Belief in ghosts and apparitions is general, almost universal; possibly
it is shared by the ghosts themselves. We are told that this wide
distribution of the faith and its persistence through the ages are
powerful evidences of its truth. As to that, I do not remember to have
heard the basis of the argument frankly stated; it can be nothing
else than that whatever is generally and long believed is true,
for of course there can be nothing in the particular belief under
consideration making it peculiarly demonstrable by counting noses. The
world has more Buddhists than Christians. Is Buddhism therefore the
truer religion? Before the day of Galileo there was a general though
not quite universal conviction that the earth was a motionless body,
the sun passing around it daily. That was a matter in which “the united
testimony of mankind” ought to have counted for more than it should in
the matter of ghosts, for all can observe the earth and sun, but not
many profess to see ghosts, and no one holds that the circumstances
in which they are seen are favorable to calm and critical observation.
Ghosts are notoriously addicted to the habit of evasion; Heine says
that it is because they are afraid of us. “The united testimony of
mankind” has a notable knack at establishing only one thing—the
incredibility of the witnesses.
If the ghosts care to prove their existence as objective phenomena
they are unfortunate in always discovering themselves to inaccurate
observers, to say nothing of the bad luck of frightening them into
fits. That the seers of ghosts are inaccurate observers, and therefore
incredible witnesses, is clear from their own stories. Who ever heard
of a naked ghost? The apparition is always said to present himself
(as he certainly should) properly clothed, either “in his habit as
he lived” or in the apparel of the grave. Herein the witness must be
at fault: whatever power of apparition after dissolution may inhere
in mortal flesh and blood, we can hardly be expected to believe
that cotton, silk, wool and linen have the same mysterious gift. If
textile fabrics had that property they would sometimes manifest it
independently, one would think—would “materialize” visibly without a
ghost inside, a greatly simpler apparition than “the grin without the
cat.”
Ask any proponent of ghosts if he think that the products of the loom
can “revisit the glimpses of the moon” after they have duly decayed,
or, while still with us, can show themselves in a place where they
are not. If he have no suspicion, poor man, of the trap set for him,
he will pronounce the thing impossible and absurd, thereby condemning
himself out of his own mouth; for assuredly such powers in these
material things are necessary to the garmenting of spooks.
Now, by the law _falsus in uno falsus in omnibus_ we are compelled
to reject all the ghost stories that have ever been seriously told.
If the observer (let him be credited with the best intentions) has
observed so badly as to think he saw what he did not see, and could
not have seen, in one particular, to what credence is he entitled with
regard to another? His error in the matter of the “long white robe” or
other garment where no long white robe or other garment could be puts
him out of court altogether. Resurrection of woolen, linen, silk, fur,
lace, feathers, hooks and eyes, buttons, hatpins and the like—well,
really, that is going far.
No, we draw the line at clothing. The materialized spook appealing to
our senses for recognition of his ghostly character must authenticate
himself otherwise than by familiar and remembered habiliments. He must
be credentialed by nudity—and that regardless of temperature or who
may happen to be present. Nay, it is to be feared that he must eschew
his hair, as well as his habiliments, and “swim into our ken” utterly
bald; for the scientists tell us with becoming solemnity that hair is a
purely vegetable growth and no essential part of us. If he deem these
to be hard conditions he is at liberty to remain on his reservation and
try to endow us with a terrifying sense of himself by other means.
In brief, the conditions under which the ghost must appear in order to
command the faith of an enlightened world are so onerous that he may
prefer to remain away—to the unspeakable impoverishment of letters and
art.
1902.