Nature of the subject. Persistent survival of certain Animistic
beliefs. Examples of the Lady Onkhari, Lucian, General Campbell.
The Anthropological aspect of the study. Difference between this
Animistic belief, and other widely diffused ideas and institutions.
Scientific admission of certain phenomena, and rejection of others.
Connection between the rejected and accepted phenomena. The
attitude of Science. Difficulties of investigation illustrated.
Dr. Carpenter's Theory of unconscious Cerebration. Illustration of
this Theory. The Failure of the Inquiry by the Dialectical Society.
Professor Huxley, Mr. G. H. Lewes. Absurdity and charlatanism of
'Spiritualism'. Historical aspect of the subject. Universality of
Animistic Beliefs, in every stage of culture. Not peculiar to
savagery, ignorance, the Dark Ages, or periods of Religious crisis.
Nature of the Evidence.
It is not without hesitation that this book is offered to the
reader. Very many people, for very various reasons, would taboo the
subjects here discoursed of altogether. These subjects are a
certain set of ancient beliefs, for example the belief in
clairvoyance, in 'hauntings,' in events transcending ordinary
natural laws. The peculiarity of these beliefs is, that they have
survived the wreck of faith in such elements of witchcraft as
metamorphosis, and power to cause tempest or drought. To study such
themes is 'impious,' or 'superstitious,' or 'useless'. Yet to a
pathologist, or anthropologist, the survivals of beliefs must always
be curious and attractive illustrations of human nature.
Ages, empires, civilisations pass, and leave some members even of
educated mankind still, in certain points, on the level of the
savage who propitiates with gifts, or addresses with prayers, the
spirits of the dead.
An example of this endurance, this secular survival of belief, may
be more instructive and is certainly more entertaining than a world
of assertions. In his Etudes Egyptiennes (Tome i. fascic. 2) M.
Maspero publishes the text and translation of a papyrus fragment.
This papyrus was discovered still attached to a statuette in wood,
representing 'the singer of Ammen, Kena,' in ceremonial dress. The
document is a letter written by an ancient Egyptian scribe, 'To the
Instructed Khou of the Dame Onkhari,' his own dead wife, the Khou,
or Khu, being the spirit of that lady. The scribe has been
'haunted' since her decease, his home has been disturbed, he asks
Onkhari what he has done to deserve such treatment: 'What wrong
have I been guilty of that I should be in this state of trouble?
what have I done that thou should'st help to assail me? no crime has
been wrought against thee. From the hour of my marriage till this
day, what have I wrought against thee that I need conceal?'
He vows that, when they meet at the tribunal of Osiris, he will have
right on his side.
This letter to the dead is deposited in the tomb of the dead, and we
may trust that the scribe was no longer annoyed by a Khou, which
being instructed, should have known better. To take another ancient
instance, in his Philopseudes Lucian introduces a kind of club of
superstitious men, telling ghost stories. One of them assures his
friend that the spectre of his late wife has visited and vexed him,
because he had accidentally neglected to burn one of a pair of gilt
shoes, to which she was attached. She indicated the place where the
shoe was lying hidden, and she was pacified. Lucian, of course,
treats this narrative in a spirit of unfeeling mirth, but, if such
tales were not current in his time, there would have been no point
in his banter. Thus the belief in the haunting of a husband by the
spirit of his wife, the belief which drives a native Australian
servant from the station where his gin is buried, survived old
Egypt, and descended to Greece. We now take a modern instance,
closely corresponding to that of the Instructed Khou of the Dame
Onkhari.
In the Proceedings of the Psychical Society (part xiv. p. 477) the
late General Campbell sends, from Gwalior House, Southgate, N.,
April 27, 1884, a tale of personal experiences and actions, which
exactly reproduces the story of the Egyptian Scribe. The narrative
is long and not interesting, except as an illustration of survival,--
in all senses of the word.
General Campbell says that his wife died in July, 1882. He
describes himself as of advanced age, and cautious in forming
opinions. In 1882 he had never given any consideration to 'the
subject of ultra-mundane indications'. Yet he recounts examples of
'about thirty inexplicable sounds, as if inviting my attention
specially, and two apparitions or visions, apparently of a carefully
calculated nature, seen by a child visitor, a blood relation of my
late wife, whom this child had never seen, nor yet any likeness of
her'. The general then describes his house, a new one, and his
unsuccessful endeavours to detect the cause of the knocks, raps,
crashes, and other disturbances. Unable to discover any ordinary
cause, he read some books on 'Spiritualism,' and, finally, addressed
a note, as the Egyptian Scribe directed a letter, to the 'agent':
{4} _Give three raps if from my deceased wife_!
He was rewarded by three crashing sounds, and by other peculiar
phenomena. All these, unlike the scribe, he regarded as sent 'for
my particular conviction and comfort'.
These instances prove that, from the Australian blacks in the Bush,
who hear raps when the spirits come, to ancient Egypt, and thence to
Greece, and last, in our own time, and in a London suburb, similar
experiences, real or imaginary, are explained by the same
hypothesis. No 'survival' can be more odd and striking, none more
illustrative of the permanence, in human nature, of certain
elements. To examine these psychological curiosities may, or may
not, be 'useful,' but, at lowest, the study may rank as a branch of
Mythology, or of Folklore.
It is in the spirit of these sciences, themselves parts of a general
historical inquiry into the past and present of our race, that we
would glance at the anecdotes, legends, and superstitions which are
here collected. The writer has been chiefly interested in the
question of the Evidence, its nature and motives, rather than in the
question of Fact. It is desirable to know why independent
witnesses, practically everywhere and always, tell the same tales.
To examine the origin of these tales is not more 'superstitious'
than to examine the origin of the religious and heroic mythologies
of the world. It is, of course, easy to give both mythology, and
'the science of spectres,' the go by. But antiquaries will be
inquiring, and these pursuits are more than mere 'antiquarian old
womanries'. We follow the stream of fable, as we track a burn to
its head, and it leads us into shy, and strange scenes of human
life, haunted by very fearful wild-fowl, and rarely visited save by
the credulous. There may be entertainment here, and, to the student
of his species, there may be instruction.
On every side we find, as we try to show, in all ages, climates,
races, and stages of civilisation, consentient testimony to a set of
extraordinary phenomena. Equally diffused we find fraudulent
imitations of these occurrences, and, on one side, a credulity which
has accepted everything, on the other hand, a scepticism which
denies and laughs at all the reports. But it is a question whether
human folly would, everywhere and always, suffer from the same
delusions, undergo the same hallucinations, and elaborate the same
frauds. The problem is one which, in other matter, always haunts
the student of man's development: he is accustomed to find similar
myths, rites, customs, fairy tales, all over the world; of some he
can trace the origin to early human imagination and reason, working
on limited knowledge; about others, he asks whether they have been
independently evolved in several places, or whether they have been
diffused from a single centre. In the present case, the problem is
more complicated. Taboos, totemism, myths explanatory of natural
phenomena, customs like what, with Dr. Murray's permission, we call
the Couvade, are either peculiar to barbarous races, or, among the
old civilised races, existed as survivals, protected by conservative
Religion. But such things as 'clairvoyance,' 'levitation,'
'veridical apparitions,' 'movements of objects without physical
contact,' 'rappings,' 'hauntings,' persist as matters of belief, in
full modern civilisation, and are attested by many otherwise sane,
credible, and even scientifically trained modern witnesses. In this
persistence, and in these testimonies, the alleged abnormal
phenomena differ from such matters as nature-myths, customs like
Suttee, Taboo, Couvade, and Totemism, the change of men into beasts,
the raising of storms by art-magic. These things our civilisation
has dropped, the belief in other wild phenomena many persons in our
civilisation retain.
The tendency of the anthropologist is to explain this fact by
Survival and Revival. Given the savage beliefs in magic, spirit
rapping, clairvoyance, and so forth, these, like Marchen, or nursery
tales, will survive obscurely among peasants and the illiterate
generally. In an age of fatigued scepticism and rigid physical
science, the imaginative longings of men will fall back on the
savage or peasant necromancy, which will be revived perhaps in some
obscure American village, and be run after by the credulous and
half-witted. Then the wished-for phenomena will be supplied by the
dexterity of charlatans. As it is easy to demonstrate the quackery
of paid 'mediums,' as _that_, at all events, is a vera causa, the
theory of Survival and Revival seems adequate. Yet there are two
circumstances which suggest that all is not such plain sailing. The
first is the constantly alleged occurrence of 'spontaneous' and
sporadic abnormal phenomena, whether clairvoyance in or out of
hypnotic trance, of effects on the mind and the senses apparently
produced by some action of a distant mind, of hallucinations
coincident with remote events, of physical prodigies that contradict
the law of gravitation, or of inexplicable sounds, lights, and other
occurrences in certain localities. These are just the things which
Medicine Men, Mediums and classical Diviners have always pretended
to provoke and produce by certain arts or rites. Secondly, whether
they do or do not occasionally succeed, apart from fraud, in these
performances, the 'spontaneous' phenomena are attested by a mass and
quality of evidence, ancient, mediaeval and modern, which would
compel attention in any other matter. Living, sane, and
scientifically trained men now,--not to speak of ingenious, and
intelligent, if superstitious observers in the past,--and Catholic
gleaners of contemporary evidence for saintly miracle, and
witnesses, judges, and juries in trials for witchcraft, are
undeniably all 'in the same tale'.
Now we can easily devise an explanation of the stories told by
savages, by fanatics, by peasants, by persons under ecclesiastical
influence, by witches, and victims of witches. That is simple, but
why are sane, scientific, modern observers, and even disgusted
modern sceptics, in a tale, and that just the old savage tale? What
makes them repeat the stories they do repeat? We do not so much
ask: 'Are these stories true?' as, '_Why are these stories told_?'
Professor Ray Lankester puts the question thus, and we are still at
a loss for an answer.
Meanwhile modern science has actually accepted as real, some strange
psychological phenomena which both science and common-sense
rejected, between 1720 and 1840, roughly speaking. The accepted
phenomena are always reported, historically, as attendant on the
still more strange, and still rejected occurrences. We are thus
face to face with a curious question of evidence: To what extent
are some educated modern observers under the same illusions as Red
Men, Kaffirs, Eskimo, Samoyeds, Australians, and Maoris? To what
extent does the coincidence of their testimony with that of races so
differently situated and trained, justify curiosity, interest, and
perhaps suspense of judgment?
The question of the value of the facts is one to be determined by
physiologists, physicians, physicists, and psychologists. It is
clear that the alleged phenomena, both those now accepted and those
still rejected, attend, or are said to attend, persons of singular
physical constitution. It is not for nothing that Iamblichus,
describing the constitution of his diviner, or seer, and the
phenomena which he displays, should exactly delineate such a man as
St. Joseph of Cupertino, with his miracles as recounted in the Acta
Sanctorum {9} (1603-1663). Now certain scientific, and (as a layman
might suppose), qualified persons, aver that they have seen and even
tested, in modern instances, the phenomena insisted on by
Iamblichus, by the Bollandists, and by a great company of ordinary
witnesses in all climes, ages, and degrees of culture. But these
few scientific observers are scouted in this matter, by the vast
majority of physicists and psychologists. It is with this majority,
if they choose to find time, and can muster inclination for the task
of prolonged and patient experiment, that the ultimate decision as
to the portee and significance of the facts must rest. The problem
cannot be solved and settled by amateurs, nor by 'common-sense,'
that
Delivers brawling judgments all day long,
On all things, unashamed.
Ignorance, however respectable, and however contemptuous, is
certainly no infallible oracle on any subject. Meanwhile most
representatives of physical science, perhaps all official
representatives, hold aloof,--not merely from such performances or
pretences as can only be criticised by professional conjurers,--but
from the whole mass of reported abnormal events. As the occurrences
are admitted, even by believers, to depend on fluctuating and
unascertained personal conditions, the reluctance of physicists to
examine them is very natural and intelligible.
Whether the determination to taboo research into them, and to
denounce their examination as of perilous moral consequence, is
scientific, or is obscurantist, every one may decide for himself.
The quest for truth is usually supposed to be regardless of
consequences, meanwhile, till science utters an opinion, till Roma
locuta est, and does not, after a scrambling and hasty inquiry, or
no inquiry at all, assert a prejudice; mere literary and historical
students cannot be expected to pronounce a verdict.
Spiritualists, and even less convinced persons, have frequently
denounced official men of science for not making more careful and
prolonged investigations in this dusky region. It is not enough,
they say, to unmask one imposture, or to sit in the dark four or
five times with a 'medium'. This affair demands the close scrutiny
of years, and the most patient and persevering experiment.
This sounds very plausible, but the few official men of science,
whose names the public has heard,--and it is astonishing how famous
among his peers a scientific character may be, while the public has
never heard of him--can very easily answer their accusers: 'What,'
they may cry, 'are we to investigate? It is absurd to ask us to
leave our special studies, and sit for many hours, through many
years, probably in the dark, with an epileptic person, and a few
hysterical believers. We are not conjurers or judges of conjuring.'
Again, is a man like Professor Huxley, or Lord Kelvin, to run about
the country, examining every cottage where there are rumours of
curious noises, and where stones and other missiles are thrown
about, by undetected hands? That is the business of the police, and
if the police are baffled, as in a Cock Lane affair at Port Glasgow,
in 1864, and in Paris, in 1846, we cannot expect men of science to
act as amateur detectives. {11} Again, it is hardly to be expected
that our chosen modern leaders of opinion will give themselves up to
cross-examining ladies and gentlemen who tell ghost stories.
Barristers and solicitors would be more useful for that purpose.
Thus hardly anything is left which physical science can investigate,
except the conduct and utterances of the hysterical, the epileptic,
the hypnotised and other subjects who are occasionally said to
display an abnormal extension of the perceptive faculties, for
example, by way of clairvoyance. To the unscientific intelligence
it seems conceivable that if Home, for example, could have been kept
in some such establishment as the Salpetriere for a year, and could
have been scrutinised and made the subject of experiment, like the
other hysterical patients, his pretensions might have been decided
on once for all. But he merely performed a few speciosa miracula
under tests established by one or two English men of science, and
believers and disbelievers are still left to wrangle over him: they
usually introduce a question of moral character. Now a few men of
science in England like Dr. Gregory about 1851, and like Dr.
Carpenter, and a larger number on the continent, have examined and
are examining these peculiarities. Their reports are often
sufficiently astonishing to the lay mind.
No doubt when, if ever, a very large and imposing body of these
reports is presented by a cloud of scientific witnesses of esteemed
reputation, then official science will give more time and study to
the topic than it is at present inclined to bestow. Mr. Wallace has
asserted that, 'whenever the scientific men of any age have denied,
on a priori grounds, the facts of investigation, they have _always
been wrong_'. {12} He adds that Galileo, Harvey, Jenner, Franklin,
Young, and Arago, when he 'wanted even to discuss the subject of the
electric telegraph,' were 'vehemently opposed by their scientific
contemporaries,' 'laughed at as dreamers,' 'ridiculed,' and so on,
like the early observers of palaeolithic axes, and similar
prehistoric remains. This is true, of course, but, because some
correct ideas were laughed at, it does not follow that whatever is
laughed at is correct. The squarers of the circle, the discoverers
of perpetual motion, the inquirers into the origin of language, have
all been ridiculed, and ruled out of court, the two former classes,
at least, justly enough. Now official science apparently regards
all the long and universally rumoured abnormal occurrences as in the
same category with Keely's Motor, and Perpetual Motion, not as in
the same category with the undulatory theory of light, or the theory
of the circulation of the blood. Clairvoyance, or ghosts, or
suspensions of the law of gravitation, are things so widely
contradictory of general experience and of ascertained laws, that
they are pronounced to be impossible; like perpetual motion they are
not admitted to a hearing.
As for the undeniable phenomenon that, in every land, age, and
condition of culture, and in every stage of belief or disbelief,
some observers have persistently asserted their experience of these
occurrences; as for the phenomenon that the testimonies of
Australian blacks, of Samoyeds, of Hurons, of Greeks, of European
peasants, of the Catholic and the Covenanting clergy, and of some
scientifically trained modern physicians and chemists, are all
coincident, official physical science leaves these things to
anthropology and folklore. Yet the coincidence of such strange
testimony is a singular fact in human nature. Even people of open
mind can, at present, say no more than that there is a great deal of
smoke, a puzzling quantity, if there be no fire, and that either
human nature is very easily deluded by simple conjuring tricks, or
that, in all stages of culture, minds are subject to identical
hallucinations. The whole hocus-pocus of 'spirit-writing' on slates
and in pellets of paper, has been satisfactorily exposed and
explained, as a rather simple kind of leger-de-main. But this was a
purely modern sort of trickery; the old universal class of useless
miracles, said to occur spontaneously, still presents problems of
undeniable psychological interest.
For example, if it be granted, as apparently it was by Dr.
Carpenter, that, in certain circumstances, certain persons, wide
awake, can perform, in various ways, intelligent actions, and
produce intelligent expressions automatically, without being
conscious of what they are doing, then that fact is nearly as
interesting and useful as the fact that we are descended from
protozoa. Thus Dr. Carpenter says that, in 'table-talking,' 'cases
have occasionally occurred in the experience of persons above
suspicion of intentional deception, in which the answers given by
the movements of tables were not only unknown to the questioners,
but were even contrary to their belief at the time, and yet
afterwards proved to be true. Such cases afford typical examples of
the doctrine of unconscious cerebration, for in several of them it
was capable of being distinctly shown that the answers, although
contrary to the belief of the questioners at the time, were true to
facts of which they had been formerly cognisant, but which had
vanished from their recollection; the residua of these forgotten
impressions giving rise to cerebral changes which prompted the
responses without any consciousness on the part of the agents of the
latent springs of their actions.' It is, apparently, to be
understood that, as the existence of latent unconscious knowledge
was traced in 'several' cases, therefore the explanation held good
in all cases, even where it could not be established as a fact.
Let us see how this theory works out in practice. Smith, Jones,
Brown and Robinson are sitting with their hands on a table. All, ex
hypothesi, are honourable men, 'above suspicion of intentional
deception'. They ask the table where Green is. Smith, Jones and
Robinson have no idea, Brown firmly believes that Green is in Rome.
The table begins to move, kicks and answers, by aid of an alphabet
and knocks, that Green is at Machrihanish, where, on investigation,
he is proved to be. Later, Brown is able to show (let us hope by
documentary evidence), that he _had_ heard Green was going to
Machrihanish, instead of to Rome as he had intended, but this
remarkable change of plans on Green's part had entirely faded from
Brown's memory. Now we are to take it, ex hypothesi, that Brown is
the soul of honour, and, like Mr. Facey Rumford, 'wouldn't tell a
lie if it was ever so'. The practical result is that, while Brown's
consciousness informs him, trumpet-tongued, that Green is at Rome,
'the residue of a forgotten impression' makes him (without his
knowing it) wag the table, which he does not intend to do, and
forces him to say through the tilts of the table, that Green is at
Machrihanish, while he believes that Green is at Rome.
The table-turners were laughed at, and many, if not all of them,
deserved ridicule. But see how even this trivial superstition
illuminates our knowledge of the human mind! A mere residuum of a
forgotten impression, a lost memory which Brown would have sworn, in
a court of justice, had never been in his mind at all, can work his
muscles, while he supposes that they are _not_ working, can make a
table move at which three other honourable men are sitting, and can
tell all of them what none of them knows. Clearly the expedient of
table-turning in court might be tried by conscientious witnesses,
who have forgotten the circumstances on which they are asked to give
evidence. As Dr. Carpenter remarks, quoting Mr. Lecky, 'our
doctrine of unconscious cerebration inculcates toleration for
differences not merely of belief, but of the moral standard'. And
why not toleration for 'immoral' actions? If Brown's residuum of an
impression can make Brown's muscles move a table to give responses
of which he is ignorant, why should not the residuum of a forgotten
impression that it would be a pleasant thing to shoot Mr. Gladstone
or Lord Salisbury, make Brown unconsciously commit that solecism?
It is a question of degree. At all events, if the unconscious self
can do as much as Dr. Carpenter believed, we cannot tell how many
other marvels it may perform; we cannot know till we investigate
further. If this be so, it is, perhaps, hardly wise or scientific
to taboo all investigation. If a mere trivial drawing-room
amusement, associated by some with an absurd 'animistic hypothesis,'
can, when explained by Dr. Carpenter, throw such unexpectedly
blinding light on human nature, who knows how much light may be
obtained from a research into more serious and widely diffused
superstitious practices? The research is, undeniably, beset with
the most thorny of difficulties. Yet whosoever agrees with Dr.
Carpenter must admit that, after one discovery so singular as
'unconscious cerebration,' in its effect on tables, some one is
bound to go further in the same field, and try for more. We are
assuming, for the sake of argument, the accuracy of Dr. Carpenter's
facts. {17a}
More than twenty years ago an attempt was made by a body called the
'Dialectical Society,' to investigate the phenomena styled
spiritualistic. This well-meant essay had most unsatisfactory
results. {17b}
First a committee of inquiry was formed, on the motion of Dr.
Edmunds. The committee was heterogeneous. Many of the names now
suggest little to the reader. Mr. Bradlaugh we remember, but he
chiefly attended a committee which sat with D. D. Home, and it is
admitted that nothing of interest there occurred. Then we find the
Rev. Maurice Davies, who was wont to write books of little
distinction on semi-religious topics. Mr. H. G. Atkinson was a
person interested in mesmerism. Kisch, Moss, and Quelch, with Dyte
and Isaac Meyers, Bergheim and Geary, Hannah, Hillier, Reed (their
names go naturally in blank verse), were, doubtless, all most
estimable men, but scarcely boast of scientific fame. Serjeant Cox,
a believer in the phenomena, if not in their spiritual cause, was of
the company, as was Mr. Jencken, who married one of the Miss Foxes,
the first authors of modern thaumaturgy. Professor Huxley and Mr.
G. H. Lewes were asked to join, but declined to march to Sarras, the
spiritual city, with the committee. This was neither surprising nor
reprehensible, but Professor Huxley's letter of refusal appears to
indicate that matters of interest, and, perhaps, logic, are
differently understood by men of science and men of letters. {18}
He gave two reasons for refusing, and others may readily be imagined
by the sympathetic observer. The first was that he had no time for
an inquiry involving much trouble, and (as he justly foresaw) much
annoyance. Next, he had no interest in the subject. He had once
examined a case of 'spiritualism,' and detected an imposture. 'But,
supposing the phenomena to be genuine, they do not interest me. If
anybody would endow me with the faculty of listening to the chatter
of old women and curates in the nearest cathedral town, I should
decline the privilege, having better things to do.' Thus it would
not interest Professor Huxley if some new kind of telephone should
enable him to hear all the conversation of persons in a town (if a
cathedral town) more or less distant. He would not be interested by
the 'genuine' fact of this extension of his faculties, because he
would not expect to be amused or instructed by the contents of what
he heard. Of course he was not invited to listen to a chatter,
which, on one hypothesis, was that of the dead, but to help to
ascertain whether or not there were any genuine facts of an unusual
nature, which some persons explained by the animistic hypothesis.
To mere 'bellettristic triflers' the existence of genuine abnormal
and unexplained facts seems to have been the object of inquiry, and
we must penitently admit that if genuine communications could really
be opened with the dead, we would regard the circumstance with some
degree of curious zest, even if the dead were on the intellectual
level of curates and old women. Besides, all old women are not
imbeciles, history records cases of a different kind, and even some
curates are as intelligent as the apes, whose anatomy and customs,
about that time, much occupied Professor Huxley. In Balaam's
conversation with his ass, it was not so much the fact that mon ane
parle bien which interested the prophet, as the circumstance that
mon ane parle. Science has obviously soared very high, when she
cannot be interested by the fact (if a fact) that the dead are
communicating with us, apart from the value of what they choose to
say.
However, Professor Huxley lost nothing by not joining the committee
of the Dialectical Society. Mr. G. H. Lewes, for his part, hoped
that with Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace to aid (for he joined the
committee) and with Mr. Crookes (who apparently did not) 'we have a
right to expect some definite result'. Any expectation of that kind
was doomed to disappointment. In Mr. Lewes's own experience, which
was large, 'the means have always been proved to be either
deliberate imposture . . . or the well-known effects of expectant
attention'. That is, when Lord Adare, the Master of Lindsay, and a
cloud of other witnesses, thought they saw heavy bodies moving about
of their own free will, either somebody cheated, or the spectators
beheld what they did behold, because they expected to do so, even
when, like M. Alphonse Karr, and Mr. Hamilton Aide, they expected
nothing of the kind. This would be Mr. Lewes's natural explanation
of the circumstances, suggested by his own large experience.
The results of the Dialectical Society's inquiry were somewhat
comic. The committee reported that marvels were alleged, by the
experimental subcommittees, to have occurred. Sub-committee No. 1
averred that 'motion may be produced in solid bodies without
material contact, by some hitherto unrecognised force'. Sub-
committees 2 and 3 had many communications with mysterious
intelligences to vouch for, and much erratic behaviour on the part
of tables to record. No. 4 had nothing to report at all, and No. 5
which sat four times with Home had mere trifles of raps. Home was
ill, and the seances were given up.
So far, many curious phenomena were alleged to have occurred, but
now Dr. Edmunds, who started the whole inquiry, sent in a separate
report. He complained that convinced spiritualists had 'captured'
the editing sub-committee, as people say, and had issued a report
practically spiritualistic. He himself had met nothing more
remarkable than impudent frauds or total failure. 'Raps, noises,
and movements of various kinds,' he had indeed witnessed, and he
heard wondrous tales from truthful people, 'but I have never been
able to see anything worthy of consideration, as not being accounted
for by unconscious action, delusion, or imposture'. Then the
editors of the Report contradicted Dr. Edmunds on points of fact,
and Mr. A. R. Wallace disabled his logic, {21} and Mr. Geary
dissented from the Report, and the editors said that his statements
were incorrect, and that he was a rare attendant at seances, and
Serjeant Cox vouched for more miracles, and a great many statements
of the most astounding description were made by Mr. Varley, an
electrician, by D. D. Home, by the Master of Lindsay (Lord Crawford)
and by other witnesses who had seen Home grow eight inches longer
and also shorter than his average height; fly in the air; handle
burning coals unharmed, cause fragrance of various sweet scents to
fill a room, and, in short, rival St. Joseph of Cupertino in all his
most characteristic performances. Unluckily Mr. Home, not being in
the vein, did not one of these feats in presence of Mr. Bradlaugh
and sub-committee No. 5. These results are clearly not of a
convincing and harmonious description, and thus ended the attempt of
the Dialectical Society. Nobody can do otherwise than congratulate
Professor Huxley and Mr. Lewes, on their discreet reserve. The
inquiry of the Dialectical Society was a failure; the members of the
committees remained at variance; and it is natural to side with the
sceptics rather than with those who believed from the first, or were
converted (as many are said to have been) during the experiments.
Perhaps all such inquiries may end in no more than diversity of
opinion. These practical researches ought not to be attempted by
the majority of people, if by any. On many nervous systems, the
mere sitting idly round a table, and calling the process a seance,
produces evil effects.
As to the idea of purposely evoking the dead, it is at least as
impious, as absurd, as odious to taste and sentiment, as it is
insane in the eyes of reason. This protest the writer feels obliged
to make, for while he regards the traditional, historical and
anthropological curiosities here collected as matters of some
interest, in various aspects, he has nothing but abhorrence and
contempt for modern efforts to converse with the manes, and for all
the profane impostures of 'spiritualism'.
On the question of the real existence of the reported phenomena
hereafter chronicled, and on the question of the portee of the
facts, if genuine, the writer has been unable to reach any
conclusion, negative or affirmative. Even the testimony of his
senses, if they ever bore witness to any of the speciosa miracula,
would fail to convince him on the affirmative side. There seems to
be no good reason why one observer should set so much store by his
own impressions of sense, while he regards those of all other
witnesses as fallible. On the other hand, the writer feels unable
to set wholly aside the concurrent testimony of the most diverse
people, in times, lands and conditions of opinion the most various.
The reported phenomena fall into regular groups, like the symptoms
of a disease. Is it a disease of observation? If so, the topic is
one of undeniable psychological interest. To urge this truth, to
produce such examples as his reading affords, is the purpose of the
author.
The topic has an historical aspect. In what sorts of periods, in
what conditions of general thought and belief, are the alleged
abnormal phenomena most current? Every one will answer: In ages
and lands of ignorance and superstitions; or, again: In periods of
religious, or, so to say, of irreligious crisis. As Mr. Lecky
insists, belief in all such matters, from fairies to the miracles of
the Gospel, declines as rationalism or enlightenment advances. Yet
it is not as Mr. Lecky says, before reason that they vanish, not
before learned argument and examination, but just before a kind of
sentiment, or instinct, or feeling, that events contradictory of
normal experience seem ridiculous, and incredible.
Now, if we set aside, for the present, ecclesiastical miracles, and
judicial witchcraft, and fix our attention on such minor and useless
marvels as clairvoyance, 'ghosts,' unexplained noises, unexplained
movements of objects, one doubts whether the general opinion as to
the ratio of marvels and ignorance is correct. The truth is that we
have often very scanty evidence. If we take Athens in her lustre,
we are, undeniably, in an age of enlightenment, of the Aufklarung.
No rationalistic, philosophical, cool-headed contemporary of
Middleton, of Hume, of Voltaire, could speak more contemptuously
about ghosts, and about the immortality of the soul, than some of
the Athenian gentlemen who converse with Socrates in the Dialogues.
Yet we find that Socrates and Plato, men as well educated, as
familiar with the refined enlightenment of Athens as the others,
take to some extent the side of the old wives with their fables, and
believe in earth-bound spirits of the dead. Again, the clear-headed
Socrates, one of the pioneers of logic, credits himself with
'premonitions,' apparently with clairvoyance, and assuredly with
warnings which, in the then existing state of psychology, he could
only regard as 'spiritual'. Hence we must infer that belief, or
disbelief, does not depend on education, enlightenment, pure reason,
but on personal character and genius. The same proportionate
distribution of these is likely to recur in any age.
Once more, Rome in the late Republic, the Rome of Cicero, was
'enlightened,' as was the Greece of Lucian; that is the educated
classes were enlightened. Yet Lucretius, writing only for the
educated classes, feels obliged to combat the belief in ghosts and
the kind of Calvinism which, but for his poem, we should not know to
have been widely prevalent. Lucian, too, mocks frequently at
educated belief in just such minor and useless miracles as we are
considering, but then Lucian lived in an age of cataclysm in
religion. Looking back on history we find that most of historical
time has either been covered with dark ignorance, among savages,
among the populace, or in all classes; or, on the other hand, has
been marked by enlightenment, which has produced, or accompanied,
religious or irreligious crises. Now religious and irreligious
crises both tend to beget belief in abnormal occurrences. Religion
welcomes them as miracles divine or diabolical. Scepticism produces
a reaction, and 'where no gods are spectres walk'. Thus men cannot,
or, so far, men have not been able to escape from the conditions in
which marvels flourish. If we are savages, then Vuis and Brewin
beset the forest paths and knock in the lacustrine dwelling perched
like a nest on reeds above the water; tornaks rout in the Eskimo
hut, in the open wood, in the gunyeh, in the Medicine Lodge. If we
are European peasants, we hear the Brownie at work, and see the
fairies dance in their grassy ring. If we are devoutly Catholic we
behold saints floating in mid-air, or we lay down our maladies and
leave our crutches at Lourdes. If we are personally religious, and
pass days in prayer, we hear voices like Bunyan; see visions like
the brave Colonel Gardiner or like Pascal; walk environed by an
atmosphere of light, like the seers in Iamblichus, and like a very
savoury Covenanting Christian. We are attended by a virtuous sprite
who raps and moves tables as was a pious man mentioned by Bodin and
a minister cited by Wodrow. We work miracles and prophesy, like Mr.
Blair of St. Andrews (1639-1662); we are clairvoyant, like Mr.
Cameron, minister of Lochend, or Loch-Head, in Kintyre (1679). If
we are dissolute, and irreligious like Lord Lyttelton, or like
Middleton, that enemy of Covenanters, we see ghosts, as they did,
and have premonitions. If we live in a time of witty scepticism, we
take to the magnetism of Mesmer. If we exist in a period of learned
and scientific scepticism, and are ourselves trained observers, we
may still watch the beliefs of Mr. Wallace and the experiments
witnessed by Mr. Crookes and Dr. Huggins.
Say we are Protestants, and sceptical, like Reginald Scot (1584), or
Whigs, like De Foe, we then exclaim with Scot, in his Discovery of
Witchcraft (1584), that minor miracles, moving tables, have gone out
with benighted Popery, as De Foe also boasts in his History of the
Devil. Alas, of the table we must admit eppur si muove; it moves,
or is believed by foreign savants to move, for a peasant medium,
Eusapia Paladino. Mr. Lecky declares (1865) that Church miracles
have followed Hop o' my Thumb; they are lost, with no track of white
pebbles, in the forest of Rationalism. {26a} And then Lourdes comes
to contradict his expectation, and Church miracles are as common as
blackberries. Enfin, mankind, in the whole course of its history,
has never got quit of experiences which, whatever their cause, drive
it back on the belief in the marvellous. {26b}
It is a noteworthy circumstance that (setting apart Church miracles,
and the epidemic of witchcraft which broke out simultaneously with
the new learning of the Renaissance, and was fostered by the
enlightened Protestantism of the Reformers, the Puritans, and the
Covenanters, in England, Scotland and America) the minor miracles,
the hauntings and knockings, are not more common in one age than in
another. Our evidence, it is true, does not quite permit us to
judge of their frequency at certain periods. The reason is obvious.
We have no newspapers, no miscellanies of daily life, from Greece,
Rome, and the Middle Ages. We have from Greece and Rome but few
literary examples of 'Psychical Research,' few collections of books
on 'Bogles' as Scott called them. We possess Palaephatus, the life
of Apollonius of Tyana, jests in Lucian, argument and exposition
from Pliny, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Plutarch, hints from Plato,
Plautus, Lucretius, from St. Augustine and other fathers. Suetonius
chronicles noises and hauntings after the death of Caligula, but,
naturally, the historian does not record similar disturbances in the
pauperum tabernaae.
Classical evidence on these matters, as about Greek and Roman
folklore in general, we have to sift painfully from the works of
literary authors who were concerned with other topics. Still, in
the region of the ghostly, as in folklore at large, we have relics
enough to prove that the ancient practices and beliefs were on the
ordinary level of today and of all days: and to show that the
ordinary numbers of abnormal phenomena were supposed to be present
in the ancient civilisations. In the Middle Ages--the 'dark ages'--
modern opinion would expect to find an inordinate quantity of
ghostly material. But modern opinion would be disappointed.
Setting aside saintly miracles, and accusations of witchcraft, the
minor phenomena are very sparsely recorded. In the darkest of all
'dark ages,' when, on the current hypothesis, such tales as we
examine ought to be most plentiful, even witch-trials are
infrequent. Mr. Lecky attributes to these benighted centuries
'extreme superstition, with little terrorism, and, consequently,
little sorcery'. The world was capable of believing anything, but
it believed in the antidote as well as in the bane, in the efficacy
of holy water as much as in the evil eye. When, with the dawn of
enlightenment in the twelfth century, superstition became cruel, and
burned witch and heretic, the charges against witches do not, as a
rule, include the phenomena which we are studying. Witches are
accused of raising storms, destroying crops, causing deaths and
blighting marriages, by sympathetic magic; of assuming the shapes of
beasts, of having intercourse with Satan, of attending the Sabbat.
All these fables, except the last, are survivals from savage
beliefs, but none of these occurrences are attested by modern
witnesses of all sorts, like the 'knockings,' 'movements,' 'ghosts,'
'wraiths,' 'second sight,' and clairvoyance.
The more part of mediaeval witchcraft, therefore, is not quod
semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. The facts were facts: people
really died or were sterile, flocks suffered, ships were wrecked,
fields were ruined; the mistake lay in attributing these things to
witchcraft. On the other hand, the facts of rappings, ghosts,
clairvoyance, in spite of the universally consentient evidence, are
very doubtful facts after all. Their existence has to be
established before we look about for their cause. Now, of records
about _these_ phenomena the Middle Ages produce but a very scanty
supply. The miracles which were so common were seldom of this kind;
they were imposing visions of devils, or of angels, or of saints;
processions of happy or unhappy souls; views of heaven, hell, or
purgatory. The reason is not far to seek: ecclesiastical
chroniclers, like classical men of letters, recorded events which
interested themselves; a wraith, or common ghost ('matter of daily
experience,' says Lavaterus, and, later, contradicts himself), or
knocking sprite, was beneath their notice. In mediaeval sermons we
meet a few edifying wraiths and ghosts, returning in obedience to a
compact made while in the body. Here and there a chronicle, as of
Rudolf of Fulda (858), vouches for communication with a rapping
bogle. Grimm has collected several cases under the head of 'House-
sprites,' including this ancient one at Capmunti, near Bingen. {30}
Gervase of Tilbury, Marie de France, John Major, Froissart, mention
an occasional follet, brownie, or knocking sprite. The prayers of
the Church contain a petition against the spiritus percutiens, or
spirit who produces 'percussive noises'. The Norsemen of the Viking
age were given to second sight, and Glam 'riding the roofs,' made
disturbances worthy of a spectre peculiarly able-bodied. But, not
counting the evidence of the Icelandic sagas, mediaeval literature,
like classical literature, needs to be carefully sifted before it
yields a few grains of such facts as sane and educated witnesses
even now aver to be matter of their personal experience. No doubt
the beliefs were prevalent, the Latin prayer proves that, but
examples were seldom recorded.
Thus the dark ages do _not_, as might have been expected, provide us
with most of this material. The last forty enlightened years give
us more bogles than all the ages between St. Augustine and the
Restoration. When the dark ages were over, when learning revived,
the learned turned their minds to 'Psychical Research,' and Wier,
Bodin, Le Loyer, Georgius Pictorius, Petrus Thyraeus, James VI.,
collected many instances of the phenomena still said to survive.
Then, for want of better materials, the unhappy, tortured witches
dragged into their confessions all the folklore which they knew.
Second sight, the fairy world, ghosts, 'wraiths,' 'astral bodies' of
witches whose bodies of flesh are elsewhere, volatile chairs and
tables, all were spoken of by witches under torture, and by sworn
witnesses. {31} Resisting the scepticism of the Restoration,
Glanvil, More, Boyle, and the rest, fought the Sadducee with the
usual ghost stories. Wodrow, later (1701-1731), compiled the
marvels of his Analecta. In spite of the cold common-sense of the
eighteenth century, sporadic outbreaks of rappings and feats of
impulsive pots, pans, beds and chairs insisted on making themselves
notorious. The Wesley case would never have been celebrated if the
sons of Samuel Wesley had not become prominent. John Wesley and the
Methodists revelled in such narratives, and so the catena of
testimonies was lengthened till Mesmer came, and, with Mesmer, the
hypothesis of a 'fluidic force' which in various shapes has endured,
and is not, even now, wholly extinct. Finally Modern Spiritualism
arrived, and was, for the most part, an organised and fraudulent
copy of the old popular phenomena, with a few cheap and vulgar
variations on the theme.
In the face of these facts, it does not seem easy to aver that one
kind of age, one sort of 'culture' is more favourable to the
occurrence of, or belief in, these phenomena than another.
Accidental circumstances, an increase, or a decrease of knowledge
and education, an access of religion, or of irreligion, a fashion in
intellectual temperament, may bring these experiences more into
notice at one moment than at another, but they are always said to
recur, at uncertain intervals, and are always essentially the same.
To prove this by examples is our present business. In a thoroughly
scientific treatise, the foundation of the whole would, of course,
be laid in a discussion of psychology, physiology, and the phenomena
of hypnotism. But on these matters an amateur opinion is of less
than no value. The various schools of psychologists, neurologists,
'alienists,' and employers of hypnotism for curative or experimental
purposes, appear to differ very widely among themselves, and the
layman may read but he cannot criticise their works. The essays
which follow are historical, anthropological, antiquarian.