Published in 1881 | 385 pages | PDF reader required
PREFACE
The claim that there is a scientific basis for Spiritualism will be an offence to many. Indeed, the mere announcement of this work has called forth adverse pre-judgments because of its title. But constantly recurring facts, which have stood the test of more than thirty-three years of ridicule, denunciation, and antagonism, must be admitted as having within them some stubborn elements of vitality, if not of scientific verification.
What is science but a collection of truths, suggestive of an inference? According to John Stuart Mill, the language of science is, "This is, or This is not; This does, or does not happen. Science takes cognisance of a phenomenon, and endeavors to discover its law." Surely, under this ruling Spiritualism has a scientific basis in its proven facts.
The man claiming to be scientific, who imagines that be knows all the laws of nature so thoroughly that occurrences like clairvoyance and direct writing cannot take place without transcending the boundaries of scientific recognition, is himself under a hallucination more serious than any which he affects to deplore.
The neglect in all ages of the world to treat these and cognate facts with fearless, scientific scrutiny, has been productive of incalculable mischief. In ancient times, the assumption that all that comes from the unseen world, certified by seeming miracle or preter-human power, must be from God or from gods, led to all sorts of theosophic impositions, superstitions, spurious revelations, and wild delusions.
In mediaeval times, and during the witchcraft excitement, monstrous cruelties were practised under the sanction of law through the failure to recognise that nothing occurring in the realm of nature can be supernatural, and that all phenomena whatever are subjects for cool scientific investigation and analysis. Certain remarkable psychic phenomena were construed as Satanic and unnatural, and an ancient Hebrew prohibition, founded in ignorance, was made the excuse for punishing with death innocent persons suspected of producing in others, medially affected, any inexplicable manifestation of abnormal power.
In our own day, though belief in spirits has been repudiated extensively, the credulity of unbelief threatens new dangers. By dismissing the phenomena as impossible, unnatural, or supernatural, specialists in science, - who, however eminent in their own departments, are ignorant of the first rudiments of the psycho-physical science, now inchoate, — instead of checking superstition by their scornful attitude, are really giving it its excuse for being. Persons experimentally sure of the phenomena, finding that they can get no guidance or light from men of science, qualified by laborious study and experiment to explain the occurrences, either put premature constructions on what they witness, or yield a too hasty credence to the assurances of some medium or medial pretender claiming a divine or high spiritual inspiration. Even so it was in the old days of oracles, seers, and myths, and so it may be again, with variations, unless a science, at once searching and liberal, reverent and intrepid, shall interpose to prevent such a revival, and protect the unwary from the frauds and delusions to which a little display of medial power may lead.
The attempt made in 1876, in London, by Professor Lankester, a specialist in physical science, wedded to the materialistic monism of Haeckel, to put a stop to the phenomena through Henry Slade, the medium, and to do this by the strong arm of the law, was simply an act of superstition, prompted by the same fanaticism (taking the form of unbelief instead of belief) which actuated the proceedings of " Matthew Hopkins, of Manningtree, Gent.,' the famous English "witch-finder" of the year 1645. The first scientists of Germany at once exempted Slade from Lankester's suspicions; and Zöllner says, in reference to Slade: " The physical facts observed by us in his presence negatived on every reasonable ground the supposition that he, in one solitary case, had taken refuge in imposture. In our eyes, therefore, he was innocently condemned, — a victim of his accuser's and judge's limited knowledge." The recent remarkable occurrences in open church at Knockmore, in Ireland, where hands and living figures have mysteriously appeared, show how important it is that these phenomena should no longer be evaded.
Rationally studied and interpreted, unmixed with delusions self-generated or imposed by others, Spiritualism is the one safeguard against all superstitions. It shows that the unseen world is as much within the sphere of universal nature as our own; it is the solvent of many mysteries that have perplexed philosophers and stultified historians; it shows that not spirits, but our own misconstructions and unchecked pas ions, are what we have most to fear. That bad persons have entered its ranks, and that flighty persons have brought it into ill-repute, - that it has been used to deceive or mislead, - should make the obligation all the more obvious to the generous mind to help to sift and co-ordinate its facts and arrest its abuses.
It is therefore with regret that I find so liberal a champion of truth as R. W. Emerson recommending ignorance as the best policy in regard to a subject which, in the hands of fanaticism or imposture, has been the cause of such great disasters and mistakes, public and private, as far back as history goes. In a recent article on "Demonology," this distinguished writer remarks: "There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant, and these spiritual phenomena are such. Shun them as you would the secrets of the undertaker and the butcher." Et tu, Brute?
This is all wrong, ideally, really, and morally. Even the comparisons by which the sentiment is illustrated are vitiated by unsoundness; for however our esthetic sensibilities may recoil, what is it but pusillanimity to ignore "the secrets of the undertaker and the butcher"? Have we no care as to how the cast-off body of the beloved one may be disposed of? Are we indifferent as to what sufferings may be inflicted on the poor brute whose life is to minister to our carnivorous appetite? The sentiment has no saving grace; it is hollow and spurious. Not by trying to make us shun the truth as something disagreeable will the philosopher deter any but the timid or weak from finding out all that is genuine and demonstrable in phenomena foreshadowing a continuous life for man.
Contrast the advice with that of Dr. John W. Draper, the well-known professor of chemistry and physiology in the University of New York. Referring to the mysteries of life, he says: " God has formed our understandings to grasp all these things. I have no sympathy with those who say of this or that physio logical problem, ' It is above our reason.'" And, as if anticipating these supersensual phenomena, which our Concord sage would have us shun, the eminent physiologist tells us, that the application of exact science to physiology is "bringing into the region of physical demonstration the existence and immortality of the soul of man, and furnishing conspicuous illustrations of the attributes of God."
Mark too the language of the venerable German philosopher, I. H. Fichte, uttered a few weeks before his death in 1879: " Notwithstanding my age and my exemption from the controversies of the day, I feel it my duty to bear testimony to the great fact of Spirit-ualism. No one should keep silent." A worthy utterance from the son of the illustrious contemporary of Kant, and the inheritor of his sire's splendid endowments!
The progress of modern Spiritualism has been something marvellous. In less than forty years it las gained at least twenty millions of adherents in all parts of the world. Adapting itself, through its eclectic affinity with all forms of truth, to a'l nationalities and classes, and repeating its peculiar manifestations ever where among persons ignorant of its forms and its antecedents, it presents the features of a universal truth, the developments of a grand, transcendent science, confirming all the traditions and intuitions of the soul's immortality, and heralding a dawn before whose light every other science, relating to the nature and destiny of. man, must seek to orient itself hereafter.
Of the present volume more than four-fifths is now for the first time published. Passages here and there, often much altered, have been adopted, from contributions made by me during the last thirty years to nearly all the periodical publications devoted to the subject, in England and the United States. As parts of the work were written at long intervals, repetitions of the same line of thought may be found; but these, though critically regarded a blemish, may have their uses for the reader in emphasising the more essential consid-erations. Objections to the existence of a fact of nature must needs be unscientific; but as they continue to be brought up against Spiritualism by persons otherwise well informed, I have devoted some space to their refutation.
But the time has gone by when the facts of this volume could be dismissed as coincidences, delusions, or frauds. The hour is coming, and now is, when the man claiming to be a philosopher, physical or meta-physical, who shall overlook the constantly recurring phenomena here recorded, will be set down as behind the age, or as evading its most important question. Spiritualism is not now "the despair of science," as I called it on the title-page of my first book on the subject. Among intelligent observers its claims to scientific recognition are no longer a matter of doubt.
