We have already observed that at the date of these events, the only
possible explanation of the phenomena presented was the fetish solution
which had in all ages been recurred to as a matter of course. In
heathen times it was god, goddess, or nymph who gave knowledge, or
power, or gifts of healing, or of prophecy, to men. In Christian times
it was angel, or devil, or spirit of the dead; and this conception was
in full force over all Christendom when the Puritan emigrants settled in
New England. The celebrated sermon of the Rev. Mr. Lawson, in the work
before us, discloses the elaborate doctrine held by the class of men who
were supposed to know best in regard to the powers given by Satan to his
agents, and the evils with which he afflicted his victims; and there
was not only no reason why the pastor's hearers should question his
interpretations, but no possibility that they should supply any of
a different kind. The accused themselves, while unable to admit or
conceive that they were themselves inspired by Satan, could propose no
explanation but that the acts were done by "some bad spirit." And such
has been the fetish tendency to this hour, through all the advance
that has been made in science, and in the arts of observation and
of reasoning. The fetish tendency--that of ascribing one's own
consciousness to external objects, as when the dog takes a watch to be
alive because it ticks, and when the savage thinks his god is angry
because it thunders, and when the Puritan catechumen cries out in
hysteria that Satan has set a witch to strangle her--that constant
tendency to explain everything by the facts, the feelings, and the
experience of the individual's own nature, is no nearer dying out
now than at the time of the Salem Tragedy; and hence, in part, the
seriousness and the instructiveness of this story to the present
generation. Ours is the generation which has seen the spread of
Spiritualism in Europe and America, a phenomenon which deprives us of
all right to treat the Salem Tragedy as a jest, or to adopt a tone of
superiority in compassion for the agents in that dismal drama. There are
hundreds, even several thousands, of lunatics in the asylums of the
United States, and not a few in our own country, who have been lodged
there by the pursuit of intercourse with spirits; in other words, by
ascribing to living but invisible external agents movements of their
own minds. Mr. Parris remarked, in 1692, that of old, witches were only
ignorant old women; whereas, in his day, they had come to be persons
of knowledge, holiness, and devotion who had been drawn into that
damnation; and in our day, we hear remarks on the superior refinement
of spirit-intercourses, in comparison with the witch doings at Salem;
but the cases are all essentially the same. In all, some peculiar and
inexplicable appearances occur, and are, as a matter of course, when
their reality can not be denied, ascribed to spiritual agency. We may
believe that we could never act as the citizens of Salem acted in their
superstition and their fear; and this may be true; but the course of
speculation is, in "spiritual circles," very much the same as in Mr.
Parris' parlor.
And how much less excuse there is for our generation than for his!
We are very far yet from being able to explain the well-known and
indisputable facts which occur from time to time, in all countries where
men abide and can give an account of themselves; such facts as the
phenomena of natural somnambulism, of double consciousness, of suspended
sensation while consciousness is awake, and the converse--of a wide
range of intellectual and instinctive operations bearing the character
of marvels to such as can not wait for the solution. We are still far
from being able to explain such mysteries, in the only true sense of the
word _explaining_--that is, being able to refer the facts to the natural
cause to which they belong; but we have an incalculable advantage over
the people of former centuries in knowing that for all proved facts
there is a natural cause; that every cause to which proved facts within
our cognizance are related is destined to become known to us; and that,
in the present case, we have learned in what direction to search for it,
and have set out on the quest. None of us can offer even the remotest
conjecture as to what the law of the common action of what we call mind
and body may be. If we could, the discovery would have been already
made. But, instead of necessarily assuming, as the Salem people did,
that what they witnessed was the operation of spiritual upon human
beings, we have, as our field of observation and study, a region
undreamed of by them--the brain as an organized part of the human frame,
and the nervous system, implicating more facts, more secrets, and more
marvels than our forefathers attributed to the whole body.