We next come to a very good ghost of the old and now rather unfashionable sort. The authority is Mr. William Brown, who had it from the Rev. Mr. Mercer of Aberdalgie, 'as what was generally belived as to Dr. Rule, Principal at Edinburgh'. Such is Wodrow's way, his ideas of evidence are quite rudimentary. Give him a ghost, and he does not care for 'contemporary record,' or 'corroborative testimony'. To come to the story. Dr. Rule, finding no room at an inn near Carnie Mount, had a fire lit in a chamber of a large deserted house hard by. He went to bed, leaving a bright fire burning, when 'the room dore is opened, and an apparition, in shape of a country tradsman, came in, and opened the courtains without speaking a word'. The doctor determined not to begin a conversation, so the apparition lighted the candles, brought them to the bedside, and backed to the door. Dr. Rule, like old Brer Rabbit, 'kept on a-saying nothing'. 'Then the apparition took an effectuall way to raise the doctor. He caryed back the candles to the table, and, with the tongs, took doun the kindled coals, and laid them on the deal chamber floor.' Dr. Rule now 'thought it was time to rise,' and followed the appearance, who carried the candles downstairs, set them on the lowest step, and vanished. Dr. Rule then lifted the candles, and went back to bed. Next morning he went to the sheriff, and told him there 'was murder in it'. The sheriff said, 'it might be so,' but, even if so, the crime was not recent, as the house for thirty years had stood empty. The step was taken up, and a dead body was found, 'and bones, to the conviction of all'. The doctor then preached on these unusual events, and an old man of eighty fell a-weeping, confessing that, as a mason lad, he had killed a companion, and buried him in that spot, while the house was being built. Consequently the house, though a new one, was haunted from the first, and was soon deserted. The narrator, Mr. Mercer, had himself seen two ghosts of murdered boys frequently in Dundee. He did not speak, nor did they, and as the rooms were comfortable he did not leave them. To have talked about the incident would only have been injurious to his landlady. 'The longer I live, the more unexpected things I meet with, and even among my own relations,' says Mr. Wodrow with much simplicity. But he never met with a ghost, nor even with any one who had met with a ghost, except Mr. Mercer.

In the same age, or earlier, Increase Mather represents apparitions as uncommonly scarce in New England, though diabolical possession and witchcraft were as familiar as influenza. It has been shown that, in nearly forty years of earnest collecting, Mr. Wodrow did not find a single supernatural occurrence which was worth investigating by the curious. Every tale was old, or some simple natural cause was at the bottom of the mystery, or the narrative rested on vague gossip, or was a myth. Today, at any dinner party, you may hear of bogles and wraiths at first or at second hand, in an abundance which would have rejoiced Wodrow. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe vainly brags, in Law's Memorialls, that 'good sense and widely diffused information have driven our ghosts to a few remote castles in the North of Scotland' (1819). But, however we are to explain it, the ghosts have come forth again, and, like golf, have crossed the Tweed. Now this is a queer result of science, common- sense, cheap newspapers, popular education, and progress in general. We may all confess to a belief in ghosts, because we call them 'phantasmogenetic agencies,' and in as much of witchcraft as we style 'hypnotic suggestion'. So great, it seems, is the force of language! {303}



THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TURNING

Bias in belief. Difficulty of examining problems in which unknown personal conditions are dominant. Comte Agenor de Gasparin on table-turning. The rise of modern table-turning. Rapping. French examples. A lady bitten by a spirit. Flying objects. The 'via media' of M. de Gasparin. Tables are turned by recondite physical causes: not by muscular or spiritual actions. The author's own experiments. Motion without contact. Dr. Carpenter's views. Incredulity of M. de Gasparin as to phenomena beyond his own experience. Ancient Greek phenomena. M. de Gasparin rejects 'spirits'. Dr. Carpenter neglects M. de Gasparin's evidence. Survival and revival. Delacourt's case. Home's case. Simon Magus. Early scientific training. Its results. Conclusion.

While reason is fondly supposed to govern our conduct, and direct our conclusions, there is no doubt that our opinions are really regulated by custom, temperament, hope, and fear. We believe or disbelieve because other people do so, because our character is attracted to, or repelled by the unusual, the mysterious; because, from one motive or another, we wish things to be thus, or fear that they may be thus, or hope that they may be so, and cannot but dread that they are otherwise. Again, the laws of Nature which have been ascertained are enough for the conduct of life, and science constantly, and with excellent reason, resists to the last gasp every attempt to recognise the existence of a new law, which, after all, can apparently do little for the benefit of mankind, and may conceivably do something by no means beneficial. Again, science is accustomed to deal with constant phenomena, which, given the conditions, will always result. The phenomena of the marvellous are not constant, or, rather, the conditions cannot be definitely ascertained. When Mr. Crookes made certain experiments on Home's power of causing a balance to move without contact he succeeded; in the presence of some Russian savants a similar experiment failed. Granting that Mr. Crookes's tests were accurate (and the lay mind, at least, can see no flaw in them), we must suppose that the personal conditions, in the Russian case, were not the same.

Now an electric current will inevitably do its work, if known and ascertained conditions are present; a personal current, so to speak, depends on personal conditions which are unascertainable. It is inevitable that science, accustomed to the invariable, should turn away from phenomena which, if they do occur, seem, so far, to have a will of their own. That they have a will of their own is precisely their attraction for another class of minds, which recognises in them the action of unknown intelligences. There are also people who so dislike our detention in the prison house of old unvarying laws, that their bias is in favour of anything which may tend to prove that science, in her contemporary mood, is not infallible. As the Frenchman did not care what sort of scheme he invested money in, 'provided that it annoys the English,' so many persons do not care what they invest belief in, provided that it irritates men of science. Just as rationally, some men of science denounce all investigation of the abnormal phenomena of which history and rumour are so full, because the research may bring back distasteful beliefs, and revive the 'ancestral tendency' to superstition. Yet the question is not whether the results of research may be dangerous, but whether the phenomena occur. The speculations of Copernicus, of Galileo, of the geologists, of Mr. Darwin, were 'dangerous,' and it does not appear that they have added to the sum of human delight. But men of science are still happiest when denouncing the 'obscurantism' of those who opposed Copernicus, Mr. Darwin, and the rest, in dread of the moral results. We owe the strugforlifeur of M. Daudet to Mr. Darwin and Mr. Alfred Wallace, and the strugforlifeur is as dangerous and disagreeable as the half- crazy spiritualist. Science is only concerned with truth, not with the mischievous inferences which people may draw from truth. And yet certain friends of science, quite naturally and normally, fall back on the attitude of the opponents of Copernicus: 'These things,' they say, 'should not even be examined'.

Such are the hostile and distracting influences, the contending currents, in the midst of which Reason has to operate as well as she can. Meanwhile every one of us probably supposes himself to be a model of pure reason, and if people would only listen to him, the measure of the universe. This happy and universal frame of mind is agreeably illustrated in a work by the late Comte Agenor de Gasparin, Les Tables Tournantes (Deuxieme edition: Levy, Paris, 1888). The first edition is of 1854, and was published at a time of general excitement about 'table-turning' and 'spirit-rapping,' an excitement which only old people remember, and which it is amazing to read about.

Modern spirit-rapping, of which table-turning is a branch, began, as we know, in 1847-48. A family of Methodists named Fox, entered, in 1847, on the tenancy of a house in Hydesville, in the State of New York. The previous occupants had been disturbed by 'knocking,' this continued in the Fox regime, one of the little girls found that the raps would answer (a discovery often made before) a system of alphabetic communication was opened, and spiritualism was launched. {307} In March, 1853, a packet of American newspapers reached Bremen, and, as Dr. Andree wrote to the Gazette d'Augsbourg (March 30, 1853), all Bremen took to experiments in turning tables. The practice spread like a new disease, even men of science and academicians were puzzled, it is a fact that, at a breakfast party in Macaulay's rooms in the Albany, a long and heavy table became vivacious, to Macaulay's disgust, when the usual experiment was tried. Men of science were, in some cases, puzzled, in others believed that a new force must be recognised, in others talked of unconscious pushing or of imposture. M. Babinet, a member of the Institute, writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes (May, 1854), explained the 'raps' or percussive noises, as the result of ventriloquism! A similar explanation was urged, and withdrawn, in the case of the Cock Lane ghost, and it does not appear that M. Babinet produced a ventriloquist who could do the trick. Raps may be counterfeited in many ways, but hardly by ventriloquism. The raps were, in Europe, a later phenomenon than the table-turning, and aroused far more interest. The higher clergy investigated the matter, and the Bishop of Mans in a charge, set down the phenomena to the agency of some kind of spirits, with whom Christian men should have no commerce. Granting the facts, the bishop was undeniably right.

There was published at that time a journal called La Table Parlante, which contained recitals of phenomena, correspondence, and so forth. Among the narratives, that of a M. Benezet was typical, and is curious. In recent years, about 1872-80, the Rev. Mr. Stainton Moses, a clergyman and scholar of the best moral reputation, believed himself to be the centre of extraordinary, and practically incredible, occurrences, a belief shared by observers among his friends. M. Benezet's narrative is full of precisely parallel details. M. Benezet lived at Toulouse, in 1853; and his experiences had for their scene his own house, and that of his relations, M. and Mme. L. The affair began in table-turning and table-tilting: the tilts indicated the presence of 'spirits,' which answered questions, right or wrong: under the hands of the L.'s the table became vivacious, and chased a butterfly. Then the spirit said it could appear as an old lady, who was viewed by one of the children. The L.'s being alarmed, gave up making experiments, but one day, at dinner, thumps were struck on the table. M. Benezet was called in, and heard the noises with awe. He went away, but the knocks sounded under the chair of Mme. L., she threw some holy water under the chair, when her thumb was bitten, and marks of teeth were left on it. Presently her shoulder was bitten, whether on a place which she could reach with her teeth or not, we are not informed. Raps went on, the L.'s fled to M. Benezet's house, which was instantly disturbed in the same fashion. Objects were spirited away, and reappeared as oddly as they had vanished. Packets of bonbons turned up unbeknown, sailed about the room, and suddenly fell on the table at dinner. The L.'s went back to their own house, where their hats and boots contracted a habit of floating dreamily about in the air. Things were hurled at them, practical jokes were played, and in September these monstrous annoyances gradually ceased. The most obvious explanation is that Mme. L. demoralised by turning tables, took, consciously or unconsciously, to imitating the tricks of which history and legend are full. Her modus, operandi, in some phenomena, is difficult to conjecture.

While opinion was agitated by these violent events, and contending hypotheses, while La Table Parlante took a Catholic view, and Science a negative view, M. Agenor de Gasparin, a Protestant, chose a via media.

M. de Gasparin, the husband of the well-known author of The Near and the Heavenly Horizons, was a table-turner, without being a spiritualist. His experiments were made in Switzerland, in 1853; he published a book on them, as we said; M. Figuier attacked it in Les Mysteres de la Science, after M. de Gasparin's death, and the widow of the author replied by republishing part of the original work. M. de Gasparin, in the early Empire, was a Liberal, an anti-Radical, an opponent of negro slavery, a Christian, an energetic honest man, absolu et ardent, as he confesses.

His purpose was to demonstrate that tables turn, that the phenomenon is purely physical, that it cannot be explained by the mechanical action of the muscles, nor by that of 'spirits'. His allies were his personal friends, and it is pretty clear that two ladies were the chief 'agents'. The process was conducted thus: a 'chain' of eight or ten people surrounded a table, lightly resting their fingers, all in contact, on its surface. It revolved, and, by request, would raise one of its legs, and tap the floor. All this, of course, can be explained either by cheating, or by the unconscious pushes administered. If any one will place his hands on a light table, he will find that the mere come and go of pulse and breath have a tendency to agitate the object. It moves a little, accompanying it you unconsciously move it more. The experiment is curious because, on some days, the table will not budge, on others it instantly sets up a peculiar gliding movement, in which it almost seems to escape from the superimposed hands, while the most wakeful attention cannot detect any conscious action of the muscles. If you try the opposite experiment, namely conscious pushing of the most gradual kind, you find that the exertion is very distinctly sensible. The author has made the following simple experiment.

Two persons for whom the table would not move laid their hands on it firmly and flatly. Two others (for whom it danced) just touched the hands of the former pair. Any pressure or push from the upper hands would be felt, of course, by the under hands. No such pressure was felt, yet the table began to rotate. In another experiment with another subject, the pressure was felt (indeed the owner of the upper hands was conscious of pressing), yet the table did not move. These experiments are, physiologically, curious, but, of course, they demonstrate nothing. Muscles can move the table, muscles can apparently act without the consciousness of their owner, therefore the movement is caused, or may be irrefutably said to be caused, by unconscious muscular action.

M. de Gasparin, of course, was aware of all this; he therefore aimed at producing movement without contact. In his early experiments the table was first set agoing by contact; all hands were then lifted at a signal, to half an inch above the table, and still the table revolved. Of course it will not do this, if it is set agoing by conscious muscular action, as any one may prove by trying. As it was possible that some one might still be touching the table, and escaping in the crowd the notice of the observers outside the circle, two ladies tried alone. The observer, Mr. Thury, saw the daylight between their hands and the table, which revolved four or five times. To make assurance doubly sure, a thin coating of flour was scattered over the whole table, and still it moved, while the flour was unmarked. M. de Gasparin was therefore convinced that the phenomena of movement without mechanical agency were real. His experiments got rid of Mr. Faraday's theory of unconscious pressure and pushing, because you cannot push with your muscles what you do not touch with any portion of your body, and De Gasparin had assured himself that there was no physical contact between his friends and this table.

M. de Gasparin now turned upon Dr. Carpenter, to whom an article in the Quarterly Review, dealing with the whole topic of abnormal occurrences, was attributed. Dr. Carpenter, at this time, had admitted the existence of the hypnotic state, and the amenability of the hypnotised person to the wildest suggestions. He had also begun to develop his doctrine of 'unconscious cerebration,' that is, the existence of mental processes beneath, or apart from our consciousness. {312} An 'ideational change' may take place in the cerebrum. The sensorium is 'unreceptive,' so the idea does not reach consciousness. Sometimes, however, the idea oozes out from the fingers, through muscular action, also unconscious. This moves the table to the appropriate tilts. These two ideas are capable, if we admit them, of explaining many singular psychological facts, but they certainly do not explain the movements of tables which nobody is touching. In face of M. de Gasparin's evidence, which probably was not before him, Dr. Carpenter could only have denied the facts, or alleged that the witnesses, including observers outside the chaine, or circle, were all self-hypnotised, all under the influence of self-suggestion, and all honestly asserting the occurrence of events which did not occur. His essay touched but lightly on this particular marvel. He remarked that 'the turning of tables, and the supposed communications of spirits through their agency' are due 'to the mental state of the performers themselves'. Now M. de Gasparin, in his via media, repudiated 'spirits' energetically. Dr. Carpenter then explained witchcraft, and the vagaries of 'camp-meetings' by the 'dominant idea'. But M. de Gasparin could reply that persons whose 'dominant idea' was incredulity attested many singular occurrences. At the end of his article, Dr. Carpenter decides that table-turners push unconsciously, as they assuredly do, but they cannot push when not in contact with the object. The doctor did not allege that table-turners are 'biologised' as he calls it, and under a glamour. But M. de Gasparin averred that no single example of trance, rigidity, loss of ordinary consciousness, or other morbid symptoms, had ever occurred in his experiments. There is thus, as it were, no common ground on which he and Dr. Carpenter can meet and fight. He dissected the doctor's rather inconsequent argument with a good deal of acuteness and wit.

M. de Gasparin then exhibited some of the besetting sins of all who indulge in argument. He accepted all his own private phenomena, but none of those, such as 'raps' and so forth, for which other people were vouching. Things must occur as he had seen them, and not otherwise. What he had seen was a chaine of people surrounding a table, all in contact with the table, and with each other. The table had moved, and had answered questions by knocking the floor with its foot. It had also moved, when the hands were held close to it, but not in contact with it. Nothing beyond that was orthodox, as nothing beyond hypnotism and unconscious cerebration was orthodox with Dr. Carpenter. Moreover M. de Gasparin had his own physical explanation of the phenomena. There is, in man's constitution, a 'fluid' which can be concentrated by his will, and which then, given a table and a chaine, will produce M. de Gasparin's phenomena: but no more. He knows that 'fluids' are going out of fashion in science, and he is ready to call the 'fluid' the 'force' or 'agency,' or 'condition of matter' or what you please. 'Substances, forces, vibrations, let it be what you choose, as long as it is something.' The objection that the phenomena are 'of no use' was made, and is still very common, but, of course, is in no case scientifically valid. Electricity was 'of no use' once, and the most useless phenomenon is none the less worthy of examination.

M. de Gasparin now examines another class of objections. First, the phenomena were denied; next, they were said to be as old as history, and familiar to the Greeks. We elsewhere show that this is quite true, that the movement of objects without contact was as familiar to the Greeks as to the Peruvians, the Thibetans, the Eskimo, and in modern stories of haunted houses. But, as will presently appear, these wilder facts would by no means coalesce with the hypothesis of M. de Gasparin. To his mind, tables turn, but they turn by virtue of the will of a 'circle,' consciously exerted, through the means of some physical force, fluid, or what not, produced by the imposition of hands. Now these processes do not characterise the phenomena among Greeks, Thibetans, Eskimo, Peruvians, in haunted houses, or in presence of the late Mr. Home,—granting the facts as alleged. In these instances, nobody is 'circling' round a chair, a bed, or what not, yet the chair or bed moves, as in the story of Monsieur S. at St. Maur (1706), and in countless other examples. All this would not, as we shall see, be convenient for the theory of M. de Gasparin.

His line of argument is that the Greek and Latin texts are misunderstood, but that, if the Greeks did turn tables, that is no proof that tables do not turn, but rather the reverse. A favourite text is taken from Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxix. ch. i. M. de Gasparin does not appear to have read the passage carefully. About 371 A.D. one Hilarius was tortured on a charge of magical operations against the Emperor Valens. He confessed. A little table, made of Delphic laurel, was produced in court. 'We made it,' he said, 'that confounded little table, under strange rites and imprecations, and we set it in movement, thus: it was placed in a room charged with perfumes, above a round plate fashioned of various metals. The edge of the plate was marked with the letters of the alphabet separated by certain spaces. A priest, linen clad, bowed himself over the table, balancing a ring tied to a thin thread. The ring, bounding from letter to letter, picks out letters forming hexameters, like those of Delphi.' This is confusing. Probably the movements of the table, communicated to the thread, caused the bounds of the ring, otherwise there was no use in the table moving. At all events the ring touched THEO (which is not a word that could begin a hexameter) when they asked who was to succeed Valens. Some one called out 'Theodore' and they pursued the experiment no farther. A number of Theodores and Theophiles were put to death, but when Theodosius was joined with Gratian in the Empire, the believers held that the table had been well inspired. Here there was no chaine, or circle, the table is not said to lever le pied legerement, as the song advises, therefore M. de Gasparin rules the case out of court. The object, however, really was analogous to planchette, Ouija, and other modern modes of automatic divination. The experiment of Hilarius with the 'confounded little table' led to a massacre of Neoplatonists, martyrs of Psychical Research! In Hilarius's confession we omit a set of ritual invocations; as unessential as the mystic rites used by savages in making curari.

The spiritus percutiens, 'rapping spirit' (?) conjured away by old Catholic formulae at the benediction of churches, was brought forward by some of M. de Gasparin's critics. As his tables did not rap, he had nothing to do with the spiritus percutiens, who proves, however, that the Church was acquainted with raps, and explained them by the spiritualistic hypothesis. {317}

A text in Tertullian's Apologetic was also cited. Here tabulae and capae, 'tables and she-goats,' are said to divine. What have she- goats to do in the matter? De Morgan wished to read tabulae et crepae, which he construes 'tables and raps,' but he only finds crepae in Festus, who says, that goats are called crepae, quod cruribus crepent, 'because they rattle with their legs'. De Morgan's guess is ingenious, but lacks confirmation. We are not, so far, aware of communication with spirits by raps before 856 A.D.

Finally, M. de Gasparin denies that his researches are 'superstitious'. Will can move my limbs, if it also moves my table, what is there superstitious in that? It is a new fact, that is all. 'Tout est si materiel, si physique dans les experiences des tables.' It was not so at Toulouse!

Meanwhile M. de Gasparin, firm in his 'Trewth,'—the need of a chaine of persons, the physical origin of the phenomena, the entire absence of spirits,—was so unlucky, when he dealt with 'spirits,' as to drop into the very line of argument which he had been denouncing. 'Spirits' are 'superstitious,'—well, his adversaries had found superstition in his own experiments and beliefs. To believe that spirits are engaged, is 'to reduce our relations with the invisible world to the grossest definition'. But why not, as we know nothing about our relations with the invisible world? The theology of the spirits is 'contrary to Scripture'; very well, your tales of tables moved without contact are contrary to science. 'No spiritualistic story has ever been told which is not to be classed among the phenomena of animal magnetism. . . . ' This, of course, is a mere example of a statement made without examination, a sin alleged by M. de Gasparin against his opponents. Vast numbers of such stories, not explicable by the now rejected theory of 'animal magnetism,' have certainly been told.

In another volume M. de Gasparin demolished the tales, but he was only at the beginning of his subject. The historical and anthropological evidence for the movement of objects without contact, not under his conditions, is very vast in bulk. The modern experiments are sometimes more scientific than his own, and the evidence for the most startling events of all kinds is quite as good as that on which he relies for his prodigies, themselves sufficiently startling. His hypothesis, at all events, of will directing a force or fluid, by no means explains phenomena quite as well provided with evidence as his own. So M. de Gasparin disposes of the rival miracles as the result of chance, imposture, or hallucination, the very weapons of his scientific adversaries. His own prodigies he has seen, and is satisfied. His opponents say: 'You cannot register your force sur l'inclinaison d'une aiguille'. He could not, but Home could do so to the satisfaction of a scientific expert, and probably M. de Gasparin would have believed it, if he had seen it. M. de Gasparin is horrified at the idea of 'trespassing on the territory of acts beyond our power'. But, if it were possible to do the miracles of Home, it would be possible because it is not beyond our power. 'The spiritualistic opinion is opposed to the doctrine of the resurrection: it merely announces the immortality of the soul.' But that has nothing to do with the matter in hand.

The theology of spirits, of course, is neither here nor there. A 'spirit' will say anything or everything. But Mr. C. C. Massey when he saw a chair move at a word (and even without one), in the presence of such a double-dyed impostor as Slade, had as much right to believe his own eyes as M. de Gasparin, and what he saw does not square with M. de Gasparin's private 'Trewth'. The chair in Mr. Massey's experience, was 'unattached' to a piece of string; it fell, and, at request, jumped up again, and approached Mr. Massey, 'just as if some one had picked it up in order to take a seat beside me'. {319a}

Such were the idola specus, the private personal prepossessions of M. de Gasparin, undeniably an honourable man. Now, in 1877, his old adversary, Dr. Carpenter, C.B., M.D., LL.D, F.R.S., F.G.S., V.P.L.S., corresponding member of the Institute of France, tout ce qu'il y a de plus officiel, de plus decore, returned to the charge. He published a work on Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc. {319b} Perhaps the unscientific reader supposes that Dr. Carpenter replied to the arguments of M. de Gasparin? This would have been sportsmanlike, but no, Dr. Carpenter firmly ignored them! He devoted three pages to table-turning (pp. 96, 97, 98). He exhibited Mr. Faraday's little machine for detecting muscular pressure, a machine which would also detect pressure which is not muscular. He explained answers given by tilts, answers not consciously known to the operators, as the results of unconscious cerebration. People may thus get answers which they do expect, or answers which they do not expect, as may happen. But not one word did Dr. Carpenter say to a popular audience at the London Institution about M. de Gasparin's assertion, and the assertion of M. de Gasparin's witnesses, that motion had been observed without any contact at all. He might, if he pleased, have alleged that M. de Gasparin and the others fabled; or that they were self-hypnotised, or were cheated, but he absolutely ignored the evidence altogether. Now this behaviour, if scientific, was hardly quite sportsmanlike, to use a simple British phrase which does credit to our language and national character. Mr. Alfred Wallace stated a similar conclusion as to Dr. Carpenter's method of argument, in language of some strength. 'Dr. Carpenter,' he said, 'habitually gives only one side of the question, and completely ignores all facts which tell against his theory.' {320} Without going so far as Mr. Wallace, and alleging that what Dr. Carpenter did in the case of M. de Gasparin, he did 'habitually,' we may briefly examine some portions of his book which, perhaps, leave something to be desired. It is written with much acuteness, with considerable fairness, and is certainly calculated to convince any reader who has not been perplexed by circumstances on which Dr. Carpenter throws little light.

Our own chief perplexity is the continuity and uniformity of the historical and anthropological evidence for certain marvels. We have already shown the difficulty of attributing this harmony of evidence, first to savage modes of thought, and then to their survival and revival. The evidence, in full civilisation, ancient and modern, of educated and even sceptical witnesses to phenomena, which are usually grotesque, but are always the same everywhere, in every age and land, and the constant attendance of these phenomena on persons of a peculiar temperament, are our stumbling-blocks on the path to absolute negation. Epilepsy, convulsions, hysterical diseases are startling affairs, we admit. It was natural that savages and the ignorant should attribute them to diabolical possession, and then look out for, and invent, manifestations of the diabolical energy outside the body of the patient, say in movements of objects, knocks, and so forth. As in these maladies the patient may be subject to hallucinations, it was natural that savages or ignorant men, or polytheists, or ardent Catholics, or excitable Covenanters, should regard these hallucinations as 'lucid' or 'clairvoyant'. A few lucky coincidences would establish this opinion among such observers as we have indicated, while failures of lucidity would not be counted. The professional epileptic medicine- man, moreover, would strengthen his case by 'prophesying on velvet,' like Norna of the Fitful Head, on private and early information. Imposture would imitate the 'spiritual' feats of 'raps,' 'physical movements of objects,' and 'luminous forms'. All this would continue after savagery, after paganism, after 'Popery' among the peasants who were for so long, and in superstition are even now, a conservative class.

All that 'expectancy,' hysterics, 'the dominant idea' and rude hypnotism, 'the sleep of the shadow,' could do, would be done, as witch trials show. All these elements in folklore, magic and belief would endure, in the peasant class, under the veneer of civilisation. Now and again these elements of superstition would break through the veneer, would come to the surface among the educated classes, and would 'carry silly women captive,' and silly men. They, too, though born in the educated class, would attest impossible occurrences.

In all this, we might only see survival, wonderfully vivacious, and revival astonishingly close to the ancient savage lines.

We are unable to state the case for survival and revival more strenuously, and the hypothesis is most attractive. This hypothesis appears to be Dr. Carpenter's, though he does not, in the limits of popular lectures, unfold it at any length. After stating (p. 1) that a continuous belief in 'occult agencies' has existed, he adds:—

'While this very continuity is maintained by some to be an evidence of the real existence of such [occult] agencies, it will be my purpose to show you that it proves nothing more than the wide-spread diffusion, alike amongst minds of the highest and lowest culture, of certain tendencies to thought, which have either created ideal marvels possessing no foundation whatever in fact, or have, by exaggeration and distortion, invested with a preternatural character occurrences which are perfectly capable of a natural explanation'.

Here Dr. Carpenter does not attempt to show cause why the 'manifestations' are always the same, for example, why spirits rap in the Australian Bush, among blacks not influenced by modern spiritualism: why tables moved, untouched, in Thibet and India, long before 'table-turning' was heard of in modern Europe. We have filled up the lacuna in the doctor's argument, by suggesting that the phenomena (which are not such as a civilised taste would desire) were invented by savages, and handed on in an unbroken catena, a chain of tradition.

But, in following Dr. Carpenter, we are brought up short at one of our old obstacles, we trip on one of our old stumbling-blocks. Granting that an epileptic patient made strange bounds and springs, we can conceive savages going farther in fancy, and averring that he flew, or was levitated, or miraculously transported through space. Let this become matter of traditional belief, as a thing possible in epilepsy, i.e., in 'diabolical,' or 'angelical possession'. Add the honest but hallucinatory persuasion of the patient that he was so levitated, and let him be a person of honour and of sanctity, say St. Theresa, St. Francis, or St. Joseph of Cupertino. Granting the survival of a savage exaggeration, granting the hallucinated saint, we may, perhaps, explain the innumerable anecdotes about miraculous levitation of which a few are repeated in our paper on 'Comparative Psychical Research.' The witnesses in witch trials, and in ecclesiastical inquiries, and Lord Orrery, and Mr. Greatrakes, and the Cromwellian soldiery in Scotland, the Spanish in Peru, Cotton Mather in New England, saw what they expected to see, what tradition taught them to look for, in the case of a convulsionary, or a saint, or a catechumen. The consensus in illusion was wonderful, but let us grant, for the sake of argument, that it was possible. Let us add another example, from Cochin China.

The witness and narrator is Delacourt, a French missionary. The source is a letter of his of November 25, 1738, to Winslow the anatomist, Membre de l'Academie des Sciences a Paris. It is printed in the Institutiones Theologicae of Collet, who attests the probity of the missionary. {324}

In May or June, 1733, Delacourt was asked to view a young native Christian, said by his friends to be 'possessed'.

'Rather incredulous,' as he says, Delacourt went to the lad, who had communicated, as he believed, unworthily, and was therefore a prey to religious excitement, which, as Bishop Callaway found among his Zulu converts, and as Wodrow attests among 'savoury Christians,' begets precisely such hallucinations as annoyed the early hermits like St. Anthony. Delacourt addressed the youth in Latin: he replied, Ego nescio loqui Latine, a tag which he might easily have picked up, let us say. Delacourt led him into church, where the patient was violently convulsed. Delacourt then (remembering the example set by the Bishop of Tilopolis) ordered the demon in Latin, to carry the boy to the ceiling. 'His body became stiff, he was dragged from the middle of the church to a pillar, and there, his feet joined, his back fixed (colle) against the pillar, he was transported in the twinkling of an eye to the ceiling, like a weight rapidly drawn up, without any apparent action on his part. I kept him in the air for half an hour, and then bade him drop without hurting himself,' when he fell 'like a packet of dirty linen'. While he was up aloft, Delacourt preached at him in Latin, and he became, 'perhaps the best Christian in Cochin China'.

Dr. Carpenter's explanation must either be that Delacourt lied; or that a tradition, surviving from savagery, and enforced by the example of the Bishop of Tilopolis, made a missionary, un peu incredule, as he says, believe that he saw, and watched for half an hour, a phenomenon which he never saw at all. But then Dr. Carpenter also dismisses, with none but the general theory already quoted, the experience of 'a nobleman of high scientific attainments,' who 'seriously assures us' that he saw Home 'sail in the air, by moonlight, out of one window and in at another, at the height of seventy feet from the ground.' {326}

Here is the stumbling-block. A nobleman of high scientific attainment, in company with another nobleman, and a captain in the army, all vouched for this performance of Home. Now could the savage tradition, which attributes flight to convulsive and entranced persons, exercise such an influence on these three educated modern witnesses; could an old piece of folklore, in company with 'expectancy,' so wildly delude them? Can 'high scientific attainments' leave their possessor with such humble powers of observation? But, to be sure, Dr. Carpenter does not tell his readers that there were three witnesses. Dr. Carpenter says that, if we believe Lord Crawford (and his friends), we can 'have no reason for refusing credit to the historical evidence of the demoniacal elevation of Simon Magus'. Let us point out that we have no contemporary evidence at all about Simon's feat, while for Home's, we have the evidence of three living and honourable men, whom Dr. Carpenter might have cross-examined. The doings of Home and of Simon were parallel, but nothing can be more different than the nature of the evidence for what they are said to have done. This, perhaps, might have been patent to a man like Dr. Carpenter of 'early scientific training'. But he illustrated his own doctrine of 'the dominant idea'; he did not see that he was guilty of a fallacy, because his 'idea' dominated him. Stumbling into as deep a gulf, Dr. Carpenter put Lord Crawford's evidence (he omitted that of his friends) on a level with, or below, the depositions of witnesses as to 'the aerial transport of witches to attend their demoniacal festivities'. But who ever swore that he saw witches so transported? The evidence was not to witnessed facts, but only to a current belief, backed by confessions under torture. No testimony could be less on a par with that of a living 'nobleman of high scientific attainments,' to his own experience.

In three pages Dr. Carpenter has shown that 'early scientific training' in physiology and pathology, does not necessarily enable its possessor to state a case fully. Nor does it prompt him to discriminate between rumours coming, a hundred and fifty years after the date of the alleged occurrences, from a remote, credulous, and unscientific age: and the statements of witnesses all living, all honourable, and, in one case, of 'high scientific attainments.' {327}

It is this solemn belief in his own infallibility as a judge of evidence combined with his almost incredible ignorance of what evidence is, that makes Dr. Carpenter such an amusing controversialist.

If any piece of fact is to be proved, it is plain that the concurrent testimony of three living and honourable men is worth more than a bit of gossip, which, after filtering through a century or two, is reported by an early Christian Father. In matters wholly marvellous, like Home's flight in the air, the evidence of three living and honourable men need not, of course, convince us of the fact. But this evidence is in itself a fact to be considered—'Why do these gentlemen tell this tale?' we ask; but Dr. Carpenter puts the testimony on the level of patristic tattle many centuries old, written down, on no authority, long after the event. Yet the worthy doctor calmly talks about 'want of scientific culture preventing people from appreciating the force of scientific reasoning,' and that after giving such examples of 'scientific reasoning' as we have examined. {328} It is in this way that Science makes herself disliked. By aid of ordinary intelligence, and of an ordinary classical education, every one (however uncultivated in 'science') can satisfy himself that Dr. Carpenter argued at random. Yet we do not assert that 'early scientific training' prevents people from understanding the nature of evidence. Dr. Carpenter had the training, but he was impetuous, and under a dominant idea, so he blundered along.

Dr. Carpenter frequently invoked for the explanation of marvels, a cause which is vera causa, expectancy. 'The expectation of a certain result is often enough to produce it' (p. 12). This he proves by cases of hypnotised patients who did, or suffered, what they expected to be ordered to suffer or do, though no such order was really given to them. Again (p. 40) he urges that imaginative people, who sit for a couple of hours, 'especially if in the dark,' believing or hoping to see a human body, or a table, rise in the air, probably 'pass into a state which is neither sleeping nor waking, but between the two, in which they see, hear, or feel by touch, anything they have been led to expect will present itself.'

This is, indeed, highly probable. But we must suppose that all present fall into this ambiguous state, described of old by Porphyry. One waking spectator who sees nothing would make the statements of the others even more worthless than usual. And it is certain that it is not even pretended that all, always, see the same phenomena.

'One saw an arm, and one a hand, and one the waving of a gown,' in that seance at Branxholme, where only William of Deloraine beheld all,

And knew, but how it mattered not, It was the wizard, Michael Scott. {329}

Granting the ambiguous state, granting darkness, and expectancy, anything may seem to happen. But Dr. Carpenter wholly omits such cases as that of Mr. Hamilton Aide, and of M. Alphonse Karr. Both were absolutely sceptical. Both disliked Home very much, and thought him an underbred Yankee quack and charlatan. Both were in the 'expectancy' of seeing no marvels, were under 'the dominant idea' that nothing unusual would occur. Both, in a brilliantly lighted room of a villa near Nice, saw a chair make a rush from the wall into the middle of the room, and saw a very large and heavy table, untouched, rise majestically in the air. M. Karr at once got under the table, and hunted, vainly, for mechanical appliances. Then he and Mr. Aide went home, disconcerted, and in very bad humour. How do 'expectancy' and the 'dominant idea' explain this experience, which Mr. Aide has published in the Nineteenth Century? The expectancy and dominant ideas of these gentlemen should have made them see the table and chair sit tight, while believers observed them in active motion. Again, how could Mr. Crookes's lack of 'a special training in the bodily and mental constitution, abnormal as well as normal,' of 'mediums,' affect his power of observing whether a plank of wood did, or did not, move to a certain extent untouched, or slightly touched, and whether the difference of position was, or was not, registered mechanically? (p. 70). It was a pure matter of skilled and trained observation in mechanics. Dr. Huggins was also present at this experiment in a mode of motion. Him Dr. Carpenter gracefully discredited as an 'amateur,' without 'a broad basis of general scientific culture'. He had devoted himself 'to a branch of research which tasks the keenest powers of observation'. Now it was precisely powers of observation that were required. 'There are moral sources of error,' of which a mere observer like Dr. Huggins would be unaware. And 'one of the most potent of these is a proclivity to believe in the reality of spiritual communications,' particularly dangerous in a case where 'spiritual communications,' were not in question! The question was, did an indicator move, or not, under a certain amount of pressure? Indiscreetly enough, to be sure, the pressure was attributed to 'psychic force,' and perhaps that was what Dr. Carpenter had in his mind, when he warned Dr. Huggins against 'the proclivity to believe in the reality of spiritual communications'.

About a wilderness of other phenomena, attested by scores of sane people, from Lord Crawford to Mr. S. C. Hall, Dr. Carpenter 'left himself no time to speak' (p. 105). This was convenient, but the lack of time prevented Dr. Carpenter from removing our stumbling- block, the one obstacle which keeps us from adopting, with no shadow of doubt, the theory that explains all the marvels by the survival and revival of savage delusions. Dr. Carpenter's hypothesis of expectancy, of a dominant idea, acting on believers, in an ambiguous state, and in the dark, can do much, but it cannot account for the experience of wide-awake sceptics, under the opposite dominant idea, in a brilliant light.

Dr. Carpenter exposed and exploded a quantity of mesmeric spiritualistic myths narrated by Dr. Gregory, by Miss Martineau, and by less respectable if equally gullible authorities. But, speaking merely as perplexed and unconvinced students of argument and evidence, we cannot say that he removed the difficulties which have been illustrated and described.

Table-turning, after what is called a 'boom' in 1853-60, is now an abandoned amusement. It is deserted, like croquet, and it is even less to be regretted. But its existence enabled disputants to illustrate the ordinary processes of reasoning; each making assertions up to the limit of his personal experience; each attacking, as 'superstitious,' all who had seen, or fancied they had seen, more than himself, and each fighting gallantly for his own explanatory hypothesis, which never did explain any phenomena beyond those attested by his own senses. The others were declared not to exist, or to be the result of imposture and mal-observation,—and perhaps they were.

The truly diverting thing is that Home did not believe in the other 'mediums,' nor in anything in the way of a marvel (such as matter passing through matter) which he had not seen with his own eyes. Whether Home's incredulity should be reckoned as a proof of his belief in his own powers, might be argued either way.



THE GHOST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION

Evolutionary Theory of the Origin of Religion. Facts misunderstood suggest ghosts, which develop into gods. This process lies behind history and experience. Difficulties of the Theory. The Theory of Lucretius. Objections Mr. Tyler's Theory. The question of abnormal facts not discussed by Mr. Tylor. Possibility that such 'psychical' facts are real, and are elements in development of savage religion. The evidence for psychical phenomena compared with that which, in other matters, satisfies anthropologists. Examples. Conclusion.

Among the many hypotheses as to the origin of religion, that which we may call the evolutionary, or anthropological, is most congenial to modern habits of thought. The old belief in a sudden, miraculous revelation is commonly rejected, though, in one sense, religion was none the less 'revealed,' even if man was obliged to work his way to the conception of deity by degrees. To attain that conception was the necessary result of man's reflection on the sum of his relations to the universe. The attainment, however, of the monotheistic idea is not now generally regarded as immediate and instinctive. A slow advance, a prolonged evolution was required, whether we accept Mr. Max Muller's theory of 'the sense of the Infinite,' or whether we prefer the anthropological hypothesis. The latter scheme, with various modifications, is the scheme of Epicurus, Lucretius, Hume, Mr. Tylor, and Mr. Herbert Spencer. Man half consciously transferred his implicit sense that he was a living and rational being to nature in general, and recognised that earth, sky, wind, clouds, trees, the lower animals, and so on, were persons like himself, persons perhaps more powerful and awful than himself. This transference of personality can scarcely be called the result of a conscious process of reasoning. Man might recognise personality everywhere, without much more thought or argument than a kitten exerts when it takes a cork or a ball for a living playmate. But consciousness must have reached a more explicit stage, when man began to ask himself what a person is, what life is, and when he arrived at the conclusion that life is a spirit. To advance from that conclusion; to explain all life as the manifestation of indwelling spirits; then to withdraw the conception of life and personality from inanimate things, to select from among spirits One more powerful than the rest, to recognise that One as disembodied, as superior, then as supreme, then as unique, and so to attain the monotheistic conception, has been, according to the evolutionary hypothesis, the tendency of human thought.

Unluckily we cannot study the process in its course of action. Perhaps there is no savage race so lowly endowed, that it does not possess, in addition to a world of 'spirits,' something that answers to the conception of God. Whether that is so, or not, is a question of evidence. We have often been told that this or the other people 'has no religious ideas at all'. But later we hear that they do possess a belief in spirits, and very often better information proves that, in one stage or other of advance or degradation, the theistic conception of a Maker and Judge of the world is also present. Meanwhile even civilised and monotheistic peoples also admit the existence of a world of spirits of the dead, of 'demons' (as in Platonism), of saints (as in Catholicism), of devils, of angels, or of subordinate deities. Thus the elements of religion are universally distributed in all degrees of culture, though one element is more conspicuous in one place or mood, another more conspicuous in another. In one mood the savage, or the civilised man, may be called monotheistic, in another mood atheistic, in a third, practically polytheistic. Only a few men anywhere, and they only when consciously engaged in speculation, assume a really definite and exclusive mental attitude on the subject. The orthodox monotheistic Mussulman has his afreets, and djinns; the Jew, or the Christian, has his angels, the Catholic has his saints; the Platonist has his demons; Superstition has its ghosts. The question is whether all these spiritual beings are only ghosts raised to higher powers: or (in the case of deity), to the highest conceivable power, while, even when this last process has been accomplished, we ask whether other ghosts, on lower grades, continue to be recognised. Meanwhile the whole anthropological hypothesis, whether valid or invalid, lies behind history, behind the experience of even the most backward races at present extant. If it be urged, as by Hume, that the conception of a supreme deity is only a reflection of kingship in human society, we must observe that some monarchical races, like the Aztecs, seem to have possessed no recognised monarchical Zeus; while something very like the monotheistic conception is found among races so remote from the monarchical state of society as to have no obvious distinctions of rank, like the Australian blacks. Moreover the evidence, on such difficult points, is obscure, and fluctuating, and capable of various interpretation. Even among the most backward peoples, the traceable shadow of a monotheistic idea often seems to bear marks of degradation and disuse, rather than of nascent development. There is a God, but He is neglected, and tribal spirits receive prayer and sacrifice. Just as in art there is a point where we find it difficult to decide whether an object is decadent, or archaic, so it is in the study of religious conceptions.

These are a few among the inevitable difficulties and obscurities which haunt the anthropological or evolutionary theory of the origin of religion. Other difficulties meet us at the very beginning. The theory regards gods as merely ghosts or spirits, raised to a higher, or to the highest power. Mankind, according to the system, was inevitably led, by the action of reason upon apparent facts, to endow all things, from humanity itself to earth, sky, rain, sea, fire, with conscious personality, life, spirit; and these attributes were as gradually withdrawn again, under stress of better knowledge, till only man was left with a soul, and only the universe was left with a God. The last scientific step, then, it may be inferred, is to deprive the universe of a God, and mankind of souls.

This step may be naturally taken by those who conceive that the whole process of ghost and god-making is based on a mere set of natural and inevitable fallacies, and who decline to recognise that these progressive fallacies (if fallacies they are) may be steps on a divinely appointed road towards truth; that He led us by a way that we knew not, and a path we did not understand. Yet, of course, it is plain that a conclusion may be correct, although it was reached by erroneous processes. All scientific verities have been attained in this manner, by a gradual modification and improvement of inadequate working hypotheses, by the slow substitution of correctness for error. Thus monotheism and the doctrine of the soul may be in no worse case than the Copernican theory, or the theory of the circulation of the blood, or the Darwinian theory; itself the successor of innumerable savage guesses, conjectures of Empedocles, ideas of Cuvier, of the elder Darwin, of Lamarck, and of Chambers.

At present, of course, the theistic hypothesis, and the hypothesis of a soul, do not admit of scientific verification. The difficulty is to demonstrate that 'mind' may exist, and work, apart from 'matter'. But it may conceivably become verifiable that the relations of 'mind' and 'matter' are, at all events, less obviously and immediately interdependent, that will and judgment are less closely and exclusively attached to physical organisms than modern science has believed. Now, according to the anthropological theory of the origin of religion, it was precisely from the opposite of the scientific belief,—it was from the belief that consciousness and will may be exerted apart from, at a distance from, the physical organism,—that the savage fallacies began, which ended, ex hypothesi, in monotheism, and in the doctrine of the soul. The savage, it is said, started from normal facts, which he misinterpreted. But suppose he started, not from normal facts alone, but also from abnormal facts,—from facts which science does not yet recognise at all,—then it is possible that the conclusions of the savage, though far too sweeping, and in parts undeniably erroneous, are yet, to a certain extent, not mistaken. He may have had 'a sane spot in his mind,' and a sane impulse may have led him into the right direction. Man may have faculties which savages recognise, and which physical science does not recognise. Man may be surrounded by agencies which savages exaggerate, and which science disregards altogether, and these faculties and agencies may point to an element of truth which is often cast aside as a survival of superstition, as the 'after-image' of an illusion.

The lowest known stage, and, according to the evolutionary hypothesis, the earliest stage in religion, is the belief in the ghosts of the dead, and in no other spiritual entities. Whether this belief anywhere exists alone, and untempered by higher creeds, is another question. These ghosts are fed, propitiated, receive worship, and, to put it briefly, the fittest ghosts survive, and become gods. Meanwhile the conception of ghosts of the dead is more or less consciously extended, so that spirits who never were incarnate as men become credible beings. They may inform inanimate objects, trees, rivers, fire, clouds, earth, sky, the great natural departments, and thence polytheism results. There are political processes, the consolidation of a state, for example, which help to blend these gods of various different origins into a divine consistory. One of these gods, it may be of sky, or air becomes king, and reflection may gradually come to recognise him not only as supreme, but as, theoretically, unique, and thus Zeus, from a very limited monarchy, may rise to solitary all-fatherhood. Yet Zeus may, originally, have been only the ghost of a dead medicine-man who was called 'Sky,' or he may have been the departmental spirit who presided over the sky, or he may have been sky conceived of as a personality, or these different elements may have been mingled in Zeus. But the whole conception of spirit, in any case, was derived, it is argued, from the conception of ghosts, and that conception may be traced to erroneous savage interpretations of natural and normal facts.

If all this be valid, the idea of God is derived from a savage fallacy, though, of course, it does not follow that an idea is erroneous, because it was attained by mistaken processes and from false premises. That, however, is the inference which many minds are inclined to draw from the evolutionary hypothesis. But if the facts on which the savage reasoned are, some of them, rare, abnormal, and not scientifically accepted; if, in short, they are facts demonstrative of unrecognised human faculties, if these faculties raise a presumption that will, mind, and organism are less closely interdependent than science supposes, then the savage reasoning may contain an important element of rejected truth. It may even seem, at least, conceivable that certain factors in the conception of 'spirit' were not necessarily evolved as the anthropological hypothesis conceives them to have been.

Science had scarcely begun her secular conflict with religion, when she discovered that the battle must be fought on haunted ground, on the field of the ghosts of the dead. 'There are no gods, or only dei otiosi, careless, indolent deities. There is nothing conscious that survives death, no soul that can exist apart from the fleshly body.' Such were the doctrines of Epicurus and Lucretius, but to these human nature opposed 'facts'; we see, people said, men long dead in our dreams, or even when awake: the Homeric Achilles, beholding Patroclus in a dream, instantly infers that there verily is a shadow, an eidolon, a shadowy consciousness, shadowy presence, which outlasts the death of the body. To this Epicurus and Lucretius reply, that the belief is caused by fallacious inferences from facts, these facts, appearances beheld in sleep or vision, these spectral faces of the long dead, are caused by 'films peeled off from the surface of objects, which fly to and fro through the air, and do likewise frighten our minds when they present themselves to us awake as well as in sleep, what time we behold strange shapes, and "idols" of the light-bereaved,' Lucretius expressly advances this doctrine of 'films' (an application of the Democritean theory of perception), 'that we may not believe that souls break loose from Acheron, or that shades fly about among the living, or that any part of us is left behind after death'. {341a} Believers in ghosts must have replied that they do not see, in sleep or awake, 'films' representing a mouldering corpse, as they ought to do on the Lucretian hypothesis, but the image, or idolon of a living face. Plutarch says that if philosophers may laugh, these long enduring 'films,' from a body perhaps many ages deep in dust, are laughable. {341b} However Lucretius is so wedded to his 'films' that he explains a purely fanciful being, like a centaur, by a fortuitous combination of the film of a man with the film of a horse. A 'ghost' then, is, to the mind of Lucretius, merely a casual persistent film of a dead man, composed of atoms very light which can fly at inconceivable speed, and are not arrested by material obstacles. By parity of reasoning no doubt, if Pythagoras is seen at the same moment in Thurii and Metapontum, only a film of him is beheld at one of these two places. The Democritean theory of ordinary perception thus becomes the Lucretian theory of dreams and ghosts. Not that Lucretius denies the existence of a rational soul, in living men, {341c} a portion of it may even leave the body during sleep, and only a spark may be left in the embers of the physical organism. If even that spark withdraws, death follows, and the soul, no longer warmly housed in the body, ceases to exist. For the 'film' (ghost) is not the soul, and the soul is not the film, whereas savage philosophy identifies the soul with the ghost. Even Lucretius retains the savage conception of the soul as a thing of rarer matter, a thing partly separable from the body, but that thing is resolved for ever into its elements on the death of the body. His imaginary 'film,' on the other hand, may apparently endure for ages.

The Lucretian theory had, for Lucretius, the advantages of being physical, and of dealing a blow at the hated doctrine of a future life. For the public it had the disadvantages of being incapable of proof, of not explaining the facts, as conceived to exist, and of being highly ridiculous, as Plutarch observed. Much later philosophers explained all apparitions as impressions of sense, recorded on the brain, and so actively revived that they seemed to have an objective existence. One or two stock cases (Nicolai's, and Mrs. A.'s), in which people in a morbid condition, saw hallucinations which they knew to be hallucinations, did, and do, a great deal of duty. Mr. Sully has them, as Hibbert and Brewster have them, engaged as protagonists. Collective hallucinations, and the hallucinations of the sane which coincide with the death, or other crisis in the experience of the person who seemed to be seen, were set down to imagination, 'expectant attention,' imposture, mistaken identity, and so forth.

Without dwelling on the causes, physical or psychological, which have been said by Frazer of Tiree (1707), Ferrier, Hibbert, Scott, and others, to account for the hallucinations of the sane, for 'ghosts,' Mr. Tylor has ably erected his theory of animism, or the belief in spirits. Thinking savages, he says, 'were deeply impressed by two groups of biological phenomena,' by the facts of living, dying, sleep, trance, waking and disease. They asked: 'What is the difference between a living body and a dead one?' They wanted to know the causes of sleep, trance and death. They were also concerned to explain the appearances of dead or absent human beings in dreams and waking visions. Now it was plain that 'life' could go away, as it does in death, or seems to do in dreamless sleep. Again, a phantasm of a living man can go away and appear to waking or sleeping people at a distance. The conclusion was reached by savages that the phantasm which thus appears is identical with the life which 'goes away' in sleep or trance. Sometimes it returns, when the man wakes, or escapes from his trance. Sometimes it stays away, he dies, his body corrupts, but the phantasm endures, and is occasionally seen in sleeping or waking vision. The general result of savage thought is that man's life must be conceived as a personal and rational entity, called his 'soul,' while it remains in his body, his 'wraith,' when it is beheld at a distance during his life, his 'ghost,' when it is observed after his death. Many circumstances confirmed or illustrated this savage hypothesis Breath remains with the body during life, deserts it at death. Hence the words spiritus, 'spirit,' [Greek], anima, and, when the separable nature of the shadow is noticed, hence come 'shade,' 'umbra,' [Greek], with analogues in many languages. The hypothesis was also strengthened, by the great difficulty which savages feel in discriminating between what occurs in dreams, and what occurs to men awake. Many civilised persons feel the same difficulty with regard to hallucinations beheld by them when in bed, asleep or awake they know not, on the dim border of existence. Reflection on all these experiences ended in the belief in spirits, in souls of the living, in wraiths of the living, in ghosts of the dead, and, finally, in God.

This theory is most cogently presented by Mr. Tylor, and is confirmed by examples chosen from his wide range of reading. But, among these normal and natural facts, as of sleep, dream, breath, life, dying, Mr. Tylor includes (not as facts, but as examples of applied animistic theory) cases of 'clairvoyance,' apparitions of the dying seen by the living at a distance, second sight, ghostly disturbances of knocking and rapping, movements of objects, and so forth. It is not a question for Mr. Tylor whether clairvoyance ever occurs: whether 'death-bed wraiths' have been seen to an extent not explicable by the laws of chance, whether disturbances and movements of objects not to be accounted for by human agency are matters of universal and often well-attested report. Into the question of fact, Mr. Tylor explicitly declines to enter; these things only concern him because they have been commonly explained by the 'animistic hypothesis,' that is, by the fancied action of spirits. The animistic hypothesis, again, is the result, naturally fallacious, of savage man's reasonings on life, death, sleep, dreams, trance, breath, shadow and the other kindred biological phenomena. Thus clairvoyance (on the animistic hypothesis) is the flight of the conscious 'spirit' of a living man across space or time; the 'deathbed wraith' is the visible apparition of the newly- emancipated 'spirit,' and 'spirits' cause the unexplained disturbances and movements of objects. In fact it is certain that the animistic hypothesis (though a mere fallacy) does colligate a great number of facts very neatly, and has persisted from times of low savagery to the present age of reason. So here is a case of the savage origin and persistent 'survival' of a hypothesis,—the most potent hypothesis in the history of humanity.

From Mr. Tylor's point of view, his concern with the subject ceases here, it is not his business to ascertain whether the abnormal facts are facts or fancies. Yet, to other students, this question is very important. First, if clairvoyance, wraiths, and the other alleged phenomena, really do occur, or have occurred, then savage man had much better grounds for the animistic hypothesis than if no such phenomena ever existed. For instance, if a medicine-man not only went into trances, but brought back from these expeditions knowledge otherwise inaccessible, then there were better grounds for believing in a consciousness exerted apart from the body than if there were no evidence but that of non-veridical dreams. If merely the dream- coincidences which the laws of chance permit were observed, the belief in the soul's dream-flight would win less favourable and general acceptance than it would if clairvoyance, 'the sleep of the shadow,' were a real if rare experience. The very name given by the Eskimos to the hypnotic state, 'the sleep of the shadow,' proves that savages do make distinctions between normal and abnormal conditions of slumber.

In the same way a few genuine wraiths, or ghosts, or 'veridical hallucinations,' would be enough to start the animistic hypothesis, or to confirm it notably, if it was already started. As to disturbances and movements of objects unexplained, these, in his own experience, suggested, even to De Morgan, the hypothesis of a conscious, active, and purposeful will, not that of any human being present. Now such a will is hardly to be defined otherwise than as 'spiritual'. This order of phenomena, like those of clairvoyance and wraiths, might either give rise to the savage animistic hypothesis, or, at least, might confirm it greatly. In fact, if the sets of abnormal phenomena existed, or were held to exist, savage man scarcely needed the normal phenomena for the basis of his spiritual belief. The normal phenomena lent him such terms as 'spirit,' 'shadow,' but much of his theory might have been built on the foundation of the abnormal phenomena alone. A 'veridical hallucination,' of the dying would give him a 'wraith'; a recognised hallucination of the dead would give him a ghost: the often reported and unexplained movements and disturbances would give him a vui, 'house spirit,' 'brownie,' 'domovoy,' follet, lar, or lutin. Or these occurrences might suggest to the thinking savage that some discontented influence survived from the recently dead.

Four thousand years have passed since houses were haunted in Egypt, and have left some sane, educated, and methodical men to meet the same annoyances as the ancient Egyptians did, by the same measures. We do not pretend to discover, without examination, the causes of the sounds and sights which baffle trained and not superstitious investigators. But we do say that similar occurrences, in a kraal or an Eskimo hut, in a wigwam, in a cave, or under a gunyeh, would greatly confirm the animistic hypothesis of savages. The theory of imposture (in some cases) does undeniably break down, for the people who hold it cannot even suggest a modus operandi within the reach of the human beings concerned, as in the case of the Wesleys. The theory of contagious hallucination of all the senses is the property of Coleridge alone. The hypothesis of a nervous force which sets up centres of conscious action is confined to Hartmann, and to certain Highland philosophers, cavalierly dismissed by the Rev. Robert Kirk as 'men illiterate'. Instead of making these guesses, the savage thinkers merely applied the animistic hypothesis, which they had found to work very well already, and, as De Morgan says, to colligate the phenomena better than any other theory. We cannot easily conceive men who know neither sleep nor dreams, but if the normal phenomena of sleep and dreams had not existed, the abnormal phenomena already described, if they occurred, as they are universally said to do, could have given rise, when speculated upon, to the belief in spirits.

But, it may reasonably be urged, 'the natural familiar facts of life, death, sleep, waking, dreams, breath, and shadows, are all versae causae, do undeniably exist, and, without the aid of any of your abnormal facts, afford basis enough for the animistic hypothesis. Moreover, after countless thousands of years, during which superstition has muttered about your abnormal facts, official science still declines to hear a word on the topic of clairvoyance or telepathy. You don't find the Royal Society investigating second sight, or attending to legends about tables which rebel against the law of gravitation.'

These are cogent remarks. Normal facts, perhaps, may have suggested the belief in spirits, the animistic hypothesis. But we do not find the hypothesis (among the backward races) where abnormal facts are not alleged to be matters of comparatively frequent experience. Consequently we do not know that the normal facts, alone, suggested the existence of spirits to early thinkers, we can only make the statement on a priori grounds. Like George Eliot's rural sage we 'think it sounds a deal likelier'. But that, after all, though a taking, is not a powerful and conclusive syllogism.

Again, we certainly do not expect to see the Royal Society inquiring into second sight, or clairvoyance, or thought transference. When the Royal Society was first founded several of its members, Pepys, F.R.S.; Mr. Robert Boyle, F.R.S.; the Rev. Joseph Glanvill, F.R.S., went into these things a good deal. But, in spite of their title, they were only amateurs. They had no professional dignity to keep up. They were well aware that they, unlike the late Mr. Faraday, did not know, by inspiration or by common-sense, the limits of the possible. They tried all things, it was such a superstitious age. Now men of science, or the majority of them, for there are some exceptions, know what is, and what is not possible. They know that germs of life may possibly come down on meteorites from somewhere else, and they produced an argument for the existence of a bathybius. But they also know that a man is not a bird to be in two places at once, like Pythagoras, and that nobody can see through a stone wall. These, and similar allegations, they reckon impossible, and, if the facts happen, so much the worse for the facts. They can only be due to imposture or mal-observation, and there is an end of the matter. This is the view of official science. Unluckily, not many years ago, official science was equally certain that the ordinary phenomena of hypnotism were based on imposture and on mal- observation. These phenomena, too, were tabooed. But so many people could testify to them, and they could be so easily explained by the suggestive force of suggestion, that they were reluctantly admitted within the sacred citadel. Many people, sane, not superstitious, healthy, and even renowned as scientific specialists, attest the existence of the still rarer phenomena which are said, in certain cases, to accompany the now more familiar incidents of hypnotism. But these phenomena have never yet been explained by any theory which science recognises, as she does recognise that suggestion is suggestive. Therefore these rarer phenomena manifestly do not exist, and cannot be the subject of legitimate inquiry.

These are unanswerable observations, and it is only the antiquarian who can venture, in his humble way, to reply to them. His answer has a certain force ad hominem, that is, as addressed to anthropologists. They, too, have but recently been admitted within the scientific fold; time was when their facts were regarded as mere travellers' tales. Mr. Max Muller is now, perhaps, almost alone in his very low estimate of anthropological evidence, and, possibly, even that sturdy champion is beginning to yield ground. Defending the validity of the testimony on which anthropologists reason about the evolution of religion, custom, manners, mythology, law, Mr. Tylor writes:—

'It is a matter worthy of consideration that the accounts of similar phenomena of culture, recurring in different parts of the world, actually supply incidental proof of their own authenticity. . . . The test of recurrence comes in. . . . The possibility of intentional or unintentional mystification is often barred by such a state of things as that a similar statement is made in two remote lands by two witnesses, of whom A lived a century before B, and B appears never to have heard of A.'

If for 'similar phenomena of culture' here, we substitute 'similar abnormal phenomena' (such as clairvoyance, wraiths, unexplained disturbances), Mr. Tylor's argument in favour of his evidence for institutions applies equally well to our evidence for mysterious 'facts'. 'How distant are the countries,' he goes on, 'how wide apart are the dates, how different the creeds and characters in the catalogue of the facts of civilisation, needs no further showing'— to the student of Mr. Tylor's erudite footnotes. In place of 'facts of civilisation' read 'psychical phenomena,' and Mr. Tylor's argument applies to the evidence for these rejected and scouted beliefs.

The countries from which 'ghosts' and 'wraiths' and 'clairvoyance' are reported are 'distant'; the dates are 'wide apart'; the 'creeds and characters of the observers' 'are 'different'; yet the evidence is as uniform, and as recurrent, as it is in the case of institutions, manners, customs. Indeed the evidence for the rejected and abnormal phenomena is even more 'recurrent' than the evidence for customs and institutions. Polyandry, totemism, human sacrifice, the taboo, are only reported as existing in remote and semi-civilised countries. Clairvoyance, wraiths, ghosts, mysterious disturbances and movements of objects are reported as existing, not only in distant ages, but today; not only among savages or barbarians, but in London, Paris, Milan. No ages can be more wide apart, few countries much more distant, than ancient Egypt and modern England: no characters look more different than that of an old scribe under Pharaoh, and that of a distinguished soldier under Queen Victoria. Yet the scribe of Khemi and General Campbell suffer from the same inexplicable annoyance, attribute it to the same very abnormal agency, and attempt (not unsuccessfully) to communicate with that agency, in precisely the same way.

This, though a striking, is an isolated and perhaps a casual example of recurrence and uniformity in evidence. Mr. Tylor's Primitive Culture is itself a store-house of other examples, to which more may easily be added. For example, there is the old and savage belief in a 'sending'. The medicine-man, or medium, or witch, can despatch a conscious, visible, and intelligent agent, non-normal, to do his bidding at a distance. This belief is often illustrated in the Scandinavian sagas. Rink testifies to it among the Eskimo, Grinnell among the Pawnees: Porphyry alleges that by some such 'telepathic impact' Plotinus, from a distance, made a hostile magician named Alexander 'double up like an empty bag,' and saw and reported this agreeable circumstance. {352} Hardly any abnormal phenomenon or faculty sounds less plausible, and the 'spectral evidence' for the presence of a witch's 'sending,' when the poor woman could establish an alibi for her visible self, appeared dubious even to Cotton Mather. But, in their Phantasms of the Living, Messrs. Gurney and Myers give cases in which a visible 'sending' was intentionally emitted by Baron Schrenck Notzing, by a stock-broker, by a young student of engineering, and by a French hospital nurse, to take no other instances. The person visited frequently by the 'sendings' in the last cases was a French physician engaged in the hospital, who reports and attests the facts. All the cases are given at first hand on the testimony of the senders and of the recipients of the sendings. Bulwer Lytton was familiar with the belief, and uses the 'shining shadow' in A Strange Story. Now here is uniform recurrent evidence from widely severed ages, from distant countries, from the Polar North, the American prairie, Neoplatonic Egypt and Greece, England and New England of the seventeenth century, and England and Germany of today. The 'creeds and characters of the observers' are as 'different' as Neoplatonism, Shamanism, Christianity of divers sects, and probably Agnosticism or indifference. All these conditions of unvarying testimony constitute good evidence for institutions and customs; anthropologists, who eagerly accept such testimony in their own studies, may decide as to whether they deserve total neglect when adduced in another field of anthropology.

Turning from 'sendings,' or 'telepathy' voluntarily brought to bear on one living person by another, we might examine 'death-bed wraiths,' or the telepathic impact—'if that hypothesis of theirs be sound'—produced by a dying on a living human being. A savage example, in which a Fuegian native on board an English ship saw his father, who was expiring in Tierra del Fuego, has the respectable authority of Mr. Darwin's Cruise of the Beagle. Instances, on the other hand, in which Australian blacks, or Fijians, see the phantasms of dead kinsmen warning them of their decease (which follows punctually) may be found in Messrs. Fison and Howitt's Kamilaroi and Kurnai.

From New Zealand Mr. Tylor cites, with his authorities, the following example: {353} 'A party of Maoris (one of whom told the story) were seated round a fire in the open air, when there appeared, seen only by two of them, the figure of a relative left ill at home. They exclaimed, the figure vanished, and, on the return of the party, it appeared that the sick man had died about the time of the vision.' A traveller in New Zealand illustrates the native belief in the death-wraith by an amusing anecdote. A Rangatira, or native gentleman, had gone on the war-path. One day he walked into his wife's house, but after a few moments could not be found. The military expedition did not return, so the lady, taking it for granted that her husband, the owner of the wraith, was dead, married an admirer. The hallucination, however, was not 'veridical'; the warrior came home, but he admitted that he had no remedy and no feud against his successor. The owner of a wraith which has been seen may be assumed to be dead. Such is Maori belief. The modern civilised examples of death-wraiths, attested and recorded in Phantasms of the Living, are numerous; but statistics prove that a lady who marries again on the strength of a wraith may commit an error of judgment, and become liable to the penalty of bigamy. The Maoris, no statisticians, take a more liberal and tolerant view. These are comparatively scanty examples from savage life, but then they are corroborated by the wealth of recurrent and coincident evidence from civilised races, ancient and modern.

On the point of clairvoyance, it is unnecessary to dwell. The second-sighted man, the seer of events remote in space or not yet accomplished in time, is familiar everywhere, from the Hebrides to the Coppermine River, from the Samoyed and Eskimo to the Zulu, from the Euphrates to the Hague. The noises heard in 'haunted houses,' the knocking, routing, dragging of heavy bodies, is recorded, Mr. Tylor says, by Dayaks, Singhalese, Siamese, and Esths; Dennys, in his Folklore of China, notes the occurrences in the Celestial Empire; Grimm, in his German Mythology, gives examples, starting from the communicative knocks of a spirit near Bingen, in the chronicle of Rudolf (856), and Suetonius tells a similar tale from imperial Rome. The physician of Catherine de Medicis, Ambroise Pare, describes every one of the noises heard by the Wesleys, long after his day, as familiar, and as caused by devils. Recurrence and conformity of evidence cannot be found in greater force.

The anthropological test of evidence for faith in the rejected phenomena is thus amply satisfied. Unless we say that these phenomena are 'impossible,' whereas totemism, the couvade, cannibalism, are possible, the testimony to belief in clairvoyance, and the other peculiar occurrences, is as good in its way as the evidence for the practice of wild customs and institutions. There remains a last and notable circumstance. All the abnormal phenomena, in the modern and mediaeval tales, occur most frequently in the presence of convulsionaries, like the so-called victims of witches, like the Hon. Master Sandilands, Lord Torphichen's son (1720), like the grandson of William Morse in New England (1680), and like Bovet's case of the demon of Spraiton. {355}

The 'mediums' of modern spiritualism, like Francis Fey, are, or pretend to be, subject to fits, anaesthesia, jerks, convulsive movements, and trance. As Mr. Tylor says about his savage jossakeeds, powwows, Birraarks, peaimen, everywhere 'these people suffer from hysterical, convulsive, and epileptic affections'. Thus the physical condition, all the world over, of persons who exhibit most freely the accepted phenomena, is identical. All the world over, too, the same persons are credited with the rejected phenomena, clairvoyance, 'discerning of spirits,' powers of voluntary 'telepathic 'and 'telekinetic' impact. Thus we find that uniform and recurrent evidence vouches for a mass of phenomena which science scouts. Science has now accepted a portion of the mass, but still rejects the stranger occurrences. Our argument is that their invariably alleged presence, in attendance on the minor occurrences, is, at least, a point worthy of examination. The undesigned coincidences of testimony represent a great deal of smoke, and proverbial wisdom suggests a presumption in favour of a few sparks of fire. Now, if there are such sparks, the animistic hypothesis may not, of course, be valid,—'spirits' may not exist,—but the universal belief in their existence may have had its origin, not in normal facts only, but in abnormal facts. And these facts, at the lowest estimate, must suggest that man may have faculties, and be surrounded by agencies, which physical science does not take into account in its theory of the universe and of human nature.

We have already argued that the doctrines of theism and of the soul need not to be false, even if they were arrived at slowly, after a succession of grosser opinions. But if the doctrines were reached by a process which started from real facts of human nature, observed by savages, but not yet recognised by physical science, then there may have been grains of truth even in the cruder and earlier ideas, and these grains of gold may have been disengaged, and fashioned, not without Divine aid, into the sacred things of spiritual religion.

The stories which we have been considering are often trivial, sometimes comic; but they are universally diffused, and as well established as universally coincident testimony can establish anything. Now, if there be but one spark of real fire to all this smoke, then the purely materialistic theories of life and of the world must be reconsidered. They seem very well established, but so have many other theories seemed, that are long gone the way of all things human.



Footnotes:

{0a} Fortnightly Review, February 1866, and in a lecture, 1895.

{0b} This diary was edited for private circulation, by a son of Mr. Proctor's, who remembers the disturbances.

{0c} See essays here on Classical and Savage Spiritualism.

{0d} This was merely a cheerful obiter dictum by the learned President.

{4} Not the house agent.

{9} Porphyry, Epistola xxi. Iamblichus, De Myst., iii. 2.

{11} The Port Glasgow story is in Report of the Dialectical Society, p. 200. The flooring was torn up; walls, ceilings, cellars, were examined by the police, and attempts were made to imitate the noises, without success. In this case, as at Rerrick in the end of the seventeenth century, and elsewhere, 'the appearance of a hand moving up and down' was seen by the family, 'but we could not catch it: it quietly vanished, and we only felt cold air'. The house was occupied by a gardener, Hugh McCardle. Names of witnesses, a sergeant of police, and others, are appended.

{12} Report of Dialectical Society, p. 86.

{17a} For ourselves, we have never seen or heard a table give any responses whatever, any more than we have seen the ghosts, heard the raps, or viewed the flights of men in the air which we chronicle in a later portion of this work.

{17b} Report on Spiritualism, Longmans, London, 1871.

{18} Report, p. 229.

{21} Mr. Wallace may be credited with scoring a point in argument. Dr. Edmunds had maintained that no amount of evidence would make him believe in certain obvious absurdities, say the lions in Trafalgar Square drinking out of the fountains. Mr. Wallace replied: 'The asserted fact is either possible or not possible. If possible, such evidence as we have been considering would prove it; if not possible, such evidence could not exist.' No such evidence exists for the lions; for the phenomena of so-called spiritualism, we have consentient testimony in every land, period and stage of culture. That certainly makes a difference, whatever the weight and value of the difference may be.

{26a} This illustration is not Mr. Lecky's.

{26b} We have here thrown together a crowd of odd experiences. The savages' examples are dealt with in the next essay; the Catholic marvels in the essay on 'Comparative Psychical Research'. For Pascal, consult L'Amulette de Pascal, by M. Lelut; for Iamblichus, see essay on 'Ancient Spiritualism'. As to Welsh, the evidence for the light in which he shone is printed in Dr. Hill Burton's Scot Abroad (i. 289), from a Wodrow MS. in Glasgow University. Mr. Welsh was minister of Ayr. He was meditating in his garden late at night. One of his friends 'chanced to open a window towards the place where he walked, and saw clearly a strange light surround him, and heard him speak strange words about his spiritual joy'. Hill Burton thinks that this verges on the Popish superstition. The truth is that eminent ministers shared the privileges of Mediums and of some saints. Examples of miraculous cures by ministers, of clairvoyance on their part, of spirit-raps attendant on them, and of prophecy, are current on Presbyterian hagiology. No ministers, to our knowledge, were 'levitated,' but some nearly flew out of their pulpits. Patrick Walker, in his Biographia Presbyteriana, vol. ii. p. 21, mentions a supernatural light which floated round The Sweet Singers, Meikle John Gibb and his friends, before they burned a bible. Mr. Gibb afterwards excelled as a pow-wow, or Medicine Man, among the Red Indians.

{30} Teutonic Mythology, English translation, vol. ii. p. 514. He cites Pertz, i. 372.

{31} A very early turning table, of 1170, is quoted from Giraldus Cambrensis by Dean Stanley in his Canterbury Memorials, p. 103. The table threw off the weapons of Becket's murderers. This was at South Malling. See the original in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, ii. 425.

{35} See Mr. Tylor's Primitive Culture, chap, xi., for the best statement of the theory.

{38} Petitot, Traditions Indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest, p. 434.

{40} Very possibly the whirring roar of the turndun, or [Greek], in Greek, Zuni, Yoruba, Australian, Maori and South African mysteries is connected with this belief in a whirring sound caused by spirits. See Custom and Myth.

{41a} Proc. S. P. R., xix. 180.

{41b} Brough Smyth, i. 475.

{42} Auckland, 1863, ch. x.

{45a} [Greek].—Iamblichus.

{45b} Kohl, Kitchi-Gami, p. 278.

{48} Hind's Explorations in Labrador, ii. 102.

{50a} Rowley, Universities' Mission to Central Africa, p. 217: cited by Mr. Tylor.

{50b} Quoted in La Table Parlante, a French serial, No. I, p. 6.

{51} Colonel A. B. Ellis, in his work on the Yorubas (1894), reports singular motions of a large wooden cylinder. It is used in ordeals.

{52} The Natural and Morall History of the East and West Indies, p. 566, London, 1604.

{53} February 9, 1872. Quoted by Mr. Tylor, in Primitive Culture, ii. 39, 1873.

{57} Revue des Deux Mondes, 1856, tome i. p. 853.

{60} Hallucinations, English translation, p. 182, London, 1859.

{62} Laws, xi.

{63} Records of the Past, iv. 134-136.

{65a} The references are to Parthey's edition, Berlin, 1857.

{65b} [Greek], 4, 3.

{65c} All are, for Porphyry, 'phantasmogenetic agencies'.

{66a} Jean Brehal, par P.P. Belon et Balme, Paris, s.a., p. 105.

{66b} Proces de Condemnation, i. 75.

{67a} Appended to Beaumont's work on Spirits, 1705.

{67b} See Mr. Lillie's Modern Mystics, and, better, Mr. Myers, in Proceedings S. P. R., Jan., 1894.

{68a} Origen, or whoever wrote the Philosophoumena, gives a recipe for producing a luminous figure on a wall. For moving lights, he suggests attaching lighted tow to a bird, and letting it loose. Maury translates the passages in La Magie, pp. 58-59. Spiritualists, of course, will allege that the world-wide theory of spectral lights is based on fact, and that the hallucinations are not begotten by subjective conditions, but by a genuine 'phantasmogenetic agency'. Two men of science, Baron Schrenk- Notzing, and Dr. Gibotteau, vouch for illusions of light accompanying attempts by living agents to transfer a hallucinatory vision of themselves to persons at a distance (Journal S. P. R., iii. 307; Proceedings, viii. 467). It will be asserted by spiritualists that disembodied agencies produce the same effect in a higher degree.

{68b} [Greek].

{69} [Greek].

{70a} Damascius, ap. Photium.

{70b} [Greek].

{71} Life of Hugh Macleod (Noble, Inverness). As an example of the growth of myth, see the version of these facts in Fraser's Magazine for 1856. Even in a sermon preached immediately after the event, it was said that the dreamer found the pack by revelation of his dream!

{72} iii. 2. [Greek].

{73} Greek Papyri in the British Museum; edited by F. G. Kenyon, M.A., London, 1893.

{74} See notice in Classical Review, February, 1894.

{75a} See oracles in Eusebius, Praep. Evang., v. 9. The medium was tied up in some way, he had to be unloosed and raised from the ground. The inspiring agency, in a hurry to be gone, gave directions for the unbinding. [Greek]. The binding of the Highland seer in a bull's hide is described by Scott in the Lady of the Lake. A modern Highland seer has ensconced himself in a boiler! The purpose is to concentrate the 'force'.

{75b} Praep. Evang., v. 8.

{75c} Ibid., v. 15, 3.

{78a} Dr. Hodgson, in Proceedings S. P. R., Jan., 1894, makes Mr. Kellar's evidence as to Indian 'levitation' seem far from convincing! As a professional conjurer, and exposer of spiritualistic imposture, Mr. Kellar has made statements about his own experiences which are not easily to be harmonised.

{78b} Proceedings S. P. R. Jan., 1894.

{86} The Miraculous Conformist. A letter to the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esq. Oxford: University Press, 1666.

{88a} Fourth edition, London, 1726.

{88b} In Kirk's Secret Commonwealth, 1691. London: Nutt, 1893.

{90a} In the Salem witch mania, a similar case of levitation was reported by the Rev. Cotton Mather. He produced a cloud of witnesses, who could not hold the woman down. She would fly up. Mr. Mather sent the signed depositions to his opponent, Mr. Calef. But Calef would not believe, for, said he, 'the age of miracles is past'. Which was just the question at issue! See Beaumont's Treatise of Spirits, p. 148, London, 1705.

{90b} Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, p. 7. London: Burns, 1875.

{90c} Popular Tales, iv. 340.

{94} The anecdote is published by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in a letter of Lauderdale's, affixed to Sharpe's edition of Law's Memorialls.

{95} See Ghosts before the Law.

{96} Proceedings S. P. R., xv. 33.

{100a} See many examples in Li Fiorette de Misser Santo Francesco.

{100b} Ch. cxviii.

{101} D. D. Home; his Life and Mission, p. 307, London, 1888.

{102} Sept. 18, vol. v., 1866.

{107a} See Colonel Yule's Marco Polo.

{107b} Quarterly Journal of Science, July, 1871.

{108a} Proceedings S. P. R., xix. 146.

{108b} North American Review, 1893.

{108c} Proceedings S. P. R., x. 45-100; xix. 147.

{109a} Incidents in my Life, i. 170.

{109b} A Paris, chez la Veuve du Carroy, 1621.

{110a} Folklore of China, 1876, p. 79.

{110b} Op. cit., p. 74.

{110c} Paris. Quarto. Black letter. 1528. The original is extremely rare. We quote from a copy once in the Tellier collection, reprinted in Recueil de Dissertations Anciennes et Nouvelles sur les Apparitions. Leloup: Avignon, 1751, vol. ii. pp. 1-87.

{112} Proceedings S. P. R., xix. 186. 'C.' is a Miss Davis, daughter of a gentleman occupying 'a responsible position as a telegraphist'. The date was 1888.

{114a} Satan's Invisible World Discovered. Edinburgh: Reid, 1685. Pp. 67-69.

{114b} Manuscript 7170, A, de la Bibliotheque du Roi. Dissertations, ut supra, vol. i. pp. 95-129.

{115} Dufresnoy, op. cit., i. 95-129.

{117} Compare Bastian, Mensch., ii. 393, cited by Mr. Tylor.

{118} De Materia Daemon. Isagoge, p. 539. Ap. Corn. Agripp., De Occult. Philosoph. Lyons, 1600.

{122} Aubrey gives a variant in his Miscellanies, on the authority of the Vicar of Barnstaple. He calls Fey 'Fry'.

{123a} The Devonshire case, 'Story of a Something,' in Miss O'Neill's Devonshire Idylls, is attested by a surviving witness.

{123b} Trials of Isobell Young, 1629, and of Jonet Thomson, Feb. 7, 1643. Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 593.

{124} Witness Rev. E. T. Vaughan, King's Langley. 1884.

{125a} Segraisiana, p. 213.

{125b} Crookes's Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena usually called Spiritual. 86. London: Burns (second edition).