THE ULTERIOR PROJECT.
It may be asked why I wished Priscilla to return with me, against her
will, since I had no passion for her, and respected the honor of her
husband. I wished it partly from spite, and partly because it was
necessary to my purpose. She had induced me, or had had more influence
to induce me than any one else, to embark in a cause which I loathed,
and which at the same time I felt myself totally unable to abandon, and
I wished to make her suffer with me. Then, again, I could do nothing
without an accomplice, and that accomplice a woman. I travelled abroad
in the character of a simple American gentleman, not as a mesmerizer, a
magician, or one who commands invisible powers. Nobody abroad, or even
at home, ever suspected me, unless it was good old Mr. Cotton, of any
thing of the sort. In all cases when the mysterious force was to be
exerted, as long as she was connected with me, I employed Priscilla as
my agent. I gave her my orders, which she, without exciting any
suspicion against her or myself, seldom failed to execute to the letter.
Even after her own views and feelings began to change, and she felt the
slavery and degradation of her position, she dared not disobey me. She
stood in awe of my power, and knew well the merciless punishment that
awaited her. Often, often has she begged me, with tears and in the
deepest agony, to undo my spell over her, and to let her go free. I
would not. Had she not declared her spirit eternally wedded to mine? The
truth is, I was half afraid to undo the spell, and emancipate her. She
knew too many of my secrets, might expose me, and defeat all my plans;
and once freed from me, once restored to the empire of reason, she would
feel herself bound in conscience to do so; and when a woman once takes
it into her head to act from conscience, she is, whether she have a good
or a false conscience, as unmanageable as if she were in love. She is as
headstrong under conscience as under passion, and of course absolutely
uncontrollable, because in either case she uses her reason simply in the
service of her feelings. Then, again, I did not like accepting a new
accomplice.
Priscilla, not daring to resist, finally persuaded her husband to
consent to return home. We crossed the Channel to England, and hastened
to embark at Liverpool on board a steamer for New York. We had a stormy
passage, and came near being cast away; but at length arrived in port,
and soon found ourselves in Philadelphia, after an absence of six years
and six months amidst scenes and events of the most exciting character.
We were all changed in looks, but still more in feelings. The fire of
our enthusiasm was extinct, the freshness and sanguine hopes of youth
had fled forever; our labor had been in vain, and there was no bright or
cheering prospect before us. I took my leave of Priscilla at the
public-house where we stopped. When I saw her faded cheek, her sunken
eye and withered form, the wrinkles gathering on her brow, and heard
her, in a broken voice, renew her oft-repeated request, and remembered
what she was some ten or twelve years before, and thought of what I was
too at that time, and what I was now, I had a touch of human feeling,
and pressing her hand to my lips—I had not the heart to refuse—I told
her I would consider it, perhaps I would, and hurried out of the room,
to conceal my emotion, not sorry, after all, to find that I had not
wholly ceased to be human.
The next day, I started for my home in Western New York. Home, alas! no
longer. The house was desolate. During my prolonged absence, my mother
and my only sister had died, and all my family were gone. My library and
my laboratory remained as I had left them. They had no charms for me
now. I looked out upon the familiar scenes of my childhood; they seemed
changed all, and were tame and listless. I met some companions of my
earlier life; there was nothing in common between them and me. Their
voices sounded strange, and grated on my ears. The sad conviction, for
the first time in my life, forced itself upon me, that I was alone, and
deeply I felt my loneness. I had lost my childhood’s faith, which,
though meagre and but a shadow, yet was something. I had no Father in
heaven, no brother or sister on earth. I believed in neither angel nor
spirit. All existence, all being, had dwindled into one invisible,
elemental, impersonal Force, which indeed I could wield, but to what
end?
In my loneness, I felt that the vulgar belief in the devil, in ghosts,
and goblins damned, would be a solace. They would be something, and any
thing is better than nothing. Better is a living dog than a dead lion.
Alas, I had sold myself, and my redemption was far off. Strange enough,
I felt something like passion revive in my guilty breast. I felt, I even
regretted Priscilla’s absence; and it seemed that she was dear to me,
and that I could not endure life without her. I pictured her to myself
as I had first known her, and I wept as I remembered how for long years
I had enslaved her. A voice whispered in my heart, emancipate her. A
momentary feeling of generosity possessed me. I summoned her, as I knew
how, to my presence. She appeared, instantaneously.
“Priscilla,” said I, “I am sad and weary. Life has lost its charms for
me, and I care not how soon I die. I have nothing to live for. You are a
wife and a mother. I absolve you from your pact; be free; return, and
devote yourself to your husband, who is worthy of you, and to your boy.
I have, and will no longer have, power over you.”
A gleam of joy spread over her face, a smile of gratitude played on her
lips, and a look of love shot from her eyes, and the place where she
stood was vacant. She had vanished; but a chattering, as of a thousand
mocking voices, filled my room, and then impish, mocking faces were seen
all around, making mouths at me. I cared not for these. I silenced the
former, and sent away the latter with a word. I retained my magic force
still. But there was joy as well as sorrow in that house in Arch street,
Philadelphia. Priscilla, the day of returning to her own house, had been
taken ill; her husband was alarmed, and called a physician, who could
understand nothing of her case. She grew worse and worse; and during the
time I had summoned her to me, she fell into a sort of stupor, a
complete trance, and to all except her husband, who had seen her in that
state before, and knew that she was subject to trances, she seemed to be
dead. The moment I had absolved her, she came to herself, a sweet smile
on her face, with the hue of perfect health. She arose in bed, embraced
her husband with a warmth and sincerity of affection which he had never
before known, and for the first time since his birth looked upon her boy
with the glad joy of a mother’s heart. But at this moment her husband
was more to her than her babe. She hung on his neck, she pressed him to
her heart, she half-smothered him with kisses, spoke in the terms and
tones of the tenderest and sweetest affection, and it seemed as if she
would pour out upon him, in a single moment, the loaded affections of a
lifetime. “My dear husband, you must forget and forgive the past. I am
yours, yours now, yours alone; heart, soul, and body, forever. The spell
is broken. The delusion is gone; take me, take me, dear James, to your
heart.”
James was a man. He had been dazzled by the beauty and accomplishments
of Priscilla, and thought it enough to be accepted as her husband,
without much scrutiny into the state of her affections. She had, for a
moment, imposed upon him, and he had accepted her notions of woman’s
rights, philanthropy, and world reform. But he did not lack good sense;
he had even a strong mind, firm principles at bottom, and all the
elements of an upright, manly character. A few months’ practical
experience served to cure him of a good deal of his philanthropy, and to
damp the ardor of his zeal for reform. He was, of course, displeased
with my intimacy with Priscilla, and he owed me, it must be owned, no
good will. But his observation pretty soon satisfied him, that whatever
the bond of that intimacy, it was not what directly affected his honor
as a husband, and he resolved that he would seem not to regard it. It
was a bitter trial to him.
His tour abroad, his observation, and his conversations with gentlemen
and ladies, not always of our clique, had opened his eyes to many
things, and made him a stanch conservative. He abandoned all the loose
notions he had previously entertained, renounced his Quaker quietism,
and had become sincerely converted to a real objective Christian faith.
His first thought and care were to reclaim his wife, and, if possible,
to release her from the mysterious power which I seemed to have over
her. He found her as anxious to be released as he was to release her,
and he thought he discovered in her, at times, a growing affection for
himself. It was a difficult case to manage, but he thought it best to be
prudent and discreet, and to avoid every thing that could excite remark,
or that he himself might afterwards regret.
Feeling now that he had himself not been entirely free from blame, that
he was bound to be forgiving, that Priscilla was really his wife, the
mother of his child, and that she probably was freed, though he knew not
how, and did now really love him, he responded with a warmth nearly
equal to her own, to her strong expressions of love, frankly forgave her
all, and pressed her to his heart as his own, his truly beloved wife. It
was for both the happiest moment they had ever known, and in that one
moment James seemed to have been compensated for his patience,
forbearance, and suffering, for so many years.
Priscilla immediately regained her health and cheerfulness, and
resolved, if possible, to recover me from the bondage in which she knew
I was held. How she sped in this, and what new trials, if any, awaited
her, will appear as I proceed in my narrative.
My own feeling of loneness, of desolation, was not relieved by my
release of the woman I had so long held spell-bound, but was aggravated
by the constant annoyance of a passion which I had seldom before
experienced, or which, without much trouble, I had always been able to
subdue. As Priscilla became purified and less unworthy of her husband,
and as she seemed the more completely to have escaped me and to be lost
to me forever, the more did I feel that I could not live without her,
and the more impossible did I find it quietly to endure her absence. I
was mad. I called her. The charm was broken, and she came not; I saw
only a vague, undefined form, flit before my eyes, and heard only a wild
mocking laugh.
Weeks passed, but they seemed ages. Priscilla, in all her loveliness, in
all her gracefulness and dignity, in all the brilliancy of youth and
beauty, was constantly present to my morbid fancy by day, and to my
dreams at night. I was completely unmanned,—wept now as a child over a
lost toy, or now raved as a madman. I could not eat, I could not sleep.
I could endure it no longer. I sold my house and furniture, disposed of
my laboratory and scientific apparatus, packed up my library, and
resolved that henceforth I would take up my residence in Philadelphia.
I had no sooner established myself in my new home, than I called in Arch
street to see Priscilla. Instead of her I found James. He received me
civilly, even kindly, conversed with me of what we had seen abroad, but
Priscilla did not appear. No matter, I would call again. Did so; saw
Priscilla only in presence of her husband. She was looking well, was
affectionate in her tone and manner, but offered me not her hand, and
seemed to take care that I should not so much as touch her dress. Well,
said I to myself, be it so. The weakness shall last no longer. I will be
myself again, and resume the project I had contemplated. I went home,
not cured, but resolved, and immediately commenced my evocation, and
communicated my orders to all the circles I had established throughout
Europe.
I have already hinted what this new project was. It was clear to me,
from my historical reading and my personal observations amid the
exciting scenes of the more recent European revolutions, that the grand
support of social order, and what I have somewhere called the system of
restraint and repression, is Christianity, and that the political and
social reformers can never fully carry out their reforms till they have
totally rooted out from modern society all belief in the Gospel, and all
peculiar reverence for its Author. This is more than hinted by Mazzini
and Kossuth, although the latter is a vice-president of the American
Bible Society, boldly avowed by M. Proudhon, and stoutly contended for
by the German Turnverein and Freimänner. If you concede the Christian
idea of God, says Proudhon, you must at once and forever abandon your
idea of liberty.
It was equally clear to me, that the attempt, by means of political
organizations, and revolutions directed against the papacy, or any
church organization, Catholic or Protestant, to root out Christianity
from the hearts of the people, must at last prove a failure. After all,
there is a natural religiosity in man, and though he will often restrain
and mortify it, and act only in view of purely secular ends,—practically
live as if there were no God, and no hereafter,—he will almost always
return to the order of religious ideas, and adopt or institute some kind
of religious worship to which he will subordinate his political ideas,
and his secular ends. An Epicurus may deny Providence, a Lucretius may
sing, in no mean poetry, that it is impossible, “_revocare defunctos_,”
and even Cicero may laugh at augurs and aruspices, and doubt the
immortality of the soul, yet the sentiment of an invisible Force, of a
mysterious Power that overshadows us, is universal, and the sceptical
philosopher feels an indefinable shudder of awe, perhaps of fear,
whenever he finds himself alone in the dark. Everywhere the shades of
Acheron wander or flit around and before him.
Even in the midst of our pleasures the thought of the invisible and the
supernal intrude unbidden to mar our festivities, and to dash our joy
with an indefinable sadness, shame, and remorse. Even a Voltaire
trembles and blasphemes in dying, at the thought of being denied
Christian burial, and a Volney, who resolves God into blind Nature, and
Christianity into astrology or astronomy, prays lustily to the God he
disowns, in a storm on Lake Erie. Do what we will, we cannot divest
ourselves of the belief or apprehension of invisible powers, who hold
our destiny in their hands; and a people absolutely without any
religion, or at least superstition, is never to be found.
Never had unbelievers a fairer chance for rooting out Christianity by
political and social revolutions, than in the eighteenth century. The
laugh was everywhere against religion and the clergy, a decided
materialistic and infidel philosophy pervaded literature, possessed the
schools, ruled in the courts, and domineered over thought and intellect.
There was lukewarmness in the religious, there were scandals among the
clergy, there were abuses in the state, and therefore an imperious call
for reform. The reformers directed all their movements against religion,
and their means were democratic and social revolution. They were strong,
they were overwhelming in their power. At their bidding, down went
throne and altar, and in ten years the religion they had abolished was
reëstablished, the churches they had closed were reopened at the order
of the soldier they had made their chief, and for democracy in the state
they had an incipient Cæsarism, which, two years later, became a fully
developed and perfect Cæsarism. The same result had followed our own
movement. In January, 1850, religion was far more vigorous in Europe,
than in January, 1840, and democracy at a far greater discount.
It was idle, then, to hope either to destroy political and social
authority in the name of absolute unbelief and irreligion, or to root
out Christianity by political and social movements. Christianity could
be eradicated only by means of a rival religion, and a religion which
could appeal to a supernatural origin, and sustain itself by prodigies,
or what the vulgar would regard as miracles. I had suspected this from
the beginning, and resolved now, that instead of working with the purely
secular passions of men, I would make my appeal to their religiosity.
Mahomet, in the seventh century, had done this admirably for his time
and the East, but had incautiously fixed his superstition in the Koran,
and made it unalterable, and therefore incapable of adapting itself to
the new face which things might assume in the vicissitude of events, the
development of society, and the progress of the race.
Swedenborg had done better, and so had Joe Smith, but neither had
sufficiently provided for the progressiveness of the race, or with
sufficient explicitness consecrated the principle of innovation and
change, and both had retained too many conceptions taken from the old
religion. Yet Swedenborg was to be taken as our starting point, and we
were only to avoid his mistakes, the principal of which was a too strict
and rigid church organization.
When I returned from Europe, I found the directions I had given, before
going abroad, had been pretty faithfully followed; and mesmeric
revelations, through Andrew Jackson Davis, and spiritual communications,
through the Foxes, were beginning to attract public attention. The
spirits were becoming exceedingly anxious to communicate, and made, as
it was supposed, many important revelations. In a few months, spiritual
knockings were becoming quite common, and mediums were found in all
parts of the country. At first, intercourse with the spirits was
obtained only in the somnambulic state, or through the slow and toilsome
medium of raps, but at the same time intimations and assurances were
given that before a great while a more easy and direct method of
communication would be vouchsafed; but, as yet, the public and
individuals were not prepared for that more direct method. The spirits
were willing, but the mediums were not sufficiently advanced, nor
sufficiently spiritualized; and the public was too gross, too
materialistic, and too sceptical. As soon as minds should become more
refined, spiritual, and believing, open vision would be permitted them,
and easy and regular communication would be established, and whoever
wished would have as free and familiar intercourse with the spirit-world
as with the world of the flesh.
At first the great object was to establish the reality of the spiritual
communications. This was to be done by the communication of secrets,
either known only to the interrogator, or incapable of being known to
the medium in any ordinary human or natural way. Sometimes the spirits
played the part of fortune-tellers; sometimes they assumed to be
prophets, and ventured to predict future events, but always events which
either depended on them, or lay in the natural order, and which a
knowledge of natural causes and effects could easily enable them to
foresee.
As the spiritual intercourse extended, and believers multiplied, the
somnambulic and rapping mediums ceased to be the only mediums. The
artificial somnambulic mediums, or mesmerized mediums, disappeared
almost wholly, and to the rapping mediums were added writing mediums and
speaking mediums, and in some instances the spirits became actually
visible to the seers, and telegraphed their messages by visible symbols,
and occasionally in words. Spiritual telegraphing, in some one or all
these ways, became, in a few months, common in all parts of the country;
and, at the expiration of two years, there were three hundred spiritual
circles or clubs in the single city of Philadelphia, and more than half
a million of believers in the United States. The epidemic had broken out
in the North of England and Wales, had spread all over Norway, Denmark,
and Sweden, and Northern and Central Germany, penetrated France in all
directions, and made its appearance even at Rome. In France and Italy,
where the population is either profoundly Christian or profoundly
infidel, the spiritual manifestation had to adopt more discreet and less
startling forms than in our own and some other countries, and to give
place at first to doubt whether it was not mere trickery, or explicable
on recognized scientific principles; and confined itself, to a great
extent, to the phenomena of table-turning, which excited curiosity
without alarming conscience. In France, in the most polished,
fashionable, and, I may almost say, most Catholic society, table-turning
became an amusement.
The next point to be attended to, was the doctrines, the philosophy or
religion, that the spirits were to teach. It would not do to attack the
Gospel too openly, and it was necessary to undermine, rather than to
bombard it. In some respects even, it was advisable to seem to confirm,
as it were by one rising from the dead, some portions of Christian
belief,—such as the immortality of the soul, and the reality of an
invisible spirit-world. The latter was doubted by the free-thinkers; but
it was essential to my project that the free-thinkers, in this respect,
should be converted, for their conversion and acknowledgment of belief
in God and a spirit-world would do much to commend our spiritualism to a
large body of silly and ill-informed Christian believers, who, seeing
such apparently good effects resulting from it, would conclude that
there could be nothing bad in it. By their fruits shall ye know them.
In the American community, to a very great extent, the belief in the
immortality of the soul is supposed to be identical with the belief in
the resurrection of the dead, taught by Christianity; and our
Unitarians, with their rationalistic erudition, very generally hold that
the peculiar and distinctive doctrine taught by our Lord was the
immortality of the soul. But the immortality of the soul was believed by
the whole ancient world, Gentile as well as Jewish; and, though
questioned by some ancient and modern sophists, there never has been
found a people who, as a body, were ignorant of it, or that denied it.
All the ancient, as all modern superstitions recognize it. All believe
the soul is imperishable, though many suppose it will be absorbed in the
Great Fountain of Life, as a drop in the ocean—a misinterpretation of
the Christian doctrine of union with God in the Light of Glory, as the
ultimate end or final beatitude of the just. The doubt was as to the
body, or the _umbra_, the material envelope and companion and external
medium of the soul in this life. The gross outward body they believed
returned to dust, and mingled with its kindred elements; but this
_umbra_, shade, the manes of the dead, which all antiquity carefully
distinguished from the soul, was also, for the most part, believed to be
imperishable; but its reunion with the soul, I do not find the heathen
world ever clearly asserting. In other words, the ancient heathen world,
though it retained the primitive belief in the immortality of the soul,
had lost belief in the resurrection of the body, and the reunion of soul
and body, or at least only retained some traces of it in their doctrine
of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls.
The peculiar Christian doctrine, or the doctrine so insisted on by the
Apostles, was not the immortality of the soul, which was always
presupposed, but the resurrection of the dead, the return to life, not
of that which had not ceased to live, but of that which had died, to
wit, the body. Hence the article in the Apostles’ Creed is not, I
believe the immortality of the soul, but, I believe the resurrection of
the body, _resurrectionem carnis_, the resurrection of the flesh; and to
this belief, it must be remarked, that the spirit-manifestations afford
no confirmation, and indeed they virtually contradict it.
The distinguishing trait of Christian morality is charity, which is
distinguished from philanthropy or benevolence, as a supernaturally
infused virtue is distinguished from a mere human sentiment, but, in the
minds of but too many of those who call themselves Christians, really
confounded with it. The spirits were then, under the name of charity, to
teach a philanthropic, sentimental, and purely human morality, for in
doing so, they would seem to the mass of superficial Christians to be
confirming the distinctive trait of Christian morality, and at the same
time appealing to the morbid spirit of the age.
Bald, naked Universalism is not popular; but there is a very general
disbelief, among the leading men of the times, in the old orthodox
doctrines of heaven and hell, of the last judgment, the everlasting
punishment of the wicked, or that our eternal state is fixed by that in
which we die. Swedenborg had greatly modified these doctrines, and
taught that the punishment of the wicked is purely negative; that men
are in hell only inasmuch as they are not in harmony with God; and not
to be in harmony with God, that is, good, is to be out of the Divine
protection, and exposed to all the sufferings incident to our
abandonment to the natural order of things. He had also recognized
different heavens, rising one above another, and different hells, one
below another; and had hinted or asserted the possibility of the
inhabitants of each improving, and advancing in wisdom and virtue, by
their intercourse with the inhabitants of this world. He had himself
even instructed angels, and assisted feeble and undeveloped souls. Here
were the germs of all that was required. The spirits were to teach that
there are different circles in the other world, into which souls are
admitted according to their respective tastes and degrees of
development, with the chance to rise in due time, if faithful, from the
lowest to the highest. In the lower circles, they are improved by
intercourse with us, as we are ourselves improved by intercourse with
spirits of the higher circle.
The dominant doctrine of our age is that of progress; that the universe
started from certain rude and imperfect beginnings, and, by a continued
series of developments and transformations, is eternally advancing
towards perfection, without however reaching it; and that man,
beginning, if not in the oyster or the tadpole, at least in a feeble and
helpless infancy, develops and advances towards perfect manhood. This
doctrine, which a few facts in natural history, in geology, and
anthropology, at first sight seem to favor, is at bottom wholly
repugnant to the Christian doctrine of a fixed creed, of final repose or
beatitude in God, of final causes, and the final consummation of all
things. So the spirits are to accept it, systematize it, and propose, as
the highest reward of virtue, to be placed on the plane of eternal
progression.
The age is indifferent, syncretic, and disposed to accept all religions
and superstitions as true under certain aspects, and as false under
others, and to pronounce one about as good and about as bad as another.
The spirits, therefore, make no direct war on any of them. In some
places they teach that the Catholic Church is the truest and best of
prevailing religions, but that Protestantism is nevertheless a safe way
of salvation, and that the spirits do not, in the other world, think so
much about differences of churches and creeds, as they did when in this
world. In other places they teach that the Catholic Church is false;
that it is wicked, the enemy of moral and social progress, and that
effectual means should be taken to prevent its extension in the United
States. They do not deny the Bible, nor affirm its inspiration, but
take, to a great extent, the neological view of it, conceding it to be
truthful in many respects, but maintaining it to be unreliable in
others. It was very well when men had nothing better, and no surer means
of information in regard to the spirit-world.
Such is a brief outline of the new religion, which was intended to
supplant Christianity, and to open the way for that “good time a
coming,” for which all our philanthropists and reformers are looking, as
any one may satisfy himself by reading the _Shekinah_, the _Spiritual
Telegraph_, or Judge Edmands’s work, from the prolific press of
Partridge & Brittan, New York. This new religion, which, indeed,
contains nothing new, and which it certainly needed no ghost from the
other world to teach or to suggest, would amount to very little if
promulgated on mere human authority, unsupported by any prodigies,
mysterious or marvellous facts; but, communicated mysteriously from
alleged denizens of another world, bearing the imposing names of William
Penn, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas
Paine, assumes in the minds of the vulgar a high importance, and can
hardly fail to be regarded as overriding Moses and the prophets, our
Lord and his Apostles. It strikes at the foundation of Christianity
itself, and once accepted, it will seem to have a directness and a
completeness of evidence that will entirely set aside, in the minds of
the spiritualists, that in favor of the Gospel. This is what I intended,
and what I hoped.
Having set the so-called spirits in motion, and through them set afloat
a system which I fancied would supplant Christianity, whether in its
Catholic or its sounder Protestant forms, my work seemed done, and I
could retire from my labors. My superintendence was no longer necessary,
and whether the agents I employed were really the spirits or souls of
the dead, as they themselves asserted, or mere elemental forces of
nature, as I was inclined to believe or had wished to persuade myself,
became to me a question of no interest. The work would go on of itself
now, and in a few years Christianity and the Church would be undermined
and fall of themselves. Then monarchy, aristocracy, republicanism, all
forms of civil government, would crumble to pieces, and universal
freedom, leaving every one to believe and do what seems right in his own
eyes, will be realized, and all here, as well as those not here, will be
placed on the plane of eternal progression—progression towards—what?