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SPIRITUALISM.

CHAPTER I.

It can hardly be denied that the question of spiritualism is forcing itself every year more and more upon the public attention; and that a belief in the reality of its phenomena, and, as almost a necessary consequence, a suspicion of their at least partially preternatural character, is on the increase amongst honest and intelligent persons. By preternatural phenomena, I mean manifestations of the operation of intelligences that are not clothed in flesh and blood; for with other than such as are so clothed, in the way of the senses, which is the way of nature, we have no acquaintance.

I believe that few will examine seriously and patiently the phenomena of spiritualism as a whole without coming upon much that they cannot, without doing violence to their natural instincts, attribute to anything but preternatural agency. Whether they reduce this to white spirits or black, red spirits or gray, will depend for the most part on the religious prepossessions of the inquirers. I have said the phenomena as a whole, because some of these, such as cases of tables turning, upon which the hands of the company are resting, and, again, many of the communications through mediums speaking in trance or otherwise, do not necessarily suggest preternatural interference.

The phenomena on which I am inclined to lay most stress are, 1st, physical manifestations—the movement or raising in the air, without contact of any sort, of heavy bodies, whether animate or inanimate; 2d, intelligent manifestations involving the communication of true information through a human medium, which was unknown at the time both to the medium and recipient. Such phenomena are not unfrequent at successful séances, and spiritualists have a right to demand that we should criticise their successes rather than their failures.

For examples of the phenomena of modern spiritualism, we shall depend mainly upon two volumes: Experiences in Spiritualism with D. D. Home, and the Report of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society. The former is a well-known though unpublished relation of seventy-eight séances; the relaters are gentlemen whose names are guarantees for intelligence and honor. Of these séances, some were held in rooms which Mr. Home had never before entered, others in a variety of rooms belonging to gentlemen taking part in the proceedings. The supposition of concealed machinery, possible enough were it question of the magician's own den, is thus effectually precluded. The Report is a still more remarkable volume. Even if spiritualism were exploded absolutely, this volume would still retain its interest as a unique collection of mental photographs representing every attitude which it is possible for the human mind to take up with regard to spiritualistic phenomena, from irreconcilable repulsion, through every shade of intelligent hesitation, to complete acceptance.

The Report consists of the reports of the séances of six experimental subcommittees, minutes of the examination before the General Committee of spiritualist witnesses, letters on spiritualism from a great number of literary and scientific persons, and communications in the shape of experiences and speculative essays on spiritualism by some of its principal adherents.

Subcommittee No. 1 (Rep., p. 9) declares itself to have "established conclusively" "the movements of heavy substances without contact or material connection of any kind between such substances and the body of any person present." This is confirmed by Subcommittee No. 2, and embodied in the general report. Amongst a great mass of well-attested phenomena, I select the following: "Thirteen witnesses state that they have seen heavy bodies, in some instances men, rise slowly in the air, and remain there without visible or tangible support." "Fourteen witnesses testify to having seen hands of figures not appertaining to any human being, but lifelike in appearance and mobility, which they have sometimes touched and even grasped." "Eight witnesses state that they have received precise information through rappings, writings, and in other ways, the accuracy of which was unknown at the time to themselves or to any persons present, and which, on subsequent inquiry, was found to be correct." Many of these experimental séances took place without the presence of any professional mediums. Subcommittees 1 and 2 declare that they have never used them, and these were particularly fertile in instances of independent movement, No. 1 having witnessed no less than fifty such motions.

There is absolutely no room for a suspicion of trickery, neither is it more rational to suppose that the phenomena had no objective existence, but were the mere phantasms of the excited imagination of the company; for the witnesses testify that they were in no such state of excitement, and their recorded conversation and behavior are incompatible with any such supposition. Again, such excitement acts spasmodically and irregularly; but, as a rule, the phenomena are seen by all equally. In the few cases in which individuals have manifested abnormal excitement, the séances have been frustrated. Subcommittee No. 2 sent for a neighbor to witness the phenomena when in full operation, and they presented precisely the same aspect to him as they did to the members of the séance.

There remains, then, a large number of objective phenomena of the kind mentioned which have to be accounted for. Three hypotheses have been advocated with more or less success, which I shall proceed to consider in order.

1st. Unconscious cerebration expressing itself in unconscious muscular action. 2d. Psychic force. 3d. Spirits. I would remark that the first and second agree, in so far as they make the source of the phenomena internal; they differ in that the first would make them the result of a known law, the action of which had been previously detected, whilst the second supposes a previously unknown law or force of which spiritualistic phenomena are the sole evidence.

I.

The doctrine of unconscious cerebration is thus expressed by Dr. Carpenter (Rep., p. 272): "Ideational changes take place in the cerebrum, of which we may be at the time unconscious for want of receptivity on the part of the sensorium, but of which the results may at a subsequent period present themselves to the consciousness, as ideas elaborated by an automatic process of which we have no cognizance." Dr. Carpenter's ground for "surmising" that "ideational changes" may be received unconsciously, and subsequently recognized, and that the consciousness or unconsciousness of the reception depends upon their being presented or not in the sensorium, is the following analogy: The cerebrum, "or rather its ganglionic matter in which its potentiality resides," stands in precisely the same anatomical relation to the sensorium that the retina does; but visual changes may be unconsciously received in the retina when the sensorium is inoperative, and may be subsequently recognized. The reality of this automatic reception and elaboration of ideas is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism, which show "that long trains of thought may, with a complete suspension of the directing and controlling power of the will, follow the lead either of some dominant idea or of suggestion from without." This doctrine, when applied to explain the intelligent manifestations of spiritualism, comes to this, that you cannot argue, from the fact that a man informs you truly of something which he could not possibly have learned elsewhere, and which you know you were never aware of in the ordinary sense of the word, that he is informed by a superior intelligence; for you may have received unconsciously into your cerebrum the information in question, or have unconsciously elaborated it from premises so received, and may have communicated it to your informant by unconscious muscular action.

I must do Dr. Carpenter the justice to admit that he nowhere, so far as I have seen, attempts to apply his doctrine in detail to the higher phenomena of spiritualism. He is contented with stating it as indicating the direction in which a solution of such phenomenal difficulties as do not seem to him wholly incredible is to be looked for.

I have every wish to speak on matters of physiological experiment with the modesty befitting my comparative unfamiliarity with the subject. I have no difficulty in admitting all that Dr. Carpenter says, in his article on "Electro-biology and Mesmerism" (Quart., Oct., 1853), on the action of dominant ideas, whether original or suggested, in the production of the phenomena of somnambulism and mesmerism; but I hesitate as to the possibility of receiving in the form of an unconscious ideational change such a piece of information as this: "I have another sister besides those I am used to reckon"; and of its recovery, not as an image or sensation such as a dream might leave, but as an unequivocal assertion of a fact clothed in all its native confidence. The nerve modification, which I suppose the "ideational change" comes to, is here understood to play the part, not merely of a bell whose prolonged vibrations, when taken cognizance of, may more or less suggest the individual visitor, but of a photographic negative, set aside, indeed, and overlaid, but from which at any moment exact representations may be taken. This theory appears to me to belong to the category of those which, to borrow Dr. Carpenter's expression (art., p. 535), "cannot be accepted without a great amount of evidence in their favor, but which, not being in absolute opposition to recognized laws, may be received upon strong testimony, without doing violence to our common sense." I must add that I have met with no such evidence either in the Quarterly Review or elsewhere. When we ask for instances, in which modern science is ordinarily so fertile, it is at least suspicious that the only at all adequate examples produced in the brilliant article, "Spiritualism and its Recent Converts" (Quart., vol. 131, 1871), are taken from the very spiritualistic phenomena under discussion. Let us, however, for the moment grant all that is expressly demanded on the score of unconscious cerebration, and then see how far it affords an adequate explanation of the phenomena of spiritualism. Of course, independent physical manifestations, such as the subcommittees report, fall entirely without the sphere of this explanation; and Faraday's ingenious machine for testing muscular action has no place where there is no contact of muscles. But what are we to say to communications such as the following (Rep., p. 195), made to Signor Damiani, at Clifton? He asked of the rapping table, "Who is there?" "Sister," was rapped out in reply. "What sister?" "Marietta." "Don't know you; that is not a family name. Are you not mistaken?" "No; I am your sister." He left the table in disgust, but afterwards joined in another séance at the same house. "Who are you?" he asks. "Marietta." "Again! Why does not a sister whom I can remember come?" "I will bring one." "And the raps were heard to recede, becoming faint and fainter, until lost in the distance. In a few seconds, a double knock, like the trot of a horse, was heard approaching, striking the ceiling, the floor, and, lastly, the table. 'Who is there?' 'Your sister Antonietta.' That is a good guess, thought I. 'Where did she pass away?' 'Chieti.' 'When?' Thirty-four loud, distinct raps succeeded. Strange! My sister so named had certainly died at Chieti just thirty-four years before." "How many brothers and sisters had you then? Can you give me their names?" "Five names (the real ones), all correctly spelt in Italian, were given. Numerous other tests produced equally remarkable results." He is much perplexed, naturally, about this sister "Marietta," and writes to his mother about her. He is answered that, "on such a date, forty-four years before, a sister had been born and had lived six hours, during which time she had been baptized by the midwife by the name of Mary." Now, this is not a case of an isolated bit of information that may have been given and forthwith wholly disconnected from the current of life, as an Indian child might have been told, on the eve of its voyage to England, that a certain tropical berry was poisonous, which it never saw again. In Signor Damiani's case, the sleep of unconscious cerebration must have been very deep that so interesting a fact should not have been waked up by all the friction it must have sustained every time of the thousand of times that he asserted himself and his five brothers and sisters to the exclusion of any others.

But these difficulties sink into the shade when we try to carry out the explanation a step further. We have to explain not merely how Signor Damiani knew, but how the medium knew, the astonishing fact. I can understand how emotions of various kinds may be read in muscular motions; how the almost inevitable slight hesitation at certain critical letters may suggest them to the keen and practised observer; but how, amongst all the threads of thought which cross the human mind, the very one which must needs be the slenderest and most remote should get itself expressed by unconscious muscular action, and how another should read the hieroglyph, I simply cannot conceive. Nothing I have met with in the wildest spiritualism is half so difficult to believe.

Here is another instance, from the testimony of Mr. Eyre (Rep., p. 179). This gentleman wanted the register of the baptism of a person born in England, and who had died in America a century ago. He was led to suppose that this would be found either in Yorkshire or Cambridgeshire. He hunted for it for three months, and then, in broad daylight, without saying who he is or what he wants, consults a medium. He says: "Before leaving home, I wrote out and numbered about a dozen questions. Among them was the question, 'Where can I find the register of the baptism I am searching for?' The paper with the questions I had folded and placed in a stout envelope, and closed it. When we sat down to the table, I asked, after some other questions, if the spirits would answer the questions I had written and had in my pocket. The answer by raps was, 'Yes.' I took the envelope containing the questions out of my pocket, and, without opening it, laid it on the table. I then took a piece of paper, and as the questions were answered—No. 1, 2, and so on—I wrote down the answers. When we came to the question, where I could get the register of the baptism, the table telegraphed, 'Stepney church,' and, at the same time, Mrs. Marshall, senior, in her peculiar manner, blurted out, 'Stepney.' Being at that time a stranger in London, I did not know there was such a place. I went on with the questions I had prepared, and got correct answers to all of them. A few days afterwards, I went to Stepney Church, and, after spending some days in searching, I there found the register of the baptism, as I had been told."

Here the medium had not even the light of the questions by which to read the unconscious expression of unconscious cerebration. One cannot help wondering what may be the muscular expression for "Stepney church."

The writer in the Quarterly Review, to whom I have before referred, shall give us the next example from his own experience (vol. 131, p. 331). He owns that, on one occasion, he was "strongly impressed" by a spiritualistic manifestation. "He (the medium, Mr. Foster) answered, in a variety of modes, the questions we put to him respecting the time and cause of the death of several of our departed friends and relatives, whose names we had written down on slips of paper, which had been folded up and crumpled into pellets before being placed in his hands. But he brought out names and dates correctly, in large red letters on his bare arms, the redness being produced by the turgescence of the minute vessels of the skin, and passing away after a few minutes like a blush. We must own to have been strongly impressed at the time by this performance; but, on subsequently thinking it over, we thought we could see that Mr. Foster's divining power was partly derived from his having the faculty of interpreting the movements of the top of pen or pencil, though the point and what was written by it was hid from his sight; and partly from a very keen observation of the indications unconsciously given by ourselves of the answer we expected." Indubitably in the case of two accomplices, a preconcerted system of movements of the top of the pencil might be made to indicate what was written; but, considering the enormous variety of ways of writing, that any one can acquire the art of so reading chance writing is incredible. At best this explanation only applies to the questions. The answers, which were given "correctly," in the shape of dates and causes of death, etc., in red letters on the medium's arm, must have been read in the reviewer's unconscious contortions. The force of the reviewer's admission of the accuracy of these communications is not affected by the fact that when another way of answering questions was adopted—viz., the questioner pointing successively to the letters of the alphabet, until interrupted by the rap—there were indications of his manner being read by the medium. Again, it is little to the purpose that "the trick by which the red letters were produced was discovered by the inquiries of one of our medical friends"—a most curiously vague statement, by the bye—for the mystery to be explained is not the red letters, but the correctness of the information they conveyed. There is nothing in the necessity of some sort of rapport existing between the medium and his questioner inconsistent with the spirit hypothesis; there is nothing in the subsequent experiments of the reviewer even tending to a natural explanation of what had so strongly impressed him; and yet he is able to shake off the strong impression triumphantly. One begins to appreciate the eloquent words of Professor Tyndall:[50] "The logical feebleness of science is not sufficiently borne in mind. It keeps down the weed of superstition not by logic, but by slowly rendering the mental soil unfit for its cultivation."

I recognize with gratitude, as one of the many services Dr. Carpenter has done to science, his full admission of a series of facts in connection with mesmerism and animal magnetism, until the other day looked upon with suspicion by medical men and physiologists; and, further, I am ready to admit that the influence of unconscious cerebration upon some of the phenomena of spiritualism is probable enough. But I maintain that it is distinctly inadequate as an explanation. Its main use, as applied to spiritualism, has been that of a learned label to attract the attention of scientific men—a scientific rag wherewith spiritualism may cover its nakedness, but which all the ingenuity in the world cannot convert into clothes.

II.

Numbers of intelligent persons, men distinguished in science, in literature, in the learned professions, but whose "mental soil" has not been rendered wholly unfit for the cultivation of all germs foreign to the philosophy of the day, have acknowledged that the phenomena of spiritualism are not only veritable, but inexplicable by any known law. "The absolute and even derisive incredulity which dispenses with all examination of the evidence for preternatural occurrences,"[51] of which Mr. Lecky boasts as one of the results of civilization, has certainly lost ground of late. Professor De Morgan says: "I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen and heard, in a manner which should render unbelief impossible, things called spiritual which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake. So far I feel the ground firm under me."[52] Mr. Edwin Arnold (Rep., p. 258) speaks to the same effect: "I regard many of the 'manifestations' as genuine, undeniable, and inexplicable by any known law or any collusion, arrangement, or deception of the senses." And so we come very much to what S. Bonaventure said in the XIIIth century: "Some have said that witchcraft is a nonentity in the world, and has no force, save merely in the estimation of men, who, in their want of faith, attribute many natural mishaps to witchcrafts; but this position is derogatory to law, to common opinion, and, what is of more importance, to experience, and so has no foothold."[53] Law has, indeed, long ceased to have anything to say on the subject, and popular sentiment, if not converted, has at least been reduced to shamefaced silence; but once again experience claims her rights, and, in a great wave extending across two hemispheres, the experience of spiritualism breaks upon us, and the opposite opinion is found to lack foothold. Even in this XIXth century, men are beginning to admit that magic or mysticism, call it what you will, though overrun as ever with trickery and delusion, is for all that no nonentity, but a long-ignored reality, worthy, not of derision, but of patient examination. True many of those who go furthest in their recognition of the genuineness of the phenomena do not attribute them to spirits; still, however this may be, no advocate of psychic force can deny that many of the so-called marvel-mongers of the middle ages were at least no mere blind leaders of the blind, but the witnesses of phenomena none the less true because it has been for so long the fashion to ignore them.

In the middle ages, people thought that these marvels were the work of spirits good or bad, or at least the result of their co-operation with man. For such an hypothesis, modern science has an almost invincible repugnance, in which I think there is much that is excusable. It is not that the man of science necessarily disbelieves in the existence of spirits; but the idea of their possible interference in phenomena which he has to consider exercises a disturbing influence upon all his calculations. He is as irritated as though he should be called upon to submit to, and make allowance for, the tricks of mischievous children who jerk his arm or clog his machinery. Again, he is haunted with the notion that, by admitting the spirit hypothesis, he is contributing to the inauguration of an era of disastrous reaction. To the eye of his imagination, the bright, open platform, the familiar instruments, each a concrete realization, in honest metal, of a known law, the intelligent modern audience, his own classical tail-coat and white neckcloth, melt away, and he sees himself propitiating fickle spirits with uncouth spells, at the bottom of a mediæval grotto:

Not that the evil dream could ever be realized in its integrity; but still, when once a spiritualist reaction has set in, who will venture to fix its limits? And so, forgetting that the spirit hypothesis in nowise excludes the operation of psychic conditions, he insists upon every indication of such conditions, as though they were the key to everything, and there were no indications of any other agency. His "mental soil," perhaps, does not permit him to deny the reality of the phenomena of spiritualism, or to talk of unconscious cerebration as a sufficient explanation; and so he is contented to raise his altar to an unknown god, provided only he may baptize him into the dynasty of science by the name of "Psychic Force."

Psychic force has still to be defined. It is the unknown cause of certain effects, taking its color from them only. With reference to independent physical manifestations, it is the power to produce "the movement of heavy substances without contact or material connection." In this sense, Arago "is stated" to have reported to the Academy of Science, "that, under peculiar conditions, the human organization gives forth a physical power which, without visible instruments, lifts heavy bodies, attracts or repels them, according to a law of polarity, overturns them, and produces the phenomena of sound."[54] When considered in relation to the whole mass of spiritualistic phenomena, its vague, unsatisfactory character becomes still more apparent. The nearest approach to a definition of psychic force, in its larger sense, that I have met with occurs in Mr. Atkinson's communication (Rep., p. 105): "It is nothing more than the ordinary and normal power of our complex nature acting without impediment" (consciousness being one of the impediments), "and diverted from its usual relations, though in some cases abnormal conditions clearly favor the development." It is hardly possible to mistake the pantheistic character of this passage; for this unconditioned nature, underlying personal consciousness, which, in virtue of its being unconditioned, knows all and can do all, what else can it be but a common nature, an anima mundi, a world-god? according to the pantheistic conception of Averrhoes, "an intelligence which, without multiplication of itself, animates all the individuals of the human species, in respect to their exercising the functions of a rational soul."[55] I am convinced that psychic force, if drawn out as the one solution of spiritualism, can end in nothing short of this; but, on the other hand, I readily admit that the "anima mundi" or rather, "spirit of nature," as advocated by Dr. H. More, Glanvil, and, if he is not misrepresented, the famous Carmente doctor, John Bacon,[56] is not pantheistic. More, formally rejecting the doctrine of Averrhoes as "atheism," insists that the "spirit of nature" is substantially distinct from, though in intimate relations with, individual souls. He defines it to be "a substance incorporeal," how far possessing "sense and animadversion" he may not determine, but certainly "devoid of reason and free-will," "pervading the whole matter of the universe, and exercising a plastical power therein, according to the sundry predispositions and occasions in the parts it works upon, raising such phenomena in the world, by directing the parts of matter and their motion, as cannot be resolved into mere mechanical powers."[57]

As capable of holding automatic thought, processes, or their embryons, such a spirit might lend itself as a vehicle of direct intellectual influence between soul and soul, as also, of course, between souls and spirits of another sort. But it must be remembered that, if this might in some measure account for the intercommunication of thought, it in no way tends to explain the genesis of information of which all concerned are ignorant. That some such brute intelligence acts as intermediary would seem to be borne out by the frequent spaces of hopeless incoherency, like nothing so much as the shaking up of loose type, which prelude and interrupt spiritual communications when the intelligent will that would fain direct matters has not yet seized the reins, or has dropped them from its grasp.

Whatever may be thought of the theory, the following passage from the first edition of Glanvil's Vanity of Dogmatizing is worth quoting. The story in it was suppressed in subsequent editions, as too romantic for the taste of the day:[58] "That one man should be able to bind the thoughts of another, and determine them to their particular objects, will be reckoned in the first rank of impossibles; yet, by the power of advanced imagination, it may very probably be effected; and history abounds with instances. I'll trouble the reader but with one, and the hands from which I had it makes me secure of the truth on't.

"There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford, who, being of very pregnant and ready parts, and yet wanting the encouragement of preferment, was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there, and to cast himself upon the wide world for a livelihood. Now, his necessities growing daily on him, and wanting the help of friends to relieve him, he was at last forced to join himself to a company of vagabond gypsies, whom occasionally he met with, and to follow their trade for a maintenance. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtility of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem as that they discovered to him their mystery; in the practice of which, by the pregnancy of his wit and parts, he soon grew so good a proficient as to be able to outdo his instructors. After he had been a pretty while exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of scholars who had formerly been of his acquaintance. The scholars had quickly spied out their old friend among the gypsies, and their amazement to see him among such society had well-nigh discovered him; but by a sign he prevented their owning him before that crew, and, taking one of them aside privately, desired him with his friend to go to an inn not far distant thence, promising there to come to them. They accordingly went thither, and he follows; after their first salutations, his friends inquire how he came to lead so odd a life as that was, and to join himself with such a cheating, beggarly company. The scholar-gypsy, having given them an account of the necessity which drove him to that kind of life, told them that the people he went with were not such impostors as they were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, and that himself had learnt much of their art, and improved it further than themselves could; and, to evince the truth of what he told them, he said he would remove into another room, leaving them to discourse together, and, upon his return, tell them the sum of what they had talked of; which accordingly he performed, giving them a full account of what had passed between them during his absence. The scholars, being amazed at so unexpected a discovery, earnestly desired him to unriddle the mystery. In which he gave them satisfaction by telling them that what he did was by power of the imagination, his fancy binding theirs; and that himself had dictated to them the discourse they held together while he was from them; that there were warrantable ways of heightening the imagination to that pitch as to bind another's; and that, when he had compassed the whole secret, of some parts of which he said he was yet ignorant, he intended to leave their company, and give the world an account of what he had learned.

"Now, that this strange power of the imagination is no impossibility, the wonderful signatures of the fœtus, caused by the imagination of the mother, is no contemptible item. The sympathies of laughing and gaping together are resolved into this principle; and I see not why the fancy of one man may not determine the cogitation of another, rightly qualified, as easily as his bodily motion. This influence seems to me to be no more unreasonable than that of one string of a lute upon another, when a stroke on it causeth a proportionable motion in the sympathizing consort, which is distant from it and not sensibly touched. Now, if this notion be strictly verifiable, it will yield us a good account of how angels inject thoughts into our minds, and know our cogitations; and here we may see the source of some kinds of fascination. If we are prejudiced against the speculation, because we cannot conceive the manner of so strange an operation, we shall indeed receive no help from the common philosophy; but yet the hypothesis of a mundane soul, lately revived by that incomparable Platonist and Cartesian, Dr. H. More, will handsomely relieve us; or, if any would rather have a mechanical account, I think it may probably be made out some such way as follows: Imagination is inward sense; to sense is required a motion of certain filaments of the brain, and consequently in imagination there is the like; they only differing in this, that the motion of the one proceeds immediately from external objects, but that of the other hath its immediate rise within us. Now, then, when any part of the brain is strongly agitated, that which is next, and most capable to receive the motive impress, must in like manner be moved. Now, we cannot conceive anything more capable of motion than the fluid matter that is interspersed among all bodies and is contiguous to them. So, then, the agitated parts of the brain begetting a motion in the proxime ether, it is propagated through the liquid medium, as we see the motion is which is caused by a stone thrown into the water. Now, when the thus moved matter meets with anything like that from which it received its primary impress, it will proportionably move it, as it is in musical strings tuned unisons; and thus the motion being conveyed from the brain of one man to the fancy of another, it is there received from the instrument of conveyance, the subtile matter, and the same kind of strings being moved, and much what after the same manner as in the first imaginant, the soul is awakened to the same apprehensions as were they that caused them. I pretend not to any exactness or infallibility in this account, foreseeing many scruples that must be removed to make it perfect. It is only an hint of the possibility of mechanically solving the phenomenon, though very likely it may require many other circumstances completely to make it out."

There are abundant records of the marvels wrought by the imagination, when, under the influence of desire or fear, or even simple expectation, the attention is concentrated upon a particular spot or a particular set of circumstances; but of the conditions and nature of the operation almost nothing is known. It would seem as if there were a tendency in every act of the imagination to create that which it conceives, although it is only in rare cases that any palpable result ensues. Various cases of recovery from the gravest illness, some of which involved the arresting active, organic mischief, are recorded as brought about by the vehement impression made upon the imagination by a remedy supposed, but never really applied. The action of imaginative sympathy is even more startling. Dr. Tuke relates the following of a lady well known to him: "One day, she was walking past a public institution, and observed a child, in whom she was particularly interested, coming out through an iron gate. She saw that he let go the gate after opening it, and that it seemed likely to close upon him, and concluded that it would do so with such force as to crush his ankle; however, this did not happen. 'It was impossible,' she says, 'by word or act, to be quick enough to meet the supposed emergency; and, in fact, I found I could not move, for such intense pain came on my ankle, corresponding to the one I thought the boy would have injured, that I could only put my hand on it to lessen its extreme painfulness. I am sure I did not move so as to strain or sprain it. The walk home—a distance of about a quarter of a mile—was very laborious, and, in taking off my stocking, I found a circle round the ankle, as if it had been painted with red-currant juice, with a large spot of the same on the outer part. By morning, the whole foot was inflamed, and I was a prisoner to my bed for many weeks."[59] In another case referred to by Dr. Tuke, "a lady of an exceedingly sensitive and impressible nature, on one occasion when a gentleman visited her house, experienced a very uncomfortable sensation so long as he was present, and she observed a spot or sore on his cheek. Two days after, a similar spot or sore appeared on her cheek, in precisely the same situation, and with the same characters."[60]

I have no fault to find with Dr. Tuke for extending this same principle of sympathetic attention to the case of stigmatization, when he says of S. Francis, absorbed in ardent realization of the Passion of Christ, "So clearly defined an idea, so ardent a faith intensifying its operation, were sufficient to reflect it in his body."[61]

I cannot help thinking that the Fathers recognized the creative power of the imagination when they denounced so fiercely the masquerading in beast-skins on the calends of January. "Is not all this false and mad when God-formed men transform themselves into cattle, or wild beasts, or monsters?"[62] The numerous accounts of the were-wolf transformation, both in classical and mediæval times, all point in the same direction; and Mr. Baring-Gould brings good authority for thinking that the etymology of the "Barsark" rage of the Norsemen designates it as an outcome of their bear-skins.

The direct action of the imagination upon external objects, attributed to Avicenna (Muratori della Fantasia, p. 268), is, of course, something further. The Arabian philosopher is reported to have said that, "by a strong action of the fancy, one might kill a camel." At the same time, the signature on the fœtus, not merely of the emotion of the mother's fear or desire, but of the object or occasion of it, would seem to imply some action ab extra, as well as such cases as that of the sympathetic bruise referred to above.

That the ordinary acts of the imagination, for all their airy and impalpable play, do leave behind them most momentous results, forming, as it were, the very mould and measure of our whole life, is a matter of constant experience. Hence it is that castles in the air are often so costly, to say nothing of the danger that, though we have built them ourselves, we may find them haunted.

I am quite prepared to admit what the Germans have called a night-side of nature—that is, various rudimental powers of doing many things of a seemingly miraculous character, which powers do very probably often co-operate in the production of spiritualistic phenomena, and under peculiar organic conditions, without any spiritual influence, may be brought into considerably developed action. Moreover, as it is, of course, in the investigation of these natural bases of magic that science will succeed so far as it succeeds at all, it is only right that it should expatiate in them. My complaint is that the modern attempt to reduce spiritualism to psychic force involves an inadequate analysis of the facts presented; and spiritualists have surely some ground to complain of the prima facie disingenuousness of a manœuvre which, in regard to the same phenomena, began with, "This is not natural, therefore it is certainly not true," and ends with, "This is true, therefore it is certainly natural."

However much the scientific mind of the day may dislike the preternatural stand-point, yet it may be that, seeing "an absolute and derisive incredulity" is no longer regarded as the one scientific attitude, some examination of the views entertained by Catholic writers on the subject may not be without interest. Many of the acutest amongst them for ages have given great attention to the phenomena of mysticism, although mainly engaged in the consideration of their moral and ascetical bearings. Before leaving this second hypothesis, I propose to bring together such passages from the schoolmen as seem to make the largest allowance on the side of psychic force. Whilst there are, I think, sufficient indications that the scholastics generally admit psychic force as a natural basis and concurrent cause in many of the phenomena of both divine and diabolic mysticism, it must be allowed that passages dwelling at any length on this point have at least the merit of rarity.

Görres taught, reasonably enough, I conceive, in his Mystik, that there is a physical basis for the great mass of miracles wrought by Almighty God in and through his saints; that is to say, that they do not, ordinarily speaking, involve the creation of an entirely fresh power, but are rather the result of a divine excitation of a power already existing in germ. Of course, he who "of these stones can raise up children to Abraham" only subjects himself to the laws which he has made in so far as it pleases him to do so; and the scholastics were right in their insistence upon what they called the "obediential" power of things—that is, their inherent capacity of becoming anything in the hands of their Creator. Of course, too, it is often impossible to ascertain in a given case whether God is using that altum dominium which he possesses as Creator, or, on the other hand, is merely developing previously existing powers. Everything tends to persuade us that all nature, and especially the human soul, is full of rudimental powers which may be developed, 1st, by the special, immediate action of the Creator; 2d, by spiritual influences, good and bad; 3d, by certain abnormal conditions of the bodily organism. I conceive that these rudimental powers form a common natural basis for the great mass of both divine and diabolic miracles, and that sometimes they may attain to a considerable degree of development without any special influence, divine or diabolic. The existence of such a common basis would seem to be implied in the fact that the devil has been able to imitate successfully and really, as in the case of Pharao's magicians, so many of the divine miracles; for we know that he can at most develop what already exists, without having the least power to create what is not. We cannot imagine that God would ever create where he might develop, according to the scholastic principle which Sir William Hamilton has translated into the Law of Parsimony: Deus non abundat in superfluis. To take a particular example, Görres maintains that the ascetic and mystic process which the mind of the saint goes through by abstraction from earthly things, and the habit of celestial contemplation, does really co-operate in the phenomenon, so common in ecstasy, of levitation. In which case, the saint would be rather aided by God, acting upon his body through his soul, to rise in the air, than, properly speaking, lifted up by him. This levitation is common enough in the best authenticated cases of diabolical possession; and, if it does not occur in cases presumably natural, at least a wholly abnormal lightness and agility is not unfrequent in some of the movements of somnambulism. We find an example of this in the following narrative, taken from a rare treatise of the Benedictine Abbot Trithemius (sæc. 15), entitled Curiositas Regia (p. 29): "Let any one who knows nothing of nature tell me if the specific gravity of the body can be lightened by the action of the mind. I, with two witnesses to back me, will relate what I myself experienced when a boy at school. One night, we were four of us sleeping in one bed; my companion rose from beside me, as asleep as ever he was, the moon in its fifteenth night shining in upon us, and wandered all over the house as though he were awake, with his eyes shut. He climbed the walls more nimbly than a squirrel. He a second and a third time clambered up on the bed, and trampled upon all of us with his feet; but we felt no more of his weight than if he had been a little mouse. Wherever his sleeping body came, at once all the fastenings of the doors fell back of their own accord. With exceeding swiftness, he got to the top of the house, and, sparrow-fashion, clave to the roof. I am telling what I saw, not what I heard in idle talk. This would seem to be the part, not of a body, but of a spirit which freely uses its native power, so to speak, when the corporal senses are bound, and it wanders outside the mansion of the body.... We do not suppose that this will appear wonderful to the wise, who have a true conception of the power and nobility of the human mind, which in some respects is accounted the equal of the angels, being only separated from them by the interposition of the body."

After speaking of the miracles wrought, first by the invocation of faith, second by sanctity, which commands the ministration of angels, third by the assistance of demons through explicit or implicit compact, he continues: "Some persons add to these three ways a fourth, saying that the mind or spirit of the man himself can naturally work its miracles, provided only it knows how to withdraw itself from the accidental, in upon itself, above the exercise of the senses, into unity. Those who can compass this undertake to work marvels, to predict the future, to lay open the secrets of men's hearts, to dispel diseases, and suddenly to change men's counsels." Trithemius is willing to admit that some such power exists, whilst denying that it can attain to any perfect exercise without some external assistance from good or evil spirits. He gives the same account with Görres of the ecstatic volatus, viz., that the power of God co-operates with the energy of the saint's soul.

William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, in the beginning of the XIIIth century, recognizes the reality of several of the phenomena of spiritualism, and indicates a natural basis. Thus, speaking of the mirrors upon which magicians make their patients look, he says that no images are seen in the glass, but that what takes place is "a bending back of the mind's edge upon itself—of his mind, I say, who looks upon such an instrument; for its brightness forbids the mind's vision exteriorating and directing itself, and flings it back and reflects it in such sort that it cannot but look into itself."[63] Within the mind, he says, all sorts of wonders may be read, for therein abides the light "to which our souls in respect to their noble powers are most closely united; and one of the wisest Christians saith that 'this light is the Creator ever blessed,' meaning by these words that betwixt our minds and the interior light, which is God, there is no intermediary, according to the prophet's word, which, addressing the Creator, saith, 'The light of thy countenance is sealed upon us, O Lord'; that is, thy lightsome countenance, which is naught else but thyself." Whilst acknowledging that this light is "sealed," and that its rays do but break out like lightning flashes in a dark night, and confessing that he has long been cured of that error of his youth, the notion that the purification and abstraction necessary for such inward vision could be profitably achieved without the "grace of the Creator," he yet maintains that this light is, up to a certain point, communicated according to a natural law, analogous, it would seem, to that of the infusion of life. He considers that a melancholy temperament favors this abstraction, and insists that melancholy madmen, in virtue of their abstraction, do receive true irradiations of this divine light, although indefinitely fragmentary (particulatas et obtruncatas), "wherefore naturally they begin to discourse like prophets of divine things, yet continue not to talk so, save for a little while, but lapse into words of accustomed folly." He attributes this relapse to their shattered condition and the excess of the melancholy fumes which overpower them.

Whatever may be thought of the theory, few can have seen much of mad persons without noticing the noble fragments with which their disjointed talk is not unfrequently interspersed. The present writer has often heard one of the persons concerned relate the following story of a madman's prophecy:

The narrator, with two lady friends, had just been received from Anglicanism into the Catholic Church in Italy, and they were anxiously looking forward to the new phase of life awaiting them in England. They were all three going over a lunatic asylum at Palermo, when suddenly one of the inmates strode up to them, and with great solemnity, touching each of them in turn, said to one of the ladies, "Il Paradiso"; to the other, "La Madalena"; and to the gentleman, "Molto, molto d'Argento." Of the two ladies, the first died a holy death on the threshold of her Catholic life, whilst the other entered an order devoted to the reformation of fallen women. The third part only remains unfulfilled, and may possibly mark the relapse into our author's desipientia consueta.

William of Auvergne extends these natural divine irradiations even to the minds of animals, for which he entertains a most unscholastic-like respect: "Yea, this light (splendor) is given to dogs to hunt out the most secret thieves; ... for the dog perceives not the thief himself, and the sense of smell represents him not; for a thief, as such, has no odor."

Trithemius and William of Auvergne may be regarded as authors who lay an exceptional stress upon the natural basis of the supernatural. The former indicates the possibility of the alteration of the specific gravity of the body by the action of the soul within it; the latter suggests a system of natural revelation akin, it would seem, to what one meets with in the mesmeric or somnambulistic trance.

The somnambulistic and mesmeric states would seem to be substantially identical, although the latter involves a relation of subjection to the will of another which is not necessary, though possible, at least in some degree, to the former. Somnambulism very frequently produces the phenomenon of the exaltation of the natural powers; for instance, when in a somnambulistic state, the singer sings more sweetly, the dancer dances more gracefully, than in their normal condition. The same exaltation of natural power has been stated sometimes to take place in deranged persons, as Lamb indicates was the case with himself, in his letter to Coleridge: "Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad. All seems to me now vapid, comparatively so." I remember being told by an intelligent person very fond of singing, who was subject to occasional fits of derangement, that, when mad, his voice gained in compass a good octave; even if this proves to be nothing but a lunatic's delusion, it is sufficiently curious that somnambulism should effect in reality what madness vainly imagines.

From time to time, somnambulism seems to open a door in the soul to a source of natural revelation, such as William of Auvergne speaks of. The following authentic instance is particularly noteworthy, because the possibility of expectation, having produced, as it often does, what was expected, is precluded. At a school at Thorp Arch, in Yorkshire, at the beginning of the present century, a boy was known to be a somnambulist. One night, the usher saw him rise from his bed and wander down-stairs into the school-room. He followed, and saw the boy go to his desk, take out his slate, and write. On looking over his shoulder, he read: "On such a day of such a month next I shall die." The boy almost directly after went up to bed, and the usher took the slate to the head-master. They agreed to say nothing about it, and another slate was substituted. The boy went on with his routine life, apparently quite unconscious that anything was impending; and, indeed, it is on all hands admitted that somnambulists in their waking state recollect nothing of their somnambulism. When the day came, the boy died.

Sister Anne Catherine Emerich (1774-1824), an ecstatica of Westphalia, has expressed herself with considerable precision on the subject of mesmerism. Whilst earnestly warning people against its use as to the last degree dangerous, she admits that the phenomena are objective, and that the power brought into action is substantially natural. What she says is so remarkable that I shall not hesitate to quote at some length.[64]