Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/footfallsonboundOOowenricli FOOTFALLS Boundary of Another World. WITH NAEEATIVE ILLUSTRATIONS. ROBERT DALE OWEF. rORUERLY HBMBER OF COXORESS, AND AllXRlUAlf UltflSTZR TO WAPLKl. " As It is the peculiar method of the Academy to interpose no personal judgment, but to admit those opinions which appear most probable, to compare arguments, and to set forth all that may be reasonably stated in favor of each proposition, and so, without obtruding any authority of its own, to leave the judgment of the hearers free •I'd unprejudiced, we will retain this custom which has been handed down from Socrates; and this method, dear brother Quintus, if you please, we will adopt, as often as possible, in all our dialogues together." — CicsRO de Divin. Lib. iL ^72. PHILADELPHIA: J. B LIPPINCOTT & CO. 18T2. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by T, B LIPPINCOTT & CO. In the Clerk's UAce of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern listrict of Pennsj'lvania. PREFACK It may intereet the reader, before perusing this volume, to know some of the circumstances which preceded and pro- duced it. The subjects of which it treats came originally under my xiotice in a land where, except to the privileged foreigner, such subjects are interdicted, — at Naples, in the autumn of 1855. Lp to that period I had regarded the whole as a delusion which no prejudice, indeed, would have prevented my exa- mming with care, but in which, lacking such examination, I had no faith whatever. To an excellent friend and former colleague, the Viscount de at. Amaro, Brazilian Minister at Naples, I shall ever remain debtor for having first won my serious attention to phenomena of a magneto-psychological character and to the study of ana- logous subjects. It was in his apartments, on the 4th of March, 1856, and in presence of himself and his lady, together with a member of the royal family of Naples, that I witnessed for the first time, with mingled feelings of surprise and incredulity, certain physical movements apparently without material agency. Three weeks later, during an evening at the Russian Minister's, an incident occurred, as we say, fortuitously, which, after the strictest scrutiny, I found myself unable to explain without referring it to some intelligent agency foreign to the spectators present, — not one of whom, it may be added, knew or had practiced any thing connected with what is called Spi- ritualism or mediumship. From that day I determined to test the matter thoroughly. My public duties left me, in winter, few leisure hours, but many during the summer and autumn months ; and that leisure, throughout more than two years, I devoted to an investigation (conducted partly by personal oh- 4 PRErACE. Bervations made in domestic privacy, partly by means of books) of the great question whether agencies from another phase of existence ever intervene here, and operate, for good or evil, on mankind. For a time the observations I made were similar to those which during the last ten years so many thousands have insti- tuted in our country and in Europe, and my reading was restricted to works for and against Animal Magnetism and for and against the modern Spiritual theory. But, as the field opened before me, I found it expedient to enlarge my sphere of research, — to consult the best professional works on Phy- siology, especially in its connection with mental phenomena, on Psychology in general, on Sleep, on Hallucination, on Insanity, on the great Mental Epidemics of Europe and America, together with treatises on the Imponderables, — in- cluding Keichenbach's curious observations, and the records of interesting researches recently made in Prussia, in Italy, in England and elsewhere, on the subject of Human Electricity in connection with its influence on the nervous system and the muscular tissues. I collected, too, the most noted old works containing nar- rative collections of apparitions, hauntings, presentiments, and the like, accompanied by dissertations on the Invisible World, and toiled through formidable piles of chaff to reach a few gleanings of sound grain. Gradually I became convinced that what by many have been regarded as new and unexampled phenomena are but modern phases of what has ever existed. And I ultimately reached the conclusion that, in order to a proper understanding of much that has excited and perplexed the public mind under the name of Spiritual Manifestations, historical research should precede every other inquiry, — that we ought to look throughout the past for classes of phenomena, and seek to arrange these, each in its proper niche. I was finally satisfied, also, that it behooved the student in this field (in the first instance, at least) to devote his attention to spontaneous phenomena, rather than to those that are evoked, — to appearances and disturbances that present them- selves occasionally only, it is true, but neither sought nor looked for ; like the rainbow, or the Aurora Borealis, or the wind that bloweth where it listeth, uncontrolled by the wishe* or the agency of man. By restricting the inquiry to these, all suspicion of being misled by epidemic excitement or ex- pectant attention is completely set aside. A record of such phenomena, carefully selected and authen- ticated, constitutes the staple of the present volume. In putting it forth, I am not to be held, any more than is the nar- turalist or the astronomer, to the imputation of tampering with holy things. As regards the special purpose of this work, no charge of necromantic efforts or unlawful seeking need be met, since it cannot possibly apply. The accusation, if any be brought, will be of a different character. If suspicion I incur, it will be not of sorcery, but of superstition, — of an endeavor, perhaps, to revive popular delusions which the lights of modern science have long since dispelled, or of stooping to put forth as grave relations of fact what are no better than idle nursery-tales. Accepting this issue, I am content to put myself on the country. I demand a fair trial before a jury who have not prejudged the cause. I ask for my witnesses a patient hearing, well assured that the final verdict, be it as it may, will be in accordance with reason and justice. I aspire not to build up a theory. I doubt, as to this subject, whether any man living is yet prepared to do so. My less ambitious endeavor is to collect together solid, reliable build- ing-stones which may serve some future architect. Already beyond middle age, it is not likely that I shall continue here long enough to see the edifice erected. But others may. The race endures, though the individual pass to another stage of existence. If I did not esteem my subject one of vast importance, I should be unworthy to approach its treatment. Had I found other writers bestowing upon it the attention which that im- portance merits, I should have remained silent. As it is, I have felt, with a modern author, that 'the withholding of large truths from the world may be a betrayal of the greatest trust.''* I am conscious, on the other hand, that one is ever apt to "Friend* in Council," Art. Truth. I* oyercElimate the importance of one's own labors. Yet even an effort such as this may suffice to give public opinion a true or a false direction. Great results are sometimes determined by humble agencies. "A ridge-tile of a cottage in Derbyshire," says Gisborne, "decides whether the rain which falls from heaven shall be directed to the German Ocean or the Atlantic." Let the reader, before he enters on the inquiry whether ultramundane interference be a great reality or a portentous delusion, permit me one additional remark. He will find that, in treating that hypothesis, I have left many things obscure and uninterpreted. Where no theory was clearly indicated, I preferred to state the facts and waive all explanation, having reached that period of life when, if good use has been made of past years, one is not ashamed to say, " I do not know," in uny case in which that is the simple truth. We do well, how- ever, to bear in mind that a difficulty unsolved does not amount to an argument in opposition.* To the many friends whose kindness has aided my under- taking, these pages owe their chief value. To some therein named I am enabled here to tender my grateful acknowledg- ments. To others who have assisted in private I am not less deeply indebted. I doubt not that if I were to delay the publication of this book for some years I should find much to modify, some- thing to retract. But if, in this world, we postpone our work till we deem it perfect, death comes upon us in our hesitation, and we effect nothing, from bootless anxiety to effect too «iuch. R. D. 0. *^* On page 511 will be found "Addenda to the Tenth Thousand." • " Where we cannot answer all objections, we are bound, in reason and in candor, to adopt the hypothesis which labors under the least." — " ElemenU of Logic," by Archbishop Whately. "That is accounted probable which has better argument producibld fof U than oan be brought against it" — South. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Preface 3 List of Adthoes Cited 13 BOOK I. PRELIMINARY. CHAPTER I. Statement of the Subject 17 Is ultramundane interference reality, or delusion? — The in- quiry practical, but hitherto discouraged — Time an essential element — Isaac Taylor — Jung Stilling — Swedenborg — Ani- mal Magnetism — Arago's opinion — Dr. Carpenter's admis- sions — The American epidemic — Phenomena independent of opinions — Sentiment linked to action — The home on the other side — Hades — Johnson's, Byron's, Addison's, and Steele's opinions — Truth in every rank — The Ghost-Club^ Contempt corrects not — Spiritualism an influential element — Dangers of over-credulity — Demoniac manifestations — Reason the appointed pilot — Duty of research — How dispose of spontaneous phenomena? — Martin Korky — Courage and impartiality demanded — A besetting temptation — Feeble be- lief — Skepticism — Georget's conversion — Evidence of sense — Some truths appeal to consciousness — Severe test applied to the subject selected. CHAPTER II. The Impossible 60 Columbus in Barcelona — The marvel of marvels — Presumption — There may be laws not yet in operation — Modern study of the imponderables — Arago's and Cuvier's admissions— What may be. CHAPTER III. The Miraculous 70 Moiern miracles rejected — Hume — The Indian prince — Defi- nition of a miracle — Change-bearing laws — Illustration from r Babbage's calculating machine — That which has been may not always be— An error of two phases — Alleged miracles — Convulsionists of St. M^dard — Spiritual agency, if it exist, not miraculous — Butler's and Tillotson's ideas of miracles. CHAPTER IV. The Improbable 92 Two modes of seeking truth — Circulation of the blood — Aero- lites — Rogers the poet, and La Place the mathematician — Former improbabilities — Argument as to concurrence in testimony — Love of the marvelous misleads — Haunted houses — The monks of Chantilly — Mental epidemics of Europe — Modesty enlists confidence — One success not disproved by twenty failures — Hallucination — Second-sight — Diagoras at Samothrace — Faraday on table-moving — Consequences of doubting our senses — Contending probabilities should be weighed. BOOK II. TOUCHING CERTAIN PHASES OP SLEEP. CHAPTER I. Sleep in general 117 A familiar marvel — An inscrutable world — Dreamless sleep — Perquin's observation — Does the soul sleep? — A personal observation — Phases of sleep which have much in common — Sleeping powers occasionally transcend the waking — Cabanis — Condorcet — Condillac — Gregory — Franklin — Legal opinion written out in sleep — Hypnotism — Carpenter's ob- servations — Darwin's theory as to suspension of volition — Spiritual and mesmeric phenomena hypnotic — How is the nervous reservoir supplied ? — The cerebral battery, and how it may possibly be charged — A hypothesis. CHAPTER II. Dreams 137 Ancient opinions — Dreams and insanity — Dreams from the ivory gate — Fatal credulity — Dreams may be suggested by slight causes — Dreams may be intentionally suggested — An ecstatic vision — The past recalled in dream — Dreams verifying themselves — The locksmith's apprentice — How ft Paris editor obtained his wife — Death of Sir Charles Lee's daughter — Calphurnia — The fishing-party — Signer Ro- CONTENTg. 9 mano's story — Dreams indicating a distant death — Macnish's dream — A shipwreck foreshadowed — Dreams involving double coincidences — The lover's appearance in dream — Misleading influence of a romantic incident — Alderman Clay's dream — A Glasgow teller's dream — The Arrears of Teind — The same error may result in skepticism and in superstition — William Hewitt's dream — Mary Hewitt's dream — The murder near Wadebridge — The two field-mice — The Percival murder seen in dream — Dreams may disclose trivial events — One dream the counterpart of another — The Joseph Wilkins dream — A miracle without a motive ? — The Mary Goffe case — The Plymouth Club alarmed — We must take trouble, if we will get at truth — An obscure explanation — Representation of cerebral action ? — Prescience in dreams — Goethe's grandfather — The visit foretold — The Indian mutiny foreshadowed — Bell and Stephenson — Murder by a negro prevented — Inferences from this case — Dreams recorded in Scripture — Are all dreams untrustworthy? BOOK III. DISTURBANCES POPULARLY TERMED HAUNTINGS. CHAPTER I. flEt KKAL Character op the Phenomena 210 ho proof of gaudy supernaturalism — A startling element pre- sents Itself — Poltergeister — What we find, not what we may expect to find — Ancient haunted houses. CHAPTER II. Narratives £'4 Disturbances at Ted worth — First example of responding of the sounds — Glanvil's observations — Mr. Mompesson's at testation — The Wesley disturbances — John Wesley's nar- rative — Emily Wesley's narrative, and her experience thirty- four years later — Opinions of Dr. Clarke, Dr. Priestley, Southey, and Coleridge — The New Havensack case — Mrs. Golding and her maid — The Castle of Slawensik — Disturb- ances in Silesia — Dr. Kemer's inquiries — Councilor Hahn's attestation — Twenty-five years after — Disturbances in the dwelling of the Seeress of Prevorst — Displacement of house- rafters — The law-suit — Disturbances legally attested — The flarm-house of Baldarroch — An alleged discovery — The cre» \0 OGNTENIS. rAoa dulouuness of incredulity — Spicer's narrative of a four- year disturbance — The cemetery of Ahrensburg — Effects produced on animals — An oflficial investigation — Its report — The Cideville parsonage — Disturbances in the north of France — Legal depositions — Verdict of the court — Additional proofs — The Rochester knockings — Disturbances at Hydes- ville — Kate Fox — Allegations of the sounds — Previous dis- turbances in the same house — Human bones found — Two peddlers disappear — One reappears — The other cannot h^ traced — The Stratford disturbances. CHAPTER III. Summing up 300 Character of the testimony — Phenomena long continued, and such as could not be mere imaginations — No expectation to influence — No motive for simulation — Whither ultra skep- ticism leads — Did Napoleon Buonaparte ever exist ? BOOK lY. OP APPEARANCES COMMONLY CALLED APPARITIONS. CHAPTER I. Touching Hallucination 303 Difficult to determine what is hallucination — The image on the retina — Opinions of Burdach, Miiller, Baillarger, Decham- bre, and De Boismont — Effects of imagination — Examples of different phases of hallucination — Illusion and hallu- cination — No collective hallucinations — Biological experi- ments — Reichenbach's observations — Exceptional cases of perception — The deaf-mute in the minority — Effect of medi- cine on perceptions — Is there evidence for epidemical halluci- nation? — De Gasparin's argument — The fanciful and the real. CHAPTER II. Apparitions op the Living 317 Jung Stilling's story — Apparition to a clergyman — Two appa- ritions of the living on the same day — The bride's terror — Suggestion as to rules of, evidence — The Glasgow sur- geon's assistant — Sight and sound — Apparition of the living seen by mother and daughter — Was this hallucination? — Dr. Donne's wife — Apparition at sea — The rescue — Appa- rition of the living at sea, and its practical result — The ('ying OONTilfTft. 11 mother and her babe — Sleep or trance not an indispen- sable condition — The two sisters — Apparition of two livinjj persons, they themselves being among the eye-witnesaes — The red dress — Hasty generalization imprudent — The Tisionary excursion — The counterpart appears where the thoughts or affections are ? CHAPTER III. Apparitions of the Dead 358 The spiritual body — May it not occasionally show itself? — A question not to be settled by closet theorists — Oberlin — His belief as to apparitions — Lorenzo the Magnificent and the Improvisatore — Mr. Grose and the skeptical cardinal — Anna Maria Porter's visitor — The dead body and the boat- cloak — Apparition in India — An atheist's theory examined — The brother's appearance to the sister — Apparition at the moment of death — The nobleman and his servant — Appa- rition witnessed by two independent observers — Louise — The Wynyard apparition, with corroborative testimony — Appa- rition of a stranger — The iron stove — Glimpse of a species of future punishment? — The child's bones found — Is there repentance and progress beyond the tomb ? — Opinion of one of the Christian Fathers — The debt of three-and-tenpence — Human character little altered by the death-change ? — The stains of blood — The victim attracted to earth ? — The four- teenth of November — Through a (so-called) ghost an inac- curacy in a War-OflBce certificate is corrected — The old Kent manor-house — The Children family — Correct information regarding them obtained through an apparition — The author of Robinson Crusoe in a dilemma — Hades. BOOK V. INDICATIONS OP PERSONAL INTERFEEENCES. CHAPTER I. Retribution 431 The furies of the ancients not implacable — Modern examples of what seems retribution — The beautiful quadroon girl — Can dreams embody requitals ? — What a French actress suffered — Annoyances continued throughout two years and a half — A dying threat apparently fulfilled — What an Eng- lish officer suffered — Was it retribution 7 12 CONTENTS. CHAPTER II. ,^ Guardianship. 452 Ho\f Senator Linn's life was saved — Was it clairvoyance, or prescience ? — Help amid the snow-drifts — Unexpected con- solation — Gaspar — The rejected suitor — Is spiritual guard- ianship an unholy or incredible hypothesis ? BOOK VI. THE SUGGESTED RESULTS. CHAPTER I. Xhe Change at Death 476 A theory must not involve absurd results — Whence can the dead return? — Character but slightly changed at death — Spiritual theory involves two postulates — Hades swept out along with purgatory — How the matter stands historically — The Grecian Hades — The Jewish Sheol — What becomes of the soul immediately after death ? — An abrupt meta- morphosis? — A final doom, or a state of progress? — How human character is formed here — The postulates rational — What has resulted from discarding Hades — Enfeebling ef- fect of distance — The loss of identity — The conception of two lives — Man cannot sympathize with that for which he is not prepared — The virtuous reasonably desire and expect another stage of action — Human instincts too little studied — Man's nature and his situation — The Ideal — The utterings of the presaging voice — Man remains, after death, a human creature — Footfalls — A master-influence in another world — We are journeying toward a land of love and truth — What death is — What obtains the rites of sepulture. CHAPTER II. Conclusion 504 Admissions demanded by reason — The invisible and inaudible world — We may expect outlines rather than filling up — Man's choice becomes his judge — Pneumatology of the Bible — More light hereafter. Addenda to Tenth Thousand 511 Appendix — Note A. Circular of the Cambridge Ghost-Club.. 513 Note B. Testimony : View taken by two oppo- sing Schools 517 Imdbx 621 LIST OF AUTHORS CITED. Abercrombie. Intellectual Powers. Abrantds, M6inoires de Madame la Duchesse de, 6critB par elle-mSme, Parii, 1835. Account of the French Prophets and their Pretended Inspirations, London, 1708. Alexander ab Alexandre ; about 1450. Arago. Biograpbie de Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Paris, 1853. Aristotle. De Divinatione et Somuiis. Aubrey's Miscellanies. Babbage. Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, London, 1838. Bacon's Essays, London, 1597. Baillarger. Des Hallucinations. Bailly. Report on Mesmerism, made to the King of France, Angnst 11* 1784. Baxter. The Certainty of the World of Spirits, London, 1691. Beaumont. Ac Historical, Physiological, and Theological Treatise o« Spirits, London, 1705. Beecher, Rev. Charles. Review of Spiritual Manifestations. Bennett, Professor. The Mesmeric Mania, Edinburgh, 1851. Bertrand. Traits du Somnambulisme, Paris, 1823. Bich^t. R^cherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort, Paris, 1805. Binns, Edward, M.D. The Anatomy of Sleep, 2d ed., London, 1845. • Blackstone's Commentaries. Boismont, De. Des Hallucinations, Paris, 1852. Bovet The Devil's Cloyster, 1684. Braid, James. Neurypnology, or the Rationale of Sleep, London, 1843. Brewster, Sir David. The Martyrs of Science, London, 1856. Brodie, Sir B. Psychological Inquiries, 3d ed., London, 1856. Browne, Sir Thomas. Works. Burdach. Traitfi de Physiologie, Paris, 1839. Bushnell, Horace. Nature and the Supernatural, New York, 1858. Butler's Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Natan. Calmeil. De la Folic, Paris, 1845. Capron. Modern Spiritualism, Boston, 1853. 2 IS li AUTHORS CITED. Carl yon, Clemeut, M.D. Early Years and Late Reflections. Carpenter, William B., M.D. Principles of Human Physiology, 5th ed., 1855. Causes C^lebres. Chalmers's Evidences of the Christian Religion. Chaucer's Tale of the Chanon Yeman. Christmas, Rev. Henry. Cradle of the Twin Giants, Science and History, London, 1849. Cicero de Divinatione. de Natura Deorum. Clairon, M^moires de Mademoiselle, Actrice da Theatre Franyais, 6crit« par elle-m^me, Paris, 1822. Clarke, Dr. Memoirs of the Wesley Family, 2d ed., London, 1843. Coleridge's Lay Sermons. Court, M. Histoire des Troubles des Cevennes, Alais, 1819. Crowe, Catherine. Night Side of Nature, 1848. Ghosts and Family Legends, 1859. Cuvier. Lemons d'Anatomie comparSe. Dechambre. Analyse de I'Ouvrage du Docteur Szafkowski sur les Hallu- cinations, 1850. De Foe, Daniel. Universal History of Apparitions, London, 1727. Dendy, W. C. Philosophy of Mystery. Du Bois-Reymond. Untersuchungen Uber thierische Elektricitat, Berlin, 1848-49. Eclipse of Faith. Edwards, Henry, D.D. The Doctrine of the Supernatural Established, London, 1845. • Ennemoser. Geschichte der Magie, Leipzig, 1844. Essays written during the Intervals of Business, London, 1853. Faraday. Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, London, 1859. Ferriar, John, M.D. Essay towards a Theory of Apparitions. Foissac. Rapports et Discussions de I'Academie Roy ale de MMecina sur le Magnetisme Animal, Paris, 1833. Friends in Council, London. Garinet. Histoire de la Magie en France. Gasparin, Comte de. Des Tables tournantes, da Sumaturel en G^n^ral^ et des Esprits, Paris, 1855. Georget De la Physiologie du Systdme nerveux, Paris, 1821. Glanvil. Sadducismus Triumphatus, 3d ed., London, 1689. Goethe. Aus meinem Leben. Grose, Francis, F.A.S. Provincial Glossary and Popular Superstition, London, 1790. Hare, Robert, M.D. Experimental Examination of tlie Spirit-Manif«sta* Uona, 4th ed.. New York, 1850. AUTHORS CITED. 15 Ilazlitt's Round Table. Herschel, Sir John. Preliminary Discourse on the Stadj of Natural History* 2d ed., London, 1851. Histoire des Diables do Loudun, Amsterdam, 1693. Holland. Chapters on Mental Physiology, London, 1852. Huidekoper, Frederick. The Belief of the First Three Centuries concerning Christ's Mission to the Underworld. Humboldt, Baron. Cosmos. Yersuche Uber die gereizte Muskel- nnd Nerven&ser. Hume's Essays. Insulanus, Theophilus. Treatise on Second-Sigb^ Dreams, and Apparitions, Edinburgh, 1763. Johnson's Rasselas. Jones, Bence, M.D. On Animal Electricity : being an Abstract of the Dis- coveries of £mil Du Bois-Beymond, London, 1852. Kepleri Epistolae. Kerner, Justinus. Die Seherin von Prevorst, 4th ed., Stuttgart, 1846. Kerr, Robert Memoirs of the Life of William Smellie, Edinburgh, 1811. La Flcche. La Demonomanie de Loudun, 1634. La Place. Theorie analytique des Probabilit^s, Paris, 1847. Locke on the Human Understanding. Macario. Du Sommeil, des RSves, et du Somnambulisme, Lyons, 1857. Mackay's Popular Delusions. Macnish. Philosophy of Sleep. Martin. Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, London, 1706. Matteucci, Carlo. Traite des Ph6nom5nes 61ectro-physiologiques des Ani- maux, 1844. Mayo, Herbert. On the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions, Edin- burgh and London, 1851. M6nardnye, M. de la. Examen et Discussions critiques de I'Histoire dot Diables de Loudun, Paris, 1747. Mirville, Marquis de. Des Esprits, et de leurs Manifestations fluidiqaes, 3d ed., Paris, 1854. Misson. Theatre sacr^ des Cevennes, London, 1707. Montg6ron, Carr6 de. La V6rit6 des Miracles op6r6s par I'lntercession de M. de Paris, 2d ed., Cologne, 1745. Miiller's Manuel de Physiologic, Paris, 1845. Neander's Church History. Plautus' Mostellaria, a Comedy. Priestley, Dr. Original Letters by the Rev. John Wesley and his Friends, London, 1791. Racine. Abr6g6 de THistoire do Port-RoyaJ, Paris, 1693. Raikes, Thomas. A Portion of the Journal kept by, London, 1856. (teichenbach. Untersuchungen Uber die Dynamide. Sensitive Mensch. 16 AUTHORS CITED. Reid's Essays on the Mind. R^ponse k TExamen de la Possession des Religieuses de Louviers, Ronen, 1643. Report of the Mysterious Noises at Hydesville, Canandaigua, April, 1848. Ricard. Trait6 du Magnetisme Animal. Rogers' Table-Talk. Rogers, E. C. Philosophy of Mysterious Agents, Human and Mundane, Boston, 1853. Roman Ritual. Roscoe, William. The Life of Lorenzo de' MedicL Rutter. Animal Electricity. ScheflFer. Histoire de Laponie, Paris, 1778. Scott, Sir Walter. Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, 2d ed., 1857. Sears, Edmund H. Foregleams of Immortality, 4th ed., Boston, 1868. Siljestrom. Minnesfest ofver Berzelius, Stockholm, 1849. Sinclair. Satan's Invisible World Discovered, Edinburgh, 1789. Spectator for July 6, 1711. Spicer. Facts and Fantasies, London, 1853. Stilling, Jung. Theorie der Geisterkunde, 1809. Stober. Vie de J. F. Oberlin. Strahan, Rev. George, D.D. Prayers and Meditations of Dr. Samnel Johnson, London, 1785. Strauss. Life of Jesus. Taylor, Isaac. Physical Theory of Another Life, London, 1839. Taylor, Joseph. Danger of Premature Interment Theologia Mystica, ad usum Directorum Animarum, Paris, 1848. Tillotson's Sermons. Tissot, le PSre. Histoire Abr^g^e de la Possession des Ursulines de Loudun, Paris, 1828. Torquemada. Flores Curiosas, Salamanca, 1570. Walton, Isaac. The Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Ac, Oxford edition, 1824. Warton's History of English Poetry. Welby, Horace. Signs before Death, London, 1825. Whately, Archbishop. Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonapart* 12th ed., London, 1853. Whately, Archbishop. Elements of Logic. Wigan. Duality of the Mind, London, 1844. WraxaU, Sir N. William. Historical Memoirs of my Own Time. FOOTFALLS ON TBI BOUNDARY OF ANOTHER WORLD. BOOK I. PRELIMINARY. CHAPTER I. STATEMENT OP THE SUBJECT. "As I did ever hold, there mought be as great a vanitie in retiring and withdrawing men's conceites (except they bee of some nature) from the world as in obtruding them ; so, in these particulars, I have played myself the Inquisitor, and find nothing to my understanding in them con- trarie or infectious to the state of Religion or manners, but rather, as I suppose, medecinable." — Bacon: Dedication to Eaaays, 1597. In an age so essentially utilitarian as the present, no inquiry is likely to engage the permanent attention of the public, unless it be practical in its bearings. Even then, if the course of such inquiry lead to the examination of extraordinary phenomena, it will be found that evidence the most direct, apparently suflScing to prove the reality of these, will usually leave the minds of men incredulous, or in doubt, if the appearances bo of isolated character, devoid of authentic precedent in the past, and incapable of classification, in the propei niche, among analogous results; much more, in case they involve a suspension of the laws of nature. B 2* 17 18 THE INQUIRY PRACTICAL. If I entertain a hope of winning the public ear, while I broach, broadly and frankly, the question whether oocasional interferences from another world in this be reality or delusion, it is, first, because I feel confident in being able to show that the inquiry is of a practical nature; and, secondly, because the plienomena which I purpose to examine in connection with it are not of iso- lated, still less of miraculous, character. In the etymo- logical sense of the term, they are not unlikely, there being many of their like to be found adequately attested throughout history. They appear in groups, and lend themselves, like all other natural phenomena, to classifi- cation. Extraordinary, even astounding, they will usually be considered; and that, not so much because they are really uncommon, as because they have been, in a mea- sure, kept out of sight. And this again arises, in part, because few dispassionate observers have patiently examined them; in part, because prejudice, which dis- credits them, has prevented thousands to whom they have presented themselves from bearing public or even private testimony to what they have witnessed; in part, again, because, although these phenomena are by no means of modern origin, or determined by laws but recently operative, they appear to have much increased in frequency and variety, and to have reached a new stage of development, in the last few years; and finally, because they are such as readily stir up in weak minds blind credulity or superstitious terror, the prolific sources of extravagance and exaggeration. Thus the intelligent conceal and the ignorant misstate them. This condition of things complicates the subject, and much increases the difficulty of treating it. Again: though no article of human faith is better founded than the belief in the ultimate prevalence of truth, yet, in every thing relating to earthly progress, TIME AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT. 19 time enter* us an essential element. The fruit dr.'»ps not till it has ripened: if nipped by early blight or plucked by premature hand it is imperfect and worth- less. And the world of mind, like that of physical nature, has its seasons : its spring, when the sap rises and the buds swell; its summer, of opened flower and blossom; its autumn, of yellow grain. We must not expect to reap, in any field, until harvest-time. Yet, how gradual soever time's innovations and the corresponding progress of the human mind, there are certain epochs at which, by what our short sight calls chance, particular subjects spring forth into notice, as it were, by a sudden impulse, attracting general atten- tion, and thus predisposing men's minds to engage in their investigation. At such epochs, words that at other times would fall unheeded may sink deep and bear good fruit. It seldom happens, however, at the first outbreak of any great excitement, when some strange novelty seems bursting on the world, that the minds of men, whether of supporters or of opponents, maintain due moderation, either in assent or in denial. The hasty ardor of new- born zeal, and the sense, quick to offense when first im- pinged upon, of prejudice long dominant, alike indispose to calm inquiry, are alike unfavorable to critical judg- ment. And thus, at the present day, perhaps, (when the din of the earliest onset has subsided and the still small voice can be heard,) rather than at any period of the last ten years, during which our country has witnessed the rise and progress of what maj^ be called a revival of Pneumatology, may the subject be discussed with less of passion and received with diminished preju- dice. And if a writer, in treating of it at this juncture, escape some of those shoals upon which earlier inquirers have stranded, it may be due as much to a happy seleo- 20 ISAAC TAYLOR. tion of time, as to any especial merit or superior dis- cern ment. Then, too, as to the great question of which I purpose to examine the probabilities, recent events have not only enlisted the attention of the audience : they have also, in a measure, opened way for the speaker. The strict- ness of the taboo is relaxed. And this was greatly to be desired. For the inquiry touching the probability of ultramundane intervention — though it cannot be said to have been lost sight of at any moment since the dawn 01 civilization, though Scripture affirm it as to former ages, and though, throughout later times, often in various superstitious shapes, it has challenged the ter- rors of the ignorant — had seemed, for a century past, to be gradually losing credit and reputable standing, and to be doomed to exclusion from respectable society or philosophical circles. Able men cared not to jeopard a reputation for common sense by meddling with it at all. With honorable exceptions, however. Of these I have met with none so original in thought, so philosophic in spirit, as Isaac Taylor. Yet he has treated, with a master's hand, one branch only of the subject, — the analogical.* Another portion of this field of research has been partially occupied, from time to time, by a class of writers, often German, usually set down as superstitious dreamers ; of which Jung Stilling, perhaps, is one of the fairest examples.f Pious, earnest, able, of a pro* * "Physical Theory of Another Life," by the Author of the " Natural History of Enthusiasm," (Isaac Taylor,) 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 336. London, 1839. f "Theorie der Geiaterkunde," ("Theory of Spiritualism," or, literally, of Spirit-Knowledge,) by Jung Stilling, originally published in 1809. Johann Heinrich Jung, better known by his adjunct name of Stilling, bom in the Duchy of Nassau in 1740, rose from poverty and the humblest position to oe, first, Professor of Political Economy at Heidelberg, and afterward a member of the Aulic Council of the Grand Duke of Baden. STILLING AND SWEDENB0R3 21 jity beyond suspicion, but somewhat myiitical withal, the Aulic Councilor of Baden sought proofs of his speculations in alleged actual occurrences, (as appari tions, house-hauntings, and the like,) the records of which he adopted, and thereupon erected his spirit- theory with a facility of belief for which the apparent evidence seems, in man}^ of the examples cited, to be insufficient warrant. In our day others have pursued a similar line of argument; in one instance, at least, if sixteen editions in six years may vouch for the fact, attracting the sympathy of the public* Jacob Bohme is by some exalted to tbe highest rank among pneumatolo- gists; but I confess to inability to discover much that is practical, or even intelligible, in the mystical effusions of the worthy' shoemaker of Gbrlitz. The fault, however, may be in myself; for, as some one has said, ** He is ever the mystic who lives in the world farthest removed from our own." Swedenborg, the great spiritualist of the eighteenth century, is a writer as to whose voluminous works it would be presumptuous to offer an opinion without a careful study of themj and that I have not yet been able to give. This, however, one may safely assert, — that whatever judgment we may pass on what the Swedish seer calls his spiritual experience, and how little soever we may be prepared to subscribe to the exclusive claims unwisely set up for him by some of his disciples, an eminent spirit and power speak from his writings, which, even at a superficial glance, must arrest the attention of the right-minded. His idea of Degrees and Progression, reaching from earth to heaven ; his doctrine of Uses, equally removed from ascetical dreamery and from Utilitarianism in its hard, modern sense ; his allegation of Influx, or, in other words, of constant in- fluence exerted from tbe spiritual world on the material ; evon his strange theory of Correspondences; but, last and chief, his glowing appreciation of that principle of Love which is the fulfilling of the Law; these and other kindred characteristics of the Swedenborgian system are of too deep and genuine import to be lightly passed by. To claim for them nothing more, they are at least marvelously suggestive, and therefore highly valuable. For tbe rest, one may appreciate Swedenborg outside of Swedenborgian- ism. "For ourselves," said Margaret Fuller, "it is not as a seer of Ghosts, but as a seer of Truths, that Swedenborg interests us." * "Night Side of Nature," by Catherine Crowe, London, 1 vol. 12mo, pp. !»02. The work, originally published in 1848, reached its sixteenth thousand m 1854. In common with the older narrative colle-*<«ons of Glanvii, Mather, Baxter, Beaumont, Sinclair, De Foe, and others oi *,jnilar stamp, 22 ANIMAL MAGNETISM. It may be conceded, however, that these narratives have commonly been read rather to amuse an idle hour than for graver purpose. They have often excited wonder, seldom produced conviction. But this, as I think, is due, not to actual insufficiency in this field, but rather, first, to an unphilosophical manner of pre- senting the subject, — a talking of wonders and miracles, when there was question only of natural, even if ultra- mundane, phenomena; and, secondly, to an indiscri- minate mixing-up of the reliable with the apocryphal, to lack of judgment in selection and of industry in veri- fication. I have not scrupled freely to cull from this department; seeking, however, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and content, in so doing, even if the avail- able material that remains shall have shrunk to some- what petty dimensions. Essentially connected with this inquiry, and to be studied by all who engage therein, are the phenomena embraced in what is usually called Animal Magnetisfti. First showing itself in France, three-quarters of a century ago, its progress arrested at the outset, when its claims were vague and its chief phenomena as yet unobserved, by the celebrated report of Bailly,* often falling into it is obnoxious to the same criticism as that of Stilling ; yet any one who feels disposed to cast the volume aside as a mere idle trumping-up of ghost- stories might do well first to read its Introduction, and its Tenth Chapter on " the future that awaits us." A recent volume by the same author (" Ghosts and Family Legends," 1859) makes no pretension to authenticity, nor to any higher purpose than to help while away a winter evening. * Made to the King of France, on the 11th of August, 1784. It was signed, among other members of the commission, by Franklin and Lavoisier. It should especially be borne in mind that, while the commissioners-, in that report, speak in strong terms against the magnetism of 1784, with ita haquctn, its crises, and its convulsions, — against Mesmer's theory, too, of a universal fluid with flux and reflux, the medium of influence by the celestial bodies on the human system, and a universal curative agent, — they expresa no opinion whatever, favorable or unfavorable, in regard to somnaml ilJsm ARAGO ON BAILLY'S REPORT. 28 the hands of untrained and superficial obsenrers, some- times of arrant charlatans, its pretensions extravagantly stated by some and arrogantly denied by others, Animal Magnetism has won its way through the errors of its properly so called. It is nsually admitted that somnambulism, with its attend- ant phenomena, in the form now known to us, was observed, for the first time, by the Marquis de Puysegur, on his estate of Buzancy, near Soissons, on the 4th of March, 1784 j but Puys^gur made public his observations only at the close of that year, four months after the commissioners' report was made. Baillj and his associates, learned and candid as they were, must not be cited as condemning that which they had never seen nor heard of. To this fact Arago, a man who rose superior to the common prejudices of his associates, honestly testifies. I translate from his notice of the life and career of the unfortunate Bailly, published in the "Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes" for 1853. " The report of Bailly," says he, " upset from their foundations the ideas, the system, the practice, of Mesmer and his disciples : let us add, in all sincerity, that we have no right to evoke its authority against modem tomnambtUism. Most of the phenomena now grouped around that name were neither knoyrn nor announced in 1783. A magnetizer undoubtedly says one of the least probable things in the world, when he tells us that such nn individual, in a state of somnambulism, can see every thing in per- fect darkness, or read through a wall, or even without the aid of the eyes. But the improbability of such assertions does not result from the celebrated report. Bailly does not notice such marvels, either to assert or to deny them. The naturalist, the physician, or the mere curious investigator, who engages in somnambulic experiments, who thinks it his duty to inquire whether, in certain states of nervous excitement, individuals are really endowed with extraordinary faculties, — that, for instance, of reading through the epigastrium or the heel, — who desires to ascertain positively up to what point the phenomena announced with so much assurance by modern mag« notizers belong only to the domain of the rogue or the conjurer, — all such inquirers, wo say, are not in this case running counter to a judgment ren- dered ; they are not really opposing themselves to a Lavoisier, a Franklin, a Bailly. "hey are entering upon a world entirely new, the very existence of whicn these illustrious sages did not suspects" — (pp. 444—445.) A little further on in the same article, Arago adds, " My object has been to show that somnambulism ought not to be rejected a priori, especially by those who have kept up with the progress of modern physical science." And, in reproof of that presumption which so often denies without examin- ing, he quotes these excellent lines, which, he says, the truly learned ought tc bear constantly in mind : — " Croire tout d^couvert est une erreur profonde ; C'est prendre Thorizon pour les homes da monde." 24 MEDICAL ADMISSIONS. friends and the denunciations of its enemies, and (what is harder yet to combat) through frequent mystifications by impostors and occasional gross abuse of its powers, to the notice and the researches of men of unquestioned talent and standing, — among them, eminent members of the medical profession, — and has at last obtained a modest place even in accredited and popular treatises on physiological science.* The alleged proofs and analogical arguments above alluded to in fiivor of ultramundane intercourse, together with such corroboration as the phenomena of somnam- bulism afford, were all given to the world previous to the time when, in the obscure village of Hydesville, a young girl,t responding to the persistent knockings which for several nights had broken the rest of her mother and sisters, chanced upon the discovery that * An example may be found in " Principles of Hnman Physiology," by William B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.R. and P.G.S., 5th edition, London, 1855, § 696, (at pages 647 et acq.,) under the head " Mesmerism." Dr. Car- penter discredits the higher phenomena of Clairvoyance, but admits, 1st. A state of complete insensibility, during which severe surgical opera- tions may be performed without the consciousness of the patient. 2d. Arti- ficial somnambulism, with manifestation of the ordinary power of mind, but no recollection, in the waking state, of what has passed. 3d. Exaltation of the senses during such somnambulism, so that the somnambule perceives what in his natural condition he could not. 4th. Action, during such som- nambulism, on the muscular apparatus, so as to produce, for example, arti- ficial catalepsy ; and, 5th. Perhaps curative effects. Dr. Carpenter says his mind is made up as to the reality of these pheno- mena, and that "he does not see why any discredit should attach to them.** (Note at page 649.) The character and standing of this gentleman's numerous works on physiology and medical science are too widely known to need indorsement.. f Kate, youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Fox, and then aged nine. It was on the night of the 31st of March, 1848. This was, however, as will be seen in the sequel, by no means the first time that the observa. tion had been made that similar sounds showed appearance of intelligence. Por the particulars of the Hydesville story, see the last narrative in Book III. PHENOMENA INDEPENDENT OF OPINIONS. 25 these sounds seemed to exhibit characteristics of intel- ligence. From that day a new and important phase has offered itself to the attention of the student in pneumatology, and with it a new duty; that of determining the true character of what is sometimes termed the American Epidemic, more wonderful in its manifestations, far wider spread in its range, than any of the mental epidemics, marvelous in their phenomena as some of them have been, recorded by physicians and psychologists of con- tinental Europe. From that day, too, there gradually emerged into notice a new department in the science of the soul, — the posi- tive and experimental. Until now the greater number of accredited works on psychology or pneumatology have been made up exclusively of speculations drawn either from analogy or from history, sacred or profane, — emi- nent sources, yet not the only ones. No such work ought now to be regarded as complete without an examination of phenomena as well as a citation of authorities. And thus, though a portion of the present volume consists of historical recallings, since the wonders of the present can seldom be fitly judged without the aid of the past, another and larger portion embraces narratives of modern date, phenomena of comparatively recent occur- rence, the evidence for which has been collected with the same care with which a member of the legal pro- fession is wont to examine his witnesses and prepare his case for trial. In perusing a work of this character, the reader will do well to bear in mind that phenomena exist indepen- dently of all opinions touching their nature or origiu. A fact is not to be slighted or disbelieved because a false theory may have been put forth to explain it. It tias its importance, if it be important at all, irrespective of all theories. 3 26 SENTIMENT LINKED TO ACTION. And if it should be alleged, as to this class of facts, that they have no intrinsic importance, the reply is, first, that although the present age, as at the outset I have ad- mitted, be a utilitarian one, — though it seek the positive and bold to the practical, — ^yet the positive and the prac- tical may be understood in a sense falsely restrictive. Man does not live by bread alone. He lives to develop and to improve, as much as to exist. And development and improvement are things as real as existence itself. That which brings home to our consciousness noble ideas, refined enjoyment, that which bears good fruit in the mind, even though we perceive it not with our eyes nor touch it with our hands, is something else than an idle dream. The poetry of life is more than a metaphor. Sentiment is linked to action. Nor is the world, with all its hard materialism, dead to these truths. There is a corner, even in our work-a-day souls, where the ideal lurks, and whence it may be called forth, to become, not a mere barren fancy, but the prolific parent of pro- gress. And from time to time it is thus called forth, to ennoble and to elevate. It is not the enthusiast only who aspires. What is civilization but a realization of human aspirations ? Yet I rest not the case here, in generalities. When I am told that studies such as form the basis of this work are curious only, and speculative in their character, leading to nothing of solid value, and therefore un- worthy to engage the serious attention of a business world, my further reply is, that such allegation is a virtual begging of the very question which in this volume I propose to discuss. It is an assuming of the negative in advance ; it is a taking for granted that the phenomena in question cannot possibly establish the reality of ultramundane interference. For, if they do, he must be a hardy or a reckless man who shall ask, " Where is the good ?" This ia not our THE HOME ON THE OTHER SIDE. 27 abiding-place; and though, during our tenancy of sixty or seventy years, it behoove us to task our best energies in the cause of earthly improvement and happiness, — though it be our bounden duty, while here, to care, in a measure, for the worldly welfare of all, more especially for the wants and comforts of our own domestic hearth, — and though, as human workers, much the larger portion of our thoughts and time must be, or ought to be, thus employed, — yet, if our permanent dwelling-place is soon to be established elsewhere ; if, as the years pass, our affections are stealing thither before us ; if the home- circle, gradually dissolving here, is to be reconstituted, fresh and enduring, in other regions,* shall we hold it to be matter of mere idle curiosity, fantastic and in- different, to ascertain, whether, in sober truth, an inti- mation from that future home is ever permitted to reach us, here on our pilgrimage, before we depart ? We canijot curtly settle this question, as some assume to do, by an a priori argument against the possibility of human intercourse with the denizens of another w^orld. Especially is the Bible Christian barred from employing * "We start in life an unbroken company : brothers and sisters, friends and lovers, neighbors and comrades, are with us : there is circle within cir- cle, and each one of us is at the charmed center, where the heart's aflFection» are aglow and whence they radiate outward on society. Youth is exuberant with joy and hopej the earth looks fair, for it sparkles with May-dews wet, and no shadow hath fallen upon it. We are all here, and we could lire here forever. The home-center is on the hither side of the river; and why should we strain our eyes to look beyond ? But this state of things does not con- tinue long. Our circle grows less and less. It is broken and broken, and then closed up again ; but every break and close make it narrower and smaller. Perhaps befbre the sun is at his meridian the majority are on the other side ) the circle there is as large as the one here ; and we are drawn contrariwise and vibrate between the two. A little longer, and almost all have crossed over; the balance settles down on the spiritual side, and the home-center is removed to the upper sphere. At length you see nothing but an aged pilgrim standing alone on the river's bank and looking ear- nestly toward the country on the other side." — " Foregleams of fmmort^iti/,'' bv Edmund H. Sears. 4th ed., Boston, 1858: chap, xvi., "Home/' p. 136. 28 WHITHER SADDUCISM MAY LEAD. any such. That which has been may be.* The Scrip- tures teach that such intercourse did exist in earlier days ; and they nowhere declare that it was thenceforth to cease forever. And when, in advance of any careful examination of this question, we decide that, in our day at least, no such intervention is possible, it might be well that we consider whether our Sadducism go not further than we think for; whether, without our consciousness perhaps, it strike not deeper than mere disbelief in modern spiritual agencies. Let us look to it, that, in slightingly discarding what it is the fashion to regard as supersti- tion, we may not be virtually disallowing also an essen- tial of faith.f Does the present existence of another world come home to us as a living truth? Do we verily believe that beings of another sphere are around us, watching, caring, loving ? Is it with our hearts, or * "Why come not spirits from the realms of glory, To visit earth, as in the days of old, — The times of ancient writ and sacred story ? Is heaven more distant ? or has earth grown cold ? . . , **To Bethlehem's air was their last anthem given When other stars before the One grew dim ? Was their last presence known in Peter's prison, Or where exulting martyrs raised the hymn ?" Julia Wallice. f Whence do such able reasoners as Dr. Strauss derive their most efficient ireapons in the assault upon existing faith ? From the modern fashion of denying all ultramundane intrusion. That which we reject as incredible if alleged to have happened to-day, by what process does it become credible by being moved back two thousand years into the past? "The totality of finite things," says Strauss, "forms a vast circle, which, except that it owes its existence and laws to a superior power, suflFers no intrusion from without. This conviction is so much a habit of thought ^ith the modern world, that in actual life the belief in a supernatural manifestation, an immediate divine agency, is at once attributed io igno- <«nce or imposture." — ^'Xife of Jeaua," vol. i. p. 71. HADES. 29 with our lips only, that we assent, if indeed we do as- sent,* to the doctrine contained in Milton's lines ? — " Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth, Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." If all this be more to us than mere idle sound, with what show of reason can we take it for granted, as a point settled prior to all discussion of it, that intercourse with another world is no longer vouchsafed to us in this ? All reasoning a prioriy if resorted to at all, tells in favor of such intervention. One of the strongest natural arguments in proof of the soul's immortality- has ever been held to be the universality of man's belief in an after-life; a sentiment so common to all ages and nations that it may claim the character of an instinct.f But the belief in the occasional appearance, * " Men have ever been familiar with the idea that the spirit does not rest with the body in the grave, but passes at once into new conditions of being. The opinion has gained adherence, and disputes the ground with the more material one, that it rests in sleep with the body to await one common day of awakening and judgment; and so confused are the common impressions on the subject that you may hear a clergyman, in his funeral sermon, deliberately giving expression to both in one discourse, and telling you, in the same breath, that my lady lately deceased is a patient inhabit- ant of the tomb, and a member of the angelic company. But the idea of uninterrupted life has so strong a hold on the affections, which cannot bear the idea of even the temporary extinction of that which they cling to, that it has the instinctive adherence of almost every one who has felt deeply and stood face to face with death." — (London) National Review for July, 1858, p. 32. The question of a mediate state of existence commencing at the moment of death, the Hades alike of the ancients and of early Christianity, will be touched upon later in this volume. There are those who admit the objective reality of apparitions, yet, deny- ing the existence of any mediate state after death, adopt the theory that it is angels of an inferior rank created such, who, for good purpose, occasion- ally personate deceased persons, and that the departed never return. This iii De Foe's hypothesis, and is ably advocated by him in his " Universal Hit' tory of Apparitions," London, 1727. The broad question is, whether *' spiritual creatures," be they angels or departed souls, are present around us. t The best analogical argument which I remember to have met with ia 80 OPINIONS OF JOHNSON, BYRON, or influence on human affairs, of disembodied spirits,* is scarcely less general or less instinctive; though it is to be admitted that in the Dark Ages it commonly de- generated into demonology.f The principle, however, may be true and the form erroneous; a contingency of constant recurrence throughout the history of the human mind, as when religion, for example, Assumed and maintained for ages the pagan form. The matter at issue, then, must be grappled with more closely. We have no right to regard it as a closed question, bluffly to reject it as involving incredi- ble assumptions, or to dismiss it with foregone conclu- sions under terms of general denial.J It is neither favor of the immortality of the soul is contained in Isaac Taylor's work already referred to, the ''Physical Theory of Another Life," at pp. 64 to 69. This argument from analogy must, I think, be regarded as much more forcible than the abstract logic by which the ancient philosophers sought to establish the truth in question. When Cicero, following Socrates and Plato, says of the soul, " Nee discerpi, nee distrahi potest, nee igitur in- terire," the ingenuity of the reasoning is more apparent than its con- clusiveness. * Disembodied, disconnected from this natural body; not unemhodied; for I by no means impugn the hypothesis of a spiritual body. — 1 Cor. xv. 44. f " To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence, of witchcraft and sor- cery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God, in various passages both of the Old and New Testament ; and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath, in its turn, borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits." — Blackatone'a Com- mentaries, b. 4, c, 4, ^ 6. I adduce the above from so distinguished a source on account of its bear- ings on the universality of man's belief in ultramundane intercourse, and to rebut a presumption against that intercourse, now in vogue ; not as proof of the reality of such intercourse. J It may not be amiss here to remind the reader that by such men as Johnson and Byron the universal belief of man in intercourse with the spirits of the departed was regarded as probable proof of its occasional ."eality. It will be remembered that the former, in his **Rasselas," puts into the mouth of the sage Imlac this sentiment: — "That tne dead are seen no more I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent testimony ADDISON, AND STEELE. SI logical nor becoming for men to decide, in advance of investigation, that it is contrary to the" divine economy that there should be ultramundane interference. It i« our business to examine the Creator's works, and thence, if needs we must, to derive conclusions as to His intentions. It is our province to seek out and establish of all ages and all nations. There is no people, rude or unlearned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which prevails as far as human nature is di£fused, could become universal only by its truth : those that never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience could make credible. That it is doubted by single cavilers can very little weaken the general evi- dence ; and some, who deny it with their tongues confess it with their fears." To this passage Byron alludes in the following : — , "I merely mean to say what Johnson said, That, in the course of some six thousand years, All nations have believed that from the dead A visitant at intervals appears. And what is strangest upon this strange head, Is, that, whatever bar the reason rears 'Gainst such belief, there's something stronger still In its behalf, let those deny who will." Addison's opinion on the same subject is well known. It is contained in one of the numbers of The Spectator ascertained to be from his pen, — namely, No. 110, published Friday, July 6, 1711, — and is in these words: — " I think a person who is thus terrified with the imagination of ghost* and specters much more reasonable than one who, contrary to the reports of all historians, sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of all nations, thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and groundless. Could not I give myself up to this general testimony of man- kind, I should to the relations of particular persons who are now living, and whom I cannot distrust in other matters of fact." Another distinguished contributor to The Spectator seems to have shared the same opinion. The author of "A Treatise on Secotid-Sight, Dreams, «uid Apparitions," a Highland clergyman, I believe, named Macleod, but writing under the signature of Theophilus Insulanut, says, — " What made me inquire more narrowly into the subject, was in conse- quence ot a conversation I had with Sir Richard Steele, who engaged mt to search for instances of it well attested." — Treatise on Second-Sight, <&«., Edinburgh, 1763, p. 97. 82 TRUTH IN EVERY RANK. facts, and then to build upon them ; not to erect on the sand of preconception hazarded theories of our own, which Science, in her onward march, may assault and overthrow, as did the system of Galileo the theology of the Koman inquisitors.* As little defensible is it, in case we should happen in search of its proofs to come upon the testimony of the humble and the unlettered, that we refuse audience to any well-attested fact because we may not consider its origin sufficiently reputable. We may learn from all classes. We shall find truth in every rank. Things that escape the reputed wise and prudent may be perceived by those who in technical knowledge are but children in comparison. Mere learning does not * Taylor has a passage on this subject well deserving our notice. Speak- ing of the belief in " occasional interferences of the dead with the living,'* which, he says, *' ought not to be summarily dismissed as a mere folly of the vulgar," he adds : — "In considering questions of this sort, we ought not to listen, for a moment, to those frequent but impertinent questions that are brought for- ward with a view of superseding the inquiry ; such, for example, as these : — *What good is answered by the alleged extra-natural occurrences?' or, * Is it worthy of the Supreme Wisdom to permit them?' and so forth. The question is a question, first, of testimony, to be judged of on the established principles of evidence, and then of physiology ; but neither of theology nor of morals. Some few human beings are wont to walk in their sleep; and during the continuance of profound slumber they perform, with pre- cision and safety, the offices of common life, and return to their beds, and yet are totally unconscious when they awake of what they have done. Now, in considering this or any such extraordinary class of facts, our busi- ness is, in the first place, to obtain a number of instances supported by the distinct and unimpeachable testimony of intelligent witnesses ; and then, being thus in possession of the facts, to adjust them, as well as we can, to other parts of our philosophy of human nature. Shall we allow an objector to put a check to our scientific curiosity on the subject, for in- stance, of somnambulism, by saying, * Scores of these accounts have turned out to be exaggerated or totally untrue,' or, * This walking in the sleep ought not to be thought possible, or as likely to be permitted by tho Benevolent Guardian of human welfare*?" — Physical ITieoty of Atmtkef Lifc^ p. 27. A REACTION. 88 always enlighten: it may but distort and obscure. That is a shrewd touch of satire, often applicable in practical life, which Goethe puts in the mouth of him of the Iron Hand, stout '' Gotz of Berlichingen." When his little son, after repeating his well-conned lesson in geography about the village and castle of Jaxt- hausen, — the Berlichingen family-seat, on the banks of the river Jaxt, — could not reply to his parent's ques- tion as to what castle he was talking about, the old warrior exclaims, " Poor child ! he knows not, for veiy learning, his own father's house!" The majority of educated men set aside, with little thought or scruple, all stories of haunted houses, all nar- ratives of apparitions, all allegations touching prophetic or clear-sighted dreams, and similar pretensions, as the ignoble offshoots of vulgar superstition. Yet there has been of late a reaction in this matter. Here and there we come upon indications of this. It is within my know- ledge, that a few years since, at one of the chief English universities, a society was formed out of some of its most distinguished members, for the purpose of instituting, as their printed circular expresses it, "a serious and earnest inquiry into the nature of the phenomena which are vaguely called supernatural." They sub- jected these to careful classification, and appealed to their friends outside of the society to aid them in forming an extensive collection of authenticated cases, as well of remarkable dreams as of apparitions, whether of persons living or of the deceased ; the use to be made of these to be a subject for future con- sideration.* * The society referred to was formed in the latter part of the year 1851, at Cambridge, by certain members of the University, some of them now at the head of well-known institutions, most of them clergymen and fellowg of Trinity College, and almost all of them men who had graduated with the highest honors. The names of the more active among them were kindly C 34 THE GHOST CLUB. It is to be conceded, however, that examples such as these, significant though they be, are but exceptions The rule is to treat all alleged evidences for dream-re- vealings, or for the objective character of apparitions, or far the reality of those disturbances that go by the name of hauntings, as due either to accidental coincidence, to disease, to delusion, or to willful deception. One of the objects of the present volume is to inquire whether in 80 doing we are overlooking any actual phenomena. Beyond this, upon a cognate subject, I do not propose to enter. I am not, in this work, about to investigate what goes by the name of spiritual manifestations, — such as table-moving, rapping, mediumship, and the like. As the geologist prefers first to inspect the rock in sitUy so furnished to me by the son of a British peer, himself one of the leading members. To him, also, I am indebted for a copy of the printed circular of the society, an able and temperate document, which will be found at length in the Appendix, {Note A.) The same gentleman informed me that the researches of the society had resulted in a conviction, shared, he believed, by all its members, that there ia suflBcient testimony for the ap- pearance, about the time of death or after it, of the apparitions of deceased persons ; while in regard to other classes of apparitions the evidence, so far as obtained, was deemed too slight to prove their reality. To a gentleman who had been one of the more active members of the society, the Rev. Mr. W , I wrote, giving him the title of the present work, and stating in general terms the spirit and manner in which I pro- posed to write it. In his reply he says, " I wish that I were able to make any contribution to your proposed work at all commensurate with the in- terest which I feel in the subject of it." . ..." I rejoice extremely to learn that the subject is likely to receive a calm and philosophic treatment. This, at least, it demands; and, for my own part, I feel little doubt that great good will result from the publication of the work which you are pre- paring. My own experience has led me to form a conclusion similar to that which you express, — that the possibility of supramundane interference is a question which is gradually attracting more and more attention, espe- cially with men of education. This circumstance makes me the more anxious that a selection of facts should be fairly laid before them.*' The society, popularly known as the " Ghost Club," attracted a good deal of attention outside its own circle. Its nature and objects first ceme to vay knowledge through the Bishop of , who took an interest in its proceed- ingfi and bestirred himself to obtain contributions to its records. CONTEMPT CORRECTS NOT. 36 I think it best, at this time and in this connection, to examine the spontaneous phenomena, rather than those which are evoked; the phenomena which seem to come unsought, or, as we usually phrase it, by the visitation of God, rather than those which appear to be called up through the deliberate eiforts of man. I have studied the former much more carefully than the latter; and space would fail m« in a single volume to dispose of both. But, if I had space, and felt competent to the task, it should not deter me that the subject is still in bad odor and sometimes in graceless hands. I well know it to be the fashion — and a very reprehensible fashion it is — to pass by with ridicule or contempt the extraordinary results which seem to present themselves in this connec- tion. Be the facts as they may, such a course is im- politic and unwise. It is not by despising error that we correct it. No sensible man well informed as to the facts denies that, like every other subject professing to reach beyond the grave, this has its fanatics, misled by fantasies, dealing in vagaries of the imagination. But we are not justified in summarily setting aside, untested, any class of allegations because we may have detected among their supporters loose observation and false logic. Rational opinions may be irrationally defended. A creed may be true though some of its advocates can give no sufficient reason for the faith that is in them. Origanus, the astronomical instructor of Wallenstein's famous attendant, Seni, was one of the earliest defenders of the Copernican system; yet his arguments to prove the earth's motion are quite on a par, as to the absurdity of their character, with those advanced on the opposite side in favor of its immobility. There is, then, nothing conclusive in it, that the in- vestigator of such a subject is met with a thousand exaggerations. It does not settle the question, that At 36 SPIRITUALISM HAS BECOME every step we detect errors and absurdities. The main problem lies deeper than these. "There are errors," says Coleridge, "which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth as yet below the horizon."* And he must be a skeptic past saving who has critically examined the phenomena in question with- out reaching the conclusion that, how inaccurately soever they may have been interpreted until now, our best powers of reason are worthily taxed to determine their exact character. Some wonders there are, in this connection, opening to human view. Tliey may be purely scientific in their bearings, but, if so, none the less well deserving a place beside the marvels of electricity in its various phases. Nor, even if they finally prove to be phenomena exclu- Bively physical, should those, meanwhile, be browbeat or discouraged who seek to detect therein ultramundane . ngencies. There are researches in which, if no pains and industry be spared, honestly to fail is as reputable as to succeed in others. And some of the most important discoveries have been made during a search after the impossible. Muschenbroeck stumbled upon the invention of the Leyden jar while endeavoring, it is said, to collect and confine Thales's electric effluvium. Moralists and statesmen, too, should bear in mind that they have here to deal with an element which already seriously influences human opinion. The phenomena sometimes called spiritual, whether genuine or spurious, have attracted the attention, and won more or less of the belief, not of thousands only, — of millions, already.f * In his first " Lay Sermon." f My friend William Howitt, the well-known author, who, with hig amiable wife, has devoted much time and thought to this subject, says, in a reoent reply to the Rev. Edward White's discourses, delivered in St. Paul't Chapel, Kentish Town, in October, November, and December, 1858, AN INFLUENTIAL ELEMENT. 87 And if these astounding novelties are permitted to spread among us without chart or compass whereby to steer " Spiritualism is said to hare convinced three millions of people in Amsrica alone. In Europe, I believe, there are not less than another million ; ana the rapidity with which it is diffusing itself through all ranks and classes, literally from the highest to the lowest, should set men thinking. It would startle some people to discover in how many royal palacea in Europe it is firmly seated, and with what vigor it is diffusing itself through all ranks and professions of men, who do not care to make much noise about it; men and women of literary, religious, and scientific fame." I have not the means of judging as to the accuracy of Mr. Hewitt's total estimate. It must necessarily be an uncertain one. But as to the latter portion of that gentleman's remarks, I can indorse it from personal know- ledge. I found, in Europe, interested and earnest inquirers into this subject in every rank, from royalty downward ; princes, and other nobles, statesmen, diplomatists, oflBcers in the army and navy, learned professors, authors, lawyers, merchants, private gentlemen, fashionable ladies, domestic mothers of families. Most of these, it is true, prosecute their investigations in pri- vate, and disclose their opinions only to intimate or sympathizing friends. But none the less does this class of opinions spread, and the circle daily enlarge that receives them. If further evidence of these allegations, so far as they relate to England, be required, it is to be found in a late number of a well-known London Quarterly, than which it would be difficult to name a periodical more opposed to this movement. In the Westminster Review for January, 1858, in an elaborate article devoted to the subject the writer says, " We should be in much error if we suppose that table-turning, or that group of asserted phe- nomena which in this country is embodied under that name, and which in America assumes the loftier title of Spiritualism, in ceasing to occupy the attention of the public generally, has also ceased to occupy the attention of every part of it. The fact is very much otherwise. Our readers would be astonished were we to lay before them the names of several of those who are unflinching believers in it, or who are devoting themselves to the study or reproduction of its marvels. Not only does it survive, but survives with ell the charm and all the stimulating attractiveness of a secret science. Until the public mind in England shall be prepared to receive it, or until the evidence shall be put in a shape to enforce general conviction, the pre- sent policy is to nurse it in quiet and enlarge the circle of its influence by a system of noiseless extension. Whether this policy will be successful remains to be seen ; but there can be no doubt that, should ever the time arrive for the revival of this movement, the persons at its head would be men and women whose intellectual qualifications are known to the publie vid who possess its confidence and esteem." — p. 32. A 88 DANGERS INCURRED our course through an unexplored ocean of mystery, we may fird ourselves at the mercy of very sinister in- fluences. Among th^ communications heretofore commonly ob- tained, alleged to be ultramundane, are many which seem to justify that old saying of Pythagoras: *'It is not out of every log of wood that a Mercury can be made." Whether coming to us from another world or from this, not a few of them contain a large mingling of falsehood with truth, and a mass of puerilities alter- nating with reason. At times they disclose evil passions; occasionally they are characterized by profanity; and some of them, even where no fraud or conscious agency is presumable, exhibit unmistakable evidence of a mun- dane origin or influence; as all candid, sensible advo- cates of the spiritual theory, after sufiicient experience, ' freely admit.* * De Gasparin considers it a conclusive argument against the spiritual theory, that *' the particular opinions of each medium may be recognized Id the dogmas he promulgates in the name of the spirits." {''Dea Tables Tovr- Hantes, du SurncUurel en Geniral, et dea Esprita," par le Comte Ag^nor de Gasparin, Paris, 1855, vol. ii. p. 497.) He is only partially accurate as to the fact. It is the questioner as often perhaps as the medium who receives back his own opinions. But this is only sometimes true of either. It is, however, beyond all doubt, sometimes true; and the fact, however explained, points, with many others, to the urgent necessity, on the part of those who adopt the spiritual hypothesis, of receiving with the utmost care, and only after the strictest scrutiny, any communications, no matter what their pre- tensions. Until Spiritualists take such precautions, — until they sit in judgment on what they receive, and separate the chaflF from the wheat, — ^they cannot reasonably complain if the majority of intelligent men reject all because a part i8 clearly worthless. Nor, meanwhile, though a witty squib prove nothing, can the point be denied of that which Saxe launches against some alleged spirit communicators of our modern day : — **If in your new estate you cannot rest. But must return, oh, grant us this request: Come with a noble and celestial air. And prove your titles to the names you bear; BY THE OVER-CREDULOUS W Hence, under any hypothesis, great danger to the weak-minded and the over-credulous. This danger is the greater, because men are wont to take it for granted that, when we shall have demon- strated (if we can demonstrate) the spiritual character of a communication, there needs no further demonstra- tion as to the truth of the facts alleged and the opinions expressed therein. This is a very illogical conclusion, though distin- guished men have sometimes arrived at it.* It is one thing to determine the ultramundane origin of a com- munication, and quite another to prove its infallibility, even its authenticity. Indeed, there are more plausible reasons than many imagine for the opinion entertained by some able men, Protestants as well as Catholic8,f that the Give some clear token of your heavenly birth ; Write as good English as you wrote on earth : And, what were once superfluous to advise, Don't tell, I beg you, such egregious lies." * See, for an example, "Experimental Examination of the Spirit Mani- fe»tation$*' by Robert Hare, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, 4th ed., 1856, pp. 14, 15. When the venerable author obtained, as he expressed it, "the sanction of the spirits under test conditions," that is, by means most ingeniously contrived by him to prevent human deception, or (again to use his own words) " so that it was utterly out of the power of any mortal to pervert the result from being a pure ema- nation from the spirits whose names were given," he received as authentic, without further doubt or question, certain extraordinary credentials pur- porting to come from another world. Professor Hare is now himself % denizen of that world where honest errors find correction, and where to uprightness is meted out its reward. f As by the Rev. Charles Beecher, in his "Review of Spiritual Manifesta- tiont," chap, vii., where will be found the quotation given in the text. De Mirville {"Des Esprita et de leurt Mani/estationn fiuidiques" par le Marquis de Mirville, Paris, 3d ed., 1854) is the ablest modem exponent of the Catholic doctrine of Demonology. The 4th edition of his work, so his publishers inform me, is (May, 1859) nearly exhausted. The Church of Rome, it is well known, recognizes the doctrine of possession by evil spirita ks an article of faith : — " Quod daemon corpora hominum possidere et ob»i- teere poesit, certum de fide est." — Theologia MjfHiea, ad utum Direetontm 4t) DEMONIAC MANIFESTATIONS. communications in question come from the Powers of Darkness, and that "we are entering on the first steps of a career of demoniac manifestation, the issues whereof man cannot conjecture." But I see no just cause what- ever for such an opinion. The reasons for this revival of an antiquated belief seem to me plausible only. God has suffered evil to exist in this world; yet we do not, for that reason, conclude that hell reigns upon earth. We reflect that perhaps through this very antagonism may lie the path of progress. Or, at least, we weigh the good against the evil, and believe in the beneficence of the Creator. But His power is not limited to this side the grave. And if He does permit communication from the other side, is it in accordance with His attri- butes that such communication should resolve itself into mere demoniac obsession? The reasons for a belief so gloomy and discouraging appear to me mainly to rest, among Protestants at least, upon an error of very mischievous influence, and to which, in a subsequent chapter, on the Change at Death, 1 shall have occasion to advert at large. I allude to the opinion, held by many, that the character of man undergoes, after death, a sudden transformation; and that the peculiarities and prejudices which distinguish the individual in this world do not pass with him into another. If they do, the motley character of commu- nications thence obtained (if such communications there be) can excite no surprise. It is precisely what wo may reasonably expect. God permits that from our many-charactered fellow-creatures of this world min- gled truth and falsehood shall reach us : why not also Animarum, Paris, 1848, vol. i. p. 376. The Roman Ritual {Cap. Beexor- cizandis obseaxia a dsemonio) supplies, in detail, the rules for exorcising the Demon; and, in point of fact, exorcisms, at Rome and elsewhere through- out Catholic countries, are at this time of daily occurrence, though usually eonducted in private, and little spoken of outside the pale of the Churcij. PROVE ALL THINGS. 41 from our fellow-creatures of another world, if the same variety of feeling and opinion prevail there? We are constantly called upon, by the exercise of our reason, to separate the genuine from the spurious in the one case. Where do we find warrant for the opinion that we are released from such a duty in the other? Lest we should imagine that, when we are commanded to prove all things, the injunction relates to mundane agencies only, an express text is added, declaring that spirits also must be tested.* A world in which men should be exonerated from the duty, or forbidden the right, to bring the judgment into play, — to sift, by the strict dictates of conscience, good from evil, the right from the wrong, — would be a world disgraced and degraded. If such a principle were fully carried out, it would at last become a world lacking not only the exercise of reason, but reason itself Use, to an extent which it is difficult to determine, is essential to continued existence. That which ceases to fulfill its purpose finally ceases to be. The eyes of fishes found far in the interior of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, shut out forever from the light of day, are rudimental only.f But it is not conceivable that, under the Divine Eco- nomy, an order of things should ever be permitted, in which man should be shorn of his noblest attribute; that which, more than any other, stamps his superiority, ♦ 1 John iv. 1. f This fact has heen verified by dissection. The fish in question (the only known species of the genus Amblyopaia Spel«ua) is, however, I believe, found only in similar localities. Nor is it certain that this fish is without the power to distinguish light from darkness; for the optic lobe remains. Drs. Telkampf, of New York, and Wyman, of Boston, have published papers on the subject. It would be an interesting experiment to bring some of these fishes to the light, and ascertain whether, in the coarse of generations, their eyea wocld gradually become perfect 4* 42 HOLD PAST TO THAT on this earth, over the lower animal races which share with him its occupation and its enjoyments. Human reason is the appointed pilot of human civilization ; fal- lible, indeed, like any other steersman, but yet essential to progress and to safety. That pilot once dismissed from the helm, the bark will drift at random, aban- doned to the vagrant influence of every chance current or passing breeze. Let us conceive a case in illustration. Let us suppose that, from some undeniably spiritual source, as through speech of an apparition, or by a voice sounding from the upper air, there should come to us the injunction to adopt the principle of polygamy, either as that system is legally recognized in Turkey, or in its unavowed form, as it appears in the great cities of the civilized world. In such a case, what is to be done? The world is God's work. The experience of the world is God's voice. Are we to set aside that experience, proclaiming to us, as it does, that under the principle of monogamy alone have man's physical powers and moral attributes ever main- tained their ascendency, while weakness and national decadence follow in the train of polygamy, whether openly carried out, as in Deseret and Constantinople, or secretly practiced, as in London and New York? Are we to give up the certain for the uncertain ? — the teach- ings of God, through His works, for the biddings of we know not whom? The folly and danger of so doing are apparent. Inti- mations from another world (supposing their reality) may be useful; they may be highly suggestive; they may supply invaluable materials for thought: just as the opinions of some wise man or the advice of some judicious friend, here upon earth, might do. But no opinion, no advice, from friend or stranger, ought to be received as infallible, or accepted as a rule of action, until Eeason shall have sat in judgment upon it and ONLY WHICH IS GOOD. 43 decided, to the best of her ability, its truth and worth. There exist not, nor can arise, any circumstances whatever that shall justify the reception by man, as in- fallible and mandatory, of any such communication. Let us suppose the extreme case. Let us imagine that, from some intelligence clearly ultramundane, there should come to us a certain communication which, fairly tested by reason, we decide to exceed, in depth and wisdom, any thing which that reason unaided could originate. Are we, because of the evident excellence of that communication, to receive with unquestioning acquiescence all its fellows coming apparently from the same source? In the chapter on Sleep cases will be adduced in proof that our intellectual powers during sleep sometimes surpass any waking effort. Yet what rational man would thence infer that we ought to be governed by our dreams? If I have dwelt at length, and insisted with sorot* iteration, on this matter, it is because of the wide spread mischief to which, in this connection, blindly assenting credulity has, in these later times especially given rise; it is because of the urgent necessity for judg- ment to discriminate, for caution to scrutinize. Bat the necessity is as urgent to bear in mind, that judg- ment and caution are the very opposites of proscrip- tion and prejudice. On the supposition that spirits do actually communicate, if those who ought to give tone and direction to public opinion content themselves wilb arrogantly denouncing the whole as a portentous im- posture, they lose all power or opportunity to regulate a reality of which they deny the existence.* And in * Dining, in February, 1859, with a gentleman commercially well known in London, and sitting at table next to the lady of the house, she broached the subject of Spiritualism. I asked her if she had seen any of its alleged phenomena. She replied that she had not; that, from what she had heurd, 44 CLAIMS OP THE SUBJECT. the case here supposed, our moral and religious guides risk the loss of influence and position by putting aside an all-important inquiry, — a contingency which as a body they appear to have overlooked. The claims of the subject to the notice of the clergy and of other public teachers are not founded alone upon the fact that this heresy (if heresy it be) has penetrated to every rank and class of society, and now influences, more or less, the opinions and the conduct of millions throughout the civilized world. These claims reach further still. The;y derive from the necessity of the case. The question as to investigation or no investiga- tion is one of time only. Once mooted and seized upon by popular sympathy, a matter like this must be probed she was convinced there was some reality in it; but, being of a nervous temperament, and not assured of her own self-control, she had refrained from examining its manifestations. " Then I know," she added, " that it has done so much harm. Has it not ?" (appealing to a gentleman sitting near us.) He assented in strong terms. I begged him to give me an ex- ample. " I could give you many," he replied, " in the circle of my ac-. quaintance; but one in particular occurs to me. The daughter of a friend of mine, in a family of the utmost respectability, and herself amiable and intelligent, is, at this very time, quite carried away with its delusions. She bad raps from the table, and is in the habit of shutting herself up, day after day, in the garret of her father's house, spelling out communications which she imagines to come from departed spirits. She will not even take the exercise necessary to her health ; alleging that while she is gone she may lose the chance of receiving some divine message. The remonstrances of her parents, who are not at all affected with the mania, are unavailing ; and it causes them much grief" Let us put what interpretation we may upon that which has been called the spirit-rap and the communications thus obtained, it is evident that such a case as the above savors of fanaticism and urgently demands regu- lation. No condition of mind can be healthy — scarcely sane — which with- draws all thoughts from the duties of earthly life, even from the care of bodily health, and suffers them to be wholly engrossed by such communica- tions ,• above all, when these are received, unquestioned, as divine and in- fallible revelation. But to deny actual phenomena is not the proper mode to win over a mis lea or diseased mind. DUTY OF RESEARCH. 46 to the bottom. There is nothing else for it. We can get rid of it on no other terms. We cannot hush it up if we would; we ought not if we could. Viewed in itB scientific aspect, we might as reasonably interdict the study of electricity or the employment of the magnetic wires. And as regards its spiritual pretensions, either these are a perilous delusion, to be detected and exploded, as by carefully prosecuted researches every delusion can be, or else a reality important beyond any that crosses our daily path. If they be a delusion, leading astray the flock, on whom so strictly as on its pastor devolves the task of exposure? — but of exposure after investiga- tion; since, in the words of a wise man of old, "He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him."* If, on the other hand, it should prove to be a reality, how grave their responsibility who blindly oppose it! In such a case, research on the part of public teachers rises to the rank of a sacred duty, lest haply, like the unbelievers of Gamaliel's day, they be found fighting against God. And this duty is bounden the rather because of a great difficulty, suggested by the narratives forming the staple of this volume, which necessarily attends the policy of non-investigation. There is the question, how far we are to carry out that policy. Men, during the last ten years, and in our country especially, have, in this connection, had their attention mainly directed to what, in one sense, may be called the artificial phase of the subject. They have been chiefly occupied in exa- mining phenomena which occur as the result of express intention and calculated method; which are elicited, not merely witnessed : such as the manifestations which come to light through what is called mediumship, in spiritual circles, through writing by impression, during artificial * Proverbs xviiL 13. 46 HOW SHALL WE DISPOSE Bomnambulism, and the like. These constitute but a small fraction of a great subject. They have for the most part been called forth during a few years only ; while the vast mass of phenomena evidently allied to them, but purely spontaneous in their character, are spread over ages and come to us through all past his- tory. These latter present themselves not merely un- expected, not unsought only, but often unwished for, de- precated, occasionally even in spite of entreaty and prayer. Often, indeed, they assume the character of ministration by spirits loving and gentle; but at other times they put on the semblance of persecution, retri- butive and terrible.* The former appear to bear out the doctrine of celestial guardianship, while the latter seem sent by God as he sends on the material world the hurricane and the earthquake. But both are indepen- dent of man's will or agency. They come as the rain falls or as the lightning flashes. This complicates the case. We may condemn as Pythonism, or denounce as unlawful necromancy, the seeking after spiritual phenomena.f But in so doing we dispose of a small branch of the subject only. How are we to deal with ultramundane manifestations, in case it should prove that they do often occur not only with- out our agency but in spite of our adjuration ? Grant that it were unwise, even sinful, to go in search of spiritual intervention : what are we to say of it if it overcome us sudden and unsolicited, and, whether for * See, as an example of the former, the narrative entitled "The rejected Suitor," and, as a specimen of the latter, that called " What an English Officer suffered :" both given in subsequent chapters of this work. f In the records of the past we come, from time to time, upon proof that men have been disposed to regard that which they imperfectly understood as savoring of unhallowed mystery. In Chaucer's tale of the Chanon Yeman, chemistry is spoken of as an elfish artj that is, taught or conducted by spirits. This, Warton says, is an Arabian idea. See " Warton't Hi*' iOTff of English Poetry" vol. L p. 169. OP SPONTANEOUS PHENOMENA? 47 good or for evil, a commissioned intruder on our earthly path ? Under that phase also (if under such it be found really to present itself) are we to ignore its existence ? Ought we, without any inquiry into the character of its influence, to prejudge and to repulse it? Let it assume what form it may, are we still, like the Princess Parizade of the Arabian tale, to stop our ears with cotton against the voices around us ? The abstract right to investigate the broad question as to the reality of ultramundane interference will not, in these United States, be seriously questioned. There never was a period in the world's history when human tyranny could close, except for a season, the avenue to any department of knowledge which the Creator has placed within the reach of man ; least of all, one involv- ing interests so vital as this. Nor is there any country in the civilized world where the attempt could be made with less chance of success than in ours. Many, however, who concede the right deem its exer- cise to be fraught with danger to human welfare and happiness. Some danger, beyond question, there is. What thing in nature is one-sided? Which of our studies may not be injudiciously undertaken or im- prudently pursued? Something, in all human endea- vors, we must risk; and that risk is the greatest, usually, for the most important objects. Eeligious re- searches involve more risk than secular : they demand, therefore, greater caution and a more dispassionate spirit. Are we to avoid them for that reason ? Would their interdiction subserve man's welfare and happiness ? That theory of the solar system which is now ad- mitted by every astronomer and taught to every school- boy was once alleged to be fraught with danger to the welfare and happiness of mankind, and its author was compelled on his knees to pledge his oath that he would never more propagate it, by word or writing. Yet what 48 COURAGE AND IMPARTIALITY scientific hypothesis do men at the present day scruple to examine ? And, if scientific, why not spiritual also ? Are we prepared to trust our reason in the one case but reject its conclusions in the other? — to declare of that noble faculty, as a German caviler did of the telescope which first revealed to human sight the satellites of Jupiter, that " it does wonders on the earth, but falsely represents celestial objects" ?* Let us take courage, and trust to the senses God has given us. There is no safety in cowardice, no expe- diency, even if there were possibility, in evasion. If to the investigation of these matters we must come sooner or later, it is the part of wisdom and manliness to undertake it at once. A large portion of the periodicals of the day have hitherto either wholly ignored the subject of ultramun- dane interference, or else passed it by with superficial and disparaging notice. After a time there will be a change in this.f The subject is gradually attaining * Martin Korky, in one of the "Kepleri Epistolse." He it was who de- clared to his master Kepler, "I will never concede his four planets to that Italian from Padua, though I die for it," and of whom, when he afterward begged to be forgiven for his presumptuous skepticism, Kepler wrote to Galileo, "I have taken him again into favor upon this express condition, lo which he has agreed, that I am to show him Jupiter's satellites, and he ts to see them and own that they are there." There are a good many Martin Korkys of the present day, with whom, AS to some of the phenomena to be noticed in this volume, the same agree- ment should be made. f Respectable periodicals, untinctured by peculiarities of opinion, have already begun to treat the general subject with more deference than for- merly. For example, in a long article, entitled " Ghosts of the Old aua New School," in one of the London Quarterlies, while the chief phenomena called spiritual are discredited, there occur such admissions as the follow- ing: — "There are sets of facts that demand a more searching and perse- vering investigation than they have yet received, — either that they may be finally disposed of as false, or reduced to scientific order. Such are the ap- pearance of ghosts, the power of second- sight, of clairvojance, and other THE CHIEF REQUISITES. 49 a breadth and importance and winning a degree of attention which will be felt by the better portion of the pres8 as entitling it to that respectful notice which is the due of a reputable opponent. And surely this is as it should be. Let the facts be as they may, the duty ol the press and of the pulpit is best fulfilled, and the dangers incident to the subject are best averted, by promoting, not discouraging, inquiry;* but inquiry, thorough, searching, sedulously accurate, and in the strictest sense of the term impartial. The first requisite in him who undertakes such an in- vestigation — more important, even, than scientific train- ing to accurate research — is that he shall approach it unbiased and unpledged, bringing with him no favorite theory to be built up, no preconceived opinions to be gratified or oifended, not a wish that the results should be found to be of this character or of that character, out a single, earnest desire to discover of what character they are. To what extent I bring to the task such qualifications, they who may read these pages can best decide. No man is an impartial judge of his own impartiality. I distrust mine. I am conscious of a disturbing element; a leaning in my mind, aside from the simple wish tc» detect what really is. Not that on the strictest self- scrutiny I can accuse myself of a desire to foist into such an inquiry any preconceptions, scientific or theolo- phenomena of magnetism and mesmeriam; the natare of sleep and dreams, of spectral illusions, (in themselves a decisive proof that the sAse of sight may be fully experienced independently of the eye;) the limits and work- ing of mental delusion and enthusiastic excitement" — National Review for July, 1858, p. 13. • " Eclairons-nous sar les v^rit^s, quelles qu'elles soient, qui ee pr^scntent i notre observation : et loin de craindre de favoriser la superstition en ad- mettant do nouveaux ph^nom^nes, quand ils sont bien prouv6s, soyona persuades que le seul moyen d'emp^cher les abus qu'on peut en faiio, c'est J'en r6p«ndre la connaissance." — Bertrand. D 6 $0 A BESETTING TEMPTATION. gicaly nor yet of the least unwillingness to accept or to surrender any opinions, orthodox or heterodox, which the progress of that inquiry might establish or disprove. Not tiiat. But I am conscious of a feeling that has acquired strength within me as these researches pro- gressed; a desire other than the mere readiness to inspect with dispassionate equanimity the phenomena as they appeared; an earnest hope, namely, that thesf might result in furnishing to the evidence of the soul's independent existence and immortality a contribution drawn from a source where such proof has seldom, until recently, been sought. Against the leaning incident to that hope, interwoven with man's nature as it is, the explorer of such a field as this should be especially on his guard. It is one of the many difficulties with which the undertaking is beset. " It is easy," truly said Bonnet, the learned Genevese, — "it is easy and agreeable to believe; to doubt requires an unpleasant effort." And the pro- clivity to conclude on insufficient evidence is the greater when we are in search of what we strongly wish to find. Our longings overhurry our judgments. But what so earnestly to be desired as the assurance that death, the much dreaded, is a friend instead of an enemy, opening to us, when the dark curtain closes on earthly scenes, the portals of a better and happier existence ? It is a common opinion that the all-sufficient and only proper source whence to derive that conviction is sacred history. But, how strongly soever we may affirm that the Scripture proofs of the soul's immortality ought to com- mand the belief of all mankind, the fact remains that they do not.* Some rest unbelievers; many more carry • The number of materialists throughout the educated portion of virilized FEEBLE BELIEF. 51 about with them, as to the sours future destiny, a faith inanimate and barren; and, oven among those who pro- fees the most, the creed of the greater number may be summed up in the exclamation, "Lord, 1 believe: help Thou mine unbelief!"* Since, then, no complaint is more common from the pulpit itself than of the world-wide discrepancy daily to bo found, even among the most zealously pious, between iaith and practice, may we not trace much of that discrepancy to the feeble grade of credence, so far below the living conviction which our senses bring home to us of earthly things, which often makes up this wavering faith ?t society, especially in Europe, is much greater than on the surface it would appear. If one broaches serious subjects, this fact betrays itself. I was conversing one day with a French lady of rank, intelligent and thoughtful beyond the average of her class, and happened to express the opinion that progression is probably a law of the next world, as of this. " You really believe, then, in another world?" she asked. " Certainly, Madame la Comtesse." " Ah ! you are a fortunate man," she replied, with some emotion. " How many of us do not!" ♦ We shall often find, in the expressions employed by distinguished men (especially the leaders in science) to express their sense of the importance of a firm religious belief, rather a desire to obtain it, and envy of those who possess it, than an assertion that they themselves have found all they sought. Here is an eloquent example : — " I envy no qualities of the mind and intellect in others, — nor genius, nor power, nor wit, nor fancy; but if I could choose what would be most de- lightful and, I believe, most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing. For it makes life a discipline of goodness, creates new hopes when all earthly hopes vanish, and throws over the decay, the destruction, of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life in death, and calls out from corruption and decay beauty an 1 everlasting glory." — Sir Humphrt Davy. 1^ One among a thousand illustrations of this discrepancy is to be found iij the bitter anguish — the grief refusing to be comforted — with which sur- vivors often bewail the dead ; a grief infinitely more poignant than that with which they would see them embark for another hemisphere, if it were even without expectation of their return and with no certainty of tbeiz 52 CAUSES OF SKEPTICISM. It is important also to distinguish among those who go by the general name of unbelievers. Of these, a few deny that man has an immortal soul; others allege that they have as yet found no conclusive proof of the soul's ultramundane existence: and the latter are much more numerous than the former. The difference between the two is great. The creed of the one may be taxed with presumption, of the other with insufficiency only. The one profess already to have reached the goal; the others declare that they are still on the road of inquiry. But as to these latter, any additional class of proofs we can find touching the nature of the soul are espe- cially important. Here we come upon the practical bearings of the question. For, while men are so diversely constituted and so variously trained as we find them, the same evidence will never convince all minds. And it is equally unchristian,* unphilosophical, and happiness. If we do not forget, do we practically realize, that article of faith which teaches that it is only to us they die ? The German idiomatic expression, in this connection, is as correct as it is heautiful : — " Den Oberlin hatte zuweilen die Ahnung wie ein kalter Schauer durch- drungen, dass sein geliebtes Weib thm sterben konne." — "Dasgroaae Geheitn- nis« der menschlichen JDoppelnatur," Dresden, 1855. * Matthew viL 1. It is quite contrary to the fact to assume as to skeptics in general that they are willfully blind. Many, it is true, especially in the heyday of youth, fall into unbelief, or an indifiFerenco much resembling it, from sheer heedlessness; while some deliberately avoid the thoughts of another world, lest these should abridge their pleasures in this; but the better and probably the more numerous portion belong to neither of these classes. They scruple because difficulties are thrust upon them. They doubt unwillingly and perforce. The author of the "Eclipse of Faith" /written in reply to Newman's "Phases of Faith") gives, as the confession of such a one, what is appropriate to hundreds of thousands : — "I have been rudely driven out of my old beliefs; my early Christian faith has given way to doubt; the little hut on the mountain-side, in which I had thought to dwell with pastoral simplicity, has been shattered by the tempest, and I turned out to the blast without a shelter. I have wandered long and far, but have not found that rest which you tell m« is lo be ob- GEORGET. 6% unjust to condemn one's neighbor, because the species of testimony which convinces us leaves him in doubt or disbelief. Shall we imagine a just God joining in such a condemnation ? Or may we not, far more rationally, believe it probable that, in the progressive course of His economy, He may be providing for each class of minds that species of evidence which is best fitted for its pecu- liar nature ? A Paris physician of the highest standing, Dr. Georget, the well-known author of a Treatise on the Physiology of the Nervous System,* made his will on the Ist of March, 1826, dying shortly after. To that document a clause is appended, in which, after alluding to the fact that in the treatise above referred to he had tained. As I examine all other theories, they seem to me pressed by at least equal difficulties with that I have abandoned. I cannot make myself contented, as others do, with believing nothing; and yet I have nothing to believe. I have wrestled long and hard with my Titan foes, but not suc- cessfully. I have turned to every quarter of the universe in vain. I have interrogated my own soul, but it answers not I have gazed upon nature, but its many voices speak no articulate language to me; and, more espe- cially, when I gaze upon the bright page of the midnight heavens, those orbs gleam upon me with so cold a light and amidst so portentous a silence that I am, with Pascal, terrified at the spectacle of the infinite solitude." —p. 70. *** De la Pkytiologie du SytiirM Nerveux, et apiciaUment du Oerveetu.** Par M. Georget, D. M. de la Faculty de Paris, anoien Interne de premidro classe de la division des Ali6n^es de I'Hospice de la Salpetri^re : 2 vols., Paris, 1821. The original text of the clause in Georget's will, above quoted from, will be found in " Rapports et Diacuationn de VAcademie Royale de Mldeeine mr le Magnetisme animal," by M. P. Foissac, M.D., Paris, 1833, p. 289. The exact words of his avowal are, ** A peine avais-je mis au jour la * Physiologie du SystSme Nerveux/ que de nouvelles meditations sur un ph^nomdno bien extraordinaire, lo somnambulisme, ne me permirent plus de douter de I'ex- istence, en nous et hors de nous, d'un principe intelligent, tout-^-fait dif- i^rent des existences materielles." Uusson, a member of the Paris Academy of Medicine, in a report to that body made in 1825, speaks of Georget as " notre estimable, laborieux, et modote collogue." — Fot$tac'i Rapporta «t Dtacuaaiorta, p. 28. 5* M THE STRONGEST EVIDENCE openly professed materialism, he says, " I had scarcely published the ^ Physiologie du Systeme Nerveux,' when ' additional reflections on a very extraordinary phe- nomenon, somnambulism, no longer allowed me to doubt of the existence, in us and out of us, of an intelli- gent principle, differing entirely from any material ex- istence." He adds, " This declaration will see the light when my sincerity can no longer be doubted nor my intentions suspected." And he concludes by an earnest request, addressed to those who may be present at the opening of his will, that they will give to the declaration in question all the publicity possible. Thus we find an able man, living in a Christian coun- try, where he had access to all the usual evidences of our religion, who remains during the greater part of his life a materialist, and toward its close finds, in a psychological phenomenon, proof sufiicient to produce a profound conviction that his life's belief had been ac error, and that the soul of man has an immortal ex- istence. The Bible had failed to convince him of his error. But ought not every believer in the soul's immortality to rejoice, that the unbelief which scriptural testimony had proved insufficient to conquer yielded before evi- dence drawn from examination of one of the many wonders, exhibited by what every one but the atheist declares to be the handiwork of God? And since that wonder belongs to a class of phenomena t. e reality of which is denied by many and doubted by m \re, should not every friend of religion bid God-speed the inquirer who pushes his researches into regions that have produced fruits so valuable as these? Nor is he a true friend to religion or to his race who does not desire that men should obtain the strongest possible evidence which exists of the soul's immortality, and the reality of a future life. But if there actually IS THAT OF SENSE. 55 be physical evidence, cognizable by the senses, of these great truths, it is, and ever must be, stronger than any which can possibly result from scriptural testimony. Intelligent Christians, even the most orthodox, admit this J Tillotson, for example. It forms, indeed, the staple of his argument against the real presence. Says that learned prelate, " Infidelity were hardly possible to men, if all men had the same evidence for the Chris- tian religion which they have against ti'ansubstan- tiation; that is, the clear and irresistible evidence of sense."* Scripture and common sense alike sustain this doc- trine; nay, our every-day language assumes its truth. If a friend, even the most trusted, relate to us some incident which he has witnessed, in what terms do we express our conviction that he has told us the truth? Do we say, "I know his testimony"? There is no such expression in the English language. We say, "I believe his testimony ."f It is true that such evidence, subject, however, to cross-examination, decides, in a court of jus- tice, men's lives and fortunes ; but only from the neces- sity of the case j only because the judges and jury could not themselves bo eye or ear witnesses of the facts to bo proved : and, with every care to scrutinize such testi- mony, it has ere now brought innocent men to the scaf- fold. Nor, save in extraordinary or exceptional cases, * " The Works of the Moat Reverend Dr. John Ttllotton, late Lord Arch- bithop of Canterbury," 8th ed., London, 1720. Sermon XXVL f In the present volume I shall have occasion to testify as to many things which I have heard and seen. Nor do I imagine that men, themselves candid, will suspect in me lack of candor ; for when a man of honest motive, seeking only the truth, plainly and impartially narrates his experience, that which he says usually bears with it to the upright mind an internal war- rant of sincerity. But yet my testimony is, and ever must be, to the reader, evidence of far lower grade and far less force than that he would have ob- tained if he had himself personally witnessed what I narrate The differ- ence is inherent in the nature of things. f6 SOME TRUTHS APPFJLL iS it under our system ever taken in court at second hand.* And when a witness begins to repeat that which others have seen and related, what is the common phrase employed to recall him to his proper sphere of duty? — " Do not tell us what others have said to you : keep to what you can depose of your own knowledge'* So, also, when in Scripture reference is made to per- sons having faith or lacking it, how are they designated? As knowers and unknowersf No: but as believers and unbelievers. "He that believeth" — not he that knoweth — "shall be saved/' As to things spiritual the Bible (with rare exceptions) speaks of our belief on this side the grave, our knowledge only on the other. "Then shall we know, even as also we are known.'* But to argue at length such a point as this is mere supererogation. There are some truths the evidence for which no argument can strengthen, because they appeal directly to our consciousness and are adopted unchallenged and at once. A pious mother loses her child, — though the very phrase is a falsi tj'^ : she but parts with him for a season, — but, in the world's language and in her heart's language, she loses her only child by death. If, now, just when her bereavement is felt the most despairingly, — in the bitter moment, perhaps, (the wmter's storm raging without,) when the thought flashes across her that the cold sleet is beating on her deserted darling's new-made grave; if in that terrible moment there should reach her suddenly, unexpectedly, a token visible to the senses, an appearance in bodily form, or ♦ I speak of the principles of evidence recognized by the common law; a system under which personal rights and guards to the liberty of the citizen are probably better assured than under any other ; though as to some righti of property the civil law system may claim the superiority. Evidence at second hand is admissible in the case of a dying man conscious of the near approach of death, or as to what has been said, un contradicted, in the presence and within the hearing of a prisoner; bo thege are the exceptions establishing the general rule. DIRECTLY TO OUR CONSCIOUSNESS. 57 an actual message perhaps, which she knew came thaft instant direct from her child; that appearance or that message testifying that he whom she had just heec thinking of as lying, wrested from her loving care, under the storm-beaten turf, was not there, was far happier than even she had ever made him, was far better cared for than even in her arms : in such a moment as that, how poor and worthless are all the arts of logic to prove that the sunshine of such unlooked-for assurance, breaking through the gloomy tempest of the mother's grief, and lighting up her shrouded hopes, has added nothing to the measure of her belief in immortality, has increased not the force of her convictions touching the Great Future, has raised not from faith to knowledge the degree of credence with which she can repeat to her soul the inspiring words, that, though the dust has re- turned to the earth as it was, the spirit »s in the hands of God who gave it I Then, if it should happen that the "unknown Bark" may, in a measure, even here become known ; if it should be that the Great Dramatist inaptly des^nbed the next world, when he called it " The undiscovered country, from whose boH»« No traveler returns;" if it should prove true that occasions sometimes present themselves when we have the direct evidence of our senses to demonstrate the continued existenofi and affec- tion of those friends who have passed that bourn; if it should be the will of God that, at this stage of man's constant progress, more clearly distinguishing pheno- mena which, in modem times at least, have been usually discredited or denied, he should attain a point at which Relief, the highest species of conviction which Scnpture or analogy can supply, may rise to the grade of Know- ledge; — if all this be, in very deed, a Reality , is it not a 68 A SEVERE TEST APPLIED glorious one, earnestly to be desired, gratefully to bo welcomed? And should not those who, with a single eye to the truth, faithfully and patiently question Nature, to dis- cover whether it is Eeality or Illusion, — should not such honest and earnest investigators be cheered on their path, be commended for their exertions? If it be a sacred and solemn duty to study the Scriptures in search of religious belief, is it a duty less sacred, less solemn, to study Nature in search of religious know- ledge? In prosecuting that research, if any fear to sin by overpassing the limits of permitted inquiry and tres- passing upon unholy and forbidden ground, let him be reminded that God, who protects His own mysteries, has rendered that sin impossible; and let him go, reve- rently indeed, but freely and undoubtingly, forward. If God has closed the way, man cannot pass thereon. But if He has left open the path, who shall forbid its entrance ? It is good to take with us through life, as companion, a great and encouraging subject; and of this we feel the need the more as we advance in years. As to that which I have selected, eminently true is the happy ex- pression of a modern writer, that "in journeying with it we go toward the sun, and the shadow of our burden falls behind us."* Some one has suggested that, if we would truly deter- mine whether, at any given time, we are occupying ourselves after a manner worthy of rational and im- mortal beings, it behooves us to ask our hearts if we are willing death should surprise us in the occupation. There is no severer test. And if we apply it to such researches as these, how clearly stands forth their high • "Esaai/s written during the Intervals of Btmness," London, 1863, p. 2. TO THE SUBJECT SELECTED 59 (jharacterl If, in prosecuting such, the observer be overtaken by death, the destroyer has no power to arrest his observations. The fatal fiat but extends their field. The torch is not quenched in the grave. It burns far more brightly beyond than ever it did or can in this dim world of ours. Here the inquirer may grope and stumble, seeing but as through a glass darkly. Death, that has delivered so many millions from misery, will dispel his doubts and resolve his difficulties. Death, the unriddler, will draw aside the curtain and let in the explaining light. That which is feebly commenced in this phase of existence will be far better prosecuted in another. Will the inquiry be completed even there? Who can tell? CHAPTEE il. THE IMPOSSIBLE. "He who, outside of pure mathematics, pronounces the word impo»nhU, lueks prudence/' — Arago: Annuaire du Bureau dea Longitudes, 1853.* There was enacted, in April of the year 1493, and in the city of Barcelona, one of those great scenes which occur but a few times in the history of our race. A Genoese mariner, of humble birth and fortune, an enthusiast, a dreamer, a believer in Marco Polo and Mandeville and in all their gorgeous fables, — ^the golden shores of Zipango, the spicy paradise of Cathay, — had conceived the magnificent project of seeking out what proved to be an addition to the known world of another hemisphere. He had gone begging from country to country, from monarch to monarch, for countenance and means. His proposals rejected by his native city, he had carried them to Spain, then governed by two of the ablest sovereigns she ever had. But there the usual fortune of the theorist seemed to pursue him. His best pro- tector the humble guardian of an Andalusian convent, his doctrine rejected by the queen's confessor as savor- ing of heresy, his lofty pretensions scouted by nobles and archbishops as those of a needy foreign adventurer, his scheme pronounced by the learned magnates of the ♦ The original, with its context, is, "Le doute est une preuve de modestie, et il a rarement nui aux progrds des sciences. On n'en pourrait pas dire autant de I'incriduliti. Celui qui, en dehors des mathfimatiques pures, prononce le mot impot^ihle, manque de prudence. La reserve est surtout an devoir quand il s'agit de I'organisation animale." — Annuair':, p. 445. 60 COLUMBUS IN BARCELONA. 61 Salamancu council (for when was titled Science ever a pioneer?) to be "vain, impracticable, and resting on grounds too weak to merit the support of the govern- ment," — he had scantily found at last, even in the en- lightened and enterprising Isabella, tardy faith enough to adventure a sum that any lady of her court might have spent on a diamond bracelet or a necklace of pearl.* And now, returned as it were from the dead, survivor of a voyage overhung with preternatural horrors, his great problem, as in despite of man and nature, tri- umphantly resolved, the visionary was welcomed as the conqueror; the needy adventurer was recognized as Admiral of the Western Ocean and Viceroy of a New Continent; was received, in solemn state, by the haugh- tiest sovereigns in the world, rising at his approach, and invited (Castilian punctilio overcome by intellectual power) to be seated before them. He told his wondrous story, and exhibited, as vouchers for its truth, the tawny savages and the barbaric gold. King, queen, and court sunk on their knees; and the Te Deum sounded, as for some glorious victory. That night, in the silence of his chamber, what thoughts may have thronged on Columbus's mind! What exultant emotions must have swelled his heart! A past world had deemed the Eastern Hemisphere the entire habitable earth. Age had succeeded to age, cen- tury had passed away after century, and still the inter- diet had been acquiesced in, that westward beyond the mountain pillarsf it belonged not to man to explore. * Seventeen thousand florins was the petty amount which the fitting-out of Columbus's first expedition cost the crown of Castile. How incommen- ipurate, sometimes, are even our successful exertions with the importaac* of some noble but novel object of research ! t quella foce stretta Ov* Ercole segnd li suoi riguardi, Aociochi I'nom piil oltre non si metta. Dante, Inferno, Canto XVL 6 62 THE MARVEL OP MARVELa And j&c he, the chosen of God to solve the greatest of terrestrial mysteries, affronting what even the hardy mariners of Palos had regarded as certain destruction, — he, the hopeful one where all but himself despaired, — had wrested from the Deep its mighty secret, — had accomplished what the united voice of the Past had declared to be an impossible achievement. But now, if, in the stillness of that night, to this man, enthusiast, dreamer, believer as he was, there had suddenly appeared some Nostradamus of the fifteenth century, of prophetic mind instinct with the future, and had declared to the ocean-compeller that not four cen- turies would elapse before that vast intervening gulf of waters — from the farther shore of which, through months of tempest, he had just groped back his weary way — should interpose no obstacle to the free communi- cation of human thought; that a man standing on the western shore of Europe should, within three hundred and seventy years from that day, engage in conversation with his fellow standing on the eastern shore of the new- found world; nay, — marvel of all marvels! — that the same fearful bolt which during his terrible voyage had 80 often lighted up the waste of waters around him should itself become the agent of communication across that storm-tossed ocean; that mortal creatures, un- aided by angel or demon, without intervention of Heaven or pact with hell, should bring that lightning under domestic subjection, and employ it, as they might some menial or some carrier-dove, to bear their daily messages; — to a prediction so wildly extravagant, so surpassingly absurd, as that, what credence could even Columbus lend ? What answer to such a prophetic vision may we imagine that he, with all a life's expe- rience of man's short-sightedness, would have given? Probably some reply like this : that, though in the future many strange things might be, such a tampering with PRESUMPTION. «• Nature as tJiat — short of a direct miracle from God^ was IMPOSSIBLE I Arago was right. With exact truths wo may deal in a positive manner. Of a hexagon inscribed within a circle each side is of the same length as the radius of that circle : it is impossible it should be either longer or shorter. The surface contained within the square of the hypothenuse is exactly of the same extent as the squares, taken together, of the two other sides of the same right-angled triangle : it is impossible it should be either greater or less. These things we declare to be im- possible with the same assurance and the same propriety with which we assert that we exist; and there is no more presumption in declaring the one than in asserting the other. But, outside the domain of pure mathematics, or kindred regions of abstract or intuitive truth, cautious and modest in his pronouncings should be fallible and short-sighted man. By what warrant does he assume to determine what God's laws permit and what they deny? By what authority does he take upon himself to assert that to him all these laws are known ? The term of his life but a da}^, the circumference of his ken but a spot, whence derives he his commission, groping about in his little span of the Present, arrogantly to proclaim what is and what is not to be in the illimitable Future ? Does not History bear on every page a condemnation of the impiety ? Does not Experience daily rise up and testify aloud against such egregious presu-mption ? Not thus is it that those speak and reason whom deep research has taught how little they know. It occurs to the humble wisdom of such men that laws of nature may exist with which they are wholly unacquainted;* * I translate from La Place's " Thiorie analyttque des ProhabiliUt :"— "We are so far from knowing all the agents of nature and their variout modes of action, that it would not be philosophical to deny any phenomena M THERE MAY BE LAWS nay, some, perhaps, which may never, since man was first here to observe them, have been brought into operation at all. Sir John Herschel has aptly illustrated this truth. "Among all the possible combinations," says that en- lightened philosopher, "of the fifty or sixty elements which chemistry shows to exist on the earth, it is likely, nay, almost certain, that some have never been formed ; that some elements, in some proportions and under some circumstances, have never yet been placed in rela- tion with one another. Yet no chemist can doubt that it is already fixed what they will do when the case does occur. They will obey certain laws, of which we know nothing at present, but which must be already fixed, or they would not be laws."* And what is true as to rules of chemical affinity is equally true of physiological and psychological laws. Indeed, it is more likely to be a frequent truth as to the merely because in the actual state of our knowledge they are inexplicable. This only we ought to do : in proportion to the diflSculty there seems to be in admitting them should be the scrupulous attention we bestow on their examination." — Introd., p. 43. From a widely-accepted authority still better known among us I extract, in the same connection, the following, in the last line of which, however, the word possibility might have been more strictly in place than proba^ hiliiy : — " An unlimited skepticism is the part of a contracted mind, which reasons upon imperfect data, or makes its own knowledge and extent of observation the standard and test of probability. . . . " In receiving upon testimony statements which are rejected by the vulgar as totally incredible, a man of cultivated mind is influenced by the recollec- tion that many things at one time appeared to him marvelous which he now knows to be true, and he thence concludes that there may still be in nature many phenomena and many principles with which he is entirely unac- quainted. In other words, he has learned from experience not to make hia own knowledge his test of probability." — Abercrombie't Intellectual Powers, pp. 55 and 60. * " Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy " by Sir John F. W. Herschel, Bart., K.H., F.R.S. London, 2d ed., 1851, p. M. NOT YET IN OPERATION. 05 laws of mind than as to those of matter, because there is nothing in the world so constantly progressive as the intelligence of man. His race alone, of all the animated races with which we are acquainted, changes and rises from generation to generation. The elephant and the beaver of to-day are not, that we know, more intelligent or further developed than were the elephant and the beaver of three thousand years ago. Theirs is a stationary destiny, but man's an advancing one, — advancing from savage instincts to civilized sentiments, from unlettered boorishness to arts and sciences and literature, from anarchy to order, from fanaticism to Christianity. But it is precisely in the case of a being whose pro- gress is constant, and whose destiny is upward as well as onward, that we may the most confidently look, at certain epochs of his development, for the disclosure of new relations and the further unfolding of laws till then but imperfectly known. There is, it is true, another view to take of this case. To some it will seem an unwarranted stretch of ana- logical inference that because in the department of chemistry we may anticipate combinations never yet formed, to be governed by laws never yet operating, we should therefore conclude that in the department of mind, also, similar phenomena may be expected. Mind and matter, it may be objected, are separated by so broad a demarkation-line, that what is true of the one may be false of the other. Are they so widely separated? Distinct they are; nothing is more untenable than the argument of the materialist j but yet how intimately connected ! A pressure on the substance of the brain, and thought is suspended; a sponge with a few anesthetic drops ap- plied to the nostrils, and insensibility supervenes; another odor inhaled, and life is extinct. And if such be the action of matter on mind, no less n 6* 66 MODERN PROGRESS IN THE striking- is the control of mind over matter. The influ- ence of imagination is proverbial; yet it has ever been underrated. The excited mind can cure the suifering body. Faith, exalted to ecstasy; has arrested disease.* The sway of will thoroughly stirred into action often transcends the curative power of physic or physician. But it is not in general considerations, such as these that the argument rests touching the intimate connec- tion between material influences and mental phenomena. The modern study of the imponderables, already pro- ductive of physical results that to our ancestors would have seemed sheer miracles, has afforded glimpses of progress in another direction, which may brighten into discoveries before which the spanning of the Atlantic by a lightning-wire will pale into insignificance. Gal- vani's first hasty inferences as to animal electricity were to a certain extent refuted, it is true, by Yolta's stricter tests. But in Italy, in Prussia, and in England, experi- ments of a recent date, following up the just though imperfect idea of the Bolognese professor, have esta- blished the fact that the muscular contractions, voluntary or automatic, which produce action in a living limb, correspond to currents of electricity existing there in appreciable quantities.f The discoverer of creosote has * These opinions find ample confirmation — to select one among many sources — in a branch of study equally interesting to the physician and the psychologist ; the history, namely, of the great mental epidemics of the world. The reader will find these briefly noticed further on in these pages. f Galvani's first eventful observation on an electrical agency producing muscular contractions in animals, made on the 20th of September, 1786, was, after all, the starting-point of the recent interesting researches by Du Bois-Reymond, Zantedeschi, Matteucci, and others, on the continent of Eu- rope, and by Rutter and Leger, in England. Du Bois-Reymond himself, member of the Academy of Sciences of Berlin, very candidly admits this fact. In a historical introduction to his work on Animal Magnetism (*' Unterauchungen uher thieriache Elektricit'dt" Berlin, 1848-49) that writer ■ays, " Qalvani really discovered not only the fundamental physiological experiment of galvanism properly so called, (the conlra/'Von o^ the frog STUDY OF THE IMPONDERABLES. 67 given to the world the results of a ten years' labor, it may be said, in the same field ; distinguishing, however, what he terms the Odic from the electric force.* Aragc thought the case of Angelique Cottin (well known under the name of the " Electric Girl") worthy of being brought under the notice of the Paris Academy of Sciences ;f and, speaking, seven years afterward, of " the actual power which one man may exert over another without the intervc tion of any known physical agent," he de- clares that even Bailly's report against Mesmer's crude theory shows "how our faculties ought to be studied when touched with dissimilar metals,) but also that of the electricity inhe- rent in the nerves and muscles. Both of these discoveries were, however, hidden in such a confusion of circumstances that the result in both caaes appeared equally to depend on the limbs or tissues of the animals employed." The reader, desiring to follow up this subject, may consult a work by H. Bence Jones, M.D., F.R.S., entitled "On Animal Electricity : being an Ab^ stract of the Diacoveriea of Emit Du Boia-Reymond," London, 1852. Also, " Traits dee Phinomhies Slectro-phyaiologiquea dea Animaux," by Carlo Ma.t- teucci, Professor in the University of Pisa, 1844. Also, Baron Humboldt's work on Stimulated Nervous and Muscular Fibers, ("Verauche Uber die gereizte Muahel- und Nervev/aaer, u. a. w") In England experiments in this branch have been pushed farther than in any other country ; chiefly by Butter of Brighton, and by Dr. Leger, whose early death was a loss alike to physiological and psychological science. I had an opportunity, through the kindness of Mr. Butter, of personally witnessing the extraordinary results to which his patient research has led, and which I regret that space does not permit me here to notice at large. I can but refer to his work, "Human Electricity : the Meana of ita Develop- ment, illuatrated by Experimenta," London, 1854 j and to another brief treatise on the same subject, by Dr. T. Leger, entitled " The Magnetoacope : an Eaaay on the Magnetoid Characteriatica of Elementary Principlea, and their Reia- tiona to the Organization of Man," London, 1852. The whole subject is singularly interesting, and will richly repay the ^fudy that may be bestowed upon it. * I here refer to Baron Beichenbach's elaborate treatises on what he calls the " Odic Force," without expressing any opinion as to the accuracy of the author's conclusions. Beichenbach discovered creosote in 183.3. t Arago's report on the subject was made on the 16th of February, 1846. It is much to be regretted that an observer so sagacious should have had no opportunity, in this case, to follow up his first hasty experimsnts. S8 ouvier's admission. experimentally, and by what means psychology may one day obtain a place among the exact sciences."* Cuvier, more familiar than Arago with the phenomena of animated nature, speaks more decidedly than he on the same subject. " It scarcely admits of further doubt," says that eminent naturalist, " that the proximity of two living bodies, in certain circumstances and with certain movements, has a real effect, independently of all parti- cipation of the imagination of one of the two ;" and he further adds that "it appears now clearly enough that the effects are due to some communication established between their nervous systems/'f This is conceding the principle lying at the base of Mesmerism, — a con- cession which is sustained by countless observations, little reliable in some cases, but in others, especially of late, carefully made by upright and capable experiment- alists, on the contested ground of artificial somnambulism and kindred phenomena. Without pausing here to inquire to what extent these various startling novelties need confirmation, or how far the deductions therefrom may be modified or dis- proved by future observations, enough of indisputable can be found therein, if not to indicate that we may be standing even now on the shores of a Great Ocean, slowly uiyvailing its wonders, and the exploration of * "BiograpMe de Jean-Sylvain Bailly" by M. Arago, originally pub- lished in the "Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes" for 1853, pp. 345 to 625. f " Leqona d'Anatomie comparie" de G. Cuvier, Paris; An. viii. vol. ii. pp. 117, 118. The original text, with its context, is as follows : — " Lc8 efiFets obtenus sur des personnes d6j§, sans connaissance avant que I'op^ration commen5a,t, ceux qui ont lieu sur les autres personnes aprSsqup Topgration leur a fait perdre connaissance, et ceux que presentent les ani- maux, ne permettent gudre de douter que la proximity de deux corps animus, dans certaines positions et avec certains mouvements, n'ait un effet r6el, independant de toute participation de I'imagination d'une deg deux, n parait assez olairement, aussi, que les effets sont dus ^ une cciuoitf nication quelconque qui s'^tablit entre leurs systSmes nerveux." WHAT MAY BE. 09 which is to bring us richer reward than did that of tho Atlantic to Columbus, at least to convince us that Her- Bchel's philosophical remark may have a wider range than he intended to give it; that in physiology and in psychology, as in chemistry, there may be possible com- binations that have never yet "been formed under our eyes; new relations, new conditions, yet to exist or appear; all to be governed, when they do occur, by laws that have obtained, indeed, from the creation of the world, but have remained until now, not, indeed, inoperative, but concealed from general observation. From general observation ; for, though unrecognized by science, they are not therefore to be set down as un- known. It is one of the objects proposed in the pages which follow, to glean, from the past as well as the present, scattered intimations of the existence of laws under which it has been alleged that man may attain, from sources other than revelation and analogy, some assurance in regard to the world to come. And since it is evident that no abstract truth is violated by the hypothesis of the existence of such laws, may I not adduce such names as Arago and Herschel to sustain me in asserting, that they lack prudence who take upon themselves to pronounce, in advance, that whoever argues such a theme has engaged in a search after tho impossible ? CHAPTER 111. THE MIRACULOUS. The universal cause Acts, not by partial but by general laws. — Popb. Men are very generally agreed to regard him as stricken with superstition or blinded by credulity who believes in any miracle of modern days. And as the world grows older this disbelief in the supernatural gradually acquires strength and universality. The reason seems to be, that the more searchingly science explores the mechanism of the universe and unvails the plan of its government, the more evidence there appears for the poet's opinion that it is by general, not by partial, laws that the universe is governed. In such a doctrine the question of God's omnipotence is not at all involved. It is not whether He can make exceptions to a system of universal law, but whether He doe&. If we may permit ourselves to speak of God's choice and intentions, it is not whether, to meet an in- cidental exigency. He has the power to suspend tne order of those constant sequences which, because ot their constancy, we term laws; but only whether, in point of fact, He chooses to select that occasional mode of effecting His objects, or does not rather see fit to carry them out after a more unvarying plan, by means less exceptional and arbitrary. It is a question of fact. But modern Science, in her progress, not only strikes from what used to be regarded as the list of exceptions to the general order of nature one item after another : she exhibits to us, also, more clearly day by day, the 70 MODERN MIRACLES REJECTED. 71 simplicity of natural laws, and the principle of unity under which detached branches are connected as parts of one great system Thus, as applied to what happens in our day, accumu- lating experience discredits the doctrine of occasional causes and the belief in the miraculous. If a man relate to us, even from his own experience, some inci- dent clearly involving supernatural agency, we listen with a shrug of pity. If we have too good an opinion of the narrator's honesty to suspect that he is playing on our credulity, we conclude unhesitatingly that he is deceived by his own. We do not stop to examine the evidence for a modern miracle : we reject it on general principles. But, in assenting to such skepticism, we shall do well to consider what a miracle is. Hume, in his well-known chapter on this subject, adduces a useful illustration. The Indian prince, he says, who rejected testimony as to the existence of ice, refused his assent to facts which arose from a state of nature with which he was unac- quainted, and which bore so little analogy to those events of which he had had constant and uniform expe- rience. As to these facts, he alleges, "Though they were not contrary to his experience, they were not con- formable to it."* And, in explanation of the distinction here made, he adds, in a note, "No Indian, it is evident, could have experience that water did not freeze in cold cli mates, "f Is the above distinction a substantial one? If so, it leads much further than Hume intended it should. JSot only had the Indian prince never seen water in a solid state J until now, he had never heard of such a thing. Not only was his own unvarying experience * Hume's " Essays and Treatises on Various Subjects," 2d ed., London^ 1784, vol. ii. p. 122. t Hume's Essays, vol. ii., Note K, p. 479. 72 THE INDIAN PRINCE opposed to the alleged fact, but the experience of his fathers, the traditions of his country, all declared that water ever had been, as now it was, a fluid. Had he no right to say that solid water was a thing contrary to his experience? Or ought he, with philosophic mode- ration, to have restricted his declaration to this, that the phenomenon of ice, if such phenomenon had actual existence, " arose from a state of nature with which he was unacquainted." We, who have so often walked upon solid water, find no difficulty in deciding that this last is what he ought to have said. Let us forgive the ignorant savage his presumptuous denial, as we would ourselves, in similar case, be forgiven ! Let us reflect how much cautious wisdom, that we find not among the best informed and most learned among ourselves, we are expecting from an unlettered bar- barian. Let us inquire whether Hume, calm and philo- sophic as he is, does not himself fail in the very wisdom he exacts. He says, in the same chapter, — "A miracle is a violation of the laws of Nature; and, as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined."* Here are two propositions : one, that what a firm and unalterable experience establishes is a law of nature ; and the other, that a variation from such a law is a miracle. But no human experience is unalterable. We may say it has hitherto been unaltered. And even that it is always hazardous to say. If any one has a right thus to speak of his experi- ence and that of his fellows, was not the Indian prince justified in considering it to be proved, by unalterable * Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 122. AND THE SCOTTISH HISTORIAN. 7S experience, that a stone placed on the surface of a sheet of water would sink to the bottom? Was he not fully justified, according to Hume's own premises, in setting down the traveler's allegation to the contrary as the assertion of a miracle, and, as such, in rejecting it as impossible ? "No Indian," says Hume, "could have experience that water did not freeze in cold countries." Of course not. That was a fact beyond his experience. Are there no facts beyond ours? Are there no states of nature with which we are unacquainted? Is it the Indian prince alone whose experience is limited and fallible ? When a man speaks of the experience of the past as a regulator of his belief, he means — he can mean — only so much of that experience as has come to his knowledge mediately or immediately. In such a case, then, to ex- press himself accurately, he ought not to say, " the ex- perience of the past," — for that would imply that he knows all that has ever happened, — but only, " my past experience." Then Hume's assertion, in the paragraph above quoted, is, that his past experience, being firm and unalterable,* enables him to determine what are invariable laws of nature, and, consequently, what are miracles. ISTor is this the full extent of the presumption. Else- where in this chapter the author says " that a miracle supported by any human testimony is more properly a subject of derision than of argument."! Taken in connection with the paragraph above cited, what a monstrous doctrine is here set up I Let it be * In another place (p. 119) Hame employs the word infallible in a simi- lar connection, thus: — "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his pa«t experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event." (The italics arc hia.) t Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 133. 7 74 Hume's definition stated in plain terms. " I regard my past experience aa firm and unalterable. If a witness, no matter how credible, testifies to any occurrence which is contrary to that experience, I do not argue with such a man: he is only worthy of derision." Though, in our day, hundreds who ought to know better act out this very doctrine, I would not be under- stood as asserting that Hume intended to put it forth. We often fail to perceive the legitimate issue of our own premises. But let us proceed a step further. Let us inquire under what circumstances we have the right to say, "such or such »n occurrence is incredible, for it would be miraculous." The question brings us back to our first inquiry, — as to what a miracle is. Let us examine Hume's defini- tion : — " A miracle may be accurately defined, a transgres- sion of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent."* I remark, in passing, that the expression " by the inter- position of some invisible »gent" is an inaccuracy. Cold is an invisible agent : it is not even a positive agent at all, being only the withdrawal or diminution of heat. Yet cold suspends what the Indian prince had strong reason for regarding as a law of nature. But the main proposition remains. *'A miracle is a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity." Here again jbhe language seems unhappily chosen. When we speak of a thing as happening by the will of God, we rationally intend, by the expression, only thai it is the act of God; for God's intentions are inscrutable to us, except as they appear in His acts. Cac w^ SAy * Hume's Essays, vol. it, Note E, p. 480. OF A MIRACLE. 75 of any thing which occurs at all, that it does not occur by volition of the Deity ? The word " transgression," too, seems not the best that could have been employed.* It must, of course, be taken in its original sense of a going or passing beyond. The author evidently meant a suspension for the time to suit a particular emergency ; and that would have been the more appropriate phrase. Hume's idea, then, would seem to be more fittingly expressed in these terms : — "A miracle is a suspension, in a special emergency and for the time only, of a law of nature, by the direct intervention of the Deity." We might add, to complete the ordinary conception of a miracle, the words, "in attestation of some truth." And now arises.the chief question, already suggested How are we to know, as to any unusual phenomenon presented to us, that it is an effect of the special inter- vention of God ? in other words, whether it is miracu- lous? But I will not even ask this question as to ourselves, finite and short-sighted as we are. It shall be far more forcibly put. Let us imagine a sage, favored beyond living mortal, of mind so comprehensive, of information so vast, that the entire experience of the past world, century by century, even from m^n's creation, lay patent before him. Let us suppose the question ad dressed to him. And would he, — a being thus preterna- turally gifted, — would even he have the right to decide, * It would be hypercriticism to object to this expression in a general way. The best authors have employed it as Hume does, yet rather in poetry than in prose, as Dry don : — " Long stood the noble youth, oppressed with awe, And stupid at the wondrous things he saw, Surpassing common faith, transgressing Nature's law." Bat a looseness of expression which may adorn a poetic phrase, or pass unchallenged in a literary theme, should be avoided in a strictly logical argument, and more especially in a definition of termc. f6 MEN CAN ESTABLISH would he have the means of deciding, as to any event which may happen to-day, whether it is, or is not, a miracle ? He may know, what we never can, that a uniform ex- perience, continued throughout thousands of years and unbroken yet by a single exception, has established, as far as past experience can establish, the existence of a natural law or constant sequence ; and he may observe a variation, the first which ever occurred, to this law. But is it given to him to know whether the Deity, to meet a certain exigency, is suspending His own law, or whether this variation is not an integral portion of the original law itself? in other words, whether the apparent law, as judged by an induction running through thou- sands of years, is the full expression of that law, or whether the exception now first appearing was *not em- braced in the primary adjustment of the law itself, when it was first made to act on the great mechanism of the Universe ? Has the Creator of the world no power to establish for its progressive government laws of (what we may call) a change-bearing character? preserving, (that is,) through the lapse of many ages, constancy of sequence, and then, at a certain epoch, by virtue of that charac- ter, (impressed upon it by the same original ordination which determined the previous long-enduring constancy,) made to exhibit a variation? We, his creatures, even with our restricted powers, know how to impress upon human mechanism laws of just such a character. The illustration furnished by Babbage's Calculating Machine, familiar though it may be, so naturally suggests itself in this connection, that I may be pardoned for presenting it here. Mr. Babbage's engine, intended to calculate and print mathematical and astronomical tables for the British Government, offers interesting incidental results. Of CHANGE-BEARING LAWS. 77 these, the following, supplied by the inventor himself, is an example ; and one of such a character that no know- ledge of the mechanism of the machine, nor acquaint- ance with mathematical science, is necessary to compre- hend it. He bids us imagine that the machine had been adjusted. It is put in motion by a weight, and the spectator, sitting down before it, observes a wheel which moves through a small angle round its axis, and which pre- sents at short intervals to his eye, successively, a series of numbers engraved *on its divided surface. He bids us suppose the figures thus seen to be the series of natural numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. ; each one exceeding its ante- cedent by unity. Then he proceeds : — "Now, reader, let me ask how long you will have counted before you are firmly convinced that the engine, supposing its adjustments to remain unaltered, will con- tinue, whilst its motion is maintained, to produce the same series of natural numbers ? Some minds, perhaps, are so constituted, that after passing the first hundred terms they will be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. After seeing five hundred terms few will doubt ; and after the fifty thousandth term the propensity to believe that the succeeding term will be fifty thousand and one will be almost irresistible. That term will be fifty thousand and one : the same regular succession will continue ; the five millionth and the fifty millionth term will still appear in their expected order; and one anbroken chain of natural numbers will pass before your ej^es, from one up to one hundred million. "True to the vast induction which has thus been made, the next term will be one hundred million and one; but after that the next number presented by the lim of the wheel, instead of being one hundred million and two, is one hundred million ten thousand and two. The whole series, from the commencement, being thus : — T8 ILLUSTRATION FROM 1 99,999,999 100,000,000 regularly as far as 100,000,001 100,010,002 :— the law changes 100,030,003 100,060,004 100,100,005 100,150,006 100,210,007 "The law which seemed at first to govern this series failed at the hundred million and second term. This term is larger than we expected by 10,000. The next term is larger than was anticipated by 30,000; and the excess of each term above what we had expected is found to be 10,000, 30,000, 60,000, 100,000, 150,000, &c. ; being, in fact, what are called the series of triangular numbers, each multiplied by 10,000." Mr. Babbage then goes on to state that this new law, after continuing for 2761 terms, fails at the two thou- sand seven hundred and sixty-second term, when another law comes into action, to continue for 1430 terms; then to give place to still another, extending over 950 terms ; which, like all its predecessors, fails in its turn, and is succeeded by other laws, which appear at different intervals. Mr. Babbage' s remarks on this extraordinary pheno- menon are as follows : — BABBAGE'S CALCULATING MACHINE. 79 "Now, it must be remarked, that the law that each number presented by the engine is greater by unity than the preceding numbery which law the observer had deduced from an induction of a hundred million instances, was not the true law that regulated its action; and that the occurrence of the number 100,010,002 at the 100,000,002d term was as necessary a consequence of the original ad- justment, and might have been as fully foreknown at the commencement, as was the regular succession of any one of the intermediate numbers to its immediate antecedent. The same remark applies to the next ap- parent deviation from the new law, which was founded on an induction of 2761 terms, and to all the succeeding laws; with this limitation only, — that, whilst their con- secutive introduction at various definite intervals is a necessary consequence of the mechanical structure of the engine, our knowledge of analysis does not yet enable us to predict the periods at which the more distant laws will be introduced."* This illustration must not be taken as suborned to establish more than it strictly proves. It is, doubtless, not only a wise but a necessary provision in our nature, that the constancy of any sequence in the past should inspire us with faith that it will continue in the future. Without such faith, the common economy of life would stand still. Uncertain whether to-morrow's sun would rise as did the sun of to-day, or whether the seasons would continue their regular alternations, our lives would pass amid scruples and hesitations. All calcula- tion would be baffled; all industry would sink under discouragement. The chances, so incalculably great, in most cases, as ♦ " Ninth Bridgewater Treatise," by Charles Babbage, 2d ed., London, 1838, pp. 34 to 39. The passage has been already quoted by another, in connection with a physiological question. 80 THAT WHICH HAS BEEN for all practical purposes to amount to certainty, are in favor of the constancy of natural sequences. The corresponding expectations, common to man with the lower animals, are instinctive. All this is not only true, but it is palpable to oui every-day consciousness, — a truth whereupon is based the entire superstructure of our daily hopes and actions. The wheel, with its divided surface, ever revolving, does present, to human eyes, uniformity of sequence, age after age; and when the unbroken chain has run on from thousands to millions, we are justified, amply justified, in expecting that the next term will obey the same law that determined its antecedent. All I have sought to do in this argument is to keep alive in our minds the conviction, that there may be a hundred million and second term, at which the vast induction fails; and that, if such does appear, we have no right to conclude that the change, unprecedented as it must seem to us, is not as necessary a consequence of an original adjust- ment as was the seemingly infinite uniformity that preceded it. The extreme rarity of what I have called change- bearing laws of nature is to be conceded; but not the improbability of their existence. In a world all over which is stamped the impress of progress, and which, for aught we know, may continue to endure through countless ages, laws of such a character, self-adapted to a changeful state of things, may be regarded as of likely occurrence.* * Modern science is revealing to us glimpses that may brighten into positive proof of this hypothesis. Sir John Herschel, writing to Lyell the geologist, and alluding to what he calls that " mystery of mysteries, the replacement of extinct species by others," says, — " For my own part, I cannot but think it an inadequate conception of the Creator, to assume it as granted that His combinations are exhausted upon any one of the theaters of their former exercise ; though in this, as in all MAY NOT ALWAYS BE. 8( But it suffices for the present argument to establish the possibility of such laws. If they are possible, then, in regard to any alleged occurrence of modern times, (strange in character, perhaps, but coming to us well attested,) we are barred from asserting that, because contrary to past experience, it would be miraculous, and is consequently impossible. We are as strictly barred from this as are the visitors to Mr. Babbage's engine from pronouncing, w^hen the long uniformity of a past sequence is unexpectedly violated, that the inventor has been dealing in the black art and is trenching on the supernatural.* His other works, we are led by all analogy to suppose that He operates through a series of intermediate causes, and that, in consequence, the ori- gination of fresh species, could it ever come under our cognizance, would be found to be a natural, in contradistinction to a miraculous, process; although we may perceive no indication of any process, actually in pro- gress, which is likely to issue in such a result." — Herachel's tetter of Feb. 20, 1836, published in Appendix to Babbage's work above cited, p. 226. ♦ Reading this chapter more than a year after it was written — namely, in March, 1859 — to a private circle of friends in London, one of them called my attention, in connection with its argument, to an article then just pub- lished in the (London) Athenaeum, attributed (correctly, I believe) to Professor De Morgan, of the London University. It proved to be a review of that strange self-commitment of an able man, virtually following Hume's false lead, Faraday's extraordinary lecture on " Mental Training,'* delivered, before Prince Albert, at the Royal Institution. And it was a satisfaction to me, on referring to the article, to find, from the pen of one of the first mathematicians of Europe, such a paragraph as the following:— " The natural philosopher, when he imagines a physical impoaaibility which is not an inconceivability, merely states that his phenomenon ig igainst all that has been hitherto known of the course of nature. Before he can compass an impossibility, he has a huge postulate to ask of his reader or hearer, a postulate which nature never taught: it is that the future la always to agree with the past. How do you know that this sequence of phenomena always will be? Answer, Because it must be. But how do you know that it must be? Answer, Because it always has been. But then, even granting that it always has been, how do you know that what always has been always will be? Answer, I feel my mind compelled to lAat conclusion. And how do you know that the leanings of your mind are always toward truth? Because I am infallible, the answer ought to P 82 CHANGE-BEARING-LAWS RARE. Nay, there are far stronger reasons against such pre- sumption in our case than in that of the supposed spec- tator before the calculating machine. He has ob- served the entire series, even to the hundred millionth term. How insignificant the fraction that has passed before our eyes ! How imperfect our knowledge of that portion which has passed before the eyes of our ancestors! How insufficient, then, are the data for a decision that the past uniformity has been un- broken ! And herein, beyond all question, do we find a source of error infinitely more frequent than is the failure to recognize a change-bearing law. I have set forth the ex- istence of such laws as a possibility beyond human denial; yet only as an argument to meet an extreme case, — a case so exceedingly rare that, notwithstanding its cer- tain possibility, it may never present itself to our ob- servation. So far as the scope of our limited experience extends, the argument, how undeniable soever, may have no practical application. It may never be our fortune to stand before the Great Machine at the moment when the hundred million and second term, unexpectedly presenting itself, indicates a departure from all former precedent. Among the laws which we see at work, it may chance that we shall never observe one which some ancestor has not seen in operation already. I^ay, that chance is a probable one. In other words, if a phenomenon actually present itself which we are tempted to regard as a violation of natural law, it is more likely — ten thousand to one — that a similar phenomenon has al- ready shown itself more or less frequently in the past, than that it presents itself now for the first time in the history of our race. he: but this answer is never given." — Aihenteum,'So. If 37, A March \%% 1859, p. 350. AN ERROR OP TWO PHASES. 88 The source of our error, then, when we mistake the extraordinary for the miraculous, is far more frequently in our ignorance of what has been than in our false con- ceptions of what may be. The error itself, from either source arising, is a grave one, entailing important practical consequences, which have varied in their prevailing character at different periods of the world. In our day the usual result is incredulity, in advance of examination, as to all phenomena that seem, to our limited experience, incapable of rational explanation. One or two cen- turies ago the same error often assumed a different form. When a phenomenon presented itself to the men of that day, the cause of which they did not com- prehend, and which seemed to them, for that reason, out of the course of nature, they were wont to take it for granted that it happened either through the agency of the devil, or else by special interposition of the Deity in attestation of some contested truth. Thus, Racine re- lates what he calls the miraculous cure of Mademoiselle Perrier, the niece of Pascal, and then an inmate of the celebrated Convent of Port Royal; and Pascal himself seeks to prove that this miracle was necessary to religion, and was performed in justification of the nuns of that convent, ardent Jansenists, and for that reason under the ban of the Jesuits. La Place, treating the whole as imposture, adduces it as a lamentable example — '' afflict- ing to see and painful to read" — of that blind credulity which is sometimes the weakness of great men.* * See Introduction to his ** Th€orie analiftique de» Prohabilitit,'* (7th ToL of his works, Paris, 1847,) p. 95. For the story itself the reader is referred to Racine's *'AbrSgf de VHU- soire de Port Royal," Paris, 1693, The alleged miracle occurred in 1856s The young girl, Perrier, had been afflicted with a lachrymal fistula. To the diseased eye was applied a relic, — said to be a thorn from the crown which the Jewish soldiers in mockeiy plac04 OB the head of Christ Tho 84 SPECIMENS or ALLEGED The truth in this case, as in many others, may ra- tionally be sought between these extremes of opinion. We cannot, at this distance of time, assume to decide what the precise facts were; but, without impeaching the good faith of a crowd of respectable witnesses, wo may deem it probable that the cure really was an extra- <»rdinary one, due, it may be, to the influence of the ex- cited mind over the body, or to some magnetic or other occult agency hitherto unrecognized by science; at all events, to some natural, though hidden, cause. Pascal and La Place are doubtless equally in error; the latter in denying that a wonderful cure was effected, the former in seeking its cause in the special intervention of a supernatural power; in imagining that God had ^irl declared that the touch had cured her. Some days afterward she waa examined by several physicians and surgeons, who substantiated the fact of her cure, and expressed the opinion that it had not been brought about by medical treatment, or by any natural cause. Besides this, the cure was attested not only by all the nuns of the convent, — celebrated over Europe for their austerity,' — but it is further fortified by all the proof which a mul- titude of witnesses of undoubted character — men of the "world as well as physicians — could bestow upon it. The Queen Regent of France, very much prejudiced against Port Royal as a nest of Jansenists, sent her own surgeon, M. Felix, to examine into the miracle ; and he returned an absolute convert. So incontestable was it regarded, even by the enemies of the nuns, that it actually saved their establishment for a time from the ruin with which it was threatened by the Jesuits, — who ultimately succeeded, however, some fifty-three years later, in suppressing the convent; it being closed in October, 1709, and razed to the ground the year after. To Racine — writing in 1673, and therefore unacquainted with these facts — the argument could not occur, that God does not suffer Himself to be baffled by man, and that it is difficult to imagine Him interfering one day in support of a cause which, the next, He suffers to go down before the efforts of its enemies. But here we approach a subject vailed from finite gaze, the intentions of the Infinite. We are as little justified in asserting that God had no special purpose in permitting an extraordinary phenomenon, which to the igno- rance of that day seemed a miracle, as in assuming to decide what tKat pur- pope majT have been. JANSENIST MIRACLES. 85 suspended for the occasion a great law of nature, for tho purpose of indorsing the five propositions of Jan- senius, of reprehending a certain religious order, and of affording a momentary triumph to a few persecuted nuns Similar errors have been of frequent occurrence. Perhaps the most striking example on record is con- tained in that extraordinary episode in the instructive history of the mental epidemics of Europe, the story of what have been called the Convulsionists of St. Medard. It is to this that Hume alludes, in a para- graph of the chapter from which I have already quoted, when he says, — " There surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person than those which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the tomb of the Abbe Paris, the famous Jansenist, with whose sanctity the people were so long deluded. The curing of the sick, giving hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind, were everywhere talked of as the usual effects of that holy sepulcher. But, what is more extraordinary, many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by wit- nesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theater that is now in the world. Nor is this all : a relation of them was published and dis- persed everywhere; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the civil magistrates, and determined enemies to those opinions in whose favor the miracles were said to have been wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them. Where shall we find such a number of circumstances agreeing to the corro- boration of one fact ? And what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses but the absolute impos- sibility or miraculous nature of the events which they relate? And this, surely, in the eyes of all reason- 86 Hume's imprudence. ablo people, will alone be regarded as a sufficient refuta- tion."* Hume here places himself in the category of those whom Arago considers deficient in prudence. He pro- nounces certain events to be impossible, because they are contrary to his experience. He is misled by the pretensions of those who relate them. The eminent magistrate to whose elaborate work we are indebted for a narrative of the events in question (Carre de Mont- geron) assumes that they were brought about by the special intervention of God, exerted, at the intercession of the deceased Abbe, to sustain the cause of the Jan- senist -Appellants and condemn the doctrines of the Bull Unigenitus.f Hume cannot admit the reason or justice of such pretensions. Nor can we. But here we must distinguish. It is one thing to refuse credit to the reality of the phenomena, and quite another to demur to the interpretation put upon them. We may admit the existence of comets, yet deny that they portend the * Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 133. f " La Viriti des Miracles opSris par V intercession de M. de Paris et autre* Appellans," par M. Carr6 de Montggron, Conseiller au Parlement de Paris. 3 vols. 4to, 2d ed., Cologne, 1745. I copy from the advertisement, p. 5 : — " H s'agit de miracles qui prouvent evidemment I'existence de Dieu et sa providence, la v6rit6 du Christianiame, la saintet6 de I'^glise Catholique, et la justice de la cause des Appellans de la buUe Unigenitus." The weight of evidence brought to bear, in this extraordinary work, in proof of each one of the chief miracles there sought to be established, would be sufficient, in a court of justice, to convict twenty men. I doubt whether such an overwhelming mass of human testimony was ever before thrown together to sustain any class of contested facts. I had prepared, and had intended to give in the present volume, a chap- ter containing a condensed narrative of this marvelous epidemic, and the phenomena it brought to light; also to devote several other chapters to the details of other historical episodes somewhat similar in character. But the subject grew under my. hands to such dimensions that I was compelled to exclude it. DISCRIMINATION OF MODERN SCIENCE. 87 birth or death of heroes. The first is a question of fact, the second only of inference or imagination. This view of the case does not appear to have sug- gested itself at the time either to friend or foe. The Jesuit inquisitors, unable to contest the facts, found nothing for it but to ascribe them to witchcraft and the devil. Nor did any better mode occur to them of re- futing Montgeron's work than to have it burned by the hands of the common hangman, on the 18th of Febru- ary, 1739. Modern science is more discriminating. The best medical writers on insanity and kindred subjects, after making due allowance for the exaggerations incident to the heat of controversialism, and for the inaccuracies into which an ignorance of physiology was sure to betray inexperienced observers, still find sufficient evidence remaining to prove, beyond cavil, the reality of cer- tain cures, and other wonderful phenomena exhibited ; but they seek the explanation of these in natural causes.* They do not imagine that the Deity suspended the laws of nature in order to disprove a papal bull ; but neither do they declare, with Hume, the impossibility of the facts claimed to be miraculous. * Consult, for example, Dr. Calmeil's excellent work, ** De la Folic, con- tidirie aoua le point de vue pathologique, philo9ophique, Kiatorique, et Judi- ciaire," 2 vols., Paris, 1845. It will be found vol. ii. pp. 313 to 400, in the chapter entitled " Thiomanie Extato-Convuhive pamii lea Janainiatea," in which the subject is examined in detail, from a medical point of view, and natural explanations offered of the phenomena in question, many of which phenomena are of so astounding a character that Hume, ignorant as he was »f the effects produced in somnambulism, during catalepsy, and in other abnormal states of the human system, may well be pardoned for his incre- dulity. Calmeil believes — and it seems probable enough — that these convulsions cc;istituted a nervous malady of an aggravated character, probably hysteria complicated with ecstatic and cataleptic symptoms. He says, " Dds 1732, rhyst^rie se oompliqua de ph^nomdnes extatiques, de ph^nomdnes oataJ^p- tiformes." — Vol. ii. p. 395. 88 SPIRITUAL AGENCY, IF SUCH A judgment similar to that which the Scottish his- torian, more than a century ago, passed on the miracles of St. Medard, is passed in our day, by a large majority of the world, on all alleged appearances or agencies of an ultramundane character. The common opinion is, that such things cannot happen except miraculously 3 that is, by special intervention of the Deity, and a tem- porary suspension by Him, in favor of certain persons, of one or more of the laws which govern the universe. And, as they cannot believe in miracles, they reject, un- examined, all evidence tending to establish the reality of such phenomena. I am not here asserting that such phenomena do occur. I am but adducing evidence for the opinion that, if they do, they are as much the result of natural law as is a rainbow or a thunder-clap. I am seeking to show cause to the believers in their existence why they should cease to attach to them any inkling of the supernatural. Numerous examples of these alleged phenomena will be found in succeeding chapters. Meanwhile, assuming for a moment the affirmative on this point, I might found, on mere general principles, an argument in con- nection with it. To a question naturally suggesting it- self, namely, to what end God permits (if He does per- mit) ultramundane intercourse, I might reply, that it is doubtless for a purpose as comprehensive as benevolent; that we may reasonably imagine Him to be opening up to our race a medium of more certain knowledge of another world, in order to give fresh impulse to oui onward progress toward wisdom and goodness in this, and more especially to correct that absorbing worldli- ness, the besetting sin of the present age, creeping over its civilization and abasing its noblest aspirings. And, if these be admitted as rational surmises, I might go on to ask how we may suppose that God would be likely to carry out such an intent; — whether, after a partial and THERB BE; IS NOT MIRACULOUS. S9 exceptional fashion, by an obtrusive suspension of IIi» own laws for the benefit of a few favored children of preference, or, under the operation of the universal order of Nature, to the common advantage of all His creatures, in silent impartiality and harmony, as lie causes the morning sun to rise and the evening dews to fall. 1 might proceed a step further, and inquire whether, if such an extension of our earthly horizon enter into (jod's design, it can rationally be imagined that the (rreat Framer should find His purpose thwarted by the laws Himself had framed ; or whether it does not far better comport with just ideas of God's omnipotence and omniprescience to conclude that, in the original adjust- ment of the world's economy, such a contingency was foreseen and provided for, as surely as every other iiuman need has been. Such arguments might not unfairly be made. Yet all a 'priori reasoning touching God's intentions, and the means we imagine He may select to effect these, seem to me hazarded and inconclusive. 1 think we do better 10 take note of God's doings than to set about conjec- turing His thoughts, which, we are told, are not as ours. It is safer to reason from our experience of His works than from our conceptions of His attributes ; for these are wrapped in mystery, while those are spread open before us. 1 rest the case, therefore, not on the vagueness of general induction, but on the direct evidence of pheno- mena observed. That evidence will be adduced in its proper place. Suffice it for the present to express my jonviction, based on experimental proof, that, if the Deity is now permitting communication between mortal creatures in this stage of existence and disembodied spirits in another. He is employing natural causes and general laws to effect His object j not resorting for that purpose to the occasional and the miraculous. 00 butler's and tillotson's Note. It will be evident, to the rcfiecting reader, that the argument running through the preceding chapter ap- plies only in so far as we may accept the popular defini- tion of a miracle; the same adopted by Hume. Some able theologians have assumed a very different one; Butler, for example, in his well-known "Analogy of Ee- ligion," in which he favors a view of the subject not very dissimilar to that taken by myself. "There is a real credibility," says he, "in the supposition that it might be part of the original plan of things that there (Should be miraculous interpositions." And he leaves it in doubt whether we ought " to call every thing in the dispensations of Providence not discoverable without Revelation, nor like the known course of things, mira- culous."* Another distinguished prelate speaks more plainly still. In one of his sermons Archbishop Tillotson says, "It is not the essence of a miracle (as many have thought) that it be an immediate effect of the Divine Power. It is sufficient that it exceed any natural power that we know of to produce it."f This is totally changing the commonly-received defi- nition. If we are not to regard it as "the essence of a miracle that it be an immediate effect of the Divine Power," — if we may properly call any occurrence mira- culous which is not "like the known course of things," — if we may declare each and every phenomenon a miracle which "exceeds any natural power that we know of to produce it," — then it is evident that the miracle of one age may be the natural event of the succeeding. In this sense we are living, even now, amojig miracles. Nor, if in this we follow Butler and Tillotson, are we * "Analogy of Religion to the Conatitutioi and Course of Nature," Part II., ehap. 2. f Semon CI-XXXII. IDEAS OF MIRACLES. 91 at all invalidating the efficacy of the early Christian miracles. Their influence on the minds of men was the same whether they were the result of partial or of general laws. In point of fact, they did attract atten- tion and add force to the teachings of a system, the innate beauty and moral grandeur of which was insuffi- cient to recommend it to the semi-barbarism of the day. Whatever their character, they did their work. And the mistake as to that character, if mistake it is to be termed, may have been the very means ordained by Providence to cherish and advance, in its infancy, a religion of peace and good will springing up in an age of war and discord. Nor, in one sense, was the error, if as such we are to regard it, one of essence, but rather of manner. The signs and wonders which broke in upon the indifference and awoke the belief of Jew and Gentile, whether they were produced by momentary suspension of law or by its preordained operation, were equally His work from whom all law proceeds. And shall we appreciate God's handiwork the less because, in the progress of His teachings, He gradually unfolds to us the mode in which He moves to perform it ? Then in heaven we should less venerate Him than upon earth. Is it an unreasonable surmise that it may be God's purpose to raise the vail of eighteen hundred years, in proportion as our eyes can bear the light; in proportion as our minds can take in the many things which Christ taught not, in His day, to those who could not bear ihem; in proportion as we are prepared to receive Christianity, for its intrinsic excellence and on its in- ternal evidence, without the aid of extraneous warrant? But I put forth these suggestions, touching, as they •io, on matters beyond our ken, incidentally and hypo- thetically only. They are not essential to my argument, nor strictly included in its pui'pose ; that being to treat of modern, not of ancient, miracles. CHAPTEE lY. THE IMPROBABLE. ••It may be said, speaking in strictness, that almost all our knowledge consists of possibilities only." — La. Place: ThSorie des Probabilitie, Introd. p.l. In quest of truth there are two modes of proceeding : the one, to sit down, draw upon one^s stock of precon- ceptions ; settle, before we enter upon an inquiry, what may be, or ought to be, or must be ; make to ourselves, in advance, what we call clear ideas of the naturally possible and impossible; then sally forth, armed against all non-conforming novelties, and with a fixed purpose to waste no time in their examination. The other plan, more modest and Baconian, is to step out into the world, eyes and ears open, an unpledged spectator, our fagot of opinions still unbound and incomplete; no sucli screen as a viust be set up to prevent our seeing and hearing whatever presents itself; no ready-made impos- sibility prepared to rule out reliable testimony; no pre- judgment barring the way against evidence for impro- babilities. Few persons realize how arbitrary and unreliable may be the notions they keep on hand of the improbable. We laugh at Jack's mother, who, when her sailor son sought to persuade her there were flying-fish, resented the attempt as an insult to her understanding, but accepted, unquestioned, the young rogue's story about one of Pharaoh's chariot-wheels brought up on the anchor-fluke from the bottom of the Eed Sea. Yet the old lady is one of a large class, numbering learned and AEROLITES. 98 lettered celebrities among its members, who have their riying-fish, insulting to the understanding, as well as she. These are a frequent phenomenon within the precincts of scientific academies and royal institutions. We forget, after a time, what have been the flying- fish of the past. It needs official reference to convince us now that for nearly half a century after Harvey's brilliant discovery the Paris Academy of Medicine listened to those who classed it among the impossibili- ties.* "We have almost forgotten that, until the com- mencement of the present century, the old ladies of the scientific world rejected, as resentfully as their proto- type of the story, all allegations going to prove the reality of aerolites.f Meteoric stones and the circulation of the blood have now lost their piscatory character, are struck off the ♦ In the records of the Paris Royal Society of Medicine we read that, as late as the year 1672, a candidate for membership, Francois Bazin, sought to conciliate the favor of that learned body by selecting as his theme the impossibility of the circulation of the blood ; {*' ergo aartguinU mofua circu- laria impoastbilis.") Harvey had given to the world his great discovery in the year 1628; but forty-four years sufficed not to procure for it the sanction of official medical authority in the French capital. f The fall of larger or smaller mineral masses, usually called meteoric stones, was long set down by the scientific world as among popular fables, notwithstanding the testimony of all antiquity in its favor. Stones alleged to have dropped from heaven were preserved in various ancient temples, as at Cybele. Plutarch, in his life of Lysander, describes a celebrated aerolite which fell in Thrace, near the mouth of the ^gos Potamos. But these and a hundred other analogous cases, recorded throughout the past, failed to dispel scientific incredulity, until Chladni, a naturalist of Wurtemberg, verified the fall of a meteorite at Sienna, in Tuscany, on the 16th of June, 1794. His report of the marvel staggered the skepticism of many. Yet it was not till nine years afterward — when, to wit, on the 26th of April, 1803, an aerolite fell in broad daylight at L'Aigle, in Normandy — that all doubt was removed. The Paris Academy of Sciences appointed a commission to institute inquiries into this case; and their report settled the question. Howard, an English naturalist, afterward prepared a list of all the aerolites known to have fallen on our earth up to the year 1818; and Chladni con- tinued the list to the year 1824. 94 A poet's logic. list of impossibilities, and inserted in the accredited catalogue of scientific truths. It used to be vulgar and ridiculous to admit them; now the vulgarity and ab- surdity consist in denying their existence. Mesmeric phenomena, on the other hand, are an example of improbabilities that have not yet passed muster. " When I was in Paris," says Eogers, (the poet,) in his " Table-Talk,'* " I went to Alexis, and desired him to de- scribe my house in St. James Place. On my word, he astonished me! He described most exactly the pecu- liarities of the staircase; said that not far from the window in the drawing-room there was a picture of a man in armor, (the painting by Giorgone,) and so on. Colonel Gurwood, shortly before his death, assured mo that he was reminded by Alexis of some circumstances that had happened to him in Spain, and which he could not conceive how any human being except himself should know. Still, I cannot believe in clairvoyance, — because the thing is impossible.''"^ Kot because the opportunities, for observation were too few, and the experiments needed repetition: that would have been a valid objection. Not because the evi- dence was imperfect and lacked confirmation : Pogers's difficulty was a more radical one. No evidence would suffice. Fish cannot have wings : the thing ie impos- sible.f * Let us deal fairly by Science, and give her the credit of this quotation. I found it in the (London) Medical Times and Gazette, No. 444, new «eries ; and the italics are not mine, but those of the medical editor. t Rogers evidently had never read La Place's celebrated work on Proba- bilities, or else he did not agree with its doctrine. Witness this passag* : — " It is exceedingly unphilosophical to deny magnetic phenomena merely because they are inexplicable in the present state of our knowledge."^ Calcul des Probabilitia, p. 348. It is remarkable enough that in a matter like this, usually deemed to savor of imagination, the mathematician should reprove the ineredulitj of the poei. FORM£R IMPROBABILITIES. 95 An example of graver character and more influential effect is to be found in a lecture, delivered in 1854, at the Koyal Institution, before Prince Albert and a select audience, by England's first electrician. Kogers's flying- fish was clairvoyance ; Faraday's is table-moving. But if great men fall into one extreme, let us not, for that reason, be betrayed into another. Let us bear in mind that, antecedent to sufficient proof adduced to es- tablish them, the circulation of the blood, the fall of me- teorites, the phenomena of clairvoyance, the reality of table-moving, — all are, or were, improbabilities. But there are few propositions to which the common sense of mankind, indorsing the most accredited scien- tific authority,* assents more readily, or with gi-eater justice, than this: that in proportion as an event or phenomenon is in its nature improbable is greater weight of evidence required to produce a rational belief in its reality. The converse of this proposition, it is true, has been plausibly argued, sometimes where one would least ex- pect to find an apology for credulity ;f but men have been so frequently deceivers, and so much more frequently themselves deceived, that, when their testimony is ad- duced to prove something of a marvelous and unexampled nature, every dictate of experience warns us against its reception, except after severest scrutiny, or the concur- rence, when that can be had, of many disinterested witnesses, testifying independently of each other. The argument, however, in regard to the weight of evidence which may be procured through such concur- rence of testimony to one and the same fact, has, in my * " Plus un fait eat extraordinaire, plus il a besoin d'etre appuj6 de fortea preuves. Car ceux qui I'attestent pouvant ou tromper, ou avoir 6t6 tromp^s, ees deux causes sont d'autant plus probables que la r^alit^ du fait Test moins vn elle-m£me." — La Place : Thiorie analytique den Probabilitit, Introd. p 12. f As ID the French Encyclopedia, article "Certitude." 96 ARCrUMENT AS TO judgment, sometimes been pushed beyond what it will bear. Where human testimony enters as an element into the calculation, its disturbing agency may be such as to weaken, almost to the point of overthrowing, the force of all strictly mathematical demonstration. Thus, in substance, has the argument been put.* Let us suppose two persons, A. and B., of such a cha- racter for veracity and clear-sightedness that the chances are that they will speak the truth, and will avoid being deceived, in nine cases out of ten. And let us suppose that these two persons, absolutely unknown to and un- connected with each other, are about to testify in regard to any fact. "What are the chances that, if their testi- mony shall agree, the fact has happened? Evidently, a hundred to one. For if their testimony agree and the fact has not happened, there must be a concurrent lie or self-deception. But, as, in the first place, the chances are ten to one against A. lying or being deceived, and then, in the contingency that he should be, the chances are again ten to one against B. failing to relate the truth, it is evident that the chances against the double event are ten times ten (or one hun- dred) to one. Pursuing the same calculation, we find that, in the event of three such witnesses concurring, the chances are a thousand to one against the falsehood of their tes- timony; if four such concur, ten thousand to one; and so on. So that it requires but a small number of such wit- nesses to establish a degree of probability which, in practice, is scarcely short of certainty itself. * The reader may consult La Place's "Theorie analytique dee Proha- bilitea," where all the calculations connected with this argument are given in detail ; or, if unprepared for the difficulties of Calculus, he will find the matter set out in more condensed and popular form, by Babbage, in his *' Ninth Bridgcwater Treatise," 2d ed., pp. 124 to 131; and in Note E of Appendix to the same work. CONCUREENCE OF TESTIMONY. 97 And, following out this principle, it will be found that, if we can but procure witnesses of such a character that it is more probable that their testimony is true than that it is false, we can always assign a sufficient number of such to establish the occurrence of any event or the reality of any phenomenon, no matter how improbable or marvelous such event or phenomenon, in itself con- sidered, may be. If the postulates be granted, these conclusions clearly follow; and they have been employed by Dr. Chalmers* and others, in treating of miracles, to illustrate the great accumulation of probability which arises from the con- currence of independent witnesses. The difficulty lies in the postulates. It seems, at first, a very easy matter to find witnesses of such mo- derate veracity and intelligence that we are justified in declaring it to be more probable that their testimony shall be true than that it shall be false. As to willful falsehood, the matter is beyond doubt. Let cynicism portray the world as it will, there is far more of truth than of falsehood in it. But as to free- dom from self-deception, that is a condition much more difficult to obtain. It depends to a great extent upon the nature of the event witnessed or the phenomenon observed. An extreme case may assure us of this. If two in- dependent witnesses of good character depose to having seen a market-woman count out six dozen eggs from a basket which was evidently of capacity sufficient to contain them, we deem the fact sufficiently proved. But if two thousand witnesses of equally good character testify that they saw Signor Blitz or Robert-Houdin take that number of eggs out of an ordinary-sized hat. they fail to convince us that the hat really contained * "En'dencex of Christian Revelation" vol. i. p. 129. 9 99 MISLEADING INFLUENCE OF THE them. We conclude that they were deceived by sleight of hand. Here, therefore, the postulates must be rejected. And, without speaking of mathematical impossibilities, in re- gard to which, of course, no imaginable number of con- current witnesses avail in proof, the character of tho event or phenomenon testified to must ever count for much; and, whatever theorists may say, it will always greatly influence our opinion, not perhaps of the honesty, but of the freedom from delusion, of the testi- fiers. So that, in a case where proof of some marvel is in question, the assumed condition, namely, that we shall find witnesses whom we believe more likely to speak the truth than to lie or be deceived, may not be capable of fulfillment. And the difficulty of procuring such may, under cer- tain circumstances, greatly increase. There are mental as well as physical epidemics, and during their preva- lence men's minds may be so morbidly excited, and their imaginations so exalted, that entire masses may become incapacitated to serve as dispassionate witnesses. There is another consideration, noticed by Hume in his chapter on Miracles, which should not be over- looked. "Though we readily reject,'' says he, "any fact which is unusual and incredible in an ordinary de- gree, yet, in advancing further, the mind observes not always the same rule." We sometimes accept, he thinks, a statement made to us, for the very reason which should cause us to reject it; on account of its ultra-marvelous character The reason is shrewdly assigned: — "The passion of surprise and wonder arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency toward the belief of those events from which it is derived."* In a word, we should be on * Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 125. LOVE OF THE MARV^ELOUS. 99 our guard against that love of the marvelous which wo find inherent in our nature. These and similar considerations will ever weigh with the prudent and reflecting observer. Yet it is to bo conceded, that the principle above referred to, of the vast accumulation of evidence from the concurrence of reliable witnesses, is not only just, mathematically con- sidered, but, in a variety of cases, strictly applies in practice. If we find, for instance, at different periods of the world and in various nations, examples constantly re- curring of men testifymg to certain phenomena of the same or a similar character, then, though these alleged phenomena may seem to us highly improbable, we are not justified in ascribing the concurrence of such testi- mony to chance. We are not justified in setting down the whole as idle superstition; though in these modem days it is very much the fashion of the world, proud of having outgrown its nursery-tales, so to do. Dis- gusted by detecting a certain admixture of error and folly, we often cast aside an entire class of narrations as wholly baseless and absurd; forgetting that when, at remote periods, at distant^points, without possibility of collusion, there spring up, again and again, the same or similar ap- pearances, such coincidence ought to suggest to us the probability that something more enduring than delu- sion may be mixed in to make up the producing cause.* * "Take any one of what are called popular errors or popular supersti- tions, and on looking at it thoroughly we shall be sure to discover in it a firm, underlying stratum of truth. There may be more than we suspected of folly and of fancy; but when these are stripped ofiF there remains quite enough of that stiff, unyielding material which belongs not to persons or periods, but is common to all ages, to puzzle the learned and silence the •coffer." — RuTTER : Human Electricity, Appendix, p. rii. To the same effect is the expression of a celebrated French philosopner : — " In every error there is a kernel of truth : let us seek to detach that kernel from the envelop that hides it from our eyes." — Baillt. IOC HAUNTED HOUSES. It is truth only that is tenacious of life, and that rises, with recurring effort, throughout the lapse of ages, elastic under repression and contempt. Let us take, as an example, that description of popular stories which relate to haunted houses, the universal pre- valence of which is admitted by those who the most ridicule the idea that they prove any thing save the folly and credulity of mankind.* Is it the part of Philosophy contemptuously to ignore all evidence that may present itself in favor of the reality of such alleged disturb- ances? It may be freely conceded, that for many of the stories in question no better foundation can be found than those panic terrors which are wont to beset the ignorant mind; that others, doubtless, are due to a mere spirit of mischief seeking to draw amusement * "Who has not either seen or heard of some house, shut up and unin- habitable, fallen into decay and looking dusty and dreary, from which at midnight strange sounds have been heard to issue, — aerial knockings, the rattling of chains and the groaning of perturbed spirits? — a house that people have thought it unsafe to pass after dark, that has remained for years without a tenant, and which no tenant would occupy, even were he paid to do so? There are hundreds of such houses in England at the pre- sent day, hundreds in France, Germany, and almost every country of Europe; which are marked with the mark of fear, — places for the pious to bless themselves at, and ask protection from, as they pass, — the abodes of ghosts and evil spirits. There are many such houses in London ; and if any vain boaster of the march of intellect would but take the trouble to find them out and count them, he would be convinced that intellect must yet make some enormous strides before such old superstitions can be eradi- cated." — ilackay's Popular Delusions, vol. ii. p. 113. The author does not deem the hypothesis that there is any thing real in such phenomena worth adverting to, even as among possible things. Nor was the idea of haunted houses less commonly received in ancient times than among us. Plautus has a comedy entitled Mostellaria, from a specter said to have shown itself in a certain house, which on that account was deserted. The particular story may have been invented by the dra- matist; but it suffices to indicate the antiquity of the idea.- -PlauU MotteU , Act ii. V. 67. THE MONKS OF CHANTTLLY. 101 from these very terrors; and, finally, that there are instances where the mystification may have covered graver designs.* But because there are counterfeits, is there therefore no true coin? May there not be ori- ginals to these spurious copies? In another part of this work I shall bring up the evi- ♦ One such is related by Garinet, in his "Histoire de la Magie en France," (p. 75;) a clever trick played oflF by certain monks on that king whose piety has procured for him the title of " The Saint." Having heard bis confessor speak in high terms of the goodness and learning of the monks of St. Bruno, the king expressed a desire to found a community of them near Paris. Bernard de la Tour, the superior, sent six of the brethren; and Louis assigned to them, sis residence, a handsome dwelling in the village of Chantilly. It so happened that from their win- dows they had a fine view of the old palace of Vauvert, originally erected for a royal residence by King Robert, but which had been deserted for years. The worthy monks, oblivious of the tenth commandment, may have thought the place would suit them; but ashamed, probably, to make a formal demand of it from the king, they seem to have set their wits to work to procure it by stratagem. At all events, the palace of Vauvert, which had never labored under any imputation against its character till they became its neighbors, began, almost immediately afterward, to ac- quire a bad name. Frightful shrieks were heard to proceed thence at night; blue, red, and green lights were seen to glimmer from its case- ments and then suddenly disappear. The clanking of chains succeeded, together with the bowlings of persons as in great pain. Then a ghastly specter, in pea-green, with long, white beard and serpent's tail, appeared at the principal windows, shaking his fists at the passers-by. This went on for months. The king, to whom of course all these wonders were duly re- ported, deplored the scandal, and sent commissioners to look into the affair. To these the six monks of Chantilly, indignant that the devil should play such pranks before their very faces, suggested that if they could but have the palace as a residence they would undertake speedily to clear it of all ghostly intruders. A deed, with the royal sign-manual, conveyed Vauvert to the monks of St. Bruno. It bears the date of 1259. From that time all disturbances ceased; the green ghost, according to the creed of the pious, being laid to rest forever under the waters of the Red Sea. Another instance, occurring in the Chateau d'Arsillier, in Picardy, will be found in the " Causes Cil^bres," vol. xi. p. 374 ; the bailiff having dressed himself up as a black phantom, with horns and tail, and guaran- teed himself against the chance of a pistol-shot bj a buffalo's hide fitted Jightly to his body. He was finally detected, and the cb .'at exposed. 102 THE MENTAL EPIDEMICS dences which present themselves to one who seriously seeks an answer to the above queries.* Let those who may decide, in advance, that the answer is not worth seeking, be reminded that there are twenty allegations which are worthy to be examined, for every one that may be unhesitatingly received. Again, there is a class of phenomena, as widely spread as the disturbances above alluded to, — probably somewhat allied to them, but more important than they, — to which the same principle in regard to the concurrence of testimony in various ages and countries eminently applies; those strange appearances, namely, which, for lack of a more definite term, may be grouped together as mesmeric. Without seeking, amid the obscurity of remote an- tiquity, a clew to all that we read of the so-called Occult Arts, — as among the magicians of Egypt, the soothsayers and diviners of Judea, the sibyls and oracles of Greece and Eome,f — we shall find, in later times, but commencing long before the appearance of Mesmer, a succession of phenomena, with resem- blance sufficient to substantiate their common origin, and evidently referable to the same unexplained and hidden causes, operating during an abnormal state of the human system, whence spring the various phases of somnambulism and other analogous mani- festations, physical and mental, observed by animal magnetizers. Time after time throughout the psycho-medical his- * See further on, under title " Disturbances popularly termed Hauntinys." t The curious in such matters may consult the "Geschichte der Magie,'* by Dr. Joseph Ennemoser, Leipzig, 1844, — of which, if he be not familiar with German, he will find an English translation, by William Howitt, '^History of Magic," London, 1854. Also, the *' Cradle of the Twin Giants, Science and History," by the Rer. Henry Christmas, M.A., F.R.S., F.S.A., London, 1849. Both are works of great research. OP EUROPE. 108 tory of the Middle Ages and of modern Europe — some- times among Catholics, sometimes among Protestants — recur these singular episodes in the history of the human mind, usually epidemical in their character while they last, each episode, however, independent of the others and separated from them widely by time ttnd place; all narrated by writers who take the most opposite views of their nature and causes, yet all, no matter by whom narrated, bearing a family likeness, which appears the more striking the more closely they are studied. Examples are numerous: as the alleged obsession (1632 to 1639) of the Ursuline Nuns of Loudun, with its sequel, in 1642, among the Sisters of St. Elizabeth at Louviers; the mental aberrations of the Prophets or Shakers (Trembleurs) of the Cevennes, (1686 to 1707,) caused by the persecutions which followed the revoca- tion of the Edict of Nantes ; and the pseudo-miracles of the Convulsionists of St. Medard (1731 to 1741) at the tomb of the Abbe Paris.* All this occurred, it will be observed, before the very name of Animal Magnetism was known, or any natural explanation of these strange manifestations was sus- pected; at a time when their investigation was con- sidered the province of the ecclesiastical tribunals, not * For details touching the disturbances at Loudun, consult "La Df- monomame de Loudun" by La FlSche, 1634 ; " Cruels Effeta de la Ven- geance du Cardinal de Richelieu ; ou, Hittoire det Diables de Loudun," Ani- it^rdam, 1693; *' Examen et Discussions Critiques de VHistoire des Diablen de Loudun" by M. de la M^nardaye, Paris, 1747; "Hiatoire AbrSgSe de la Possession des Ursulines de Loudun" by the Pere Tissot, Paris, 1828. For those of Louviers, see " Riponse