Published in 1887 | 243 pages | PDF reader required
INTRODUCTORY
That which was the origin and is the meaning of the report of the Seybert Commission was the origin and is the meaning of the volume in hand. It is known to more than a little multitude of people that a fund was left, several years back, to the University of Pennsylvania, in trust, to be employed in examination of the so-called "spiritistic" phenomena of the times. The gentleman leaving this fund had implicit faith in the reality of such manifestations, and it was his intention, as is well known to the writer, to secure influential means, first, as to endorsement, which he never doubted would be the result of an examination, and, second, as to extension of a good enjoyed by himself. This trust being accepted, a committee was appointed to carry out its intentions. This committee, as it is understood, has earnestly and faithfully laboured at the task imposed on it, and is now about ready to make public a report of what has been done.
Commencing a like work at the same time with this Commission, the author of the volume in hand finds concurrence as to the conclusion of the labor a matter at which he is very well pleased, seeing that remedy will be found at hand for correction of mistakes not unlikely to exist. As to the course pursued by the Commission in its work, and as to deductions reached by it, he is profoundly ignorant.
A reader whose concern shall carry him into the substance of the volume in hand will quickly discover that spiritualism is a matter about which, in the estimation of the writer, a great deal is to be said. He will assuredly quickly see that there is but one entirely satisfactory way of learning the subject, at least of feeling it, and that way lies with cultivation of spiritual.
The author trusts to be pardoned for suggesting that greatest interest is to be found in the volume by a reading that shall leave the chapters on The Hypostases and the three Rosicrucian Circles treating of Matter, Ego, and Soul, until the other parts of the book be read; as after such a manner of reading interest is attracted by the curious and uncommon, while intelligence is later to be satisfied by analyses which make up the substance of the intermediate chapters.
In the estimation of every "common sense" person in the land, spiritualism is the antipodes of "nineteenth century sense;" the latter, in the estimation of all such people, being the highest sense, the other the lowest nonsense. Paradox is with the two.
All knowledge obtainable out of what is ordinarily esteemed learning rests with three premises.
The first of these premises is with Aristotle, and teaches that "Common Sense is little better than no sense at all."
The second is with Zoroaster, and teaches that "He who knows himself knows all things in himself."
The third is maker of itself, and teaches that A thing is to the sense that uses it what to the sense it seems to be; that it is never anything else.
In these three irrefutable aphorisms is the foundation of what is offered.
The term "Spiritus Sanctus"' is used as a heading in the Rosicrucian sense; meaning, not "Sacred Spirit," but laboratory, or sanctuary, of the spiritual.
