all things, men as well as
gods and spirits, were born from Swabhâva, or their own nature,[180] {94}
both Spinoza and Bruno were led to the conclusion that _God is to
be sought for within nature and not without_. For, creation being
proportional to the power of the Creator, the universe as well as its
Creator must be infinite and eternal, one form emanating from its own
essence, and creating in its turn another. The modern commentators
affirm that Bruno, “_unsustained by the hope of another and better
world_, still surrendered his life rather than his convictions;”
thereby allowing it to be inferred that Giordano Bruno had no belief in
the continued existence of man after death. Professor Draper asserts
most positively that Bruno did not believe in the immortality of the
soul. Speaking of the countless victims of the religious intolerance
of the Popish Church, he remarks: “The passage from this life to the
next, though through a hard trial, was the passage from a transient
trouble to eternal happiness.... On his way through the dark valley,
the martyr believed that there was an invisible hand that would
lead him.... For Bruno there was no such support. The philosophical
opinions, for the sake of which he surrendered his life, could give him
no consolation.”[181]
But Professor Draper seems to have a very superficial knowledge of
the true belief of the philosophers. We can leave Spinoza out of the
question, and even allow him to remain in the eyes of his critics an
utter atheist and materialist; for the cautious reserve which he placed
upon himself in his writings makes it extremely difficult for one who
does not read him between the lines, and is not thoroughly acquainted
with the hidden meaning of the Pythagorean metaphysics, to ascertain
what his real sentiments were. But as for Giordano Bruno, if he adhered
to the doctrines of Pythagoras he must have believed in another life,
hence, he could not have been an atheist whose philosophy offered him
no such “consolation.” His accusation and subsequent confession, as
given by Professor Domenico Berti, in his _Life of Bruno_, and compiled
from original documents recently published, prove beyond doubt what
were his _real_ philosophy, creed and doctrines. In common with the
Alexandrian Platonists, and the later Kabalists, he held that Jesus
was a magician in the sense given to this appellation by Porphyry and
Cicero, who call it the _divina sapientia_ (divine knowledge), and by
Philo Judæus, who described the Magi as the most wonderful inquirers
into the hidden mysteries of nature, not in the degrading sense given
to the word magic in our century. In his noble conception, _the Magi
were holy men, who, setting themselves apart from everything else on
this earth, contemplated the divine virtues and understood the divine
nature of the gods and spirits, the more clearly; and so, initiated {95}
others into the same mysteries, which consist in one holding an
uninterrupted intercourse with these invisible beings during life_. But
we will show Bruno’s inmost philosophical convictions better by quoting
fragments from the _accusation_ and his _own confession_.
The charges in the denunciation of Mocenigo, his accuser, are expressed
in the following terms:
“I, Zuane Mocenigo, son of the most illustrious Ser Marcantonio,
denounce to your very reverend fathership, by constraint of my
conscience and by order of my confessor, that I have heard say by
Giordano Bruno, several times when he discoursed with me in my
house, that it is great blasphemy in Catholics to say that the bread
transubstantiates itself into flesh; that he is opposed to the Mass;
that no religion pleases him; that Christ was a wretch (_un tristo_),
and that if he did wicked works to seduce the people he might well
predict that He ought to be impaled; that there is no distinction of
persons in God, and that it would be imperfection in God; that the
world is eternal, and that there are infinite worlds, and that God
makes them continually, because, he says, He desires all He can; that
Christ did apparent miracles and was _a magician_, and so were the
apostles, and that he had a mind to do as much and more than they did;
that Christ showed an unwillingness to die, and shunned death all He
could; that there is no punishment of sin, and that souls created by
the operation of nature pass from one animal to another, and that as
the brute animals are born of corruption, so also are men when after
dissolution they come to be born again.”
Perfidious as they are, the above words plainly indicate the belief of
Bruno in the Pythagorean metempsychosis, which, misunderstood as it is,
still shows a belief in the _survival_ of man in one shape or another.
Further, the accuser says:
“He has shown indications of wishing to make himself the author of a
new sect, under the name of ‘_New Philosophy_.’ He has said that the
Virgin could not have brought forth, and that our Catholic faith is all
full of blasphemies against the majesty of God; that the monks ought
to be deprived of the right of disputation and their revenues, because
they pollute the world; that they are all asses, and that our opinions
are doctrines of asses; that we have no proof that our faith has merit
with God, and that not to do to others what we would not have done to
ourselves suffices for a good life, and that he laughs at all other
sins, and wonders how God can endure so many heresies in Catholics. He
says that he means to apply himself to the art of divination, and make
all the world run after him; that St. Thomas and all the Doctors knew
nothing to compare with him, and that he could ask questions of all the
first theologians of the world that they could not answer.”
To this, the accused philosopher answered by the following profession {96}
of faith, which is that of every disciple of the ancient masters:
“I hold, in brief, to an infinite universe, that is, an effect of
infinite divine power, because I esteemed it a thing unworthy of divine
goodness and power, that, being able to produce besides this world
another and infinite others, it should produce a finite world. Thus I
have declared that there are infinite particular worlds similar to this
of the earth, which, with Pythagoras, I understand to be a star similar
in nature with the moon, the other planets, and the other stars, which
are infinite; and that all those bodies are worlds, and without number,
which thus constitute the infinite universality in an infinite space,
and this is called the infinite universe, in which are innumerable
worlds, so that there is a double kind of infinite greatness in the
universe, and of a multitude of worlds. Indirectly, this may be
understood to be repugnant to the truth according to the true faith.
“Moreover, I place in this universe a universal Providence, by virtue
of which everything lives, vegetates and moves, and stands in its
perfection, and I understand it in two ways; one, in the mode in which
the whole soul is present in the whole and every part of the body, and
this I call nature, the shadow and footprint of divinity; the other,
the ineffable mode in which God, by essence, presence, and power, is in
all and above all, not as part, not as soul, but in mode inexplicable.
“Moreover, I understand all the attributes in divinity to be one and
the same thing. Together with the theologians and great philosophers,
I apprehend three attributes, power, wisdom, and goodness, or, rather,
mind, intellect, love, with which things have first, being, through
the mind; next, ordered and distinct being, through the intellect; and
third, concord and symmetry, through love. Thus I understand being in
all and over all, as there is nothing without participation in being,
and there is no being without essence, just as nothing is beautiful
without beauty being present; thus nothing can be free from the divine
presence, and thus by way of reason, and not by way of substantial
truth, do I understand distinction in divinity.
“Assuming then the world caused and produced, I understand that,
according to all its being, it is dependent upon the first cause, so
that it did not reject the name of creation, which I understand that
Aristotle also has expressed, saying, ‘God is that upon whom the world
and all nature depends,’ so that according to the explanation of St.
Thomas, whether it be eternal or in time, it is, according to all its
being, dependent on the first cause, and nothing in it is independent.
“Next, in regard to what belongs to the true faith, not speaking
philosophically, to come to individuality about the divine persons, {97}
the wisdom and the son of the mind, called by philosophers intellect,
and by theologians the word, which ought to be believed to have taken
on human flesh. But I, abiding in the phrases of philosophy, have not
understood it, but have doubted and held it with inconstant faith, not
that I remember to have shown marks of it in writing nor in speech,
except indirectly from other things, something of it may be gathered as
by way of ingenuity and profession in regard to what may be proved by
reason and concluded from natural light. Thus, in regard to the Holy
Spirit in a third person, I have not been able to comprehend, as ought
to be believed, but, according to the Pythagoric manner, in conformity
to the manner shown by Solomon, I have understood it as the soul of
the universe, or adjoined to the universe according to the saying of
the wisdom of Solomon: ‘The spirit of God filled all the earth, and
that which contains all things,’ all which conforms equally to the
Pythagoric doctrine explained by Virgil in the text of the _Æneid_”:
Principio cœlum ac terras camposque liquentes,
Lucentemque globum Lunæ, Titaniaque astra
Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem;
and the lines following.
“From this spirit, then, which is called the life of the universe, I
understand, in my philosophy, proceeds life and soul to everything
which has life and soul, which, moreover, I understand to be immortal,
as also to bodies, which, as to their substance, are all immortal,
there being no other death than division and congregation, which
doctrine seems expressed in _Ecclesiastes_, where it is said that
‘there is nothing new under the sun; that which is is that which was.’”
Furthermore, Bruno confesses his inability to comprehend the doctrine
of three persons in the godhead, and his doubts of the incarnation
of God in Jesus, but firmly pronounces his belief in the _miracles_
of Christ. How could he, being a Pythagorean philosopher, discredit
them? If, under the merciless constraint of the Inquisition, he, like
Galileo, subsequently recanted, and threw himself upon the clemency of
his ecclesiastical persecutors, we must remember that he spoke like a
man standing between the rack and the fagot, and human nature cannot
always be heroic when the corporeal frame is debilitated by torture and
imprisonment.
But for the opportune appearance of Berti’s authoritative work, we
would have continued to revere Bruno as a martyr, whose bust was
deservedly set high in the Pantheon of Exact Science, crowned with
laurel by the hand of Draper. But now we see that their hero of an {98}
hour is neither atheist, materialist, nor positivist, but simply
a Pythagorean who taught the philosophy of Upper Asia, and claimed
to possess the powers of the magicians, so despised by Draper’s own
school! Nothing more amusing than this _contretemps_ has happened
since the supposed statue of St. Peter was discovered by irreverent
archæologists to be nothing else than the Jupiter of the Capitol, and
Buddha’s identity with the Catholic St. Josaphat was satisfactorily
proven.
Thus, search where we may through the archives of history, we find that
there is no fragment of modern philosophy—whether Newtonian, Cartesian,
Huxleyian or any other—but has been dug from the Oriental mines. Even
Positivism and Nihilism find their prototype in the exoteric portion
of Kapila’s philosophy, as is well remarked by Max Müller. It was the
inspiration of the Hindu sages that penetrated the mysteries of Praguâ
Pâramitâ (perfect wisdom); their hands that rocked the cradle of the
first ancestor of that feeble but noisy child that we have christened
MODERN SCIENCE.
CHAPTER IV. {99}
“I choose the nobler part of Emerson, when, after various
disenchantments, he exclaimed, ‘I covet Truth.’ The gladness of
true heroism visits the heart of him who is really competent to
say this.”
—TYNDALL.
“A testimony is sufficient when it rests on:
1st. A great number of very sensible witnesses who agree in having
seen well.
2d. Who are sane, bodily and mentally.
3d. Who are impartial and disinterested.
4th. Who unanimously agree.
5th. Who solemnly certify to the fact.”—VOLTAIRE, _Dictionnaire
Philosophique_.
The Count Agenor de Gasparin is a devoted Protestant. His battle with
des Mousseaux, de Mirville and other fanatics who laid the whole of
the spiritual phenomena at the door of Satan, was long and fierce.
Two volumes of over fifteen hundred pages are the result, proving the
_effects_, denying the _cause_, and employing superhuman efforts to
invent every other possible explanation that could be suggested rather
than the true one.
The severe rebuke received by the _Journal des Débats_ from M. de
Gasparin, was read by all civilized Europe.[182] After that gentleman
had minutely described numerous manifestations that he had witnessed
himself, this journal very impertinently proposed to the authorities
in France to send all those who, after having read the _fine_ analysis
of the “spiritual hallucinations” published by Faraday, should insist
on crediting this delusion, to the lunatic asylum for _Incurables_.
“Take care,” wrote de Gasparin in answer, “the representatives of the
exact sciences are on their way to become ... the _Inquisitors_ of our
days.... Facts are stronger than Academies. Rejected, denied, mocked,
they nevertheless are facts, and _do_ exist.”[183]
The following affirmations of physical phenomena, as witnessed by
himself and Professor Thury, may be found in de Gasparin’s voluminous
work.
“The experimenters have often seen the legs of the table _glued_, so
to say, to the floor, and, notwithstanding the excitement of those
present, refuse to be moved from their place. On other occasions
they have seen the tables levitated in quite an energetic way. They {100}
heard, with their own ears, loud as well as gentle raps, the former
threatening to shatter the table to pieces on account of their
violence, the latter so soft as to become hardly perceptible.... As to
LEVITATIONS WITHOUT CONTACT, we found means to produce them easily,
and with success.... And such levitations do not pertain to isolated
results. We have reproduced them over THIRTY times.[184] ... One day
the table will turn, and lift its legs successively, its weight being
augmented by a man weighing eighty-seven _kilogrammes_ seated on it;
another time it will remain motionless and _immovable_, notwithstanding
that the person placed on it weighs but sixty.[185] ... On one occasion
we willed it to turn upside down, and it turned over, with its legs in
the air, notwithstanding that our fingers _never touched it once_.”[186]
“It is certain,” remarks de Mirville, “that a man who had repeatedly
witnessed such a phenomenon, could not accept the _fine_ analysis of
the English physicist.”[187]
Since 1850, des Mousseaux and de Mirville, uncompromising Roman
Catholics, have published many volumes whose titles are cleverly
contrived to attract public attention. They betray on the part of the
authors a very serious alarm, which, moreover, they take no pains to
conceal. Were it possible to consider the phenomena spurious, the
church of Rome would never have gone so much out of her way to repress
them.
Both sides having agreed upon the facts, leaving skeptics out of the
question, people could divide themselves into but two parties: the
believers in the direct agency of the devil, and the believers in
disembodied and other spirits. The fact alone, that theology dreaded
a great deal more the revelations which might come through this
mysterious agency than all the threatening “conflicts” with Science
and the categorical denials of the latter, ought to have opened the
eyes of the most skeptical. The church of Rome has never been either
credulous or cowardly, as is abundantly proved by the Machiavellism
which marks her policy. Moreover, she has never troubled herself much
about the clever prestidigitateurs whom she _knew_ to be simply adepts
in juggling. Robert Houdin, Comte, Hamilton and Bosco, slept secure in
their beds, while she persecuted such men as Paracelsus, Cagliostro,
and Mesmer, the Hermetic philosophers and mystics—and effectually
stopped every genuine manifestation of an occult nature by killing the
mediums.
Those who are unable to believe in a personal devil and the dogmas of
the church must nevertheless accord to the clergy enough of shrewdness {101}
to prevent the compromising of her reputation for infallibility by
making so much of manifestations which, if fraudulent, must inevitably
be some day exposed.
But the best testimony to the reality of this force was given by Robert
Houdin himself, the king of jugglers, who, upon being called as an
expert by the Academy to witness the wonderful _clairvoyant_ powers and
occasional mistakes of a table, said: “We jugglers never make mistakes,
and my second-sight never failed me yet.”
The learned astronomer Babinet was not more fortunate in his selection
of Comte, the celebrated ventriloquist, as an expert to testify
against the phenomena of direct voices and the rappings. Comte, if
we may believe the witnesses, laughed in the face of Babinet at
the bare suggestion that the raps were produced by “_unconscious
ventriloquism_!” The latter theory, worthy twin-sister of “_unconscious
cerebration_,” caused many of the most skeptical academicians to blush.
Its absurdity was too apparent.
“The problem of the supernatural,” says de Gasparin, “such as it was
presented by the middle ages, and as it stands now, is not among the
number of those which we are permitted to despise; its breadth and
grandeur escape the notice of no one.... Everything is profoundly
serious in it, both the evil and the remedy, the superstitious
recrudescency, and the physical fact which is destined to conquer the
latter.”[188]
Further, he pronounces the following decisive opinion, to which he
came, conquered by the various manifestations, as he says himself—“The
number of facts which claim their place in the broad daylight of
truth, has so much increased of late, that of two consequences one
is henceforth inevitable: either the domain of natural sciences must
consent to expand itself, or the domain of the supernatural will become
so enlarged as to have no bounds.”[189]
Among the multitude of books against spiritualism emanating from
Catholic and Protestant sources, none have produced a more appalling
effect than the works of de Mirville and des Mousseaux: _La Magie
au XIXme Siecle_—_Mœurs et Pratiques des Demons_—_Hauts Phénomènes
de la Magie_—_Les Mediateurs de la Magie_—_Des Esprits et de leurs
Manifestations_, etc. They comprise the most cyclopædic biography of
the devil and his imps that has appeared for the private delectation of
good Catholics since the middle ages.
According to the authors, _he_ who was “a liar and murderer from the
beginning,” was also the principal motor of spiritual phenomena. He had
been for thousands of years at the head of pagan theurgy; and it was {102}
he, again, who, encouraged by the increase of heresies, infidelity, and
atheism, had reappeared in our century. The French Academy lifted up
its voice in a general outcry of indignation, and M. de Gasparin even
took it for a personal insult. “This is a declaration of war, a ‘levée
of shields’”—wrote he in his voluminous book of refutations. “The work
of M. de Mirville is a real _manifesto_.... I would be glad to see in
it the expression of a strictly individual opinion, but, in truth, it
is _impossible_. The success of the work, these solemn adhesions, the
faithful reproduction of its theses by the journals and writers of
the party, the solidarity established throughout between them and the
whole body of catholicity ... everything goes to show a work which _is
essentially an act, and has the value of a collective labor_. As it is,
I felt that I had a duty to perform.... I felt obliged to pick up the
glove, ... and lift high the Protestant flag against the Ultramontane
banner.”[190]
The medical faculties, as might have been expected, assuming the part
of the Greek chorus, echoed the various expostulations against the
demonological authors. The _Medico-Psychological Annals_, edited by
Drs. Brierre de Boismont and Cerise, published the following: “Outside
these controversies of antagonistical parties, never in our country
did a writer dare to face, with a more aggressive serenity, ... the
sarcasms, the scorn of what we term common sense; and, as if to defy
and challenge at the same time thundering peals of laughter and
shrugging of shoulders, the author strikes an attitude, and placing
himself with effrontery before the members of the Academy ... addresses
to them what he modestly terms his _Mémoire on the Devil_!”[191]
That was a cutting insult to the Academicians, to be sure; but ever
since 1850 they seem to have been doomed to suffer in their pride
more than most of them can bear. The idea of asking the attention of
the forty “Immortals” to the pranks of the Devil! They vowed revenge,
and, leaguing themselves together, propounded a theory which exceeded
in absurdity even de Mirville’s demonolatry! Dr. Royer and Jobart de
Lamballe—both celebrities in their way—formed an alliance and presented
to the Institute a German whose cleverness afforded, according to
his statement, the key to all the knockings and rappings of both
hemispheres. “We blush” remarks the Marquis de Mirville—“to say that
the whole of the trick consisted simply in the reiterated displacement
of one of the muscular tendons of the legs. Great demonstration of the
system in full sitting of the Institute—and on the spot ... expressions
of Academical gratitude for this _interesting_ communication, and, a
few days later, a full assurance given to the public by a professor of {103}
the medical faculty, that, scientists having pronounced their opinion,
the mystery was at last unravelled!“[192]
But such _scientific_ explanations neither prevented the phenomenon
from quietly following its course, nor the two writers on demonology
from proceeding to expound their strictly orthodox theories.
Denying that the Church had anything to do with his books, des
Mousseaux gravely gave the Academy, in addition to his _Mémoire_, the
following interesting and profoundly philosophical thoughts on Satan:
“_The Devil is the chief pillar of Faith._ He is one of the grand
personages whose life is closely allied to that of the church; and
without his speech which issued out so triumphantly from the mouth of
the Serpent, _his medium_, the fall of man could not have taken place.
Thus, if it was not for him, the Saviour, the Crucified, the Redeemer,
would be but the most ridiculous of supernumeraries, and the Cross an
insult to good sense!”[193]
This writer, be it remembered, is only the faithful echo of the church,
which anathematizes equally the one who denies God and him who doubts
the objective existence of Satan.
But the Marquis de Mirville carries this idea of God’s partnership with
the Devil still further. According to him it is a regular commercial
affair, in which the senior “silent partner” suffers the active
business of the firm to be transacted as it may please his junior
associate, by whose audacity and industry he profits. Who could be of
any other opinion, upon reading the following?
“At the moment of this spiritual invasion of 1853, so slightingly
regarded, we had dared to pronounce the word of a ‘threatening
catastrophe.’ The world was nevertheless at peace, but history showing
us the same symptoms at all disastrous epochs, we had a presentiment of
the sad effects of a law which Goërres has formulated thus: [vol. v.,
p. 356.] ‘These mysterious apparitions have invariably indicated the
chastening hand of God on earth.’”[194]
These guerilla-skirmishes between the champions of the clergy and the
materialistic Academy of Science, prove abundantly how little the
latter has done toward uprooting blind fanaticism from the minds of
even very educated persons. _Evidently science has neither completely
conquered nor muzzled theology._ She will master her only on that day
when she will condescend to see in the spiritual phenomenon something
besides mere hallucination and charlatanry. But how can she do it
without investigating it thoroughly? Let us suppose that before the {104}
time when electro-magnetism was publicly acknowledged, the Copenhagen
Professor Oersted, its discoverer, had been suffering from an attack
of what we call _psychophobia_, or _pneumatophobia_. He notices that
the wire along which a voltaic current is passing shows a tendency to
turn the magnetic needle from its natural position to one perpendicular
to the direction of the current. Suppose, moreover, that the professor
had heard much of certain superstitious people who used that kind of
magnetized needles to converse with unseen intelligences. That they
received signals and even held correct conversations with them by means
of the tippings of such a needle, and that in consequence he suddenly
felt a scientific horror and disgust for such an ignorant belief, and
refused, point-blank, to have anything to do with such a needle. What
would have been the result? Electro-magnetism might not have been
discovered till now, and our experimentalists would have been the
principal losers thereby.
Babinet, Royer, and Jobert de Lamballe, all three members of the
Institute, particularly distinguished themselves in this struggle
between skepticism and supernaturalism, and most assuredly have reaped
no laurels. The famous astronomer had imprudently risked himself on the
battlefield of the phenomenon. He had _explained_ scientifically the
manifestations. But, emboldened by the fond belief among scientists
that the new epidemic could not stand close investigation nor outlive
the year, he had the still greater imprudence to publish two articles
on them. As M. de Mirville very wittily remarks, if both of the
articles had but a poor success in the scientific press, they had, on
the other hand, none at all in the daily one.
M. Babinet began by accepting _a priori_, the rotation and movements of
the furniture, which fact he declared to be ”_hors de doute_.” “This
rotation,” he said, “being able to manifest itself with a considerable
energy, either by a very great speed, or by a strong resistance when it
is desired that it should stop.”[195]
Now comes the explanation of the eminent scientist. “Gently pushed
by little concordant impulsions of the hands laid upon it, the table
begins to oscillate from right to left.... At the moment when, after
more or less delay, a nervous trepidation is established in the hands
and the little individual impulsions of all the experimenters have
become harmonized, the table is set in motion.”[196]
He finds it very simple, for “all muscular movements are determined
over bodies by levers of the third order, in which the fulcrum is
very near to the point where the force acts. This, consequently, {105}
communicates a great speed to the mobile parts for the very
little distance which the motor force has to run.... Some persons
are astonished to see a table subjected to the action of several
well-disposed individuals in a fair way to _conquer powerful
obstacles_, even break its legs, when suddenly stopped; but that is
_very simple_ if we consider the power of the _little concordant
actions_.... Once more, the physical explanation offers no
difficulty.”[197]
In this dissertation, two results are clearly shown: the reality of the
phenomena proved, and the scientific explanation made ridiculous. But
M. Babinet can well afford to be laughed at a little; he knows, as an
astronomer, that dark spots are to be found even in the sun.
There is one thing, though, that Babinet has always stoutly denied,
viz.: the levitation of furniture without contact. De Mirville
catches him proclaiming that such levitation is impossible: “simply
_impossible_,” he says, “as impossible as perpetual motion.”[198]
Who can take upon himself, after such a declaration, to maintain that
the word _impossible_ pronounced by science is infallible?
But the tables, after having waltzed, oscillated and turned,
began tipping and rapping. The raps were sometimes as powerful
as pistol-detonations. What of this? Listen: “The witnesses and
investigators are _ventriloquists_!”
De Mirville refers us to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in which is
published a very interesting dialogue, invented by M. Babinet speaking
of himself to himself, like the Chaldean En-Soph of the Kabalists:
“What can we finally say of all these facts brought under our
observation? Are there such raps produced? Yes. Do such raps answer
questions? Yes. Who produces these sounds? The mediums. By what means?
_By the ordinary acoustic method of the ventriloquists._ But we were
given to suppose that these sounds might result from the _cracking of
the toes and fingers_? No; for then they would always proceed from the
same point, and such is not the fact.”[199]
“Now,” asks de Mirville, “what are we to believe of the Americans, and
their _thousands of mediums_ who produce the same raps before millions
of witnesses?” “_Ventriloquism_, to be sure,” answers Babinet. “But how
can you explain such an impossibility?” The easiest thing in the world;
listen only: “All that was necessary to produce the first manifestation
in the _first house_ in America was, a street-boy knocking at the door
of a mystified citizen, perhaps with a leaden ball attached to a {106}
string, and if Mr. Weekman (the first believer in America) (?)[200]
when he watched for the third time, heard no shouts of laughter in the
street, it is because of the essential difference which exists between
a French street-Arab, and an English or Trans-Atlantic one, the latter
being amply provided with what we call a _sad merriment_, ”_gaité
triste_.”[201]
Truly says de Mirville in his famous reply to the attacks of de
Gasparin, Babinet, and other scientists: “and thus according to our
great physicist, _the tables turn_ very quickly, very energetically,
resist likewise, and, as M. de Gasparin has proved, they _levitate
without contact_. Said a minister: ‘With three words of a man’s
handwriting, I take upon myself to have him hung.’ With the above three
lines, we take upon ourselves, in our turn, to throw into the greatest
confusion the physicists of all the globe, or rather to revolutionize
the world—if at least, M. de Babinet had taken the precaution of
suggesting, like M. de Gasparin, some yet unknown law or force. For
this would cover the whole ground.”[C]
But it is in the notes embracing the “facts and physical theories,”
that we find the acme of the consistency and logic of Babinet as an
expert investigator on the field of Spiritualism.
It would appear, that M. de Mirville in his narrative of the wonders
manifested at the _Presbytere de Cideville_,[202] was much struck
by the marvellousness of some facts. Though authenticated before
the inquest and magistrates, they were of so miraculous a nature
as to force the demonological author himself to shrink from the
responsibility of publishing them.
These facts were as follows: “At the precise moment _predicted_ by
a _sorcerer_” a case of revenge—“a violent clap of thunder was heard
above one of the chimneys of the presbytery, after which the _fluid_
descended with a formidable noise through that passage, threw down
believers as well as skeptics (as to the power of the sorcerer) who
were warming themselves by the fire; and, having filled the room with a
multitude of _fantastic animals_, returned to the chimney, and having
reascended it, disappeared, after producing the same terrible noise.”
“As,” adds de Mirville, “we were already but too rich in facts, we
recoiled before this new enormity added to so many others.”[203]
But Babinet, who in common with his learned colleagues had made such
fun of the two writers on demonology, and who was determined, moreover,
to prove the absurdity of all like stories, felt himself obliged to {107}
discredit the above-mentioned fact of the Cideville phenomena, by
presenting one still more incredible. We yield the floor to M. Babinet,
himself.
The following circumstance which he gave to the Academy of Sciences, on
July 5, 1852, can be found _without further commentary_, and merely as
an instance of a _sphere-like lightning_, in the “Œuvres de F. Arago,”
vol. i. p. 52. We offer it _verbatim_.
“After a strong clap of thunder,” says M. Babinet, “but not immediately
following it, a tailor apprentice, living in the Rue St. Jacques, was
just finishing his dinner, when he saw the paper-screen which shut
the fireplace fall down as if pushed out of its place by a moderate
gust of wind. Immediately after that he perceived a globe of fire, as
large as the head of a child, come out _quietly_ and _softly_ from
within the grate and slowly move about the room, without touching the
bricks of the floor. The aspect of this fire-globe was that of a _young
cat_, of middle size ... moving itself without the use of its paws.
The fire-globe was rather brilliant and luminous than hot or inflamed,
and the tailor had no sensation of warmth. This globe approached his
feet like a young cat which wishes to play and rub itself against the
legs, as is habitual to these animals; but the apprentice withdrew
his feet from it, and moving with great caution, avoided contact with
the _meteor_. The latter remained for a few seconds moving about his
legs, the tailor examining it with great curiosity and bending over
it. After having tried several excursions in opposite directions, but
without leaving the centre of the room, the fire-globe elevated itself
vertically to the level of the man’s head, who to avoid its contact
with his face, threw himself backward on his chair. Arrived at about a
yard from the floor the fire-globe slightly lengthened, took an oblique
direction toward a hole in the wall over the fireplace, at about the
height of a _metre_ above the mantelpiece.” This hole had been made for
the purpose of admitting the pipe of a stove in winter; but, according
to the expression of the tailor, “_the thunder could not see it_, for
it was papered over like the rest of the wall. The fire-globe went
directly to that hole, _unglued the paper without damaging it_, and
reascended the chimney ... when it arrived at the top, which it did
very slowly ... at least sixty feet above ground ... it produced a most
frightful explosion, which partly destroyed the chimney, ...” etc.
“It seems,” remarks de Mirville in his review, “that we could apply to
M. Babinet the following remark made by a very witty woman to Raynal,
‘If you are not a Christian, it is not for lack of faith.’”[204]
It was not alone believers who wondered at the credulity displayed by {108}
M. Babinet, in persisting to call the manifestation a _meteor_; for Dr.
Boudin mentions it very seriously in a work on _lightning_ he was just
then publishing. “If these details are exact,” says the doctor, “as
they seem to be, since they are admitted by MM. Babinet and Arago, it
appears very difficult for the phenomenon to retain its appellation of
_sphere-shaped lightning_. However, we leave it to others to explain,
if they can, the _essence of a fire-globe emitting no sensation of
heat, having the aspect of a cat, slowly promenading in a room, which
finds means to escape by reascending the chimney through an aperture in
the wall covered over with a paper which it unglues without damaging
it_!”[205]
“We are of the same opinion,” adds the marquis, “as the learned doctor,
on the difficulty of an exact definition, and we do not see why we
should not have in future lightning in the shape of a dog, of a monkey,
etc., etc. One shudders at the bare idea of a whole meteorological
_menagerie_, which, thanks to _thunder_, might come down to our rooms
to promenade themselves at will.”
Says de Gasparin, in his monster volume of refutations: “In questions
of testimony, certitude must absolutely cease the moment we cross the
borders of the supernatural.”[206]
The line of demarcation not being sufficiently fixed and determined,
which of the opponents is best fitted to take upon himself the
difficult task? Which of the two is better entitled to become the
public arbiter? Is it the party of superstition, which is supported
in its testimony by the evidence of many thousands of people? For
nearly two years they crowded the country where were daily manifested
the unprecedented miracles of Cideville, now nearly forgotten among
other countless spiritual phenomena; shall we believe them, or shall
we bow to science, represented by Babinet, who, on the testimony of
_one_ man (the tailor), accepts the manifestation of the fire-globe,
or the _meteor-cat_, and henceforth claims for it a place among the
established facts of _natural_ phenomena?
Mr. Crookes, in his first article in the _Quarterly Journal of
Science_, October 1, 1871, mentions de Gasparin and his work _Science_
v. _Spiritualism_. He remarks that “the author finally arrived at
the conclusion that all these phenomena are to be accounted for by
the action of natural causes, and do not require the supposition of
miracles, nor the intervention of spirits and diabolical influences!
Gasparin considers it as a fact fully established by his experiments,
that _the will, in certain states of organism, can act at a distance {109}
on inert matter_, and most of his work is devoted to ascertaining the
laws and conditions under which this action manifests itself.”[207]
Precisely; but as the work of de Gasparin called forth numberless
_Answers_, _Defenses_, and _Memoirs_, it was then demonstrated by his
own work that as he was a Protestant, in point of religious fanaticism,
he was as little to be relied upon as des Mousseaux and de Mirville.
The former is a profoundly pious Calvinist, while the two latter are
fanatical Roman Catholics. Moreover, the very words of de Gasparin
betray the spirit of partisanship:—“I feel I have a duty to perform....
I lift high the Protestant flag against the Ultramontane banner!”
etc.[208] In such matters as the nature of the so-called spiritual
phenomena, no evidence can be relied upon, except the disinterested
testimony of cold _unprejudiced_ witnesses and science. Truth is one,
and Legion is the name for religious sects; every one of which claims
to have found the unadulterated truth; as “the Devil is the chief
pillar of the (Catholic) Church,” so all supernaturalism and miracles
ceased, in de Gasparin’s opinion, “with apostleship.”
But Mr. Crookes mentioned another eminent scholar, Thury, of Geneva,
professor of natural history, who was a brother-investigator with
Gasparin in the phenomena of Valleyres. This professor contradicts
point-blank the assertions of his colleague. “The first and
most necessary condition,” says Gasparin, “is the _will_ of the
experimenter; without the will, one would obtain nothing; you can form
the chain (the circle) for twenty-four hours consecutively, without
obtaining the least movement.”[209]
The above proves only that de Gasparin makes no difference between
phenomena purely magnetic, produced by the persevering will of the
sitters among whom there may be not even a single medium, developed
or undeveloped, and the so-called spiritual ones. While the first can
be produced _consciously_ by nearly every person, who has a firm and
determined will, the latter overpowers the sensitive very often against
his own consent, and always acts independently of him. _The mesmerizer
wills a thing, and if he is powerful enough, that thing is done. The
medium_, even if he had an honest purpose to succeed, _may get no
manifestations at all; the less he exercises his will, the better the
phenomena: the more he feels anxious, the less he is likely to get
anything_; to mesmerize requires a positive nature, to be a medium a
perfectly passive one. This is the Alphabet of Spiritualism, and no
medium is ignorant of it.
The opinion of Thury, as we have said, disagrees entirely with {110}
Gasparin’s theories of will-power. He states it in so many plain words,
in a letter, in answer to the invitation of the count to modify the
last article of his _mémoire_. As the book of Thury is not at hand, we
translate the letter as it is found in the _résumé_ of de Mirville’s
_Defense_. Thury’s article which so shocked his religious friend,
related to the possibility of the existence and intervention in those
manifestations “of _wills_ other than those of men and animals.”
“I feel, sir, the justness of your observations in relation to
the last pages of this _mémoire_: they may provoke a very bad
feeling for me on the part of scientists in general. I regret
it the more as my determination seems _to affect you so much_;
nevertheless, I persist in my resolution, because I think it a
duty, to shirk which would be a kind of treason.
“If, _against all expectations_, there were some truth in
Spiritualism, by abstaining from saying on the part of science,
as I conceive it to be, _that the absurdity of the belief
in the intervention of spirits is not as yet demonstrated
scientifically_ (for such is the _résumé_, and the thesis of
the past pages of my _mémoire_), by abstaining from saying it
to those who, after having read my work, will feel inclined
to experiment with the phenomena, I might risk to entice such
persons on a path many issues of which are very _equivocal_.
”_Without leaving the domain of science_, as I esteem it, I
will pursue my duty to the end, without any reticence to the
profit of my own glory, and, to use your own words, ‘as the
great scandal lies there,’ I do not wish to assume the shame
of it. I, moreover, insist that ‘_this is as scientific as
anything else_.’ If I wanted to sustain now the theory of the
intervention of disembodied spirits, I would have no power
for it, for the facts which are made known are not sufficient
for the demonstration of such a hypothesis. As it is, and in
the position I have assumed, I feel I am strong against every
one. Willingly or not, all the scientists must learn, through
experience and their own errors, to suspend their judgment as
to things which they have not sufficiently examined. The lesson
you gave them in this direction cannot be lost.
“GENEVA, _21 December, 1854_.”
Let us analyze the above letter, and try to discover what the writer
thinks, or rather what he does not think of this new force. One thing
is certain, at least: Professor Thury, a distinguished physicist
and naturalist, admits, and even scientifically proves that various
manifestations take place. Like Mr. Crookes, he does not believe that
they are produced by the interference of spirits or disembodied men who {111}
have lived and died on earth; for he says in his letter that nothing
has demonstrated this theory. He certainly believes no more in the
Catholic devils or demons, for de Mirville, who quotes this letter as
a triumphant proof against de Gasparin’s naturalistic theory, once
arrived at the above sentence, hastens to emphasize it by a foot-note,
which runs thus: “At Valleyres—_perhaps_, but everywhere else!”[210]
showing himself anxious to convey the idea that the professor only
meant the manifestations of Valleyres, when denying their being
produced by demons.
The contradictions, and we are sorry to say, the absurdities in
which de Gasparin allows himself to be caught, are numerous. While
bitterly criticizing the pretensions of the learned Faradaysiacs, he
attributes things which he declares _magical_, to causes perfectly
natural. “If,” he says, “we had to deal but with such phenomena (as
witnessed and explained (?) by the great physicist), we might as well
hold our tongues; but we have passed _beyond_, and what good can
they do now, I would ask, these apparatus which demonstrate that an
_unconscious pressure_ explains the whole? It explains _all_, and the
table resists pressure and guidance! It explains _all_, and a piece of
furniture which _nobody touches_ follows the fingers pointed at it; it
_levitates_ (without contact), and it turns itself _upside down_!”[211]
But for all that, he takes upon himself to _explain_ the phenomena.
“People will be advocating miracles, you say—magic! Every new law
appears to them as a prodigy. Calm yourselves; I take upon myself the
task to quiet those who are alarmed. In the face of such phenomena, we
do not cross at all the boundaries of natural law.”[212]
Most assuredly, we do not. But can the scientists assert that they have
in their possession the keys to such law? M. de Gasparin thinks he has.
Let us see.
“I do not risk myself to explain anything; _it is no business of
mine_.(?) To authenticate simple facts, and maintain a truth which
science desires to smother, is all I pretend to do. Nevertheless, I
cannot resist the temptation to point out to those who would treat
us as so many _illuminati_ or sorcerers, that the manifestation in
question affords an interpretation which agrees with _the ordinary laws
of science_.
“Suppose a fluid, emanating from the experimenters, and chiefly from
_some of them_; suppose that the will determined the direction taken by
the fluid, and you will readily understand the rotation and levitation
of that one of the legs of the table toward which is ejected with every
action of the will an excess of fluid. Suppose that the glass causes {112}
the fluid to escape, and you will understand how a tumbler placed on
the table can interrupt its rotation, and that the tumbler, placed on
one of its sides, causes the accumulation of the fluid in the opposite
side, which, in consequence of that, _is lifted_!”
If every one of the experimenters were clever mesmerizers, the
explanation, _minus_ certain important details, might be acceptable. So
much for the power of _human will_ on inanimate matter, according to
the learned minister of Louis Philippe. But how about the intelligence
exhibited by the table? What explanation does he give as to answers
obtained through the agency of this table to questions? answers which
could not possibly have been the “reflections of the brain” of those
present (one of the favorite theories of de Gasparin), for their own
ideas were quite the reverse of the very _liberal_ philosophy given by
this wonderful table? On this he is silent. Anything but _spirits_,
whether human, satanic, or elemental.
Thus, the “simultaneous concentration of thought,” and the
“accumulation of fluid,” will be found no better than “the unconscious
cerebration” and “psychic force” of other scientists. We must try
again; and we may predict beforehand that the thousand and one theories
of science will prove of no avail until they will confess that this
force, far from being a projection of the accumulated wills of the
circle, is, on the contrary, a force which is abnormal, foreign to
themselves, and _supra-intelligent_.
Professor Thury, who denies the theory of departed human spirits,
rejects the Christian devil-doctrine, and shows himself unwilling
to pronounce in favor of Crookes’s theory (the 6th), that of the
hermetists and ancient theurgists, adopts the one, which, he says in
his letter, is “_the most prudent_, and makes him feel strong against
every one.” Moreover, he accepts as little of de Gasparin’s hypothesis
of “unconscious will-power.” This is what he says in his work:
“As to the announced phenomena, such as the _levitation without
contact_, and the displacement of furniture by invisible hands—unable
to demonstrate their impossibility, _a priori_, no one has the right to
treat as absurd the serious evidences which affirm their occurrence”
(p. 9).
As to the theory proposed by M. de Gasparin, Thury judges it very
severely. “While admitting that in the experiments of Valleyres,”
says de Mirville, “the seat of the _force_ might have been in the
_individual_—and we say that it was intrinsic and extrinsic at the
same time—and that the will might be generally necessary (p. 20), he
repeats but what he had said in his preface, to wit: ‘M. de Gasparin
presents us with crude facts, and the explanations following he offers
for what they are worth. _Breathe on them_, and not many will be found {113}
standing after this. No, very little, if anything, will remain of his
explanations. As to facts, they are _henceforth demonstrated_’” (p. 10).
As Mr. Crookes tells us, Professor Thury refutes “all these
explanations, and considers the effects due to a peculiar substance,
fluid, or agent, pervading in a manner similar to the luminiferous
ether of the scientists, all matter, nervous, organic or inorganic,
which he terms _psychode_. He enters into full discussion as to the
properties of this state, or form, or matter, and proposes the term
_ectenic_ force ... for the power exerted when the mind acts at a
distance through the influence of the psychode.”[213]
Mr. Crookes remarks further, that “Professor Thury’s _ectenic_ force,
and his own ‘psychic force’ are evidently equivalent terms.”
We certainly could very easily demonstrate that the two forces are
identical, moreover, the astral or _sidereal_ light as explained by
the alchemists and Eliphas Levi, in his _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute
Magie_; and that, under the name of AKASA, or life-principle, this
all-pervading force was known to the gymnosophists, Hindu magicians,
and adepts of all countries, thousands of years ago; and, that it is
still known to them, and used at present by the Thibetan lamas, fakirs,
thaumaturgists of all nationalities, and even by many of the Hindu
“jugglers.”
In many cases of trance, artificially induced by mesmerization, it
is also quite possible, even quite probable, that it is the “spirit”
of the subject which acts under the guidance of the operator’s will.
But, if the medium remains conscious, and psycho-physical phenomena
occur which indicate a directing intelligence, then, unless it be
conceded that he is a “magician,” and can project his double, physical
exhaustion can signify nothing more than nervous prostration. The
proof that he is the passive instrument of unseen entities controlling
occult potencies, seems conclusive. Even if Thury’s _ectenic_ and
Crookes’s _psychic_ force are substantially of the same derivation,
the respective discoverers seem to differ widely as to the properties
and potencies of this force; while Professor Thury candidly admits
that the phenomena are often produced by “wills _not_ human,” and so,
of course, gives a qualified endorsement to Mr. Crookes’s theory No.
6, the latter, admitting the genuineness of the phenomena, has as yet
pronounced no definite opinion as to their cause.