------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_.
Footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraphs in which they are
referenced.
Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.
THE SPIRIT-RAPPER.
THE
SPIRIT-RAPPER;
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
BY
O. A. BROWNSON,
AUTHOR OF “CHARLES ELWOOD.”
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY.
LONDON:
CHARLES DOLMAN.
M.DCCC.LIV.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY.
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
If the critics undertake to determine, by any recognized rules of art,
to what class of literary productions the following unpretending work
belongs, I think they will be sorely puzzled. I am sure I am puzzled
myself to say what it is. It is not a novel; it is not a romance; it is
not a biography of a real individual; it is not a dissertation, an
essay, or a regular treatise; and yet it perhaps has some elements of
them all, thrown together in just such a way as best suited my
convenience, or my purpose.
I wanted to write a book, easy to write and not precisely hard to read,
on the new superstition, or old superstition under a new name, exciting
just now no little attention at home and abroad; and I chose such a
literary form as I—not, properly speaking, a literary man—could best
manage, and which would afford me the most facilities for bringing
distinctly before the reader the various points to which I wished to
direct his attention. If the critics think that I have chosen badly,
they are at liberty to bestow upon the author as much of the castigation
which, in his capacity of Reviewer, he has for many years been in the
habit of bestowing upon others, as they think proper. I have thought it
but fair to give those whom I may have offended by my own criticisms in
another place, an opportunity to pay their debts and wipe off old
scores.
The book, though affecting some degree of levity, is serious in its
aims, and truthful in its statements. There is no fiction in it, save
its machinery. What is given as fact, is fact, or at least so regarded
by the author. The facts narrated, or strictly analogous facts, I have
either seen myself, or given on what I regard as ample evidence. The
theory presented as their explanation, and the reasoning by which it is
sustained, speak for themselves, and are left to the judgment of the
reader.
The connection of spirit-rapping, or the spirit-manifestations, with
modern philanthropy, visionary reforms, socialism, and revolutionism, is
not an imagination of my own. It is historical, and asserted by the
Spiritists, or Spiritualists themselves, as any one may satisfy himself
who can have the patience to look through their Library. I have
endeavored to be scrupulously exact in all my statements and
representations in this respect. The shafts which the author shoots at
random may perhaps hit some well-meaning persons who get crotchets in
their heads, or astride of hobbies; but they are not poisoned with
malice, and will titillate the skin, rather than penetrate the flesh.
I have not aimed at originality, or at displaying my erudition in the
Black Art. I have certainly read some on the subject, and at one period
of my life made myself acquainted with more “deviltry” than ever did or
ever will do me any good. I have however drawn very little from
“forbidden” sources. In writing, I have used freely a recent French
work, from which I have taken the larger portion of my facts, and many
of my arguments, although I had previously studied the subject for
myself, had learned the same facts, with one or two exceptions, from
other sources, and had adopted the same solution. The work I refer to is
entitled, _Pneumatologie des Esprits et de leurs Manifestations
fluidiques_. By the Marquis Etudes de M——. Paris, 1853. There are some
views, not unimportant, in this work, which I am not prepared to accept;
but, upon the whole, it is the only really sensible and scientific work
I have seen on the subject, and I freely confess that I have done little
more than transfer its substance to my pages.
The volume when it was begun was intended to be published anonymously,
but my publishers have preferred to issue it with the name of the
author. I think they have judged unwisely, but as they ought to know
their own trade better than I, and as there is nothing in it that I am
particularly ashamed of or unwilling to avow, I cheerfully comply with
their request, and send it out with my name, to make or mar its fortune.
If it tend in any degree to throw light on the dark facts of history, to
check superstition, to rebuke unreasoning scepticism, and to recall the
age to faith in the Gospel of our Lord, the purpose, the serious
purpose, for which it was written will be answered, and I shall be
content, whatever reception it may otherwise meet from the public.
THE AUTHOR.
BOSTON, August 11, 1854.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST LESSON 1
CHAPTER II.
GUESSES 10
CHAPTER III.
FURTHER EXPERIMENTS 22
CHAPTER IV.
AN EXPLOSION 33
CHAPTER V.
SOME PROGRESS 46
CHAPTER VI.
TABLE TURNING 61
CHAPTER VII.
A LESSON IN PHILANTHROPY 71
CHAPTER VIII.
A LESSON IN WORLD-REFORM 91
CHAPTER IX.
THE CONSPIRACY 112
CHAPTER X.
MR. COTTON IS PUZZLED 133
CHAPTER XI.
WORTH CONSIDERING 154
CHAPTER XII.
A MISSIONARY TOUR 173
CHAPTER XIII.
THE TOUR CONTINUED 184
CHAPTER XIV.
ROME AND THE REVOLUTION 199
CHAPTER XV.
THE ULTERIOR PROJECT 218
CHAPTER XVI.
A REBUFF 239
CHAPTER XVII.
A GLEAM OF HOPE 245
CHAPTER XVIII.
RELIGIOUS MONOMANIA 257
CHAPTER XIX.
MESMERISM INSUFFICIENT 275
CHAPTER XX.
SHEER DEVILTRY 290
CHAPTER XXI.
SPIRIT-MANIFESTATIONS 303
CHAPTER XXII.
SUPERSTITION 316
CHAPTER XXIII.
DIFFICULTIES 329
CHAPTER XXIV.
LEFT IN THE LURCH 347
CHAPTER XXV.
CONCLUSIONS 363
CHAPTER XXVI.
CONVERSION 387
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SPIRIT-RAPPER.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST LESSON.
My days are numbered; I am drawing near to the close of my earthly
pilgrimage, and I must soon take my final departure,—whither, I dread to
think. But before I go I would leave a brief record of some incidents in
my worse than unprofitable life. A few who have known me, and will have
the charity to breathe a prayer at my grave, may be glad to possess it;
and others of my countrymen, who know not what to think of the
marvellous phenomena daily and hourly exhibited in their midst, or are
vainly striving to explain them on natural principles, may find it
neither uninteresting nor uninstructive.
Of my exterior life I have not much to record, for though few have
played a more active or important part in the great events of the past
few years, my name has rarely been connected with them before the
public. I was born in a small town in Western New York. My parents were
honest agriculturists from Connecticut, and descended from ancestors
who, with Hooker, founded the colony of Hartford. They were among the
early settlers of what used to be called the “Holland Purchase,” and,
till emigrating to the new world west of the Genesee, were rigid
Puritans. Like most emigrants from the land of “steady habits,” they
were intelligent, moral, industrious, and economical, and, as a matter
of course, soon prospered in this world’s goods, and became able to give
their only son the best education the State could furnish, and to leave
him a competent estate. I made my preparatory studies at Batavia, and
entered, at seventeen, the Freshman class of Union College, Schenectady.
I remained at college four years, a diligent, if not a brilliant
student, and graduated at the close with the highest standing, and the
general love and esteem of my classmates.
My early predilection was for the mathematical and physical sciences.
The moral and intellectual sciences were not much to my taste. I took no
great interest in them. They struck me as vague, uncertain, and
unprofitable. I preferred what M. Comte has since called _Positive
Philosophy_. I soon mastered mathematics, mechanics, and physics, as far
as they were taught in our college, but I found my greatest delight in
chemistry, which, by its subtle analyses, seemed to promise me an
approach to the vital principle and to the essences of things.
On leaving college I studied—not very profoundly—medicine, and took my
degree, less with a view to professional practice, in which I never
engaged, than with a view to general science. After taking my degree as
Doctor of Medicine, I resumed and extended my college studies, entered
largely into the study of natural history, physical geography, zoölogy,
geology, mineralogy, and indeed all the ’ologies, then so fashionable
that one must have a smattering of them if he would woo successfully his
sweetheart. I paid some attention to Gall and Spurzheim’s new science of
Phrenology, when Spurzheim visited this country, where he died, and was
much interested in it till I had the misfortune to listen to a course of
lectures in its exposition and defence, by George Combe, Esq., the great
Scottish phrenologist. That course upset me, and I have since abandoned
Phrenology, save so far as I find it taught by Plato in his Timæus, and
only laughed at its pretensions and its adherents.
I was arrested, for a moment, by Boston Transcendentalism, but I could
not make much of it. Its chiefs told me that I was not spiritual enough
to appreciate it, and that I was too much under the despotism of the
understanding to be able to rise to those empyrean regions where the
soul asserts her freedom, and sports with infinite delight in all the
luxury of the unintelligible. I thought they talked metaphysics, what
neither their hearers nor themselves could understand; and finding
myself very little enlightened by their intelligible unintelligibility,
their dark utterances, and their Orphic sayings, I gave them up, and
returned to my laboratory.
About 1836, I made the acquaintance of Dr. P——, or, as he claimed to be,
the Marquis de P——, a native of one of the French West India Islands,
but brought up and educated at Paris, where he had been a
Saint-Simonian, and a chief of the _savans_ of the new religion. The
decision of the French courts in 1833, that Saint-Simonism was not a
religion, and therefore that its chiefs were not priests, and entitled
to a salary from the state, dispersed the new sect, and he soon after
came to the United States, and commenced, though with a very imperfect
knowledge of our language, and very little facility in speaking it, a
course of lectures in several of our eastern cities, on Mesmerism, or,
as he preferred to call it, Animal Magnetism. His appearance was by no
means prepossessing, and his manners, though unpretending, were very far
from indicating that exquisite grace and polish which are supposed, for
what reason I know not, to be peculiar to the Frenchman; but he was a
serious, earnest-minded man, who in several branches of science had made
solid studies. I knew him well, and esteemed him much.
At that time I had paid not much attention to Mesmerism. I had heard of
Mesmer indeed, of his extraordinary pretensions, and the wonderful
phenomena which he professed to produce by his rod and tub; but I had
supposed that the matter had been put at rest for all sensible persons
by the famous report of the French Academy in 1784, signed, among
others, by Bailly the astronomer, and our own Franklin. I supposed that
every scientific man acquiesced in the conclusion of that report, that
the extraordinary phenomena exhibited by magnetism were to be ascribed
to the imagination, and that from the date of that report magnetism had
ceased to occupy the attention of the scientific. I was therefore
surprised, nay, scandalized, to find a man of real science, and, as I
wished to believe, of real worth, professing faith in what I had been
led to regard as an exploded humbug, and which, at the very best, could
have no practical utility beyond illustrating the deceptive power of the
imagination, and the sad consequences which might result to those
weak-minded people who become dupes to their own disordered fancy.
Dr. P—— assured me that I was mistaken both as to the bearing and as to
the effect of the famous report of the French Academy. That report, he
said, concedes the reality of the mesmeric phenomena, and only declares
that the assertion of Mesmer, that they are produced by means of a
subtle fluid analogous to electricity or magnetism, was not proven or
demonstrated by the experiments the commission witnessed; which gives no
uneasiness to any animal magnetist in our day, because now no one
pretends to explain those phenomena by means of such a fluid. It is
true, he said, the commission, in their published report, assert that
the phenomena are to be explained by the imagination; but in a private
report, addressed to the king, they say, that “it is impossible not to
recognize in them a _great power_ which agitates and subjects the
patients, and of which the magnetizer appears to be the depositary.”
This, contended Dr. P——, is by no means compatible with the theory which
ascribes them to the imagination, for that theory supposes the cause
that produces them to be in the magnetized, since it is to their
imagination, not to that of the magnetizer, that they are to be
ascribed; but in this secret report, the power which produces them is
assumed to be in the magnetizer, “of which,” it says, “he who magnetizes
seems to be the depositary.” For these, as well as other reasons, he
said, the report of the Academy was not regarded by magnetists as any
authority against Animal Magnetism as understood and practised at the
present time.
Moreover, he assured me, that the report of the Academy had not settled
the question, or seriously checked the cultivation or the progress of
Animal Magnetism. It had at no moment ceased to be studied and
practised, chiefly for its therapeutic effects, and, as he proved to me,
was at the time firmly held and practised by large numbers of the most
upright, benevolent, learned, and scientific members of the medical
profession in France, Germany, and Great Britain. It had continued to
make progress, and was now very generally held and respected on the
continent of Europe. If I would not be behind my age, if I would not
remain ignorant of a very curious and interesting class of phenomena, I
must, he insisted, investigate and make myself acquainted with Animal
Magnetism. I should do it as a lover of science; I should do it more
especially as a lover of my race, as a friend of humanity; for I might
rest assured that Animal Magnetism is the most facile and powerful means
ever yet discovered of solacing, and to a great extent curing, a
thousand ills that flesh is heir to.
My curiosity, I confess, was excited, and I resolved to investigate the
subject. Dr. P—— had picked up, somewhere in Rhode Island, a
somnambulist, an honest, simple-minded young woman, of no great strength
of intellect, and very little education or knowledge. She was sickly,
and suffering from some nervous affection. He had found her very
susceptible to the mesmeric influence, and he made her the subject of
numerous experiments. He had brought her, in the winter of 1836-7, to
Boston, and there exhibited her to his class. Spending that winter in
the same city, I consented one afternoon to be present at his
experiments. There were some twenty or thirty gentlemen present on the
occasion, mostly lawyers, physicians, ministers, and literary and
scientific gentlemen of distinction, all disbelievers in Mesmerism, and
on the alert to detect the least sign of deception or complicity.
The Doctor introduced his patient, who took her seat in an arm-chair
placed in the centre of the room, and, without any visible sign from Dr.
P——, was in a few minutes apparently fast asleep. Her breathing was
regular, her pulse natural, and her sleep sound and tranquil. Was it
sleep? It was, as far as we could ascertain, and sleep accompanied by
complete insensibility. We resorted to every imaginable contrivance to
awaken her. One tickled her nose with a feather, another shook her with
all his might, another discharged a pistol close to her ear, another
stuck pins and needles into her flesh,—all without the least effect.
There was no quivering or shrinking, no muscular contraction, and to the
rudest proofs she was as insensible as a corpse. We all exhausted our
inventive powers in vain, and stood astounded, unwilling to trust our
own senses, and yet unable to detect the least conceivable deception or
collusion. We none of us knew what to think or say. We were taken all
aback.
Various written questions, after we had given over trying to awaken her,
were handed to Dr. P——, which he put to her mentally, without a word or
sign that we could any of us discern, and to which she instantly
answered. One question was, the time of the day; she answered, and
answered correctly, much more so than most gentlemen’s watches present.
To every question put she answered, and so far as any of us knew, or
could ascertain, with perfect accuracy. The Doctor at length told her he
thought she had slept long enough, and would do well to wake up.
Instantly she was wide awake, and apparently unconscious of all that had
passed. She remained awake for some time, when Dr. P—— said to her, “I
will you to go to sleep again for just fifteen minutes, and then to wake
up.” Instantly she dropped asleep. One or two of the company took the
Doctor into a different part of the room, got him into an angry
discussion, and made him forget the order he had given. I stood by the
somnambulist holding my watch in my hand, and to my astonishment,
precisely at the expiration of fifteen minutes, she awoke. Various other
experiments were tried, various severe tests were put;—some of them with
complete success, others, indeed, proved total failures; and after a
session of about three hours the party broke up and went to their
several homes, some two or three converted, the greater part satisfied
that there was and could be no collusion or deception, and yet wholly
sceptical as to the alleged magnetic power.