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SPIRITUALISM
By the Rev. R. H. Benson
It is becoming every day increasingly impossible
for any educated man to dismiss the subject of
Spiritualism with mere contempt. A matter which
is engaging the earnest attention of men like Professor
Barrett, Professor Oliver Lodge, and women like Mrs
Henry Sidgwick; a branch of inquiry which absorbs
Professor Richet, which has changed Professor Lombroso from a convinced materialist into a believer in
the spiritual world; a religion which numbers hun
dreds of thousands of adherents throughout the
civilized globe, including many professors at foreign
universities, and has produced societies in every
European country, which can trace back its spiritual
descent in every civilization practically as far as
ordinary theistic religion itself; which claims, unlike
other religions, to produce evidential phenomena
practically at will, and to bring spiritual existences
before the bar of the senses—all this can no longer be
ignored or simply laughed at. A generation or two
ago it was possible to take up such an attitude ; it
appeared then, at least to men of average education,
as if the matter had become finally discredited ; the
thing lurked about among ill-informed people in
slightly disreputable and dingy surroundings; its
professors, when they engaged public attention at all,
were frequently detected in fraud ; there was scarcely
one adherent to its philosophy—scarcely even one
who thought it worth investigation—whose name was
known beyond his own immediate circle. But all
this has changed. The affair has come out into the
light of day; its phenomena are in process of being
36
1
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The History of Religions
136
respectfully judged by scientists as well as by theo
logians ; and it must take its place at last among the
recognized religions of the world.
I 0)
Its history is, as has been said, as old as the history
of civilization, and even older, since, under the form
of Necromancy, it is said to be traceable among vari
ous nations in almost every part of the world, and it
survives to-day among peoples so far removed from
one another as the Esquimaux and the Hindus. It
is also one of its characteristics that it usually under
goes strong revivals at periods when established
creeds are beginning to lose their hold, and that it is
one of the most common signs of decadence in re-,
ligious thought. It is mentioned, with decided con
demnation, in book after book of the Old Testament.1Yet it is difficult to determine its creed, since this
appears to take its colouring to a large extent from
the religious thought of the respective countries in
which it flourishes.2 It is by its phenomena, and its
startling claims to bring the spiritual world within
the range of the senses, rather than by its dogmas,
that it may be identified as one religion rather than
many.
It would be impossible therefore to give a coherent
or exhaustive account of Spiritualism considered as a
world-religion. All that is possible is to describe it
as it appears in the world to-day, to state its claims,
and to examine its credentials. In its present form,
especially under the aspect of communication through
1 Lev. xx. 6. “The soul that shall go aside after magicians and
soothsayers ... I will set my face against that soul.’; xix. 31 ;
1 Kings xxviii. 3 • 4 Kings xxi. 6 ; etc.
2 Spiritistic practices have been traced amongst nations so far removed
from one another as the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, the Jews, the
North American Indians. (Cf. Lapponi, Hypnotism and Spiritism,
pp. 20 ff.)
�361
Spiritualism
3
rapping on tables, it first appeared in America in
the year 1848, whence it spread quickly all over
Europe.1
(ii)
Briefly speaking, the spiritualist claims that the
“ other world ” is directly accessible to this, not merely
by one revelation made once for all and preserved in
its integrity, not merely by sacraments or the recep
tion of supersensual grace, not merely by exceptional
and abnormal apparitions very occasionally granted
by direct Divine permission; but by constant com
munications from the spirits of the departed, through
which men can be assured of the survival of human
souls, and can receive a kind of progressive revelation
of the supreme laws of the universe.
These communications are made (it is said) in a
variety of ways; but for all of them there is required
what is known as the mediumistic faculty on the part
of at least.one of the inquirers. The medium in fact
is a person living in this world who, through his
peculiar constitution, is enabled to act as a channel
between'the two worlds, and to be so used by the
discarnate personalities who desire to communicate
with human beings. For those communications to
take place it is usually necessary for the medium to
pass into a state of trance, such as was that into
which the priests and priestesses of the old oracles
were accustomed to pass. The usual method of
procedure at spiritualistic meetings then, though not
the invariable method, is as follows:—
The inquirers themselves sit round a table and
endeavour to put themselves into a sympathetic
attitude of mind, placing their hands upon the table
in order to establish the “ circle ”—that is, a kind of
psychical ring, connected perhaps with some unknown
1 Its revival at the present day is no doubt largely due to the Pro
testant disregard of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints.
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The History of Religions
[36
laws of magnetism—through which the communica
tions may be more easily made. The “spiritual
atmosphere” is often helped by the singing of hymns,
the playing of soft music, or the offering of prayer.
The medium, according to circumstances, sits either
with the inquirers or in a cabinet apart by himself.
Precautions are usually taken intended to guard against
possible fraud, conscious or unconscious.
After a certain period has passed it is claimed that
phenomena frequently take place that put it beyond
a doubt that discarnate and intelligent spirits are
present and are beginning to communicate. These are
generally of one or more of the following kinds :—
(a) Movements of inanimate objects.—The table at
which the inquirers are seated begins to tremble, to
move, to emit rapping sounds, to rise from the floor
in such a manner as cannot be explained by human
agency. Objects in the room are seen (in the twilight,
in which the seances are usually held) to move through
the air ; or, in darkness, are felt by the sitters to touch
therrf. Objects are brought through closed doors and
placed upon the table. Other objects are actually
“ materialized,” that is, are brought into existence in
a manner to be discussed later. Lights of a peculiar
nature are formed in the air and move about fast or
slowly. A pencil placed upon a sheet of paper or
within locked slates is heard to move upon the paper,
and messages are found later written upon the paper
or slates.1
1 Extract from “Report on a Series of Sittings with Eusapia Palla
dino,” reprinted from the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research, part lix,, vol. xxiii. pp. 404, 431, 498. By the Hon.
Everard Feilding, W. W. Baggally, and Hereward Carrington:—
(<z) “ 12.5 a.m. Complete levitation of the table.
C. I hold both her ankles with my two hands.
F. I was holding her right hand in the middle of the table.
Prof. G. I was holding her left hand on the rim of the table.
I1. Prof. G.’s left hand was on my right hand (across the table).
Note by M. Large movements of the table; I can just see the
table up in the air. ...”
(Extract from shorthand report taken at the time.)
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Spiritualism
5
(jo) Messages delivered through the mouth of the
medium.—These consist in sentences spoken by the
medium, generally in a voice alien to himself, pur
porting to come from one or more discarnate spirits
present in the room, known either personally or by
repute while they lived in the body to one or more
of the inquirers. It is claimed that these messages
often concern private matters utterly unknown to the
medium, known only to the inquirer and to the
departed soul who is present. Sometimes these
messages are of a private nature, sometimes of public
interest, and concern spiritual and religious truths.
(c) Messages delivered through inanimate objects.—
These come sometimes, as has been said, by means of
a pencil placed on paper or within locked slates,
sometimes by means of raps upon the table or the
walls of a room, interpreted by a code agreed upon
by the sitters. Three raps usually are taken to stand
for “yes,” one rap for “ no.”1
“ 11.26 p.m. The small table is levitated right on to the seance
table, through the curtains between B. and the medium.
It rose to a height of two and a half feet from the floor,
and is now resting on the seance table. ...”
“ 12.5° a. m. F. She taps with her right hand on mine, and the
tambourine shakes synchronously within the cabinet.
C. The bell rings, and has been brought on the top of the
medium’s head from the cabinet, and remains there.
F. I was holding her right hand on the top of the table. I saw
the bell arrive on her head. ...”
(5) “F. A light flashed out about a foot behind and above the
medium’s head. It was of a brilliant bluish-green colour.
(It was a steady light, and lasted about two seconds.)
11.37 p.m. F. Now another light has come out, this time on
the medium’s lap.
B. Both C. and F, saw a brilliant light inside the cabinet,
about two and a half feet from the medium, inside the
right-hand curtain. ...”
It must be noted that these seances were conducted by trained
observers under stringent test-conditions. The extracts are given from
this report as containing, on the whole, descriptions of the most
accurate and scientific observations made in recent times.
1 “Report,’’etc., pp. 470, 475.
“ 11.1 p.m. Four nods of her head are followed by four thumps on
the table. She did not touch the table with her head.
II.54 p.m. Table tilts four times, meaning ‘ talk.’”
36
I*
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The History of Religions
[36
(d) Automatic handwriting.—For this two methods
are employed, (i) Some person, usually the medium,
holding a pencil passively in his fingers, begins after
a little preliminary scribbling to write, sometimes at
a superhuman speed, sometimes with a superhuman
minuteness, sometimes in a handwriting closely re
sembling that used by the person whose spirit is said
to be present, messages and sentences concerning
private matters known to none present except the
one to whom the message is directed. (2) The same
results are obtained by the use of an instrument
called planchette—that is, a little heart-shaped board
running on three castors, pierced by a pencil whose
point just touches a paper placed beneath. The
medium’s fingers are placed lightly upon the board,
and the pencil moves apparently without the medium’s
volition. It must be noted that both these methods
of communication are frequently employed by in
quirers quite apart from any seance, and results are
often equally well obtained.
(e) Materialization.—This is considered the triumph
of spiritualism, and consists in its full form in the
actual appearance, before the senses of sight, hearing,
and touch, of a discarnate soul that has clothed
itself with a body for the occasion. The phenomenon
takes place in a variety of ways. It will be enough
to describe the more usual.
The medium seats himself, generally partly in view
of the sitters, or, if not, tightly secured by cords,
within the cabinet, and passes into the state of trance.
After a certain period, often of apparent distress to
the medium, a certain disturbance makes itself felt:
sounds are heard, or movements perceived, or a
sensation of cold. There appear then, sometimes in
the full sight of the sitters, a luminous cloud that
gradually takes shape and existence, and is ultimately
recognized by some one present as possessing the
form and features of a dead friend. The degree of
“ materialization ” varies with the amount of “ power ”
�36”)
Spiritualism
7
that is present. Sometimes it is little more than a
faint vaporous intangible model, generally swathed
in drapery; sometimes, it is said, the power is great
enough to produce a figure that can be handled and
touched, and is, apparently, in all respects like a
human body, with powers of free speech and move
ment. Further claims are made with regard to the
effect of this appearance upon the photographic lens.
Photographs are shown, declared to be taken under
test-conditions, representing such figures which were
at the time invisible to the human eye; in such cases
it is said that the “ materialization ” took place, but
not with sufficient power to manifest itself to a less
delicate instrument than the camera. The disappear
ance of the apparition takes place in various manners.
Sometimes it passes back into the body of the medium
from which it has been seen to emerge ; sometimes
it retires behind a curtain; sometimes it disintegrates
visibly before the eyes of the sitters into a small in
coherent mist, which presently itself disappears.1
(iii)
The spiritualist theory as to the manner of these
phenomena is commonly as follows:—There is said
to be resident in the human body a certain force or
matter called “ astral ”; and a medium is a person
from whom this substance can be easily detached.
This “ astral ” substance is situated on the border line
between matter and spirit, and is the means by which
discarnate spirits can communicate.2
1 “ Report,” etc., pp. 448, 449, 453, 463
“ B, A hand comes out from behind the curtain and presses me tightly
on my shoulder. I feel the thumb and the four fingers, which are
now pressing downwards with very considerable force. ...”
* ‘At 11.38 there appeared one of these strange objects seen from
time to time at Eusapia’s seances, to which, for want of a better
name, the word ‘head’ is applied. ...”
“ C. I saw a head come out from the curtains slowly, and within
six inches from my head, and it stayed out about two seconds
and then went back.”
2 The word “astral” would seem to have been imported into
Spiritualism from the East through Theosophy.
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The History of Religions
[36
For example:—In the case of the sounds and
movements mentioned above, it is believed that it is
through this “astral force” that the relations with
matter are set up. In the case of “ materialization ”
it is this “ astral substance ” that is drawn off in great
quantities, not only from the medium but even from
the persons of the sitters, and moulded by the will
of the communicating soul into the aspect of that
body which it inhabited on earth. To the loss of
this “astral substance” is attributed the state of
nervous exhaustion in which mediums are so often
found after emerging from trance; and to its vital
relations with the medium is attributed the violent
shock caused to the medium if the “materialized”
figure is in any way interfered with. Opinions differ
as to the extent in which the substance is reabsorbed
by the person from whom it was taken after the close
of the phenomena.
With regard to the explanation of the phenomena
of automatic handwriting, it is held by spiritualists
that the communicating spirit, through means of the
astral power with which the writer is charged, controls
his hand and his brain; with regard to the com
munications made through the mouth of the medium,
it is his voice that is so used. It is freely conceded
by spiritualists that certain well-defined dangers to
the nervous centres of the medium usually accompany
all attempts (especially by means of “materializa
tion ”) to communicate with the spiritual world ; that
deceiving spirits occasionally seek to play tricks upon
the inquirers, and even to impersonate their dead
relatives; but it is claimed that those perils are
reduced to a minimum by the methods used, and
that the gain to spiritual knowledge is incalculably
greater than the loss to health or serenity.
(iv)
The Spiritualist Creed, as has been said, is exceed
ingly difficult of definition, since professed spiritual
�36]
Spiritualism
■-
9
teachings, when brought together, are frequently found
to be mutually exclusive. Yet, on the whole (at
least at the present day in European countries), spirit
ualist dogmas seem to be emerging into some kind
of coherent form.
The existence of God is usually acknowledged ;
indeed, Sunday schools and churches organized for
purposes of worship as well as of instruction, and for
the training of children as mediums, have been in
existence in England for many years. Beyond this
it is taught that the actions of life here have a
corresponding effect upon the state of existence
hereafter, though the doctrine of eternal punishment
is, practically always, explicitly denied. The con
dition of life in the next world is said to be one of
progressive purification, rising, it would seem, up to
some kind of absorption into the Supreme Spirit,
to whom the name of God is given. All distinctively
Christian doctrines are usually denied, although it
is said of Jesus Christ that as a spiritual teacher
He has had few equals and no superiors. It is
claimed that He Himself was an adept medium, and
that His appearances after the Resurrection were in
stances of “ materialization.” His Divinity is practi
cally always explicitly denied.
It is exceedingly difficult to say more than this
of the Spiritualistic creed, since, besides the diverg
ences in various countries already mentioned, there
is occasionally a further divergence even in teaching
given to the same inquirer as he advances in know
ledge. The disciple is at first told to practise his
religion; but later on is informed that Christian
worship and doctrine are only embryonic stages of
the truth, and that the initiate will find all that he
needs in the teaching given him by the spirits.
The dogmatic system of the Spiritualists, therefore,
is best described as a vague kind of Theism, at times
closely resembling Pantheism.
�IO
The History of Religions
[36
II
It will be seen plainly from the foregoing pages
that it will be impossible within the limits of a
pamphlet to do more than sketch very lightly the
criticisms that may be passed upon Spiritualism,
and the reasons why the Catholic Church (and in
deed all the historical religions of the world) has
condemned and rejected it, and forbidden it to her
children, both in its present form and under its old
presentment in Necromancy. The Jewish Church
herself always regarded it with horror, and inflicted
the severest penalties upon all her people who meddled
with it.
Very briefly, however, the reasons and criticisms
are as follows :—
(i)
First, it is necessary to remember the enormous
amount of fraud that has always accompanied the
practice of Spiritualism—fraud that is acknowledged
and deplored, to be frank, by Spiritualists themselves.
While, therefore, fraud on the part of the professors
of a religion is not enough to discredit entirely the
religion itself (for in that case hardly any creed would
be immune), it is yet, in this instance, of sufficient
gravity to cause us to doubt very seriously the reck
less assertions occasionally made by Spiritualists, and
to demand very searching tests indeed before any of
the more startling phenomena are accepted as facts.
In addition to the instances of this deliberate and
conscious fraud—instances known to all who have
studied the history of the movement (as, for example,
in the case of the famous William Eglinton)—there
must also be added unconscious fraud, exaggeration
and doubtful testimony, due on the one side to the
almost irresistible desire of the medium to produce evi
dence, and on the other to the very fierce state of
nervous excitment of most inquirers under the cir-
�36]
Spiritualism
11
cumstances described above.1 Large deductions,
therefore, must be made with regard to the whole
body of evidence that is circulated generally among
the public.
(ii)
There remains, however, when all such deductions
have been made, a residuum (and of a very startling
nature) which it is impossible to disregard ; evidence,
too, that fits in in a remarkable manner with much
that has always been believed by Catholics ; though
these, as will be shown presently, give a very different
explanation of it from that offered by Spiritualists.2
But even this, however, must be sifted further before
anything even resembling a Spiritualistic theory can
be deduced from it.
It is now an established fact among psychologists
that ideas, or sense-images, can be transmitted from
the brain of one living person to that of another, and
that the transmission takes place with increased ease
if the mind of the recipient or the agent is in a
1 The most recent opinion of competent judges in the case of Eusapia
Palladino is that the medium in question, while possessing und ubted
“ powers,” supplements them by fraud, both conscious and unconscious.
2 From “Report of Sittings with Eusapia Palladino,” etc., p. 463 :—
“ B., who is evidently passing through the same stages as I did in my
earlier seances, toys with the suggestion of an apparatus, by way of
easing his mind. It would be an interesting problem to set before a
manufacturer of conjuring machines to devise an apparatus capable of
producing alternatively a black, flat, profile face, a square face on
a long neck, and a ’cello-like face on a warty, wobbly body two feet
long ; also a white hand with movable fingers, a yellowish hand, and
a hand invisible altogether—all these for use outside the curtain.
Further, for use within, a hand with practicable living thumb and
fingers having nails. . . . Our manufacturer must so construct the
apparatus that it can be actuated unseen by a somewhat stout and
elderly lady, clad in a tight plain gown, who sits outside the curtain,
held visibly by hand and foot, in such a way as to escape the obser
vation of the practical conjurers clinging about her, and on the look-cut
for its operation. It must further be of such dimensions as to be con
cealed about the lady while parading herself for inspection upon a
chair, clad in her stays and a short flannel petticoat.—E. F., Dec. 6,
1908.”
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The History of Religions
[36
passive condition.1 We are bound, therefore, in
approaching the subject from the purely scientific
side, to allow that a great number at least of the
alleged messages from the dead, whether given by
the voice or the hand of the medium, may be nothing
more than the result of this transmission of thought,
or telepathy. It is of no evidential value to say that
the inquirer in this or that instance has been re
minded through such a message of a fact he had
forgotten : the very fact that he recognized it as true
shows that the thought somewhere resided in his
brain.
(iii)
There remain the physical phenomena—all such
things as sounds, lights, the movement of objects
and “materializations”—the physical phenomena that
remain, that is to say, after due deductions have been
made for fraud, conscious or unconscious. There
remains further to be discussed the Spiritualistic
philosophy concerning them.
First, then, it must be said in fairness that, at any
rate until recently, many eminent scientists who have
gravely examined the physical phenomena are dis
satisfied with the evidence presented in their favour.
They deny, in fact, the assertion that the things in
question prove the presence of discarnate spirits.
Fraud and imagination, they say, are sufficient to
account for all. To this, again in fairness, it must
be answered that, as a rule, these inquirers approach
the question in a state of convinced scepticism, and
1 It is impossible, in view of recent researches, to deny any longer
that Telepathy is an established conclusion of science. It need not be
concluded, however, that what St. Thomas appears to teach as to the
impossibility of purely mental communications is at all assailed by this
discovery. For, curiously enough, some of the characteristics of tele
pathy are markedly in accordance with the philosophy of St. Thomas.
For example, communications by telepathy are nearly always conveyed
by faint visualized pictures. The idea is not communicated direct.
This seems to correspond remarkably with what St. Thomas implies, at
least, with regard to sense-images.
�36]
Spiritualism
13
that convinced scepticism is exactly that condition of
mind that prevents the best manifestations. Certainly
it is an unfortunate dilemma, but a perfectly legitimate
one. It is the dilemma in which both Huxley and his
Christian adversaries were placed when the former
proposed testing the efficacy of prayer by the ex
pedient of praying for the recovery of the patients in
one selected ward of a hospital, and of comparing
results with those of the other wards. Faith, or at
least passivity of mind, it is claimed by Spiritualists,
is a condition necessary to manifestations.
To Catholics,however,and indeed to most Christians,
the evidence must naturally be of a very different value
from that which it has to those who are not satisfied
that a spiritual world exists at all. Catholics are
persuaded that it does exist, that it does manifest
itself (as in the lives of the saints) to the dwellers in
this. They are bound, therefore, to be predisposed to
accept good evidence to the effect that in this or that
instance it has manifested itself; and the only questions
that remain to be settled are, firstly, do these phe
nomena take place among spiritualists? secondly, how
are they to be interpreted ?
To this first question, no adequate answer can, of
course, be given. A Catholic is perfectly free to deny
that such things happen if he has examined the
evidence and found it insufficient. He is not free,
however—if he claims to be an intelligent man—to
deny its possibility. Allowing, then, that the evidence
has been found sufficient to show that at seances
phenomena take place—of the kind described above—
in sufficient number to be considerable, and of such
a nature that they cannot be attributed to human
agency1—what further criticisms can be passed upon
them, and what conclusions can be drawn ?
1 It would occupy too much space to discuss adequately the theory put
forward tentatively by some observers to the effect that the ‘ ‘ subconscious
self” {i.e. the range of these powers and faculties, such as the power of
thought-transference, unconscious cerebration, etc., lying beneath the
ordinary faculties of man) is capable of producing actual physical phe-
�14
The History of Religions
[36
These criticisms are of various kinds—founded
respectively upon observation, and on the principles
of theology.
A. Criticisms founded on observation.
(a) First it cannot but be remarked that the phe
nomena are extremely frequently of a very trifling
nature at the best. Foolish tricks are continually
played upon the sitters; mocking answers given, or
evasions, to their questions.1 These are explained by
spiritualists as being the work of low-caste or earthbound spirits who intrude themselves into the circle.
Yet the very possibility of this—and it is not denied
that this phenomenon is fairly common—throws a
very great doubt upon the genuineness of the other
communications. If it is found impossible for in
quirers, even with the best intentions, to protect
themselves against these annoyances, how can it be
possible for them to be sure that even the graver
nomena such as some of those described in these pages. It is, of course,
a possible explanation—(possible, at least, in the sense that such an
assertion cannot possibly be disproved, since it attributes to an almost
wholly unknown part of human nature forces completely unanalogous to
any others possessed by man)—but so also might it be attributed to
electricity or ether, or some completely unknown but natural agency.
To those, however, who believe at all in the existence of a spiritual world,
it will seem a far more tenable hypothesis to suppose that it is from this
spiritual world that the force is generated ; and therefore, so far as the
evidence goes, a more scientific hypothesis.
1 (a) “ I was suddenly startled by a noise like that of hammering, and
of occasional footsteps, clearly emanating from the bedroom occupied by
my friend. . . . The strange noises, which appeared to have ceased at
the moment of my entrance, recommenced almost immediately with the
utmost vigour, and I became the witness of a scene such as I have
never witnessed before. ... A hundred hands seemed to be hammering
away on walls and doors and table and bed, and every now and then
there was the sound of feet tramping along the floor. ... As morning
dawned the noises gradually ceased.”—{Dangers of Spiritualism, pp.
45> 46.)
.
.
, ,
(5) “The moment the door is opened, it may be by the presence of
persons of like inclinations, of ignorant or credulous mediums . . . or
men of immoral or intemperate habits, troops of so-called ‘dark’ spirits
rush in, and indulge these propensities to silly tricks, lying deception,
and temptation to evil.”—(Letter from a spiritualist of twenty years’
standing, quoted in Dangers oj Spiritualism, p. 125.)
�36]
Spiritualism
15 •
messages come from those personalities that profess
to send them ?
(p) This doubt is further enhanced by the extra
ordinary meagreness even of the most solemn
“spiritual teachings.” If the spiritualistic theory
were true, if it were a fact that some of the greatest
thinkers and scientists in the world’s history, con_ sumed by a desire to illuminate their brethren still living
on earth, returned to give them that teaching, how is
it that no historical mystery has ever yet been solved
by this means, no scientific problem answered, no
ascetical doctrine superior to that already given by
teachers on earth ever yet bestowed ? The collections
of “ spiritual teachings ” circulated from time to time
among the public seldom surpass in intelligence or
knowledge the average works of writers even still
incarnate; much less do they approximate in know
ledge or spirituality to the teachings of the greatest
spiritual Leaders of the past.
(f) It is a matter of regret among spiritualists them
selves that occasionally, after the most poignant
scenes, when the presence of some departed friend
has been recognized by one of the inquirers, further
investigation has shown that the communicating
personality has broken down in some perfectly simple
test of identity.1 This seems to lead to the inevitable
conclusion that in some cases at least the discarnate
spirit that has manifested itself has been deliberately
1 “The absolute futility of any attempt at identifying spirits is another
discouraging or unsatisfactory circumstance. It is no proof that the
spirit communicating is A. B. if he tells me of words or circumstances
(supposed to be) known only to A. B. and myself. . . . The alleged
‘ friend ’ of a few years ago (while he was writing through me, and
turning my ideas upside down through his extraordinary ‘ counsel ’ and
hypocrisy) certainly was possessed of knowledge of my present history
unknown to anybody else. . . . Now if one’s diary of thoughts and acts
is an open book for one spirit and another to read at his convenience,
nothing that he may resurrect to one’s mind is any proof that he is trust
worthy .... any more than would be the case if a shoeblack read over
one’s shoulder what one had written . . . . and claimed by virtue of his
knowledge that he was one’s father or mother.”—(Extract from a
letter quoted in Dangers of Spiritualism, pp. 115, 116.)
�16
The History of Religions
[36
impersonating another in a most heartless manner.
Grave suspicion then is bound to remain even in cases
where fraud of this kind has not been detected.
(<7) It is a matter of common knowledge among
spiritualists that the nervous exhaustion which so often
comes upon the medium during or after a seance has
led in many cases to a complete breakdown of the
mental and moral powers. This is not, of course, in
any sense a conclusive argument; religious mania is
known in every creed; but the fact becomes more
significant when it is remembered that, on the other
side, Spiritualism has not produced characters of any
extraordinary sanctity or eminence. Except in the
cases where materialists have been convinced through
means of Spiritualism of the existence of another
world, it is impossible to point to any spiritual or
mental gain to balance the extremely numerous losses
on the other side.
(e) Further, it is exceedingly easy to adduce testi
mony after testimony from those who, once spiritualists,
have relinquished the life because of the loss not only
of mental but also moral virtues. An extremely un
pleasant symptom in the case of inquirers too much
absorbed in such practices as those of planchette or
ordinary automatic handwriting is the appearance of
the obscene and blasphemous element in the communi
cations received. Of course such results as those, as
well as others less terrible (such as loss of will-power,
morbidity, etc.) may very well arise from the mere
passivity of mind necessary for success in such experi
ments, and from the consequent uprush of those
realms of human consciousness not directly controlled
by the will (as in the case of delirium). Yet, even
with all allowances made for such possibilities, there
would seem to remain a certain malignancy of delib
erate purpose, a certain design followed in the process,
certainly not intended by the inquirer, that would
argue strongly in favour of another personality being
at work. At any rate, in such cases, there is an inten-
�36]
Spiritualism
17
tion of communicating with the spiritual world; and if
this means of communication were according to the
Divine will—if even it were true that the communi
cating personalities were those which they professed
to be—it would be difficult to account for the per
sistence of this phenomenon.
The following extract from a letter to the author of
The Dangers of Spiritualism is given at length, as
containing an excellent analysis of the state of brain
and nerves—to say the least—brought on by the
continued practice of automatic handwriting.
“ But now comes the worst part of the whole story.
My whole being had manifestly undergone a change ;
I seemed to have received another nature—gross, vile,
sensual, originating the most vile and abominable
ideas, such as had never formerly entered into my
mental life. My old self was still there, thank God !
I have never quite lost that. But, although rebellious
and disgusted, it nevertheless seemed powerless against
the stronger, evil influence which was dominating it.
It was as if some unclean spirit had taken possession
of me, had driven out my old self, and was using my
mind and body for its own vile purposes. At first, I
fought and struggled against it, and tried to rouse
myself; but it was all to no purpose. All the day
long my body was tired, weighed down by a heavy,
languid, care-for-nothing feeling. I had no desire but
to lie down and to let my thoughts go wandering. I
lost interest in everything I used to delight in in
former times. I dropped my studies; my hobbies
had no longer any charm for me; everything seemed
an effort and a trouble. I have read of the mental
and physical condition of opium-smokers, and it
certainly seemed to me as if I was overpowered by
a kind of moral opium which simply rendered me
powerless to make any more effort. Only when
evening came I seemed capable of moving. I then
began to grow restless. If I went to bed I could not
sleep, but simply lay a.wake, my brain all activity,
�18
The History of Religions
[36
imagining, picturing the most wretched abominations.
Dreading, therefore, to go to bed, I used to go out.
Invariably I would find myself proceeding to some
low public-house, not to drink, but just to be in the
company of, and to hobnob with, any dirty, low
fellow I would find there. And, strange to say, such
would receive me just as one of themselves, while I
felt perfectly at home with them—I, who had never
been in the habit of frequenting the bar of even the
most respectable public-house. I had no desire what
ever to go among decent people of my own station
of life; on the contrary, I liked the company I met
with in these places; I liked the low, foul conversation;
I revelled in the filthy talk! I would treat my com
panions to drink, and positively enjoyed seeing them
drunk. The smell of the stale beer, of the rank
tobacco, their crude familiarities, were like tonics to
me. The weariness would go; I would sing and
laugh with the loudest of them, thinking it a fine
thing to be called a ‘jolly good chap.’ I could never
get drunk myself; a single pint of beer would make
me sick. When morning came I would get up,
haggard, tired, ashamed, disgusted, afraid to meet
any person of my acquaintance. I can’t describe all
the horrible things I went through, some of them
veritable orgies. Time passed, things gradually got
worse; I dropped my old friends, or they dropped
me. I became unsettled and miserable in my work;
I felt that I could not remain in my place, that I must
get away. With new scenes and new faces I might
get the better of this thing. So I sent in my resig
nation and left the town. ... At present I am
living an idle, aimless life, just existing on the
payment I obtain for a few hours’ private teaching
a week, and a few shillings picked up playing the
piano in public-houses. I am without hopes, pros
pects, or friends. What is there to live for ?
“ And now let me draw attention to one or two
curious points in my history. It is very difficult to
�36]
Spiritualism
19
explain exactly the relationship between the two
natures inhabiting my body. I shall make myself
better understood if I use the word ego to signify my
own mental identity, and alter that of the other. By
I and me I mean my physical self (common to both).
Both of them are I \ but the two are never ‘ in residence ’
at the same time. There is now no struggle for
mastery. The change is imperceptible. I may now
be ego, then I suddenly find myself alter. This latter,
without warning, comes and takes possession, drives
out ego, or paralyses him, does what he likes, and just
as suddenly goes. He just ignores, never remembers
or thinks of ego. Ego, on the contrary, has a vivid
recollection of alter, is disgusted with him, loathes
him, fears him, looks upon him as a vile, sensual thief,
who has robbed him (ego) of all that made life worth
living. When I am alter I am strong, active in mind
and body, full of devilry, daring anything, imagining
and enjoying all evil. When alter goes, poor, pitiful
ego just creeps back into a weak, exhausted body,
weary, tired of life, full of remorse, making good
resolutions, yet having no power to carry them out.
There is one other point. If I can manage to get off
into a good sleep, alter seems to be powerless. My
dreams are always pleasant, mostly of people and
places of the good old times, never of anything bad.
It is only when I am awake, and when my mind is
unemployed, that alter catches me. My worst time
is at night. If I go to bed without being able to
sleep, alter is in full possession, running riot with my
imagination till the morning.
“There may have been no connection between my
dabbling in telepathy and this other thing, but, rightly
or wrongly, I believe that on that night some unclean
spirit attached itself to me, gradually gaining influence
over my nature, and in the end making me his mere
slave. For very shame I have been obliged to keep
the whole matter to myself. People sometimes marvel
(and well they might) at the change which has come
�20
The History of Religions
[36
over me. My sense of fairness will not permit me to
put the whole blame upon telepathy ; there may have
been some unconscious error on my part, or some
circumstance unknown to me may have caused this
alteration in my life. The fact itself remains ; I know
what I was before that evening, and I know what I
have been since.
“ I have only succeeded in writing this by fits and
starts when I am ego; alter nearly threw it all into the
fire last evening, calling it a d----- d lot of rubbish.”
So much, then, for criticisms founded on observation.
We pass on to—
B. Criticisms founded on theology.
It must first be remarked that the following criti
cisms will have no weight with those who approach
the subject of Spiritualism as pure agnostics—beyond
the weight of the fact that historical religion has
always recognized the existence of Spiritualism or
Necromancy, and, up to a certain point at least, the
objectivity of its phenomena.
For it is not only the Catholic Church that has
condemned Spiritualism, the Protestant bodies have
usually done so as well, and the Jewish Church
punished the adherents of Necromancy with death.
Spiritualism, or Necromancy, or the dealing with
“familiar spirits,” has always been regarded by the
other great world-religions as a bastard, rather than
a competitor with a dignity comparable to their own.
This fact is at least significant.
(a) First, then, it is sufficient for the Catholic to
recognize that Spiritualism is, dogmatically, an ad
versary, and not an ally of his own creed. It is
claimed sometimes that Spiritualism and Christianity
are compatible, and, theoretically, it may be so; but,
practically, their dogmatic systems are mutually
exclusive, and Christians who practise Spiritualism
are bound in the long-run to choose between that
faith and their own. So far as Spiritualism has
produced a coherent creed at all, it directly traverses
�36]
Spiritualism
21
even such fundamental doctrines as that of the Incar
nation.
(p) Catholic theology teaches in detail that the
destiny of all men at death takes them elsewhere in the
spiritual world. It is entirely incompatible with
Catholic belief to believe that the souls of the departed
are allowed, except under very peculiar and unusual
circumstances, to revisit this earth with the intention
of communicating with those still living upon it. To
believe that those souls are so far at the mercy of
mediums as to be compelled, practically, in instance
after instance, to manifest themselves here—parti
cularly under such circumstances as usually accompany
spiritualistic seances—is utterly antagonistic both to
the letter and the spirit of Catholic teaching.
For these two main reasons, then, as well as for
others mentioned above, the Catholic Church con
demns Spiritualism without reserve. She acknowledges
the fact that the spiritual world is accessible to this,
and this to that; but she lays down most stringently
the only modes in which such communication may
be sought, and denounces the rest as methods contrary
to the Divine Will.
(r) What, then, is the view of Catholic theologians
as regards the phenomena claimed by Spiritualists?
First it must be noted that Catholics do not pledge
themselves, as a matter of faith, even to the objectivity
of the phenomena. This or that piece of evidence
must be judged, as all other evidence, even in support
of alleged Catholic miracles, simply on its own weight.
At the same time it is undoubtedly true that Catholic
theologians as a whole are disposed to accept much
of the evidence offered by Spiritualists as a sufficient
proof that phenomena do take place at stances and
elsewhere which cannot be accounted for on natural
grounds. The explanation given, then, is as follows :—
(1) Christians are aware from quite other reasons
than those given by Spiritualists that the spiritual
world is a fact, that it is inhabited by innumerable
�22
The History of Religions
[36
personalities, good and bad, and that to many of
these personalities—that is, to spirits that have never
been incarnate—this world is perfectly accessible.
On the one side are the unfallen angels of God, on
the other the fallen; and this earth is to a large
extent the battle-ground between these opposing
forces. The object of the angels of light is to draw
men nearer to God, to protect them from spiritual
and even bodily dangers, and to help them towards
heaven ;■ the object of the angels of darkness is ex
actly the opposite.
Now the precise range of powers permitted to the
evil angels has not been revealed to men; we know
only that they are considerable, though limited; and
we may at least conjecture that as it has been per
mitted in the past to the angels of light to assume
a human appearance, so it is at any rate quite possible
that the same power maybe allowed to their adversaries.
We know also as a positive fact that the evil angels
are permitted under certain circumstances to obtain
such a hold over men who yield to them as actually
to obsess or possess^ their powers and their will.
(2) Turning once more to the phenomena of Spirit
ualism, it is to be noticed that the Christian faith is
continually assailed by those professed “ benefactors ”
of man ; that the mental powers or the morality of
those who practise Spiritualism are extremely liable to
decay; and further, that the process employed is one
calculated to undermine almost imperceptibly the
faith and morals of even those who approach the
investigation with good intentions. In a word, it
would seem that—if the alleged experiences are
facts—they are designed with considerable skill to
the carrying out of that very object which Catholics
believe to be the aim of the spiritual enemies of man.
Inquirers are met on their most tender side, the
1 “ Obsession ” means the persecution of the human will or imagina-.
tion ; ‘ ‘ possession,” its more or less complete control by a discarnate
spirit.
�36]
Spiritualisin
23
appeal is made to their highest human affections;
they are led on by apparent proof after apparent
proof to believe that they are actually in communi
cation with those they once loved on earth. It would
appear almost inevitable, then, that such inquirers
should ultimately accept such teaching as they re
ceive—and we have seen of what character that teach
ing is—as undeniable truth. For every man that is
converted by Spiritualism to believe in the immortality
of his soul, there are probably a hundred who are
led by it to relinquish the beliefs and practices of
Clmstianity.
urther evidence in support of the Catholic theory
is found in the facts related above under the heading
Criticisms founded on observation. The large propor
tion of fraud, both on the part of mediums and of the
personalities that claim to communicate, the trifling
and often mischievous tricks and evasions with which
serious inquiry is so often met, the solemnity of the
claim to shed light from the spiritual world upon the
problems of this world, coupled with the extraordinary
futility of the “ revelations ” so made, as well as the
continual injuries inflicted upon the bodily and
mental health of the mediums and the inquirers—all
those considerations support very strongly the Cath
olic contention that the phenomena, if genuine, must
be the work of the avowed spiritual enemies of the
human race. Theologians emphasize this the more
from the fact that in extreme cases of nervous or
mental breakdown following upon the practices of
Spiritualism, symptoms make their appearance iden
tical with, or at least closely resembling, those which
accompany undoubted cases of “ possession ”; and
“ possession,” it must be remembered, has been familiar
to Catholics for many centuries; its treatment finds a
regular place in the Ritual and Exorcisms of the
Church, and the fact of it is vouched for explicitly in
the New Testament.
As regards the exact mode by which the genuine
�'24
The History of Religions
[36
phenomena—if they exist—are produced, Catholic
theology offers no definite opinion. All that can be
said is that an acceptance of the “ astral ” theory
is not condemned. It is conceivable that there may
be some such force or substance in the human con
stitution, but of this Catholic theology has no
cognizance. It is a matter of psychical, or even
physical science, rather than of theology or philosophy.
This, then, is the attitude of the Catholic Church
towards Spiritualism:—
(1) She does not in any way commit herself to
the acceptance of the phenomena. Yet she does not
deny them, and allows fully for their possibility.
Each claim stands or falls on its own proper evidence.
(2) So far as the alleged phenomena are genuine,
the Catholic Church accounts for them by the action
of evil discarnate spirits—called “ fallen angels.” She
utterly rejects, therefore, their testimony, and warns
her children against accepting it.
(3) She condemns in the gravest manner any
attempt to communicate in this manner with the
spiritual world, as contrary to the Divine Will.
(4) She leaves open—granted the genuineness of
the phenomena—the mode in which such phenomena
are accomplished.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED.
Modern Spiritism. By J. Godfrey Raupert. Kegan Paul, 1907.
The Dangers of Spiritualism. By J. Godfrey Raupert. Kegan
Paul, 1906.
Sermons on Modern Spiritualism.
By Rev. A. V. Miller.
Kegan Paul, 1908.
Hypnotism and spiritism. By Lapponi. Chapman & Hall,
1906.
The Unseen World. By Lepicier. Kegan Paul, 1906.
�
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Benson, Robert Hugh [1871-1914]
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THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY;
OB, THE CONNECTION BETWEEN
SPIRITUALISM AND MODERN THOUGHT.
Br
GEORGE BARLOW.
“Have faith in God.”—Jesus Christ.
LONDON:
JAMES BURNS, 15 SOUTHAMPTON ROW, IIOLBORN, W.C.
1876.
��THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY;
OR, THE CONNECTION BETWEEN
SPIRITUALISM AND MODERN THOUGHT.
*
“Hava faith in God."—Jesüs Christ.
Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism. By William Crookes, F.R.S.
On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism.
Three Essays. By Alfred Russel
Wallace.
Thoughts in Aid of Faith. By Sara S. Hennell.
Present Religion: as a Faith owning Fellowship with Thought. By Sara S.
Hennell.
The Essence of Christianity. By Ludwig Feuerbach.
The Gospel of the Resurrection: Thoughts on its Relation to Reason and History.
By Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity, Cambridge.
A General View of Positivism. By Auguste Comte.
Literature and Dogma: an Essay towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible.
By Matthew Arnold.
The Old Faith and the New. By Friedrich Strauss.
The Arcana of Nature. By Hudson Tuttle.
The Arcana of Spiritualism. By Hudson Tuttle.
The Great Harmonia. By Andrew Jackson Davis.
At last man wakes from his dream of centuries.
He looks back
through the receding vistas of the ages, and he understands, by
the help of science, how it is that he was made—how the slow,
unconscious, creative power toiled upward through lower forms,
tiU it emerged in man, and became, in man, for the first lime
clearly conscious-of itself, and (now) of its own origin. He sees
how intellect gradually appeared—how reason supplanted in
stinct—how the dim germ of the moral sense first glimmered,
glow-worm like, along primeval plains and banks of thought—
how, when the moral sense had fairly established itself, the con
* This article attempts to deal with the theoretical and doctrinal sides of the
subject—which are hardly yet sufficiently discerned by the public—as Mr.
Wallace, in his articles in the Fortnightly Review, dealt with the experimental
and practical.
�4
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
ception of a God, like unto man, only larger and nobler, was not
long in following as its resultant—how that idea has gradually
become less and less anthropomorphic, till now, at last, man,
fully conscious of himself, takes back those attributes of his
own which he first, with childish eagerness, transferred to God,
and stands forth grand in the simple riches of his own divinity;
crowned with the crown of that God whom he first created, and
then detected and dethroned; bright with the product of his
own fiery, insatiable thought. Man now sees that all the motley
crowd of deities who have thronged the past, and made the ways
rich with their flashing sceptres and brilliant diadems—the
strange gods of India and the East—the Jewish stern Jehovah
—the pale, blood-stained Christ of Calvary—the lovely, golden
haired goddesses of Greece, who ruled the hills and watched the
streams of that immortal land—the weird divinities of the rough
Scandinavian thought—he sees that all these were but the crea
tions of his own fertile brain; that he himself is greater than all
these; that they find their fulfilment, as they first had their
origin, in man.
Now, if this be true; if, as many most able thinkers are now
pointing out, the word God is a symbol used by man to express
all of the highest and widest and noblest that he can conceive,
but having no objective significance; if man is, and has always
been, the creator of his own deities, and has fashioned them
according to his will—that is, according to the measure of
insight into what is really true and noble which he has pos
sessed in every age ; if the eternal essence or basis of things is,
as pointed out by Strauss and others, and hinted at by Mill in
his last work, itself unconscious, yet able to evolve conscious
ness (which then reacts upon its own originally unconscious
substance, producing further changes and improvements un
limited in extent); if a personal God is a (necessary) fiction of
the human brain, and the eternal power in which “ we live and
move and have our being” is an impersonal power, which yet,
by its upward struggles, blossoms into a consciousness of pure
and endless personality at last (a doctrine which the researches
of science daily render more probable); if the force which has
had no beginning is not a conscious force endowed with will,
but an unconscious force possessing attributes, what we call
personality and will being not causes but caused—-ultimate re
sults of the action and interaction of those inherent attributes
carried on through countless ages; if—to sum the whole matter
up briefly, and co set forth clearly the new point of view—the
first cause, or rather the perpetual cause, is an unconscious,
inevitable producer of consciousness, and that consciousness (our
own—upon this planet), again by the inevitable law of things,
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
O
turns round, as it were, upon itself, and, naturally ascribing its
own origin to a power in all things similar to itself, only greater,
exclaims—“ I am personal—I have a will and a moral sense—
all the elaborate works of human art that I see round me are
works of design—therefore I was created, and the world was
created, by the authoritative fiat of a beneficent, intelligent, per
sonal God”*—arranging, in so arguing, its inferences, as it is
now becoming plain to us, in a most inconsequent way;—if all
this, in very truth, be so, what is to be said about our personal
immortality ? Is that too, as Strauss thought, as Feuerbach
seems to indicate, a mere symbol—a mere outward expression of
our own intense longing for it ? Will our own proper person
ality be torn away from us along with the personality of God ?-|Must we acquiesce calmly in ideas of mere impersonal expan
sion along the tides and breezes of things—a mere unconscious
mingling with that unconscious universe whence we proceeded ?
First of all I would point out that those who believe (Feuer
bach, Strauss, S. Hennell, &c.) that God is a mere symbol—the
mere creation of our personality—ascribe a tremendous force to
that personality. I take, for the present, their view; I take it
boldly, uncompromisingly; I say that God does not exist at all
—never has existed save in our thought of him—save only in
the innermost recesses of those creative hearts of ours which
first originated the superb symbol, and then breathed upon it
and gave it a glorious life and a glorious kingdom to rule over,
even the entire universe—and gave it the sceptre of endlessness
and the crown of purity—of our purity generously transferred
to the symbol, even to the imaginary God. This view I take
and rejoice in—rejoicing in the exaltation that it confers upon
man, who thus becomes, verily, “ the master of things”—creat
ing, not created; bestowing, not gifted; the proud giver and
maker, and not the poor, humble, depraved, pitiful receiver of
life. 1 rejoice to restore his dignity to man, and the worth of
his attributes maligned and maltreated for ages.
But then,
doing and feeling all this quite as acutely as the scientific
atheists or humanitarians, I go on to ask—Why should we limit
the results of the human personality, confessedly in itself so
proud and supreme, to this life ? Why not extend the line of
its majestic continuity beyond the horizon of this life—beyond
“ the red vast void of sunset hailed from far, the equal waters of
* The Moral and Intelligent Governor of the Universe, at the popular concep
tion of whom Matthew Arnold has launched so many of his keen sarcastic arrows
in “ Literature and Dogma.”
f I am assuming in this article, for the sake of bringing my point of view
about Spiritualism clearly to bear, the truth of the modern notion as to the im
personal nature of the absolute essence.
�G
THE GOSPEL OF HUMAN II Y.
the dead ? ” If we have, indeed, from the depths of our inner
consciousness, lifted, with travail and strong effort, as it were,
the conception of an external anthropomorphic God, and are now
just discovering that this conception was our own, originated
from within, not imposed upon us from without, and not neces
sarily answering to any external reality;—if, so seeing, so know
ing, we are now taking back, resuming, with laughter and lordly
triumph, that crown and that sceptre of imperial rule which we
first bestowed upon God—or rather upon our conception of him—
how shall not all other things be ours as well, by virtue of our
own inherent attributes or those of the universe (the same
thing)—even immortality with all its sweetness, and endless
love with all its flowers ? If man could originate the giant con
ception of One God (as on the showing of Feuerbach and
Hennell he has done), besides creating the countless swarm of
smaller flame-winged deities who hovered on innumerable pinions
over Greece, over Borne, and the misty recesses of the remote
East—if man can do this, he can do something far greater—he
can take back from the symbol of God the crown of his own
divinity, and pass on in the strength of calm inherent immor
tality to meet death, which shall be to him as the golden gate
of life.
Understand, reader, clearly what I am arguing for. I am
arguing for inherent immortality—for immortality naturally in
herent in man, potentially present in the germ, waiting to be
evolved. Just as, according to Professor Tyndall, all our present
gifts and capacities were potentially latent in that wide-spread
“ fiery cloud ” whence our visible universe sprang, so, I say, is im
mortality potentially latent in man. Now, the difference between
my point of view and the orthodox point of view is just this—
that I look upon immortality as natural and inherent; they look
upon it as something inseparably connected with the Incarnation
and the Trinity—or even with certain ideas about the Incarna
tion and the Trinity—as something mercifully given to us by
God (and perhaps given only to a few)-—something w/w'cA we
might miss—which indeed we are all in great danger of missing
*
—something given by the Eternal King of Heaven as a boon/f
*
for which we have to be ceaselessly and laboriously grateful,
lifting up our praises with loud voices and urgent hearts to the
Lord for the riches of his goodness—something of which we
might have been deprived ; nay, were justly deprived by the sin
of Adam or our own, but which has been restored to us in the
* See Calvinistic and Evangelical views, passim.
+ “According to his mercy he saved us . .
that, being justified by
his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
(Titns iii. 5, 6, 7.) And in numberless other passages of the New Testament.
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
7
person of Jesus Christ, and for ever securely sealed to us in
him—something which the Son of God came to bring and to
bestow. From my point of view on the contrary—a point of
view which, I maintain, is strictly in accordance with the most
advanced scientific views of evolution and natural development
—immortality is not a matter of chance or divine gift at all,
but a matter of positive certainty. IVe cannot licl/p having it.
God cannot either bestow it or take it away from us It is wrapped
*
* Mr Buchanan has reached this idea by poetic intuition, though he has
probably never reasoned much about it. In one of his fine “ Coruisken
Sonnets,” he says : —
‘ ‘ All things that live are deathless—I and ye.
The Father could not slay us if he would;
The Elements in all their multitude
Will rise against their Master terribly,
If but one hair upon a human head
Should perish! ”
And in another: —
“ I heard a Whirlwind on the mountain peak
Pause for a space its furious flight and cry—
‘ There is no Death! ’ loudly it seemed to shriek;
‘ Nothing that is, beneath the sun, shall die.’
The frail sick Vapours echoed, drifting by—
‘ There is no Death, but change early and late ;
•
Powerless were God's right Hand, full arm'd with fate,
To slay the meanest thing beneath the sky. ’ ”
Surely such lines as those which I have italicised indicate a great change of
view now passing over the minds of the thoughtful upon these subjects. We
may compare also, in reference to the notion of the inherent inextinguishable
immortality of man, several very striking passages in Walt Whitman’s poems.
Take the following, for example, from “ To Think of Time”-—
“ You are not thrown to the winds—you gather certainly and safely
around yourself;
Yourself ! Yourself ! Yourself, for ever and ever!
It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father—
it is to identify you ;
It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;
Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form’d in you,
You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.”
And, from the same poem:—
“ I swear I think now that everything without exception has an eternal
Soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground ! the weeds of the sea have! the
animals!
“ I swear I think there is nothing but immortality!
That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is for it, and
the cohering is for it;
And all preparation is for it! and identity is for it! and life and
materials are altogether for it! ”
And if any one should say, as it is likely that those of the scientific and
sceptical turn of mind may, that in both these cases the poets are speaking
with a flue poetic frenzy, which has little real weight when brought to bear
upon objects with which the understanding pure and simple should properly
�8
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
up, sweetly enfolded, among the nobler necessities of our beings
it is as natural, in its place and time, as the visible life. It i;
evolved at a certain point by necessary law, just as the germs
of the lower forms of life were evolved from forms still lower by
their abiding impulse of upward progress. To make my meaning
*
quite clear, I may here quote a passage in Professor Westcott’s
“ Gospel of the Besurrection,” in which the view that I am op
posing is well stated. He says:—“The Apostles do not teach a
redemption to be wrought out by each man for himself, after the
example of Christ, but of redemption wrought for each by Christ,
and placed within their reach. . . . They do not teach an
immortality of the soul as a consequence flowing from any con
ceptions of man’s essential nature, but a resurrection of the body
. not only historically established in the rising again of Christ,
but given to us through Him who is ‘the Besurrection and the
Life,’” To which I reply generally, reserving for the present
what I have to say as to how the details of the resurrection are
affected by Spiritualism;—Why is “given to us” better than
“ a consequence flowing ” ? Surely our tenure of immortality
would be exactly the same in both cases—rather more secure as
a natural consequence I should think, being then safe from all
personal caprice of the giver. The hell of the churches could
never have been a natural consequence of man’s nature ; so subtle
a torture-chamber requires a personal giver and supporter.
Briefly, Why is it better to receive immortality than to take it,
or win it or earn it or (best of all) grow into it by certain steps,
grounded on inherent power ?
So far as regards the possibility of an inherent immortality—
“ the power of an endless life”—latent in man, without regard
deal—I reply that in this question of our immortality the fine poetic intuition,
whether expressed on its religious side by a Christ, or a Paul, or an A’Kempis,
or on its more strictly imaginative side by a Tennyson, or a Buchanan, or a
Whitman, is just the very thing we need—the very golden guiding-thread
whereby we may traverse those obscure cavernous recesses of our nature,
wherein the wished-for answer lies, but which the understanding, unassisted,
cannot reach.
* The able authors of “ The Unseen Universe” hold some view as to the
“ spiritual body,” closely akin to this I believe; only they go on (with strange
perverseness!) to deduce the theological Trinity, etc., from their physical
and scientific conclusions. It is curious that, while condemning the Spirit
ualistic manifestations of modern times as having “ no objective signifi
cance,” they should have failed to observe how exactly their own theory of
the “ spiritual body” corresponds to that of the more thoughtful among the
Spiritualists. Miss Cobbe, in the same way, in her last work, “ The Hopes of
the Human Race,” started a theory about the germ of the spiritual body being
resident in man and gradually blossoming, as if it were an original one—not
aware, apparently, that the Spiritualists, and indeed the Christians, had long
entertained and promulgated the very same notion. But these are only
instances of how we are all treading over the same ground just now; eagerly,
so that we run up against one another.
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
9
to capricious external divine beneficence of any kind. I now
come to the place at which Modern Spiritualism (as a theory,
for I am not here concerned with tire truth of this or that phe
nomenon) comes in to supplement and clinch my argument. As
a question of fact it must be investigated further, and the results
at present attained must be scientifically tabulated and arranged;
but as a theory or doctrine—as a system of belief, the uprising
of which was to be expected and predicted just at this precise
epoch of human development—the thing is perfect. I)r. West
cott, on page 50 of “The Gospel of the Resurrection,” says, in
reference to Spiritualism, “ Exactly when material views of the
universe seem to be gaining an absolute ascendancy, popular in
stinct finds expression now in this form of extravagant credulity,
and now in that. Arrogant physicism is met by superstitious
spiritualism; and there is right on both sides.”
Just so; but what Dr. Westcott does not appear to see is just
the very point which I want to bring out in this article, and in
which any originality of view that it may claim consists—viz.,
how beautifully Spiritualism supplements and completes the
positive Antichristian scientific teachings of modern times by
offering positive, tangible evidence of another world such as
science may lay hold of and investigate. We may say that the
“five hundred” nameless witnesses to Christ’s Resurrection,
whom science has so often longed to have in the witness-box,
are really present with us now, only tenfold in number, among
the Spiritualists. Let science examine them, and make what it
can of them, and let us know the results. I look upon Spiritu
alism, taken in its healthy and general sense, apart from the'
impostures and the nightmares of cliques, and rightly understood,
as the other world side of modern positivism—as positivism, in
fact, carried across death’s purely factitious boundary. Of
course, as Dr. Westcott (who has, I believe, some affinities with
the Spiritualists) would no doubt say, Spiritualism, if proved to
be true, would in one sense greatly strengthen the hands of the
Christians. It would show that the miracles, and notably that
of the Itesurrection, are possible. If they happen now, they
might have happened then; and the presumption would in such
case be that they, or many of them, did happen then. But
Spiritualism does far more than this, with its strong, free thought,
and its habit of pushing things to extremes. It goes further.
In its essence it is pitilessly hostile (as the clergy have instinc
tively recognised) to things orthodox, and is likeiy, if once fairly
established in England or in Europe, to do even more towards over
throwing the State Creeds than the modern advances of science.
It overcomes Christianity, in especial in this way—by outflank
*
ing it. If Christianity had miracles, Spiritualism has ten times
�10
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
as many. If Christianity revealed the other world to us, Spirit
ualism does so far more clearly and nearly—without a hopeless
gulf of eighteen centuries between. It is a mistake to suppose
that Spiritualism is merely a réchauffé of old supernatural
doctrines. It is something more. While, as Mr. Wallace
pointed out in the Fortnightly, it professes to clear away super
stitions by explaining the real rationale of former miracles,
demoniac possessions, and so forth, it extends a hand to modern
positive thought, and asks that that method may be applied to
miracles, and extended not only to hitherto unreached portions
of this world, but to the whole domain of the unseen. Miracles
happen, it says ; they have happened occasionally throughout
history, but never capriciously, always bylaw strict and unvary
ing enough to satisfy the most fastidious positivist or scien
tist. Immortality will turn out to be a thing natural enough ;
the Resurrection of Christ was perfectly simple and natural. We
hope in time to be able to supply science with the means of in
vestigating its method, and finally establishing it—perhaps even
reproducing it. This is the creed of the most intelligent among
the Spiritualists, and I do think that the general reasonableness
of their system, and its amenableness to the requirements of
positive or experiential thought ought to be more widely known
and understood. It is not too much to say that that unknown
quantity—that residue of fact which we have most of us felt
still remains in the early records of Christianity after the utmost
efforts of the sceptical school—those occurrences which Strauss
and Renan have failed to explain away—may yet be explained
(having been accepted as actual facts) by Spiritualism. Another
Life of Jesus may yet be written, neither on the orthodox nor
the infidel basis, but upon the Spiritualistic ; and it may come
more nearly than any previous life to the actual truth.
I think I may here be forgiven for quoting a portion of a
letter which I wrote to a friend when I first began to study care
fully the Spiritualistic literature, expressing the conclusions
which I formed at the time.
*
I see no reason now (the letter
was written towards the close of December, 1873—some months
before, Mr. Wallaces article appeared) materially to differ from
them, except that I should not now' call myself a Theist. The
extract will show still more clearly what I conceive to be the
relation of modern Spiritualism to that gospel of humanity (as
opposed to the gospel of the Resurrection of Christ) which I
touched upon at the beginning of this article—that gospel which
is being preached, or has been preached, with more or less of
* The contents of the letter have all the freshness and force of first impressions,
and I cannot state, my case better.
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
II
variety, and with more or less of success, by Goethe, Swinburne,
M. Arnold, Theodore Parker, Miss Cobbe, Miss Hennell, Emerson,
Greg, Mazzini, Feuerbach, Strauss, J. S. Mill, A. J. Davis, F.
Newman, H. G. Atkinson, Hudson Tuttle, Walt Whitman, Fiske,
Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, Comte, and others.
*
“ I am now going to talk a little about Spiritualism, upon which
subject I have been bringing my mind to bear lately. I think
a few observations may interest you, as you have not yet turned
the light of your mind-lantern in that direction. The subject is
one which all men of intelligence at the present day ought to
spend a certain amount of time (no£ »too much) in investigating
and coming to an opinion upon.
“ I have come to the conclusion that there is truth at the
bottom of it, and that (amidst a mass of jugglery, folly, and im
posture) many of the facts to Which it bears witness will have
to be accepted, and added to the sum of human knowledge. I
shall give up calling myself a Theist, and call myself a Spirit
ualist, by which I do not mean an adherent of table-rapping
and all that sort of thing, but simply (as opposed to a Materi
alist) a believer in an unseen and supra-sensual world, and a
believer in the creed which holds that this unseen world has acted
upon the visible world in certain exceptional cases, and at certain
exceptional epochs, in an abnormal, though not unnatural, fashion.
That is what I mean by Spiritualism; and I shall use the word
henceforward (and the word Spiritualist) in this significance,
distinguishing the creed of mere table-rapping and its adherents
by the words Spiritism and Spiritists. Do you do the same, and
then we shall have no misunderstanding.
“ Now Spiritualism is an advance upon Theism, and is in
excess of it just so far as this—that (while accepting with
Theism the results of modern criticism and of modern science to
a very large extent) it allirms where Positivism denies, and
where Theism (your position, if I understand you rightly) re
fuses either to affirm or deny. Positivism (perhaps I had better
say Materialism, as they are not exactly the same thing) denies
altogether the existence of the unseen world, and (of course) its
influence on ours; Theism affirms the unseen world, but denies
that it impinges upon ours in any way (or refuses to predicate
anything with certainty concerning this—there is a slight vari
* I have purposely thrown a large number of powerful names together, as it is
interesting to see how extraordinary is the real strength of the new thought of
the age, when its forces are combined. Those teachers whom I have mentioned
differ, of course, greatly in doctrine ; but they all unite in one thing—in pro
phesying great and speedy changes to the religion of the civilised world, and in
pointing towards new conceptions of man as man, and a new vision of the glory
and potential holiness of collective humanity, as the means whereby these mighty
and inevitable changes are to be finally achieved.
�12
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
ance among Theistic prophets at this point); Spiritualism affirms
positive law and positive criticism (with Materialism, Science,
and Theism), affirms the unseen world (with Theism), and (its
differentia) asserts that in rare instances and at rare seasons it
does impinge upon ours. I think it probable that the Resurrec
tion was one of these instances, and a cardinal one. I think it
probable that Westcott was right (so far) in his book. I do not
see any other way of reconciling the three marked books of
my this year’s reading—Westcott’s ‘ Gospel of the Resurrection,’
Comte’s ‘ General View of the Positive Philosophy,’ M. Arnold’s
‘ Literature and Dogma’—each of which has had a very strong
influence upon me, and in each of which I think I discern
several weak points—also noble truth in each. I do not see
any other way of combining these books than by affirming that
the Spiritual world has impinged upon ours at given points
(Westcott); that all worlds are under the dominion of positive
law (Comte); and, thirdly, that the critical spirit must be ap
plied to Christianity, that the day for metaphysical dogmas has
gone by, and that all religion must primarily repose upon the
Intuition (M. Arnold).
“ What do you think of the above generalisation ? Ido not
think it is a small one. It is the result of much thought, and
seems to me to contain and sum up a good deal, and to throw
great light upon many hitherto obscure subjects. To me some
of these new thoughts have been like a flood of light.
“ I have long felt that the weak point of Theism lies in the
fact that it affirms a Spiritual world, and yet denies the possi
bility of any intercourse between the inhabitants of that world
and ours. This is the point that even popular Christian writers
see so clearly, and make so much of. I think there is sound
sense in what they say. That is why I asked you why, if we
hoped to see our dead friends some day, we should not see them
occasionally now—asking if it was logical (believing in another
world) to attempt to draw a hard line of demarcation between
that world and this—pointing out what I thought the inconsis
tency of Mazzini’s addressing the brothers Bandiera in prayer,
if at the same time he held positive views about the action of
one world upon another, and their Spirits upon his. Perhaps
you remember what I said. The truth is, that if you once admit
a Spiritual world (as you do, and Mazzini and Parker did), you
cannot, without giving a larger encouragement to Materialism
than any of you three would care to do, get out of the possibility
of that world’s sometimes trenching upon ours. . . .
“ I want now to clear your mind of the misconceptions which
probably fill it (as they filled mine up till very lately) on the
subject of Spiritualism.
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
13
“You no doubt thought (judging from ‘Sludge the Medium’
and representations of that sort) that Spiritualism was a mere
mass of charlatanism, imposture, ignorance, and vulgarity. Now,
I find on examination that it is not so. Simply not so. I was
very much startled by discovering that there is a clear scientific
tone about a good deal of Spiritualistic writing, and that some
Spiritualistic oratory is not unworthy of Parker. There is a Mrs.
Cora Tappan in particular, an American Spiritualistic oratoress,
who is possessed of real genius, and whose addresses are in every
way remarkable.
*
Some time I will send you out some Spirit
ualistic papers, and you shall judge for yourself. I was sur
prised and pleased to find a great deal of sound criticism and
healthy thought in their work. I think at present that (for me)
Spiritualism supplies the wanting factor—the unknown quan
tity ; it seems to fill the gap of which I have long been conscious
in Theism, and which has driven me back to Christianity, only
to be expelled again by the want of reason in its advocates.
But Spiritualism professes to work upon scientific bases. I
thought it was a modern reproduction of the superstitious side
of Christianity. I dare say you are thinking the same. It is
not so. I find that it is, on the contrary, a genuine product of
the age in which we live—that Spiritualists profess advanced
philosophical opinions (not unlike those of Parker)—that they
consider the Christian dogma of the Trinity as a worn-out fable,
and worship Parker’s Father and Mother of the Universe. Some
of Mrs. Tappan’s prayers are quite as beautiful as those of Parker,
and very much in the same style. All this was new and sur
prising to me, and, I think, will be new to you. It is encour
aging and reassuring, for I had fancied that Spiritualism went
in for patching and bolstering up Christianity. I find, for
instance, that Spiritualists talk about the superstitions of Chris
tianity, and that, far from shunning, they court scientific and
honest investigation.
“ I do not place much reliance upon séances or casual pheno
mena ; my main argument is, as usual, an a priori one, and lies
higher up. The more I think and read, the more firmly am I
convinced that there are only two great divisions of opinion in
the world, which have struggled together (like Shelley’s snake
and eagle in ‘ The Revolt of Islam’) through all time, and have
taken ever-varying forms and phases—the Materialistic and the
Spiritualistic. Between these two the empires of time and
* This was written, as above stated, in 1873. I regret to have to add that
further experience of Mrs. Tappan teaches me that she sometimes talks and
writes the most egregious nonsense. Nevertheless, she is a remarkable woman,
and her principal book of poems, “Hesperia,” has true genius in it, though
mixed and overlaid with much that is tawdry, weak, and superficial.
�14
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
thought are divided. Christianity and Theism, and Spiritism
and Comtism and Spinozism, and so forth, are only minor forms
of these enormous Creeds—chips torn from the parent rocks.
They can always be classified (like stones and fossils in the
hand of an experienced geologist) as having originally belonged
to one or the other rock-stratum. Theism has hitherto been
giving her right hand to Materialism, and all I want to do is to
spin the good lady round and give her right hand to Spiritual
ism, and bestow upon Materialism only the graces of her left.
“ Questions like that of Christ’s Resurrection are really utterly
unimportant by the side of the question—Is there a Spiritual
World at all ? Are we to believe in anything besides matter ?
And the only way to answer this question is to fall back upon
the intuition. It cannot be answered (on the one hand) by
scientific induction—nor can it be proved (on the other) by his
torical evidence, though it may be very largely confirmed by
this. To this point, I think, men of all creeds and opinions are
coming very fast. I find the same feeling among Theists—among
Spiritualists—among the modern Christian apologists. They all,
with hardly an exception, are falling back upon the intuition,
and preaching that Christianity ought to be approached by the
intuitional or a priori route. To this basis some of them add
miracles, and some do not. Once grant the intuition, and this
becomes quite a secondary question, and it is coming to be con
sidered so on all sides. But, as a secondary question, it is of
great importance. I find that the abler Spiritualists themselves
are not for pressing the more marvellous appliances of their
trade—they, too, preach immortality and the existence of God
from the intuition, and only appeal to their modern miracles in
confirmation of an intuition and a faith previously existent in
the mind. (In some instances, no doubt, it may be—and always
has been—the other way; startling external occurrences may
awake a spirit of enquiry and produce conviction ; but the ulti
mate appeal must always be to the intuition residing in each
one’s consciousness ; else how are you to “ try the spirits,”
according to the New Testament ?) Herein they are in perfect
union with the Zeit-Geist, and move in harmonious ranks with
the other advocates of progressive thought. The truth is, that
though we are “ under the dawn,” we are very far from being
under the noonday, and for a good deal we shall have to wait.
I doubt whether either of us will see in our lifetime a complete
‘System of Science’ or a complete ‘ System of Religion’—and
the utmost that our modern aspiring philosophico-artistic writers
can really hope to do is to lay (perhaps) the stones of a few steps
which shall ultimately form a basis for a complete ‘ System of
Art.’ Now, this fact of our being so far from the noonday bears
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
15
upon the question of miracles in this way—that we have not
yet got to the end of our destructive criticism, and therefore it is
impossible to tell what will be left when that criticism has com
pleted its work and done its duty—namely, its worst. If I may
venture to prophesy, I think that the result will be somewhat as
follows. A large portion of the results of the destructive criti
cism will have to be accepted; the mythical theory will account
for many of the Biblical legends quite satisfactorily (perhaps, for
Christ’s being born of a Virgin, among others ; a prominent Eng
lish clergyman told me, not long since, that he would be glad
not to believe this, and that he thought the time, had come for a
frank consideration of the question); the naturalistic theoiy will
account for others ; but will they account for all ? I do not feel
sure that they will; and I think it likely that a residue of nar
ratives will be left, both in our Bible and the Bibles of other re
ligions, which will never be rightly understood except by
admitting the interposition in these rare instances for rare
reasons of supernatural (but perfectly harmonious—perfectly
positive) agency. I really think that the ultimate choice lies
between this and sheer Materialism. The Resurrection may be
one such instance; the Conversion of Paul may be another; but
I would never press this upon any one as a matter of faith—-it
is Aberglaube. But where I do not agree with M. Arnold is,
that I think the tenets of Aberglaube may sometimes be founded
on facts. But I do agree with him in feeling that Aberglaube
is not of equal force with the Intuition; and this G. MacDonald
saw long ago.
“ As an example of what I call the Theistic inconsistency, I
will quote the following. M. Arnold, talking about the stoning
of Stephen, implies that the passage about Stephen’s seeing the
Lord Jesus sitting at the right hand of God is not to be taken
literally. It is to be interpreted, rather, upon the principles of
what is called Ideology. Stephen did not behold at that supreme
juncture an objective Christ; but he underwent a transfiguration
of soul, which he expressed (or which has been expressed for
him, by what M. Arnold calls ‘reporters’) in those words. Now
I am not concerned to prove that Stephen did see an objective
Christ—that is a question of importance, but not of primary im
portance ; but what I do say—and I think that I have not only
true logical argument, but sound English common sense on my
side in saying it—is this, that such an objective vision would
not be one whit more wonderful than the realisation of the
issues which are implied in M. Arnold’s own affirmation ; for he
does (practically) affirm immortality—he affirms “ the power of
an endless life;” if the feeling of this eternal life never rises in
us to a sense of its being inextinguishable, it is, he says, proba
�15
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
bly because we fall so very far short of Christ’s moral standard
that our intuitions are weak, and we feel that we dare not trust
them and cast our whole souls upon them as Christ did. The
affirmation of the human intuition at all supreme moments is
There is no death. This affirmation forms the appropriate text
and motto of Spiritualism, and stands in precise contraposition
to the text engraved upon the banner of Materialism—Nothing
exists but matter. Now, all that M. Arnold has shown is, that
this broad human intuition, which reached its personal height (we
may say) in Christ of Nazareth, is the ultimate thing to be
relied upon—the primary basis, the ultimate test—and that we
are never safe in basing any religion upon miracles. He has not
shown more than this ; he has hardly attempted to show more;
and I think that, as far as he has gone, he is on safe ground, and
right. His weak point would be, if he ever attempted to deny
that the intuition which he affirms may sometimes be confirmed
and established (for previous believers in it) by supernatural
proofs ; at this point you will find (I expect), if you ever read
any reviews of his book, that his opponents will get hold of him.
They will say (with reason), you affirm a life which transcends
this visible life of ours; you assert that Christ possessed in a
surpassing degree the intuition of that life, and that we all
possess it in our measure, and that it may be largely increased
by faithfulness to light or (in your own words) by a rigid
attention to conduct — why, therefore, should the Resurrec
tion not be a manifestation—one, probably, among many other
manifestations, but the chief one of hitherto accomplished human
history—why should it not be a manifestation of that life in
which you say that you believe ? * Why believe in the life if
it is never to manifest itself ? Why believe in immortality if
you are never to be clothed with it ? The immortal life must
have a beginning. (Turn those four words—must have a begin
ning—over in your mind carefully; I cannot tell you what a
force they have to me.) If the immortal life is to begin, it is
only a subtle form of Materialism to endeavour to lay down the
law as to when it shall first manifest itself (that is the weak
point of Parker and what is called pure Theism). This seems
to me unspeakably important. You will find if you take the
assertion of pure Theism that there was no Resurrection,^ and
that the eternal life never impinges upon ours, but that this life
necessarily begins at the given point of death, and not till then,
* See an article in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1873, in which this
point is well brought out.
+ See for a confirmation of my statement that this is the creed of pure
Theism—the view as to the Resurrection held by the most advanced Theists
—Miss Cobbe’s “Hopes of the Human Race,” about “Jewish ghost-stories.”
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
17
you will find, if you patiently follow this thought to its. ultimate
analysis and proceed to disintegrate it, that you have in reality
left no scope for that eternal lite or its manifestation at all.
« The real difficulty is not to conceive of a spiritual or eternal
life manifesting itself in surprising and unusual ways, which to
the material eye appear abnormal and monstrous; the real diffi
culty is to believe in such a lite at all. Those who have no
spiritual vision by nature, or who have lost it for a time through
wrong-doing, cannot believe in a supra-mundane life ; once be
lieve in such a life as a matter of absolute truth, and endeavour
to live up to the faith in it, and special convictions as to the
truth of the assertions concerning certain ways in which that
life is said to have manifested itself upon the earth may well be
left to come of themselves—gradually. Here we begin to under
stand the meaning of ‘ the natural man understandeth not the
things of the spirit—they are foolishness unto him—because
they°are spiritually discerned,’ and the whole mass of evangelical
metaphor about the carnal man being like a man who is blind
fold in the midst of a bright room, and similar expressions
venerated by the seers and sages of all religions through all
time.”
And again, in another letter written in March, 1874:—“The
literature of Spiritualism (of which I have read a. great deal
lately) abounds with well-attested instances of revelations which
you would call ‘special’ and ‘inharmonious.’ It makes mir
acles common, and explains them. This brings me round to the
view of Spiritualism which I took at Brighton (when I thought
the matter out pretty ultimately); I do not know whether it will
be my final view. I was attracted towards the subject by my
own curious experience; I found that Spiritualists, far from
mocking and laughing at such things like the vulgar herd,
believed fully in them; nay, dealt almost exclusively in the
obscurer phenomena of mind and spirit. I found narratives of
experiences not unlike my own. Thus I was led to look further
into the subject.
‘‘Next I found accounts of intelligent disembodied agency
(you confuse the argument by talking about ‘ spirit’ and ‘ matter’
in that rigid way; we do not know what spirit and matter are;
what we call spirit may be some exceedingly attenuated form of
matter; or, spirits may be clothed in some exceedingly thin
tissue of matter—we do not know) ; I found accounts of intelli
gent agency acting upon mortals from the outside. I found
these accounts confirmed by hosts of able and honest witnesses.
So I was led to ask myself what would be the effect of this new
belief {if I found myself compelled to believe it) upon my faith
in Christianity.
�18
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
“ Now we have got to an interesting point. I saw two ways of
regarding Spiritualism (assvm ing its essential truth) in Connec
tion with Christianity. The first way was to regard the creed of
modern miracles as confirming the old creed. Miracles are per
formed now ; therefore they were performed then. Christ, the
incarnate Logos, performed in that capacity the greatest miracles
of all—those of raising the dead. This is one view; and it is
the view of a large body of men in England and America who
call themselves Christian Spiritualists. A medium called Harris
may perhaps be regarded as their leader.
“ This view did not satisfy me, as I then should have had to
give up my Theism, with all its attendant liberty and beauty of
thought, and regard Christ as an exceptional person, with all the
ugliness and bondage of thought attendant upon that conception.
Therefore, I sought for another method of reconciling Spiritualism
with Christianity. I came to the conclusion that Spiritualism
—(I always mean ‘modern Spiritualism’ when I use the word
in this letter—the modern Science of the Miraculous, dating
from Hydesville, in the State of New York, where the rappings
began in the Fox family in 1848 ; I cannot further maintain in
writing the distinction between ‘Spiritism’ and ‘Spiritualism’)
—that°Spiritualism must be regarded simply as an expansion of
Theism—simply as its magnetic or thaumaturgic side. It seemed
to me to fill up a gap which Parker and Mazzini had left un
closed. I do not think Parker and Renan ever fairly explained
the origin of Christianity; nor do I think that Arnold has done
so in ‘Literature and Dogma.’ Something more is needed ; and
that ‘unknown quantity’ is supplied oy modern Spiritualism,
which takes up the work where Parker relinquished it. The
miracles of Christ and of the apostolic era have never become
really plain in the light of modern criticism. It is this fact
which has given their strength to Westcott and the defenders of
Christianity. As long as they brought strong evidence to show
that certain wonderful works were wrought at that time which
are not performed now, and have never been performed at
any other era, it was impossible to dislodge them from their
earth-works; but once show that such miracles are common
things of almost daily occurrence, that every religion has had
them, and that they are going on now, and the whole strength
of Christianity, as gained from its exclusiveness, totters and
stumbles to the ground. This is the true significance of modern
Spiritualism, and this is the view which I finally took of it at
Brighton. It is the one thing which was wanting to make the
fortresses of Theism impregnable. It is the one thing which
*
* It should be understood that, throughout this article, I use the word
“Theism” in the sense of the advanced Theism professed and proclaimed by
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
19
was needed to make the gateways of the new creed secure. It
is the missing factor which I have been looking foi so long,
which explains the Resurrection, and all books based, like
Westcott's, upon the Resurrection. Christ did rise; he appeared
to his friends; he made his spirit-form visible to them (as many
other spirit-forms have been visible in history); but he was not
the Son of God in any exclusive sense for all that (here Spirit
ualistic Theism triumphs over Westcott, and. maintains the
integrity of mem, while admitting his facts; it is at this point
that I claim some originality of conception). Other risen spirits
have made themselves manifest to their friends; they are doing
so now; they are doing so in London!
“ If they are doing so in London, why. should one man not
have done so at Jerusalem ? and if they are doing so in London,
why should the solitary man who did so at Jerusalem be dubbed
the Incarnate Word and the Visible Jehovah for so doing ? [I
cannot resist the conclusion that many of our higher poets, in
those most exalted moments of which they have left to us a
record—(as, for example, Byron during the thunderstorm on the
Jura mountains, his feelings on which occasion he describes so
wonderfully in the famous passage in Childe Harold; and
Tennvson on the night when, as he says—
‘ Word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch’d me from the past,
And all at once it seem’d at last
His living soul was Hash’d on mine,
‘ And mine in his was wound, and whirl’d
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world ’ * —
)
knew something of what the resurrection-life meant.
No
theories of a swift resurrection and reappearance of Christ could
have seemed strange or far-fetched to Byron, after his wonderful
experience of the passion of eternal life, as excited and roused
into conscious, active being within him in that instance by the
marvels of the mountains and the storm; nor to Tennyson, after
Parker in America, by Mazzini in Italy and on the Continent generally, and by
writers like Miss Cobbe and Francis Newman in England. But my own faith
has to some extent, veered round lately towards that Religion of Humanity
sketched out at the beginning and conclusion of this paper. When I wrote the
above letters, “Theism” expressed tn me an advanced reasonable creed which
should gather into itself all the fruits of the past, and all the young springing
blossoms of present thought as well. I now doubt whether “Theism” is a fit
name for such a creed. But 1 thought it best to retain, in the letters, the old
expression, while indicating elsewhere the qualifications which I now perceive to
be necessary.
* In Memoriam, p. 140. I have been informed, upon good authority, that
the brother, and also the sister, of the Laureate are Spiritualists.
�20
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
his wondrous sense of sudden spiritual union -with his dead
friend Arthur Hallam upon that memorable night; nor to others
who have felt, in their measure, similar hints and intuitions of
immortality. I myself had, in early youth, a strange spiritual
experience, after which the faith in an immortal life can never
seem to me anything absurd or unreal—rather the most natural
and obvious thing in the world. The truth is that the Resurrec
tion is not an isolated fact at all. It is confirmed and led up to
by multitudes of spiritual experiences in all ages, felt and
enounced by those ‘magnetic men’ of whom Mr. Haweis speaks
in his recent volume.
]
*
“I am as jealous to define and defend the boundaries of our
beloved Theism as ever Athanasius or Origen or Clement were to
guard their Christian creeds. Therefore, I say that a man shall
not be called the Living God because he happens, casually, to
have risen from the dead, or has had any other abnormal Spiritual
experience ;. and here I encounter Westcott with mutual shock
of inwoven breastplates, face from face. But I differ from
Comte and Arnold in that I accept the chief of Westcott’s pre
misses. Only that I deduce from those premisses very different
conclusions. I only establish Theism on a firmer basis, and
overthrow Westcott more profoundly, in that I am able to accept
his Christian Resurrection and add twenty Theistic Resurrec
tions to it. “ Let those laugh who win.” The great love wins
in the issue, and so does the broad thought. Theism has now
finally conquered Christianity; its final victory was to inaugu
rate a code of miracles of its own, grander and more human
than any which preceded it.
Andrew Jackson Davis, the
Poughkeepsie Seer, is the prophet of this new revelation of
unchristian, superchristian miracles; he is your ‘ coming man,’
and he comes from America, as you predicted. Of his works
and thoughts more anon.
“ I argue as to Christ’s Resurrection from my own experience,
from the experience of others, from well-attested facts of history
and of modern Spiritualism. It certainly seems to me a grand
idea that Theism should have its miracles as well as Christianity.
If the light that be in Christianity turns out to be darkness,
truly ‘ great is that darkness.’ Gerald Massey, ‘ the people’s
poet,’ is a devoted and uncompromising Spiritualist. They say
that Tennyson and Walt Whitman are Spiritualists, and Tenny
son certainly ought to be, judging from his intercourse with the
spirit of Arthur Hallam, in ‘In Memoriam.’ He must have
been very near to the spirit of his dead friend at one point in
the poem. If Theism can perform even the wonders of Chris
“ Speech in Season.”
Reviewed at length in the Westminster for July
�21
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
tianity (its inferior material phenomena) better than the Chris
tians themselves, it is truly a sign that the power of God has
passed over to the New Creed, and that the Ark is no longe^ in
the Churches. It adds the colour that was wanting to Moncure
Conway’s buok, and wrings the last lingering supernatural dyes
*
out of the Christian flag.
“ The great movement of the age (as you have yourself said)
is towards decentralisation; towards republicanism of thought.
Now, modern Spiritualism is simply the most republican creed
in its tendency that can possibly be found; for it refuses to
recognise any excess of personality—any imperialism of religion
—affirming that nascent Mediumship exists in nearly every one,
and that each, in his measure, can hold intercourse with the
Spiritual world. In all this it is at one with the age. And in
all this it is at deadly feud with the orthodox Churches and with
Christianity, because it takes even the golden handle of their
esoteric thaumaturgic weapon out of their grasp. Therefore,
the Churches hate this new movement even more than the
simple Theistic movement (which is of a more abstract and
philosophical character), and accuse its preachers of holding
communion with evil spirits, and being instigated by Satan, and
so on—the old story. But some Christians, like Mr. Haweis,
have had the sense to see that they cannot maintain their own
series of miracles intact, and exclude these modern miracles, and
all others,—and they recognise, and even preach, Spiritualism.
“ In communications alleged to be from spirits, great stress is
laid upon the fact that no one person is to be the centre of this
movement. This was the mistake the spirits made—so they
say—in inaugurating and furthering the Christian movement;
and that mistake must not be made twice. Now when one finds
thoughts of this kind emanating from the obscure brains of
illiterate American Mediums, it makes one pause—and think.
There is nothing more remarkable in the history of this move
ment than the way in which the foremost thoughts of the fore
most thinkers of the age have been repeated by ignorant and
uneducated men under alleged spirit-influence. It certainly
looks as if the Zeit-Gcist of Matthew Arnold were something
more than a mere abstraction. Thoughts are in the air, we all
know. But the idea that they are not only in the air, but in
the hearts and minds of devoted, earnest, disembodied spirits,
intent upon educating us upon earth, and inaugurating era after
era, is one of the loveliest announcements of modern Spiritualism,
and it is quite as philosophical as the conception of an abstract
Zeit-Geist. Of course, the idea, in its essence, is as old as the
* “ The Earthward Pilgrimage.” London: J. C. Hotten.
1870.
�22
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY-.
hills ; Paul had it (compare his ‘ Cloud of Witnesses ’); Sweden
borg ’had it; Christ had it; but some of its developments are new.
“"i have now made plain the second view which may be taken
of Spiritualism when regarded in close connection with Chris
tianity. It may be called Theistic or advanced' or progressive
Spiritualism. I thought this view out for myself at Brighton,
and, subsequently, upon an examination of the best Spiritualistic
literature, could not but be gratified to discover that a similar
solution had presented itself to the most advanced among the
Spiritualists. There are two parties in their ranks as everywhere
else: the negative and the positive party; the obstructive and
the progressive; the conservative and the liberal. The acknow
ledged leader of the Liberal Spiritualistic party is the extraor
dinary man I spoke of above—Andrew Jackson Davis. He is the
author of a vast number of philosophical and metaphysical
works, some of which I have been reading lately. He is a man
of very real and massive genius—a sort of intuitive Spiritual
Comte of the west—and it is an astonishing thing to find this
American shoemaker’s apprentice (for such he was, I believe),
propounding intuitively even in his early days the very same
critical Theistic truths, which it has taken M. Arnold a life’s
perusal of ‘ the best that has been thought and written in the
world’ to reach. This, I say, is extremely astonishing; and it
is a phenomenon which one encounters constantly in examin
ing the records of Spiritualism.”
I have now shown what I conceive to be the relation between
Spiritualism, assuming that some of its phenomena shall even
tually be proved to be genuine, and modern thought. In con
clusion I will briefly recur to the other main purpose of this
article, which is to show that if the belief in a personal loving
God, constructed after the sanguine fashion of the Christian
Church, has to be abandoned, we need not therefore necessarily
give up our faith in a personal immortality.
The things, though they may at first sight (naturally) seem
similar, yet are in fact totally dissimilar, and have a totally dis
similar bearing. They are based upon different grounds. If it
is probable, as maintained at the commencement of this article,
that we have ourselves thrown the conception of a giant god
made in man’s image upon the vacant sky of our own thought;
if we have evolved from our own experience of love and tender
ness, and the overmastering conviction which we, as a race, have
now reached that unselfishness is the one thing superior to all
things else —the one thing passionately to strive after—the one
*
* Dean Stanley, in a recent remarkable speech delivered at the distribution of
prizes to the students of St. Thomas’s Hospital, said:—“Whatever course
physical science might take, nothing could ever destroy r shake in the least de-
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
23
thing wholly divine;—if, from this intense conviction (Mr.
Arnold’s “ Intuition”}, we have evolved the further belief (Mr.
Arnold’s “ Abcrglaube”') in a righteous God who inspires us with
the love of righteousness—who wishes to make us like himself,
“ pure even as he is pure ”—and who has sent his Son into the
world to redeem us from our sins and to prepare us for the
heavenly kingdom—if all this be Abcrglaube, and only the con
viction—the conviction that “ righteousness makes for happi
ness ”—based upon experience the one thing sure :—if all this
be so, our hope of immortality, based upon that inextinguishable
sense of life and eternal permanency which the practice of
righteousness invariably gives, remains much as. it was before.
It°is not really shaken in the least. It cannot be shaken. And
if Spiritualism can indeed help to explain the Resurrection of
Christ upon sober scientific grounds—grounds other than that
he was the Eternal Son, the only-begotten of the Father, and
therefore could not “see corruption,” nor be “holden of death,”
on account of his aboriginal kingly quality—if Spiritualism can
lift us out of the difficulty and clear up, without having recourse
to all this Abcrglaube, the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection in a
simple human way—as I have through a great part of this
article been attempting to show that there is strong hope of its
doing—if this, with all its valuable concomitants, shall turn out
to be the truth, our hope of immortality will approach an experi
mental certainty, and we shall be greatly indebted to the muchdespised much-calumniated Spiritualism !
In this connexion it is well to say that we do not really know,
much as has been made of it in priestly argument, that Jesus
Christ believed in a personal God at all. Poor Jesus! Centuries
of councils and boisterous churches have put so many words into
his mouth—so many strange opinions into his heart—that it
is becoming a matter of almost hopeless difficulty to know
what he really did believe or feel. But this much we may say
without fear— that his God was a very different Being from that
complex Divinity of the Churches whose body passes into con
secrated wafers, and who sustains the lurid dominions of hell
with his red right hand!
Christ believed in God as Father—he addressed him as Father,
and thought of him as Father, we are told; and it is likely that
in this particular we are informed correctly, as the unusual man
ner of loving and trustful utterance would have rivetted itself in
gree the glory of goodness, the excellence of purity, charity, courage—the im
mense prominence of the moral nature of man above everything else in the world.
. . . The moral being of man and the moral excellence which exists in man
are beyond everything else.’’ With this I heartily agree, maintaining as I do
that our moral intuitions are the causes and creators of our creeds, instead of our
creeds creating and nourishing them (sec Lit. and Dogma, pp. 290, 291).
�24
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY-.
the minds of the hearers, and probably have been reported accu
rately—without additions or misapprehensions of their own.
But even then it remains to inquire, what did Jesus mean by
Father—did he use the word as we speak of God the Father, the
First Person of the Holy Trinity—did he use the word as the
Churches have used it, and are using it—or as Mil ton used it—
or as John Knox,—did he use it out of consideration for popular
ignorance and superstition (much the same in all ages), as likely
to convey the truest idea to the popular mind—did he not, in his
inmost heart, mean by it something very like that impersonal
absolute power which modern science presents to us as at the.
root of all things, and which we may call father, or brother, or
mother, not because it is indeed as a conscious father, or brother,
or mother, but because it (by the final results of the working of
its originally unconscious attributes) produces fatherhood and
motherhood, and all the tender grace of brotherliness—produces
and sustains these in us, so that we naturally call this power
father, though it heeds not nor hearkens to our voice ? Was
not (to take a very excellent instance) all that loving-kindness
and unceasing pity and tenderness which the late Frederick
Maurice used to speak about as residing in the Godhead, and
eternally manifested to us by God the Son—was not that prin
ciple of eternal, boundless, endless love, which he was never
tired of expatiating upon, really resident in the man himself,
Frederick Maurice1 and did he not unconsciously cast his own
?
grand shadow on the sky, and hear his own true voice calling
unto him as if from the fairest heights of heaven—more voluble
now, being as the fancied tongue of God ?
These questions are not intended to be irreverent. They are
being reverently, but bravely and persistently, asked on all sides
now—they will be asked more persistently and much less
reverently as time goes on, if mankind is to be drugged in reply
with superstitious fallacies, and put off with petulant half
answers. Meantime, pending the full discovery in the depths of
man’s own nature of the answers to these and similar questions,
let us remember, in removal, or at least in mitigation of that
principal dread which overwhelms him just now—lest in losing
the personal God of his own creation, he has also parted with
his own immortality—that all the analogy of nature goes to
show that from lesser to greater, from simple to increasingly
complex, is her constant plan of procedure—and that there is
really little reason to fear that that mingling with the eternal
elements, of which all the poets speak in such rapturous terms,
means anything like what we can only express as the loss of
individuality or of personality. We are not likely to return,
unconscious, to that unconscious universe from which, by ages
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
25
of upward agony, we have slowly emerged. We are, or have
become, immeasurably greater than our prolific mother, and we
have no desire to return to the unconscious folds of her embrace.
Devoted Pantheists, when they talk about mingling with the
universe, continually forget how much greater that thought and
moral sense which have been slowly evolved are than the forces
which evolved and produced them; they continually, without
knowing or noticing it, advocate an immense retrogression—a
vast passing from the greater to the less great, from the hetero
geneous to the homogeneous—when they preach their belief in
the annihilation of man’s conscious personality—the very thing
which all the strenuous ages have been struggling triumphantly
to produce. Do not fear, we shall not lose this. Far more
likely is it that further evolution, as yet unseen and unex
perienced, will increase and intensify it. The powers of air
and earth and ocean shall be ours; but we shall not be theirs.
We shall rejoice with the winds and the happy tumult of the
breezes; but they shall not exult and triumph over us. We
shall hold lordship over them—they shall pass into us and
become a part of us—we shall not passively pass into them; the
universe may be absorbed, in some strange, sweet fashion, into
the human spirit, as it has already in some measure been
absorbed into the souls of poets like Shelley and Keats—but it
will, must,, re-issue thence in the victorious utterance of human
personality, made greater, not smaller, by the electric human
touch. It will not absorb us, but we shall, in the end, enclose
and absorb all the blossoms of its manifold and enigmatic beauty.
We shall pass onward to become greater and more complex in
our powers of thought and love and ecstasy; we shall not flee
backward into Pantheistic viewless breezes, or Pantheistic fiery
star-dust. We have been these things—yea, all of them, or
latent in all of them—but we shall be these no more. We have
climbed above them to the conscious, glorious height of man;
and our superb self-consciousness shall only widen and deepen
and increase; it shall become world-consciousness, and even
*
the sense of many worlds, without the loss of the central govern
ing self—the central human spirit.
G e;*’’er powers of love in especial shall be ours—strange
1
lcvely xorms of passion unseen and undreamed of as yet—but
* “ I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any
iota of the world;
I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless—in
vain I try to think how limitless;
I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of orbs, play their swift sports
through the air on gmrpose—and that I shall one day be eligible to do as
much as they, and more than they.”
Walt Whitman—“ Whispers of Heavenly Death.”
�26
THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
no loss of passion; no absorption into passionless nature; no
eternal mingling with the serene but loveless stars. We pass
upward. We win nature; we are not won and conquered of
her. It may be that the passions of all planets, or experienced
on all planets, shall unite in us, but it will be only to increase
and sweetly amplify, as with the sound of many voices, or the
scent of many flowers, or the breath of many and lordly moun
tain winds,the fragrant central yearning and the pure innate desire
of each. We shall gain everything by expansion—nothing is to be
gained by lingering within the dusty precincts of ourselves. By
widening out we gain the universe, but we lose no jot nor tittle
of our true eternal selves thereby. These true endless selves
abide alway, and they shall not be diminished. Death cannot
narrow them; they are unchangeable for all the shocks and per
turbations of creeds. The forces of nature must in the end
become our servants; they are never (had not Ezekiel the vision
of a man upon the central throne ?) to be our masters and lords.
The sea and thunder will not win us, but we may win the
passion and the pleasure of thunder, and stars, and sea. When
Byron said—
“ And this is in the night:—Most glorious night!
Thou wcrt not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,—
A portion of the tempest and of thee ! ”
he had a vision of a great ecstatic joy—a voluptuous spiritual
rapture in which, too, all the quivering and throbbing senses took
*
part —beyond the reach of words; and as what he had (and all
true poets have had) a prophetic foreglimpse of was not the loss
of consciousness, but the splendid presence of a consciousness
which, while it grew (and even in proportion as it grew) wider
and less embodied, became also more personal and more intense,
so shall the loss of life bring to each soul in the end a deeper
and wider life ; more pregnant with sweet and masterly issues;
more safely and nobly lifted above all ultimate arrows of adverse
fate>
George Barlow.
NOTE.
Since the above was written, an article on “Theism” has appeared in
the Westminster Review, from which the following is an extract:—
“ Religions are not made; they grow. Their progress is not from the
enlightened to the vulgar, but from the vulgar to the enlightened. They are
not'products of the intellect, but manifest themselves .as physical forces too.
The religion of the future is in our midst already, working like potent yeast in
the minds of the people. It is in our midst to-day with signs^and wonders
uprising like a swollen tide, and scorning the barriers of Nature’s laws. But
however irresistible its effects they are not declared on the surface. It comes
* See Swinburne’s “Essay on Byron.”
�THE GOSPEL OF HUMANITY.
27
veiling its destined splendours beneath an exterior that invites contempt. Hidden
from the prudent, its truths are revealed to babes. Once more the weak will
confound the mighty, the foolish the wise, and base things and things despised, it
may be even things that are not, bring to nought things that are, for it seems
certain that whether truly or whether falsely Spiritualism will re-establish, on
what professes to be ground of positive evidence, the fading belief in a future liie
—not such a future as is dear to the reigning theology, but a future developed
from the present, a continuation under improved conditions of the scheme of
things around us. Further than this it is impossible to predict the precise
development which Spiritualism may take in the future, just as it would have
been impossible at the birth of Christianity to have predicted its actual subsequent
development: but from the unexampled power possessed by this new
religious force of fusing with other creeds, it seems likely in the end to bring
about a greater uniformity of belief than has ever yet been known.”—West
minster lieview, Oct., 1875.
It will be seen that the writer is here pursuing a new line of thought,
which runs curiously parallel to that indicated in my own treatise.—Gr. B..
Oct. 23, 1875.
In preparation, by the same Author,
WALT WHITMAN;
OR,
THE RELIGION OF ART.
The Religion of Art will redeem the world, not by producing
world-wide pangs of remorse and repentance (this is the mission of
Morality or the Moral Law; whose giver is Jesus)—not by expounding
the external truths of natural things (this is the mission of Science;
whose prophets are the patient experimentalists of all ages)—but by
exhibiting the world as it is. The prophets and preachers of this,
the final and only successful Religion, are the poets and artists of
every age: they are higher than Love, higher than Pity, higher than
Purity, higher than Repentance, higher than Truth : they pursue the
absolute Beauty of things, and this they announce and sing. Their
pitiless pitifid beautiful Song will redeem the world.
�POEMS AND SONNETS.
By GEORGE BARLOW.
7n Three Parts, price 7s. 67. each.
Crown 8ro., cloth.
JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, 74 and 75 Piccadilly.
1871.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
Part I.—11 Mr. George Barlow’s ‘ Sonnets ’ is, in several respects, a
clever and remarkable book. . . . Mr. Barlow has a peculiar gift for
quaint and captivating titles. The ‘ Ecstasy of the Hair,’ ‘ My Own
Dart,’ ‘'Blue Weather,’ ‘Death’s Lips and Palms,’ ‘To have Beheld,’
are felicitous and suggestive fancies. . . . This would scarcely have
been remarked, did it arise from lack of power to perfect. From the
evidence of his better work, we are convinced that the author has
all that is needful of such power, to make of the many eidola of good
things that sprinkle his volume, real embodiments of genius. Such
evidences are not rare. . . . Mr. Barlow has, however, sterling
qualities that compensate even these crudities; and if we have been
particular in the enumeration of his faults, it is that these qualities
are great enough to merit care in their culture—care in their libera
tion from the occasional clumsiness that obscures them. If Mr.
Barlow be a young man, his career is, to a great measure, in his own
hanus.”—Blanchard Jerrold, in Lloyd's News, Feb. 26, 1871.
“ To the Rossetti subdivision, we think, the volume before us
belongs. It has the loving yearning after loveliness which charac
terises the writers referred to, but it has no obscurity, and it has a
fine human sentiment of its own. There is, also, a sympathy with
nature which evidently is not assumed, not accepted at second-hand,
but which bursts forth from the inner personality of the writer. The
verse, if not great, is uniformly sweet, and (which is a virtue) we can
all follow its meaning.”—Weekly Dispatch, March 26, 1871.
“ A new singer to us is Mr. Barlow, but one who unquestionably
fingers the chords of his harp with a delicate, reverential, and, withal,
somewhat masterly touch. His theme is love, with variations : and
charmingly and archly he discourses upon that ancient but ever new
topic, owning apparently inexhaustible resources within himself of
heart-melody. His laudations of beauty have nothing in them that
is sickening or sensual; on the contrary, they are moderate and
graceful. His sentiment is not less tender than true and pure; his
thoughts of beauty are refining and elevating. He has less mannerism
than most of the young writers in the present day, and shows a
generous appreciation of others, which is, to a certain extent, some
proof of merit in himself.”—Public Opinion, April 1, 1871.
�OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
“ The author expresses his admiration of American Society for
being free from the ‘ pruning of Convention’s hand,’ but it is much to
be regretted that he has forborne to apply more of such pruning to
his own work......................... There are grace and melody in the pieces
entitled, ‘ Reminiscence ’ and ‘ The Discovery of Love,’ and another
called ‘ The Waking of Beauty ’ shows a genuine worship, which
ought some time to bear worthier fruit.”—Spectator, April 8, 1871.
“ This is the first part only of a collection which, thus far, reveals
so many graces that a reader of taste may well wait impatiently for
the second.”—Illustrated London News, April 22, 1871.
Speaking of Part III., The Westminster Review, for April, 1874,
says:—
“ Mr- Barlow has probably, without knowing it, been influenced
by the feeling of the day. And a man may resemble another in his
style without having read him. Influences are, as it were, in the air.
The series of poems ‘ Under the Gaslight,’ appears to us to represent
much of the spirit of the rising generation of poets. Mr. Barlow
writes not merely fluently, but with a command of both language
and thought. His ideas are thoroughly under his control. Again,
the series of poems ‘ Christ is not Risen,’ well represent much of the
spiritual unrest—for we. have no better title—of the day. It would
be utterly impossible, judging by the present volume, to say what
Mr. Barlow may do. His verse is full of promise.”
“ The quality of Mr. Barlow’s work is by no means out of propor
tion to the quantity. He has not only a fluent pen, but an indubi
table gift of beautiful and harmonious, if not commonly powerful,
expression. He is no careless workman, trusting to the force of
genius alone, and neglecting the strictness of method and the grace of
form. Indeed, grace and finish are the conspicuous and prevailing
qualities of his poetry, and the number of awkward lines and words
put in to save the credit of a rhyme is so small as to be almost
unnoticeable.”—Literary World, June 19, 1874.
Parts I., II., III.—“Mr. Barlow is a poet of no mean capacity,
whose muse is specially devoted to the somewhat unthankful task of
producing sonnets..................... In Part II. Mr. Barlow is at his
best, and his success in poems of less strict metre than is required
for the sonnet is such as to induce us to wish he had avoided the
more laborious task. As one of many excellent short pieces we may
instance £A Dream of Roses.’ .... We have read Mr.
Barlow’s three volumes with interest and pleasure, which is more
than can be said of much of the poetry of the day.”—Weekly Dis
patch, Aug. 17, 1873.
“ Mr. Barlow has read poetry, and it is probable that he under
stands it. There is no evidence in his more serious work of mis
directed energies or ill-chosen subjects..................... His sonnets are
of a subject and intention which does not forbid comparison with
Petrarch himself.”—Illustrated Review, Aug. 28, 1873.
�Ey the same Author.
A LIFE’S LOVE.
Square 8ro., cloth, price 6s.
JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, 74 and 75 Piccadilly.
1873.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
“ ‘ A Life’s Love’ is a volume of short poems from the pen of one
who evidently derives much of his inspiration from Mr. Swinburne.
As far as we have glanced at them, the poems are the reverse of
ci.mmonplace.”—Examiner, July 26, 1873.
“ Mr. Barlow’s muse has much original power and culture, but it
is a little too exuberant in the power of imitation......................... His
chief excellence is the way in which he weaves the world of nature
external to him with the fancies of imagination and the feelings of
the human heart; hence it is that his poetry, which we can cordially
commend to all lovers of the muse, is full of similes drawn from the
world of external nature.”—Standard, July 31, 1873.
“ Mr. Barlow’s book of sonnets, entitled ‘ A Life’s Love,’ reveals
earnestness of feeling, refinement of taste, and some aspiration. . . .
The endeavour after an elevated artistic ideal is apparent, but the
poems are less remarkable for what they are in themselves than
suggestive of what their author, with his idealistic tendency and
tenderness, and charm of sentiment, may one day produce.
Much of the mystic element is perceptible in Mr. Barlow’s verse.
. . . It is impossible not to wish well to a young poet whose faults
are evidently those of youth and inexperience. When the early
subjectiveness of intellect and feeling have progressed into a more
objective stage, these slight inartistic blemishes will doubtless dis
appear. . . Time is the test to show what real creative power may
be behind the downy shoots of the first growth. We shall, how
ever, look forward to Mr. Barlow’s further efforts in the hope that
his role of poet may not have been undertaken lightly to be aban
doned.”—Antiquary, Auj. 23, 1873.
“ The perfect English Sonneteer has not yet presented himself to
the public. Mr. George Barlow has, perhaps, more than any other
modern writer devoted himself to the making of sonnets.....................
From the quantity of sonnets he has written, we should say that he
lias faith in the style he has adopted, and in himself as the exponent
of the style. Whether, however, he is the long-expected perfect
sonneteer we doubt, although some of the stanzas in ‘ A Life’s Love’
contain some of the most charming and delightful poetry we have
read for some time. Mr. Barlow is Petrarchan in manner. We have
Petrarchan subtleties and Petrarchan conceits. Petrarch’s sonnets
immortalise his love for Laura; George Barlow’s ‘Life’s Love’ is
not mentioned by name, but the love is evidently genuine and the
lady human. . . . The sonnet entitled ‘ The Pearl Necklace’ is,
in our opinion, the brightest and most valuable gem in Mr. Barlow’s
rich collection. If it be not true poetry we are greatly deceived.”—
Civil Service Review, Sept. 13, 1873.
�By the same Author.
UNDER THE DAWN.
Crown 8ro., cloth extra, price 7s. 6d.
CHATTO & WINDUS, 74 and 75 Piccadilly.
1875.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
“Mr. Barlow’s former works—‘Poemsand Sonnets’ and a Life’s
Love’—attracted some attention. If they did not show him to be a
great poet, they certainly afforded ample proof that he is a fearless
thinker, and possesses a facility—we had almost said a dangerous
facility—for versification.................... The main object of the author
of ‘ Under the Dawn’ is at once political and religious. In harmony
with the prevailing spirit of our age, he hates everything in the shape
of creeds with an utter hatred, and longs to see his mind set free
from the galling bondage in which they hold their slaves. Also in
unison with the time in its desire and determination—despite tempo
rary reactions—to effect great and necessary political reforms, our
poet was as indignant in expressing the wrongs from which men
suffer, and at times eloquent in the assertion of man’s inalienable
rights. Mr. Barlow, indeed, is both republican and free-thinker.
. . . . The wearers of strait jackets of orthodoxy, therefore, had
better—indeed, they are certain, to give ‘Under the Dawn’ a wide
berth.—Birmingham Morning News, Dec. 22, 1874.
“ ‘ Christ’s Sermon in the City’ is the most brilliant and most
original of a series of poems which point Mr. Barlow out as a singer
of the most choice gifts and graces of minstrelsy.”—Evening Standard,
Dec. 24, 1874.
“ The ‘ Dedication’ is a singularly beautiful one..............................
In reading these last-named poems, we have regretted that Mr.
Barlow has not given us more of a similar description, for they show
that he is a careful observer of nature, and that he is able to stand alone
onground of his own choosing.”—Civil Service Gazette, Dec. 26, 1874.
“ The writer has a very fei-tile fancy. His powei- of illustrating
an apparently barren subject is really surprising. He has a great
mastery over verse, and his diction is rich and artistic.........................
‘ Under the Dawn’ is in many respects so meritorious as an intellec
tual production as to make us regret deeply that the author is so
widely separated from the religious feeling of his country and gene
ration.”—Irish Times, Dec. 26, 1874.
“ The opening poem of this book is liable to the charge of being
too highly coloured, but it is withal a daring and vigorous effort.
When time has a little dimmed the over bright flame of Mr.
Barlow’s fancy, and chastened the fervour of his style, we may
expect from his pen poems which will leave more than a mere passing
mark upon the poetic literature of the age.”—Newcastle Chronicle,
Jan. 2, 1875.
“ Should command a large circle of renders.”—Perthshire Adver
tiser, Jan. 4, 1875.
�OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
“Mr. Barlow lias a great deal of ideality, and also a very definite
mode of thinking; so that he is clear even in his impassioned pieces,
and delicate in his most masculine.”—Ncotewian, Jan. 5, 1875.
“ Mr. Barlow has been charged with being a copyist—an echo of
Swinburne; but we must say, after a careful perusual of his poems,
that the charge is not to be sustained.”—London Sun, Jan. 30, 1875.
“ The present work will extend the poet’s reputation; anything
more daring has not been printed since Shelley’s day.”—Sussex Daily
News, March 4, 1875.
“ Mr. Barlow, being asked by his admirers, of whom he has not a
few, to write a poem worthy of his undoubted powers, has .given
them a long preface, in which he defends himself against various
foolish charges. Some time ago, when noticing his ‘ Poems and
Sonnets,’ we made some remarks on the general style and tendency of
Mr. Barlow’s poetry. We thought, and we still think, that it repro
duces, in a very remarkable way, many of the thoughts and per
plexities which are agitating the minds of the younger generation.
To accuse Mr. Barlow of plagiarism is the height of folly. We think
that it would have been far better for Mr. Barlow to have left his
critics unanswered. Time will decide between him and them. His
duty is to be true to his Muse, and not to engage in controversy.”—
Westminster Review, April, 1875.
“ Mr. Barlow has considerable command of language, a lively
fancy, and vigorous thought ■ but we commend to him the study of
loftier masters, and a selection of purer models. His verbal harmony
should express elevated ideas and wholesome morality, and many of
his poems attest his full capacity as a poetic teacher well worthy of
an audience.”—Morning Post, May 19, 1875.
“ Under the Dawn’ is decidedly not the echo of ‘ Songs before
Sunrise,’ a few have decried it as ; but neither is it a revolt against
the pantheistic creed. Rather, it may be termed, the offspring of a
union between Theism and the worship of Nature—the production of
a mind wherein materialistic and purely spiritual ideas are blended-—
perhaps in a manner not far divergent from the truth.........................
Looking at the sonnet called ‘ Italy to England,’ and similar composi
tions, we should say that Mr. Barlow is better calculated to succeed
in the lyric than the epic.................... We like the whole tone of the
‘ Ode to Mazzini Triumphant ’—a composition which we think dis
putes with ‘ Christ’s Sermon in the City’ the praise of being the
finest poem in the volume.—Human Nature, Sept., 1875.
“ I am happy to see that we have a new ‘ birth of time’ and spark
of Promethian fire in another poet of most excellent promise, and
very considerable performance—Mr. George Barlow, who names his
volume of poems ‘ Under the Dawn,’ and whose charming verse
conveys much sound philosophy, and most beautiful and varied senti
ment, with a wholesome scorn for worn-out follies and superstitions.”
—National Reformer, Oct. 3, 1875.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The gospel of humanity; or, the connection between spiritualism and modern thought
Creator
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Barlow, George [1847-1913 or 1914.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 27, [5] p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Inscription on front cover: 'With the Author's Compliments'. Printed by H. Nisbet, Glasgow. Includes bibliographical references. Extracts from reviews of works by the same author listed on unnumbered pages at the end.
Publisher
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James Burns
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1876
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G5333
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Spiritualism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The gospel of humanity; or, the connection between spiritualism and modern thought), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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English
Conway Tracts
Spiritualism
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Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
a state of ignorance persons are liable to numerous
impositions ; they are easily imposed- on by rumours
IbSj
ar* reports which they have not the power of investid
pat'nS> and still more easily imposed on by their own
iMCiMiSSffi impressions or notions. Of all the impositions which
have vexed the ignorant, a belief in the reality of spectral appear
ances has been one of the most ridiculous, yet one of the longest
and most zealously supported. This belief was once current even
among men reputed for their learning—that is, a kind of learning, not
founded on a correct knowledge of nature—but, by the progress of
inquiry, it has gradually been abandoned by persons of education,
and now is maintained only by those whose minds have not been
instructed on the subject. Considering that this belief, like every
other error, is injurious to happiness, and that, in a particular
manner, the young require to be put on their guard against it, we
propose, in the present paper, to explain the theory of spectral
illusions—how they originate in the mind, and are in no respect
supernatural in their character.
To obtain right ideas of this curious, and, to many, mysterious
subject, it is necessary to understand, in the first place, what kind
of a thing the human mind is, and how it operates in connection
with the senses, or at least two of them—seeing and hearing. The
seat of the mind is in the brain ; in other words, the brain is the
organ or mdss of organs by which the thinking faculties act. Like
No. 159.
,
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
an instrument finely tuned, the brain, when in a sound state of
health, performs its part in our economy with fidelity. Shut up in
the skull, however, it has no communication with external nature
except through the medium of the senses. The senses are the
channels of intelligence to the brain. When the eye receives the
impression or picture of a thing presented to it, that impression iscarried by a nerve to the brain, where the consciousness or mind
recognises it; and the same thing occurs with the ear in the trans
mission of sound. The ordinary notion, therefore, that the eye sees,
is scarcely correct. It is the mind, through the operation of the
brain, the optic nerve, and the eye, which sees. The eye is only an
instrument of vision and recognition. Such is the ordinary process
of seeing, and of having a consciousness of what is presented to the
eye ; and we perceive that the outer organ of vision performs but an
inferior part in the operation. There is, indeed, a consciousness of
seeing objects, without using the eyes. With these organs shut, we
can exert our imagination so far as to recall the image of objects
which we formerly have seen. Thus, when in an imperfect state of
sleep, with the imagination less or more active, we think that we
see objects, and mingle in strange scenes ; and this is called dream
ing. Dreams, therefore, arise principally from a condition of partial
wakefulness, in which the unregulated imagination leads to all kinds
of visionary conceptions. In a state of entire wakefulness, and with
the eyes open, unreal conceptions of objects seemingly present may
also be formed; but this occurs only when the system is disordered
by disease.
We are now brought to an understanding of the cause of those
illusions which, under the name of ghosts, apparitions, or spectres,
have in all ages disturbed the minds of the credulous. The disorder
which leads to the formation of these baseless visions may be
organic or functional, or a combination of both. Organic disorder
of the body is that condition in which one or more organs are
altered in structure by disease. Functional disorder is less serious
in character : it is that condition of things where the healthy action
of the organ or organs, in part or whole, is impeded, without the
existence of any disease of structure. Lunacy, if not arising from
organic disorder, hovers between it and functional derangement, in
either case producing unreal conceptions in the mind. Functional
disorder may arise in various ways, and be of different kinds. It
may be said that violent excitement of the imagination or passions
constitutes functional mental disorder : ‘ Anger is a short madness/
said the Romans wisely. As for functional bodily disorder, tem
porary affections of the digestive organs may be pointed to as
common causes of such cases of physical derangement. All these
disorders, and kinds of disorders, may appear in a complicated
form; and, what is of most importance to our present argument,
the nervous system, on which depend the action of the senses, the
2
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
powers of the will, and the operation of all the involuntary functions
(such as the circulation of the blood, and digestion), is, and must
necessarily be, involved more or less deeply in all cases of constitu
tional disorder, organic or functional. These powers of the nerves,
which form, as we have seen, the sole medium by which mind and
body act and react on each other, are clearly, then, connected with
the production of every kind of illusory impression.
In lunacy, from organic derangement, these impressions are
usually the most vivid. Every lunatic tells you he sees spectres, or
unreal persons ; and no doubt they are seemingly present to his
diseased perceptions. The same cause, simple insanity, partial or
otherwise, and existing either with or without structural brain disease,
has been, we truly believe, at the foundation of many more apparition
cases than any other cause. By far the greatest number of such
cases ever put on record, have been connected with fanaticism in
religious matters ; and can there be a doubt that the majority of the
poor creatures, men and women, who habitually subjected themselves,
in the early centuries of the church, to macerations and lacerations,
and saw signs and visions, were simply persons of partially deranged
intellect ? St Theresa, who lay entranced for whole days, and who,
in the fervour of devotion, imagined that she was frequently addressed
by the voice of God, and that St Peter and St Paul would often in
person visit her solitude, is an example of this order of monomaniacs.
That this individual, and others like her, should have been perfectly
sensible on all other points, is a phenomenon in the pathology of
mind too common to cause any wonder. We would ascribe, we
repeat, a large class of apparition-cases, including these devotional
ones, to simple mental derangement. The eye in such instances
may take in a correct impression of external objects, but this is not
all that is wanting. A correct perception by the mind is essential to
healthy and natural vision, and this perception the deranged intellect
cannot effect.
We should go further than this for a complete elucidation of
spectral illusions. At the time the spectre makes its appearance,
the mind may be neither altogether diseased nor altogether health
ful ; the perceptive powers may recognise through the eye all
surrounding objects exactly as they appear, but, almost in the same
instant of time, the mind may mix up an unreal object with them.
How, then, is the unreal object introduced into the scene ? There
is the strongest ground for believing that the unreal object—the
spectre—is an idea of the mind acting on the optic nerve, and
impressing a picture on the retina, just as effectually as if the object
were external to the person. The mind, as it were, daguerreotypes
the idea—the flash of thought—on the retina, or mirror of the eye,
where it is recognised by the powers of perception. That spectres
are mental pictures, is forcibly stated as follows by Sir David
Brewster : ‘ I propose to shew that the “ mind’s eye ” is actually the
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
Tody’s eye, and that the retina is the common tablet on which both
classes of impressions are painted, and by means of which they
receive their visual existence according to the same optical laws.
Nor is this true merely in the case of spectral illusions. It holds
good of all ideas recalled by the memory, or created by the imagina
tion, and may be regarded as a fundamental law in the science of
pneumatology.
‘ In the healthy state of the mind and body, the relative intensity
•of these two classes of impressions on the retina are nicely adjusted.
The mental pictures are transient, and comparatively feeble, and in
ordinary temperaments are never capable of disturbing or effacing
'the direct images of visible objects. The affairs of life could not be
• carried on if the memop' were to intrude bright representations of
‘•the past into the domestic scene, or scatter them over the external
{-landscape. The two opposite impressions, indeed, could not co
exist. The same nervous fibre which is carrying from the brain to
the retina the figures of memory, could not at the same instant be
carrying back the impressions of external objects from the retina to
the brain. The mind cannot perform two different functions at the
same instant, and the direction of its attention to one of the two
classes of impressions necessarily produces the extinction of the other.
But so rapid is the exercise of mental power, that the alternate
appearance and disappearance of the two contending impressions is
710 more recognised than the successive observations of external
objects during the twinkling of the eyelids.’ *
With these general observations, we proceed to an analysis of the
-different kinds of spectre-seeing, beginning with a short explanation
of dreaming and somnambulism, with which apparitional illusions
are intimately associated.
DREAMS—SOMNAMBULISM.
Dreaming is a modification of disordered mental action, arising
usually from some kind of functional derangement. In sound sleep,
■The functions of digestion, the circulation of the blood, and all others,
may be said to be duly in action, and the mind is accordingly not
•disturbed. If, however, any of the bodily functions be in a state of
derangement ; if, in particular, the digestion be incommoded, which
it ordinarily is in an artificial mode of life, the senses, the nerves,
"the mind, will also be probably affected, and an imperfect sleep,
with an imperfect consciousness, is the result. According to the
Test writers on the subject, it has been ascertained that, in beginning
To sleep, the senses do not unitedly fall into a state of slumber, but
drop off one after the other. The sight ceases, in consequence of
The protection of the eyelids, to receive impressions first, while all
* Letters on Natural Magic.
4
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
the other senses preserve their sensibility entire. The sense of tasteis the next which loses its susceptibility of impressions, and then the
sense of smelling. The hearing is next in order ; and, last of all,,
comes the sense of touch. Furthermore, the senses are thought to
sleep with different degrees of profoundness. The sense of touch
sleeps the most lightly, and is the most easily awakened; the next
easiest is the hearing ; the next is the sight ; and the taste and
smelling awake the last. Another remarkable circumstance deserves
notice ; certain muscles and parts of the body begin to sleep before
others. Sleep commences at the extremities, beginning with the feet
and legs, and creeping towards the centre of nervous action. The
necessity for keeping the feet warm and perfectly still, as a prelimi
nary of sleep, is well known. From these explanations, it will not
appear surprising that, with one or more of the senses, and perhaps
also one or more parts of the body imperfectly asleep, there should
be at the same time an imperfect kind of mental action, which pro
duces the phenomenon of dreaming.
A dream, then, is an imperfectly formed thought. Much of the
imperfection and incoherency of such thoughts is from having no
immediate consciousness of surrounding objects. The imagination
revels unchecked by actual circumstances, and is not under the
control of the will. Ungoverned by any ordinary standards of
reason, we, in dreaming, have the impression that the ideas which.,
chase each other through the mind are actual occurrences: a mereill-formed thought is imagined to be an action. As thought is veryrapid, it thus happens that events which would take whole days or
a longer time in performance, are dreamed in a few moments. Sowonderful is this compression of a multitude of transactions into the
very shortest period, that when we are accidentally ‘ awakened from
a profound slumber by a loud knock at, or by the rapid opening of,
the door, a train of actions which it would take hours, or days, or
even weeks to accomplish, sometimes passes through the mind.
Time, in fact, seems to be in a great measure annihilated. An
extensive period is reduced, as it were, to a single point, or rather a
single point is made to embrace an extensive period. In one
instant we pass through many adventures, see many strange sights,,
and hear many strange sounds. If we are awaked by a loud knock
,
*
we have perhaps the idea of a tumult passing before us, and knowall the characters engaged in it—their aspects, and even their very
names. If the door open violently, the flood-gates of a canal mayappear to be expanding, and we may see the individuals employed,
in the process, and hear their conversation, which may seem an
hour in length ; if a light be brought into the room, the notion of
the house being in flames invades us, and we are witnesses to the
whole conflagration from its commencement till it be finally extin
guished. The thoughts which arise in such situations are endless,,
and assume an infinite variety of aspects.
5.
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
' ‘ One of the most remarkable phenomena attendant upon dream
ing, is the almost universal absence of surprise. Scarcely any event,
however incredible, impossible, or absurd, gives rise to this emotion.
We see circumstances at utter variance with the laws of nature, and
yet their discordancy, impracticability, and oddness never strike us
as at all out of the usual course of things. This is one of the
strongest proofs that can be alleged in support of the dormant
Condition of the reflecting faculties. Had these powers been awake
and in full activity, they would have pointed out the erroneous
nature of the impressions conjured into existence by fancy, and
shewn us truly that the visions passing before our eyes were merely
the chimeras of an excited imagination—the airy phantoms of
imperfect sleep.’*
Dreams are in general connected with snatches of waking recol
lections, and assume a character from the dreamer’s ordinary'
pursuits and feelings. Shakspeare has admirably described the
effects of dreams of different classes of persons; and the subject
has been also well illustrated by Stepney in the following lines :
‘ At dead of night imperial reason sleeps,
And Fancy with her train her revels keeps.
Then airy phantoms a mixed scene display,
Of what we heard, or saw, or wished by day;
For memory those images retains
Which passion formed, and still the strongest reigns.
Huntsmen renew the chase they lately run,
And generals fight again their battles won.
Spectres and fairies haunt the murderer’s dreams;
Grants and disgraces are the courtier’s themes.
The miser spies a thief, or a new hoard ;
The cit’s a knight; the sycophant a lord.
Thus Fancy’s in the wild distraction lost,
With what we most abhor, or covet most.
Honours and state before this phantom fall;
For sleep, like death, its image, equals all.’
Chaucer’s description, versified by Dryden, is also worthy of being
quoted :
.
‘ Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes ;
When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes;
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A court of cobblers, and a mob of kings :
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad:
Both are the reasonable soul run mad ;
And many monstrous forms in sleep we see,
That neither were, or are, or e’er can be.
* Macnish’s Philosophy of Sleep.
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind,
Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind.
The nurse’s legends are for truth received,
And the man dreams but what the boy believed;
Sometimes we but rehearse a former play,
The night restores our actions done by day;
As hounds in sleep will open for their prey.
In short, the farce of dreams is of a piece
In chimeras all; and more absurd or less.’
In ordinary dreaming, the powers of voluntary motion are often
exercised to a slight extent. A dreamer, under the impression • that
he is engaged in an active battle, will frequently give a bed-fellow
a smart belabouring. Often also, in cases of common dreaming,
the muscles on which the production of the voice depends are set
in action, through the instrumentality of that portion of the brain
which is not in a quiescent state, and the dreamer mutters, or talks,
or cries aloud. Sometimes nearly all the senses, along with the
muscles of motion, are in activity, while part of the cerebral organs
are dormant, and in this condition the dreamer becomes a somnam
bulist, or sleep-walker. ‘ If we dream,’ says Mr Macnish, 1 that we
are walking, and the vision possesses such a degree of vividness
and exciting energy as to arouse the muscles of locomotion, we
naturally get up and walk. Should we dream that we hear or see,
and the impression be so vivid as to stimulate the eyes and ears,
or more properly speaking, those parts of the brain which take
cognizance of sights and sounds, then we both see any objects, or
hear any sounds, which may occur, just as if we were awake. In
some cases the muscles only are excited, and then we simply walk,
without hearing or seeing.’ In other cases we both walk and see,
and in a third variety we at once walk, see, and hear. In the same
way the vocal organs alone may be stimulated, and a person may
merely be a sleep-talker; or, under a conjunction of impulses, he
may talk, walk, see, and hear.
Cases of persons in a state of somnambulism rising from bed and
walking to a distant part of the house, or of looking for some object
of which they were dreaming, and so forth, are exceedingly common,
and the seeming marvel is explained by the fact already noticed—
only certain senses and portions of brain are asleep while others are
waking. The boy who, according to the common story, rose in his
sleep and took a nest of young eagles from a dangerous precipice,
must have received the most accurate accounts of external objects
from his visual organs, and must have been able to some extent to
reason upon them, else he could never have overcome the difficulties
of the ascent. He dreamed of taking away the nest, and to his great
surprise found it beneath his bed in the morning in the spot where
he only thought himself to have put it in imagination. The follow
ing case, mentioned by Mr Macnish, is scarcely less wonderful. It
7
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
occurred near one of the towns on the Irish coast. ‘About two
o’clock in the morning, the watchmen on the Revenue Quay were
much surprised at descrying a man disporting himself in the water,
about a hundred yards from the shore. Intimation having been
given to the Revenue boat’s crew, they pushed off, and succeeded in
picking him up ; but, strange to say, he had no idea whatever of his
perilous situation, and it was with the utmost difficulty they could
persuade him he was not still in bed. But the most singular part
of this novel adventure was, that the man had left his house at
twelve o’clock that night, and walked through a difficult and to him
dangerous road, a distance of nearly two miles, and had actually
swum one mile and a half when he was fortunately discovered and
picked up.’ The state of madness gives us, by analogy, the best
explanation of the condition of these climbers and swimmers. With
one or more organs or portions of his brain diseased, and the
rest sound, the insane person has the perfect use of his external
senses, yet may form imperfect conclusions regarding many things
around him. The somnambulist, with one or more of his senses in
activity, but with some of his cerebral organs in a torpid state, is
in much the same position as regards his power of forming right
judgments on all that he hears or sees.
A respectable person, captain of a merchant-vessel, told Sir
Walter Scott the following story, in illustration of illusion from
somnambulism. While lying in the Tagus, a man belonging to his
ship was murdered by a Portuguese, and a report soon spread that
the spirit of the deceased haunted the vessel. The captain found,
on making inquiry, that one of his own mates, an honest, sensible
Irishman, was the chief evidence respecting the ghost. The mate
affirmed that the spectre took him from bed every night, led him
about the ship, and, in short, worried his life out. The captain knew
not what to think of this, but he privately resolved to watch the mate
by night. He did so, and, at the hour of twelve, saw the man start
up with ghastly looks, and light a candle ; after which he went to
the galley, where he stood staring wildly for a time, as if on some
horrible object. He then lifted a can filled with water, sprinkled some
of it about, and, appearing much relieved, went quietly back to his
bed. Next morning, on being asked if he had been annoyed in the
night, he said : ‘Yes; I was led by the ghost to the galley ; but I
got hold, in some way or other, of a jar of holy-water, and freed my
self, by sprinkling it about, from the presence of the horrible phantom.’
The captain now told the truth, as observed ; and the mate, though
much surprised, believed it. He was never visited by the ghost
again, the deception of his own dreaming fancy being thus discovered.
Had the mate burned his hand with the candle, and, by the same
mode of reasoning which led him to believe in the banishment of
the ghost by holy-water, formed the conclusion that the spectre had
touched his hand to imprint on it a perpetual mark, what would
8
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
have been said of the matter by his comrades and himself in the
morning, supposing no watching to have taken place? They would
assuredly have held the scar as an indubitable proof of the super
natural visitation, and the story would have remained as darkly
mysterious as could be desired.
The condition of nightmare, in which the sufferer is under the
feeling of some terrible oppression, is one of the most afflicting kinds
of dreaming. In the more simple order of cases of nightmare, the
dreamer is only labouring under the influence of indigestion; but in
the more severe, the cause is ascribed to cerebral disorder. A
gentleman in Edinburgh was afflicted for years with a night
mare which rendered existence almost unsupportable. On falling
asleep, he dreamed that he was chased by a bull; and frequently, in
terror of being tossed by the horns of the infuriated animal, he leaped
from the bed to the opposite side of the room, on one occasion doing
himself a serious injury. At the death of this unhappy gentleman,
his head was opened, and a portion of his brain found to be affected
with a deep-seated ulcer. In cases of this kind, the spectral
illusions of the dreamer are usually most vivid, and on awakening,
it requires a strong effort of reason to be convinced that the appear
ances were nothing more than airy phantoms of the disordered brain.
With these explanations on the subject of dreaming, we are pre
pared for a consideration of those unreal impressions made on the
mind while in a wakeful condition.
ILLUSIONS FROM CONGESTION OF THE BLOOD-VESSELS.
One of the more simple kinds of functional disorder producing
false impressions on the mind, is an overfulness of blood in the
circulatory vessels. Persons who have followed the discommendable
practice of blood-letting periodically, and have neglected it for more
than the usual length of time, are the most liable to this species of
illusion. Upwards of seventy years ago, Nicolai, a celebrated book
seller in Berlin, experienced the feeling of seeing spectres from this
cause. According to an interesting account he has given on the
subject, it appears that he was a man of a vivid imagination and
excitable temperament, who, some years previous to the occurrences
he relates, was troubled with violent vertigo, which he relieved by
periodical bleeding with leeches. It became with him a custom to
be bled twice in the year; but at length having on one occasion
neglected this means of relieving the system, his mind became
depressed, and apparitions began to be seemingly present to his eyes.
The following is his narration of this painful condition :
‘ My wife and another person came into my apartment in the
morning in order to console me, but I was too much agitated by a
series of incidents, which had most powerfully affected my moral
feeling, to be capable of attending to them. On a sudden I perceived,
159
9
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
at about the distance of ten steps, a form like that of a deceased
person. I pointed at it, asking my wife if she did not see it. It was
but natural that she should not see anything; my question, therefore,
alarmed her very much, and she immediately sent for a physician.
The phantom continued about eight minutes. I grew at length more
calm, and being extremely exhausted, fell into a restless sleep, which
lasted about half an hour. The physician ascribed the apparition to
a violent mental emotion, and hoped there would be no return; but
the violent agitation of my mind had in some way disordered my
nerves, and produced further consequences which deserve a more
minute description.
‘At four in the afternoon, the form which I had seen in the
morning reappeared. I wp.s by myself when this happened, and, •
being rather uneasy at the incident, went to my wife’s apartment,
but there likewise I was persecuted by the apparition, which, how
ever, at intervals disappeared, and always presented itself in a
standing posture. About six o’clock there appeared also several
walking figures, which had no connection with the first. After the
first day the form of the deceased person no more appeared, but its
place was supplied with many other phantasms, sometimes repre
senting acquaintances, but mostly strangers ; those whom I knew
were composed of living and deceased persons, but the number of
the latt'er was comparatively small. I observed the persons with
whom I daily conversed did not appear as phantasms, these repre
senting chiefly persons who lived at some distance from me.
‘ These phantasms seemed equally clear and distinct at all times
and under all circumstances, both when I was by myself and when
I was in company, as well in the day as at night, and in my own
house as well as abroad; they were, however, less frequent when I
was in the house of a friend, and rarely appeared to me in the street.
When I shut my eyes, these phantasms would sometimes vanish
entirely, though there were instances when I beheld them with my
eyes closed; yet when they disappeared on such occasions, they
generally returned when I opened my eyes. I conversed sometimes
with my physician and my wife of the phantasms which at the
moment surrounded me; they appeared more frequently walking
than at rest; nor were they constantly present. They frequently
did not come for some time, but always reappeared for a longer or
shorter period, either singly or in company; the latter, however,
being most frequently the case. I generally saw human forms of
both sexes ; but they usually seemed not to take the smallest notice
of each other, moving as in a market-place, where all are eager to
press through the crowd; at times, however, they seemed to be
transacting business with each other. I also saw several times
people on horseback, dogs, and birds.
‘ All these phantasms appeared to me in their natural size, and as
distinct as if alive, exhibiting different shades of carnation in the
IO
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
uncovered parts, as well as different colours and fashions in their
dresses, though the colours seemed somewhat paler than in real
nature. None of the figures appeared particularly terrible, comical,
or disgusting, most of them being of an indifferent shape, and some
presenting a pleasing aspect. The longer these phantasms continued
to visit me, the more frequently did they return, while at the same
time they increased in number about four weeks after they had first
appeared. I also began to hear them talk: these phantoms sometimes
conversed among themselves, but more frequently addressed their
discourse to me ; their speeches were commonly short, and never of
an unpleasant turn. At different times there appeared to me both
dear and sensible friends of both sexes, whose addresses tended to
appease my grief, which had not yet wholly subsided : their consolatory speeches were in general addressed to me when I was alone.
Sometimes, however, I was accosted by these consoling friends while
I was engaged in company, and not unfrequently while real persons
were speaking to me. These consolatory addresses consisted some
times of abrupt phrases, and at other times they were regularly
executed.’
Having thus suffered for some time, it occurred to him that the
mental disorder might arise from a superabundance of blood, and he
again had "recourse to leeching. When the leeches were applied, no
person was with him besides the surgeon ; but during the operation
his apartment was crowded with human phantasms of all descriptions.
In the course of a few hours, however, they moved around the
chamber more slowly; their colour began to fade; until, growing
more and more obscure, they at last dissolved into air, and he ceased
to be troubled with them afterwards.
ILLUSIONS FROM DERANGEMENT IN DIGESTION.
Any derangement of the digestive powers acts on the brain; when
the derangement is excessive, and the health otherwise impaired,
the mind becomes affected, so as to deceive the senses and to produce
spectral illusions. Sir David Brewster, in his Letters on Natural
Magic, narrates the case of a lady of high character and intelligence,
but of vivid imagination, who was so affected from only simple
derangement of the .stomach. The facts were communicated by
the husband of the lady, a man of learning and science, and are as
follow:
‘ I. The first illusion to which Mrs A. was subject was one which
affected only the ear. On the 26th of December 1830, about half
past four in the afternoon, she was standing near the fire in the hall,
and on the point of going up stairs to dress, when she heard, as she
supposed, her husband’s voice calling her by name : “------------ J
come here! come to me 1” She imagined that he was calling at
the door to have it opened; but upon going there and opening the
zi
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
door, she was surprised to find no person there. Upon returning to
the fire, she again heard the same voice calling out very distinctly
and loudly: “----- , come; come here!” She then opened two
other doors of the same room, and upon seeing no person, she
returned to the fireplace. After a few moments, she heard the same
voice still calling: “------------ , come to me! come! come away!”
in a loud, plaintive, and somewhat impatient tone. She answered
as loudly: “Where are you? I don’t know where you are;” still
imagining that he was somewhere in search of her : but receiving no
answer, she shortly after went up stairs. On Mr A.’s return to the
house, about half an hour afterwards, she inquired why he called to
her so often, and where he was ; and she was of course greatly sur
prised to learn that he had not been near the house at the time.
‘2. The next illusion which occurred to Mrs A. was of a more
alarming character. On the 30th of December, about four o’clock
in the afternoon, Mrs A. came down stairs into the drawing-room,
which she had quitted only a few minutes before, and on entering
the room she saw her husband, as she supposed, standing with his
back to the fire. As he had gone out to take a walk about half an
hour before, she was surprised to see him there, and asked him why
'he had returned so soon. The figure looked fixedly at her with a
serious and thoughtful expression of countenance, but did not speak.
Supposing that his mind was absorbed in thought, she sat down in
an arm-chair hear the fire, and within two feet at most of the figure,1
which she still saw standing before her. As its eyes, however, still
continued to be fixed upon her, she said, after the lapse of a few
minutes: “Why don’t you speak,----- ?” The figure immediately
moved off towards the window at the farther end of the room, with
its eyes still gazing on her, and it passed so very close to her in
doing so, that she was struck by the circumstance of hearing no step
nor sound, nor feeling her clothes brushed against, nor even any
agitation in the air. Although she was now convinced that the figure
was not her husband, yet she never for a moment supposed that it
was anything supernatural, and was soon convinced that it was a
spectral illusion. The appearance was seen in bright daylight, and
lasted four or five minutes. When the figure stood close to her, it
•concealed the real objects behind it, and the apparition was fully as
vivid as the reality.
‘ 3. On these two occasions Mrs A. was alone, but when the next
phantasm appeared her husband was present. This took place on
the 4th of January 1831. About ten o’clock at night, when Mr and
Mrs A. were sitting in the drawing-room, Mr A. took up the poker
to stir the fire, and when he was in the act of doing this, Mrs A.
exclaimed : “Why, there’s the cat in the room !” “ Where?” asked
Mr A. “ There, close to you,” she replied. “ Where ?” he repeated.
“ Why, on the rug to be sure, between yourself and the coal-scuttle.”
Mr A., who had still the poker in his hand, pushed it in the direction
'
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
y
mentioned. “Take care,” cried Mrs A.; “take care, you are hitting
her with the poker.” Mr A. again asked her to point out exactly
where she saw the cat. She replied : “Why, sitting up there close
to your feet on the rug : she is looking at me. It is Kitty—come
here, Kitty ?” There were two cats in the house, one of which went
by this name, and they were rarely if ever in the drawing-room. At
this time Mrs A. had no idea that the sight of the cat was an illusion.
When she was asked to touch it, she got up for the purpose, and
seemed as if she were pursuing something which moved away. She
followed a few steps, and then said : “ It has gone under the chair.”
Mr A. assured her it was an illusion, but she would not believe it.
He then lifted up the chair, and Mrs A. saw nothing more of it..
The room was then searched all over, and nothing found in it. There was a dog lying on the hearth, which would have betrayed great
uneasiness if a cat had been in the room, but he lay perfectly quiet.
In order to be quite certain, Mr A. rung the bell, and sent for the
two cats, both of which were found in the housekeeper’s room.
‘ 4. About a month after this occurrence, Mrs A., who had taken
a somewhat fatiguing drive during the day, was preparing to go
to bed about eleven o’clock at night, and, sitting before the dressing
glass, was occupied in arranging her hair. She was in a listless
and drowsy state of mind, but fully awake. When her fingers were
in active motion among the papillotes, she was suddenly startled
by seeing in the mirror the figure of a near relation, who was then
in Scotland, and in perfect health. The apparition appeared over
her left shoulder, and its eyes met hers in the glass. After a few
minutes, she turned round to look for the reality of the form over
her shoulder; but it was not visible, and it had also disappeared
from the glass when she looked again in that direction.’
Passing over from the fifth to the ninth cases, we come to the
tenth. ‘ On the 26th of October, about two P.M., Mrs A. was sitting
in a chair by the window in the same room with her husband. He
heard her exclaim : ‘ What have I seen ! ’ And on looking at her,
he observed a strange expression in her eyes and countenance.
A carriage and four had appeared to her to be driving up the
entrance road to the house. As it approached, she felt inclined
to go up stairs to prepare to receive company, but, as if spell-bound,
she was unable to move or speak. The carriage approached, and
as it arrived within a few yards of the window, she saw the figures
of the postilions and the persons inside take the ghastly appearanceof skeletons and other hideous figures. The whole then vanished
entirely, when she uttered the above-mentioned exclamation.
‘11. On the morning of the 30th October, when Mrs A. was
sitting in her own room with a favourite dog in her lap, she distinctly
saw the same dog moving about the room during the space of about
a minute or rather more.
‘12. On the 3d December, about nine P.M., when Mr and Mrs
13
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
A. were sitting near each other in the drawing-room, occupied in.
reading, Mr A. felt a pressure on his foot. On looking up, he
observed Mrs A.’s eyes fixed with a strong and unnatural stare on
a chair about nine or ten feet distant. Upon asking her what she
saw, the expression of her countenance changed, and upon recover
ing herself, she told Mr A. that she had seen his brother, who was
alive and well at the moment in London, seated in the opposite chair,
but dressed in grave-clothes, and with a ghastly countenance, as
if scarcely alive 1
‘ From the very commencement of the spectral illusions,’ observes
Sir David in conclusion, ‘ both Mrs A. and her husband were well
aware of their nature and origin, and both of them paid the most
minute attention to the circumstances which accompanied them,
not only with the view of throwing light upon so curious a subject,
but for the purpose of ascertaining their connection with the state
of health under which they appeared.’
ILLUSIONS
FROM
DELIRIUM
TREMENS.
A bodily disorder, which in itself ought to afford a solution of
nearly all apparitions, is that called delirium tremens, or vulgarly
blue devils. This is most commonly induced, in otherwise healthy
subjects, by continued intemperance in intoxicating liquors. It is a
disorder intimately connected with a derangement of the digestive
functions. So long as the drinker can take food, he is comparatively
secure against the disease, but when his stomach rejects (jommon
nourishmept, and he persists in taking stimulants, the effects are
for the most part speedily visible, at least in peculiarly nervous
constitutions. The first symptom is commonly a slight impairment
of the healthy powers of the senses of hearing and seeing. A ringing
in the ears probably takes place; then any common noise, such
as the rattle of a cart on the street, assumes to the hearing a
particular sound, and arranges itself into a certain tune perhaps,
or certain words, which haunt the sufferer, and are by and by rung
into his ears on the recurrence of every noise. The proverb, ‘ As
the fool thinks, so the bell tinks,’ becomes very applicable in his
case. His sense of seeing, in the meanwhile, begins to shew equal
disorder; figures float before him perpetually when his eyes are
closed at night. By day also, objects seem to move before him
that are really stationary. The senses of touch, taste, and sfnell
are also involved in confusion. In this way the disturbance of
the senses goes on, increasing always with the disorder of the
alimentary function, until the unhappy drinker is at last visited,
most probably in the twilight, by visionary figures as distinct in
outline as living beings, and which seem to speak to him with the
voice of life. At first he mistakes them for realities; but, soon
discovering his error, is thrown into the deepest alarm. If he
14
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
has the courage to approach and examine any one of the illusory
figures, he probably finds that some fold of drapery, or some shadow,
has been the object converted by his diseased sense into the appari
tion, and he may also find that the voice was but- some simple house
hold sound, converted by his disordered ear into strange speech:
for the senses, at least in the milder cases of this sort, rather convert
than create, though the metamorphosed may differ widely from the
real substance. The visitations and sufferings of the party may
go on increasing, till he takes courage to speak to the physician,
who, by great care, restores his alimentary organs to a state of
health, and, in consequence, the visions slowly leave him. If, how
ever, remedies are not applied in time, the party will probably sink
under the influence of his disorder. The spectral figures and voices
being solely and entirely the creation of his own fancy, will seem
to do or say anything that may be uppermost in that fancy at
the moment, and will encourage him to self-murder by every possible
argument—all emanating, of course, from his own brain. The whole
consists merely of his own fancies, bodied forth to him visibly and
audibly in his seeing and hearing organs. His own poor head is
the seat of all; there is nothing apart from him—nothing but
vacancy.
Dr Alderson, a respectable physician, mentions his being called
to a keeper of a public-house, who was in a state of great terror, and
who described himself as having been haunted for some time with
spectres. He had first noticed something to be wrong with him on
being laughed at by a little girl for desiring her to lift some oyster
shells from the floor. He himself stooped, but found none. Sooh
after, in the twilight, he saw a soldier enter the house, and, not
liking his manner, desired him to go away; but receiving no answer,
he sprang forward to seize the intruder, and to his horror found the
shape to be but a phantom ! The visitations increased by night and
by day, till he could not distinguish real customers from imaginary
ones, so definite and distinct were the latter in outline. Sometimes
they took the forms of living friends, and sometimes of people long
dead. Dr Alderson resorted to a course of treatment which restored
the strength of the digestive organs, and gradually banished the
spectres.
,
ILLUSIONS FROM SEVERE DISORDERS.
Among the other varieties of bodily ailments affecting either
structure or function, which have been found to produce spectral
illusions, fevers, inflammatory affections, epileptic attacks, hysteria,
and disorders of the nerves generally, are among the most pro
minent. As regards fevers and inflammatory affections, particularly
those of the brain, it is well known to almost every mother or
member of a large family, that scarcely any severe case can occur
l5
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
without illusions of the sight to a greater or less extent. In hysteric
and epileptic cases also, where fits or partial trances occur, the same
phenomena are frequently observed. But we shall not enlarge on
the effects produced by the influence of severe and obviously exist
ing maladies, as it is in those cases only where the spectre-seer has
exhibited apparent sanity of mind and body that special wonder has
been excited. It is so far of great importance, however, to notice
that these diseases do produce the illusions, as in most cases it will
be found, on inquiry, that the party subject to them, however sound
to appearance at the time, afterwards displayed some of these
complaints in full force; and we may then rationally explain the
whole matter by supposing the seeds of the ailments to have early
existed in a latent state. A German lady, of excellent talents and
high character, published an account some years back of successive
visions with which she had been honoured, as she believed, by
Divine favour. The case of this lady throws so much light on
delusions arising from deranged temperament and kindred maladies,
that we take the liberty of extracting it from the interesting work of
Dr Hibbert.
‘The illusions which the lady experienced first came on in the
fourth year of her age, while she was sitting with her little doll upon
her knees; and, for the greater convenience of dressing and
undressing it, resting her feet upon a large folio Bible. “ I had
scarcely taken my place,” she observes, “ above a minute, when I
heard a voice at my ear say: ‘Put the book where you found it;’
but as I did not see any person, I did not do so. The voice, how
ever repeated the mandate, that I should do it immediately; and,
at the same time, I thought somebody took hold of my face. ' I
instantly obeyed with fear and trembling; but not being able to
lift the book upon the table, I called the servant-maid to come
quickly and assist me. When she came, and saw that I was alone
and terrified, she scolded me, as nobody was there.” It may be
remarked of this part of the account, that the voice which the
narrator heard can only be regarded as a renovated feeling of the
mind, resulting from some prior remonstrances that she might have
incurred from her protectors, whenever she treated with unbecoming
irreverence the holy volume ; while the impression of a person
taking hold of her face, may be referred to some morbid sensation
of touch, incidental to many nervous affections, which would easily
associate itself with the imaginary rebuke of her mysterious monitor,
so as to impart to the whole of the illusion a certain degree of
connection and consistency. The patient (for such I shall call her)
next describes the extreme diligence and the peculiar delight with
which, as she grew up in years, she read twice over, from the
beginning to the end, the pages of the Scriptures ; and she likewise
dwells upon her constant endeavour to render the Bible more
intelligible, by often hearing sermons and reading religious books.
16
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
It is certainly of importance to know the subject of her incessant
and anxious studies, as it is well calculated to explain the nature of
her visions, which, as we might expect, were generally of a religious
description. We are, in the next place, told by the lady, that after
she had reached her seventh year, she saw, when playing, a clear
flame which seemed to enter through the chamber door, while in
the middle of it was a long bright light about the size of a child of
six years old. The phantasm remained stationary for half an hour
near the stove of the room, and then went out again by the room
door ; the white light first, and the flame following it. After this
vision, we hear of no other until the lady is married, when, unfor
tunately, her husband made her life so bitter to her, that she could
think only of death. Hence must have necessarily arisen the
combining influence of strong mental emotions, which could not
but act as powerful exciting agents upon a frame the mental feelings
of which, from constitutional causes, were of the most intense kind.
Spectral illusions would of course become very frequent. Thus, on
one occasion, when she had received some ill-treatment from her
husband, she made a resolution to desist from prayer, thinking the
Lord had forsaken her; but, upon further consideration, she
repented of this purpose, and, after returning thanks to Heaven,
went to bed. She awakened towards the morning, and then, to her
astonishment, found that it was broad daylight, and that at her bed
side was seated a heavenly figure in the shape of a man about sixty
years of age, dressed in a bluish robe, with bright hair, and a
countenance shining like the clearest red and white crystal. He
looked at her with tenderness, saying nothing more than ‘■'■Proceed,
proceed, proceed!” These words were unintelligible to her, until
they were solved by another phantasm, young and beautiful as an
angel, who appeared on the opposite side of the bed, and more
explicitly added : “ Proceed in prayer, proceed in faith, proceed in
trials” After this incident, a strange light appeared, when she
immediately felt herself pulled by the hairs of her head, and pinched
and tormented in various ways. The cause of this affliction she
soon discovered to be the devil himself, who made his debut in
the usual hideous form under which he is personated, until at length
the angel interfered and pushed away the foul fiend with his elbow.
“Afterwards,” as the lady added, “the light came again, and both
persons looked mournfully at it. The young one then said : ‘ Lord,
this is sufficientand he uttered these words three times. Whilst
he repeated them, I looked at him, and beheld two large white
wings on his shoulders, and therefore I knew him to be an angel
of God. The light immediately disappeared, the two figures
vanished, and the day was suddenly converted into night. My
heart was again restored to its right place, the pain ceased, and I
arose.” ’
Dr Crichton, author of an able work on insanity, found that this
17
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
unfortunate lady was always affected with the aura epileptica during
the prevalence of the illusions ; or, in other words, that she was
labouring under slight attacks of epilepsy. Thus simply was
explained a series of phenomena which, from the high character
for veracity of the subject of them, astonished a great part of
Germany.
ILLUSIONS OF THE IMAGINATION.
Persons in a desponding or gloomy state of mind are exceedingly
liable to be deceived by their fancies. The morbid imagination
catches at every seemingly mysterious appearance, and transforms
it into a spectre, or warning of approaching dissolution. ‘ A man
who is thoroughly frightened,’ observes a popular American writer,
*
* can imagine almost anything. The whistling of the wind sounds
in his ears like the cry of dying men. As he walks along trembling
in the dark, the friendly guide-post is a giant; the tree gently waving
in the wind is a ghost; and every cow he chances to meet is some
fearful apparition from the land of hobgoblins. Who is there that
•cannot testify, from personal experience, of some such freaks of
imagination? How often does one wake up in the night and find the
clothes upon the chair, or some article of furniture in the room,
assuming a distinctly defined form, altogether different from that
which it in reality possesses!
‘ There is in imagination a potency far exceeding the fabled power
of Aladdin’s lamp. How often does one sit in wintry evening
musings, and trace in the glowing embers the features of an absent
friend! Imagination, with its magic wand, will there build the
city with its countless spires—or marshal contending armies
—or drive the tempest-shattered ship upon the ocean. The
following story, relate.d by Scott, affords a good illustration of
this principle :
‘ “ Not long after the death of a late illustrious poet, who had filled,
while living, a great station in the eye of the public, a literary friend,
to whom the deceased had been well known, was engaged, during
the darkening twilight of an autumn evening, in perusing one of the
publications which professed to detail the habits and opinions of the
distinguished individual who was now no more. As the reader had
enjoyed the intimacy of the deceased to a considerable degree, he
was deeply interested in the publication, which contained some
particulars relating to himself and other friends. A visitor was
sitting in the apartment, who was also engaged in reading. Their
sitting-room opened into an entrance-hall, rather fantastically fitted
up with articles of armour, skins of wild animals, and the like. It
was when laying down his book, and passing into this hall, through
• Scientific Tracts (Boston, 1832).
18
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
which the moon was beginning to shine, that the individual of whom
I speak saw right before him, in a standing posture, the exact repre
sentation of his departed friend, whose recollection had been so
strongly brought to his imagination. He stopped for a single
moment, so as to notice the wonderful accuracy with which fancy
had impressed upon the bodily eye the peculiarities of dress and
position of the illustrious poet. Sensible, however, of the delusion,
he felt no sentiment save that of wonder at the extraordinary accuracy
of the resemblance, and stepped onward towards the figure, which
resolved itself, as he approached, into the various materials of which
it was composed. These were merely a screen occupied by great
coats, shawls, plaids, and such other articles as are usually found in
a country entrance-hall. The spectator returned to the spot from
which he had seen the illusion, and endeavoured with all his power
to recall the image which had been so singularly vivid. But this he
was unable to do. And the person who had witnessed the appari
tion, or, more properly, whose excited state had been the means of
raising it, had only to return into the apartment, and tell his
young friend under what a striking hallucination he had for a
moment laboured.”
‘Most persons under such circumstances would have declared
unhesitatingly that the ghost of the departed had appeared to them,
and they would have found great multitudes who would have believed
it. When the imagination has such power to recall the images of
the absent, is it at all wonderful that many persons should attribute
such appearances to supernatural visitations? Had the poet himself
been in the place of the screen, he probably would not have been
more vividly present. How many, then, of the causes of vulgar fear
are to be attributed to the effect of imagination 1 A lady was once
passing through a wood, in the darkening twilight of a stormy
evening, to visit a friend who was watching over a dying child. The
clouds were thick—the rain beginning to fall; darkness was increas
ing ; the wind was moaning mournfully through the trees. The
lady’s heart almost failed her as she saw that she had a mile to walk
through the woods in the gathering gloom. But the reflection of
the situation of her friend forbade her turning back. Excited and
trembling, she called to her aid a nervous resolution, and pressed
onward. She had not proceeded far, when she beheld in the path
before her the movement of some very indistinct object. It appeared
to keep a little distance in advance of her, and as she made efforts
to get nearer to see what it was, it seemed proportionably to recede.
The lady began to feel rather unpleasantly. There was some pale
white object certainly discernible before her, and it appeared
mysteriously to float along at a regular distance, without any effort
at motion. Notwithstanding the lady’s good sense and unusual
resolution, a cold chill began to come over her. She made every
effort to resist her fears, and soon succeeded in drawing nearer the
19
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
mysterious object, when she was appalled at beholding the features
of her friend’s child, cold in death, wrapped in its shroud. She
gazed earnestly, and there it remained distinct and clear before her
eyes. She considered it a monition that her friend’s child was dead,
and that she must hasten on to her aid. But there was the apparition
directly in her path. She must pass it. Taking up a little stick,
she forced herself along to the object, and behold, some little animal
scampered away. It was this that her excited imagination had
transformed into the corpse of an infant in its winding-sheet. The
vision before her eyes was undoubtedly as clear as the reality could
have been. Such is the power of imagination. If this lady, when
she saw the corpse, had turned in terror and fled home, what
reasoning could ever have satisfied her that she had not seen some
thing supernatural? When it is known that the imagination has
such a power as this, can we longer wonder at any accounts which
are given of unearthly appearances ?’
The numerous stories told of ghosts, or the spirits of persons who
are dead, will in most instances be found to have originated in
diseased imagination, aggravated by some abnormal defect of mind.
We may mention a remarkable case in point; it is told by the com
piler of Les Causes Celebres. Two young noblemen, the Marquises
De Rambouillet and De Precy, belonging to two of the first families
of France, made an agreement, in the warmth of their friendship,
that the one who died first should return to the other with tidings of
the world to come. Soon afterwards, De Rambouillet went to the
wars in Flanders, while De Precy remained at Paris, stricken by a
fever. Lying alone in bed, and severely ill, De Precy one day heard
a rustling of his bed-curtains, and turning round, saw his friend De
Rambouillet in full military attire. The sick man sprung over the
bed to welcome his friend, but the other receded, and said that he
had come to fulfil his promise, having been killed on that very day.
He further said that it behoved De Precy to think more of the after
world, as all that was said of it was true, and as he himself would
die in his first battle. De Precy was then left by the phantom ; and
it was afterwards found that De Rambouillet had fallen on that day.
De Precy recovered, went to the wars, and died in his first combat.
Here, a'fter a compact—the very conception of which argues credu
lousness or weakness of mind—we not only have one of the parties
left in anxiety about the other, but left in a violent fever, and aware
that his friend was engaged in a bloody war. That a spectral illusion
should occur in such a case, is a thing not at all to be wondered at, as
little as the direction and shape that the sick man’s wanderings took.
The fulfilment of the prophecy is the point of interest; and regard
ing it we would simply use the words of Dr Hibbert, in referring to
the story of Lord Balcarras and Viscount Dundee. Lord Balcarras
was confined as a Jacobite in the castle of Edinburgh, while Dundee
was fighting for the same cause ; and on one occasion the apparition
20
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
of the latter came to the bedside of Balcarras, looked at him stead
fastly, leaned for some time on the mantel-piece, and then walked
away. It afterwards appeared that Dundee fell just about the time
at Killiecrankie. ‘ With regard to this point,’ says Dr Hibbert, ‘ it
must be considered that, agreeably to the well-known doctrine of
chances, the event [of Dundee’s death] might as well occur then as
at any other time ; while afar greater proportion of other apparitions,
less fortunate in such a supposed confirmation of their supernatural
origin, are allowed quietly to sink into oblivion? This observation
applies equally as well to the case of De Precy as to that of Balcarras,
each of whom knew that his friend was then hotly campaigning, and
could most probably even guess, from the latest bulletins, on what
day the hostile armies would decisively meet. We are not told
whether or not Balcarras, like De Precy, was in ill health, but the
Scottish lord was confined on a charge of high treason, and on
Dundee’s life or death, victory or defeat, the fate of the prisoner
must have been felt by himself to rest. This was enough to give his
lordship a vivid dream, and even to give him a waking portraiture of
Dundee, after the fashion of the bust of Curran case.
But though explanations may thus be given of the common run
of apparition cases, it may seem to some that there are particular
cases not to be so accounted for. Of this nature, such readers
may say, is the well-warranted story of the Irish lady of rank, who,
having married a second time, was visited in the night-time by the
spirit of her first husband, from whom she received a notification of
the appointed period of her own death. The lady was at first
terrified, but regained her courage. ‘ How shall I know to-morrow
mom,’ said she boldly to the spectre, ‘ that this is not a delusion of
the senses—that I indeed am visited by a spirit ?’ ‘ Let this be a
token to thee for life,’ said the visitant, and, grasping the arm of the
lady for an instant, disappeared. In the morning a dark mark, as
if of a fresh burn, was seen on the wrist, and the lady kept the scar
covered over while she lived. She died at the time prophesied.
This story is told with great unction by some memoir writers,
and the circumstances are said to have been long kept secret by
the lady’s family. For argument’s sake let us admit the most striking
points of the case to be true. As for the circumstance of her death
at the time foretold, it is well known how powerful imagination is in
causing fulfilment in these cases ; and at all events, one instance of
such a fulfilment is no great marvel amid hundreds of failures.
But the black mark—what of it ? We confess to the reader, that if
we had actually seen the scar upon the wrist of the lady, we should
not have been one step nearer to the admission of supernatural
agency. Supposing, however, that the mark actually existed, could it
not have been explained by somnambulism ? The lady may readily
have risen in her sleep, burnt her hand against the bedroom grate,
and, conscious of an unpleasing sensation, though not awakened by
2X
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
it, her fancy may have formed the whole story of the preternatural
visitation, precisely as the Irish mate of the merchant vessel in
vented the circumstances connected with the holy-water. When
we find that such an explanation of the matter is accordant with
observed and unquestionable facts, it would be irrational to over
look it, and seek a solution in a supposed breach of the laws of
nature.
In some instances, it may be difficult to decide whether spectral
appearances and spectral noises proceed from functional derange
ment or from an overwrought state of mind. Want of exercise and
amusement may also be a prevailing cause. A friend mentions to
us the following case. An acquaintance of his, a merchant in London,
who had for years paid a very close attention to business, was one
day, while alone in his counting-house, very much surprised to hear,
as he imagined, persons outside the door talking freely about him.
Thinking it was some acquaintances who were playing off a trick, he
opened the door to request them to come in, when, to his amazement,
nobody was there. He again sat down at his desk, and in a few
minutes the same dialogue recommenced. The language employed
was now very alarming. One voice seemed to say : ‘ We have the
scoundrel safe in his counting-house ; let us go in and seize him.’
‘ Certainly,’ replied the other voice ; ‘ it is right to take him ; he has
been guilty of a great crime, and ought to be brought to condign
punishment.’ Alarmed at these threats, the bewildered merchant
rushed to the door; and there again no person was to be seen. He
now locked his door and went home ; but the voices, as he thought,
followed him through the crowd, and he arrived at his house in a
most unenviable state of mind. Inclined to ascribe the voices to
derangement in mind, he sent for a medical attendant, and told his
case ; and a certain kind of treatment was prescribed. This, how
ever, failed: the voices menacing him with punishment for purely
imaginary crimes continued, and he was reduced to the brink of
despair. At length a friend prescribed entire relaxation from business,
and a daily game of cricket; which, to his great relief, proved an
effectual remedy. The exercise banished the phantom voices, and
they were no more heard.
In bygone times, when any kind of nonsense was believed without
investigation, the Lowland Scotch, as they alleged, occasionally saw
wraiths, or spectral appearances of persons who were soon to quit
this mortal scene ; the Irish were also accustomed to the spectacle
offetches; and the Highlanders had their second-sight; the whole,
be it observed, being but a variety of mental disease or some
kind of delusion. In some instances the appearances were a
result of atmospheric refraction, but generally they were nothing
more than the phantoms of a morbid and overexcited fancy. The
progress of education and intelligence has almost everywhere
banished such delusions.
28
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
ILLUSIONS
FROM
DERANGEMENT
OF
THE
EYES.
In our preliminary observations, it was shewn that spectral appear
ances produced by mental disorder were really formed or daguerreotyped on the eye; but an unsound state of the eye itself may
also cause these phantoms. Dr Abercrombie mentions two cases
strikingly illustrative of this fact. In one of these, a gentleman of
high mental endowments, and of the age of eighty, enjoying unin
terrupted health, and very temperate in his habits, was the person
subject to the illusions. For twelve years this gentleman had
daily visitations of spectral figures, attired often in foreign dresses,
such as Roman, Turkish, and Grecian, and presenting all varieties
of the human countenance, in its gradations from childhood to old
age. Sometimes faces only were visible, and the countenance of
the gentleman himself not unfrequently appeared among them.
One old and arch-looking lady was the most constant visitor, and
she always wore a tartan plaid of an antique cut. These illusory
appearances were rather amusing than otherwise, being for the most
part of a pleasing character. The second case mentioned by Dr
Abercrombie was one even more remarkable than the preceding.
‘ A gentleman of sound mind, in good health, and engaged in active
business, has all his life been the sport of spectral illusions, tosuch an extent that, in meeting a friend on the street, he has first
to appeal to the sense of touch before he can determine whether
or not the appearance is real. He can call up figures at will by
a steady process of mental conception, and the figures may either
be something real, or the composition of his own fancy? Another
member of the family was subject to the same delusive impressions.
These very curious cases indicate, we think, a defective condition,
of the retina, which may be held as one distinct and specific source
of spectral deceptions. That defective condition seems to consist
in an unusual sensitiveness, rendering the organ liable to have
figures called up upon it by the stimulus of the fancy, as if impressed
by actual external objects. In ordinary circumstances, on a friend
being vividly called to one’s remembrance, one can mentally form
a complete conception of his face and figure in their minutest
lineaments. ‘ My father ! ’ says Hamlet; ‘ methinks I see him now !’’
‘Where, my lord?’ ‘In my mind's eye, Horatio? In Hamlet’s
case, an apparition is described as having followed this delineation
by the memory, and so may a vivid impression of any figure or
object be transferred from the mind to the retina, where the latter
organ is permanently or temporarily in a weak or peculiarly sensitive
state. In this way the spectral illusions seem to have been
habitually caused in the two cases described. There the defect in
the retina was the fundamental or ultimate cause of their existence,
and the fancy of the individual the power which regulated their
23 •
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
frequency and character. Slighter cases of this nature are of com
paratively common occurrence—cases in which the retina is for a
short time so affected as to give the impression of an apparition.
Every one is aware that a peculiarly bright or shining object, if long
gazed upon, does not leave the retina as soon as the eye is with
drawn from it. It remains upon the nerve for a considerable time
afterwards, at least in outline, as may be observed by closing the
eyelids on such occasions. This retentive power, when aided by
the imagination, and perhaps by a little bodily derangement with
which the senses sympathise, may be carried so far as to produce
an actual and forcible spectral illusion. A gentleman, who had
gazed long and earnestly on a small and beautiful portrait of the
Virgin and Child, was startled, immediately on turning his eye
from the picture, by seeing a woman and infant at the other end
of his chamber of the full size of life. A particular circumstance,
however, disclosed in a moment the source of the appearance.
The picture was a three-parts length, and the apparitional figures
also wanted the lower fourth of the body, thus shewing that the
figures had merely been retained on the tablet of the eye. But
the retina may retain an impression much longer than in this case;
or rather may recall, after a considerable time, an impression that
has been very vividly made at the first. A celebrated oculist in
London mentioned to us that he had been waited on by a gentle
man who laboured under an annoying spectral impression in his
eye. He stated that, having looked steadfastly on a copy of the
Lord’s Prayer, printed in minute characters within a circle the size
of a sixpence, he had ever since had the impression of the Lord’s
Prayer in his eye. On whatever object he turned his organs of
vision, there was the small round copy of the Lord’s Prayer present,
and partly covering it.
It appears, then, from the cases described, that the eye, through
defectiveness of its parts, or through the power of the retina in
retaining or recalling vivid impressions, may itself be the main
agent in producing spectral illusions. From one particular circum
stance, we may generally tell at once whether or not the eye is the
organ in fault on such occasions. In Dr Abercrombie’s cases,
the spectral figures never spoke. This is equivalent to a positive
indication that the sense of hearing was not involved in the derange
ment ; in short, that the eye, and not the whole of the senses, or
general system, constituted the seat of the defect.
ILLUSIONS EXPLAINED BY PHRENOLOGY.
In previous sections, it has been stated that maladies of various
kinds are capable of producing spectral illusions by their effects on
the brain and nervous system. In some cases, it was stated that the
brain is directly diseased; in other cases, that the perceptions made
24
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
by that organ are only indirectly deranged by sympathy with some
bodily malady. Madness, for example, having its origin in diseased
cerebral structure, may be attended with spectral illusions ; and
disorder of the alimentary organs, caused by dissipation, may be an
indirect source of them; the senses, and the brain which forms per
ceptions through their reports, being functionally disordered from
sympathy. That a peculiar temperament of body, and, in part, a
particular mental constitution, are requisite to give a predisposition
to the affection, there can be little doubt. Some mental philosophers
go a great way further. The phrenologists hold that it is chiefly on
a particular development of one portion of the brain, which they
describe as the seat of the sentiment of Wonder, that the tendency
to see visions depends. It is observed by them that this ‘sentiment,
when in a state of extreme exaltation (great development and high
excitement), may stimulate the perceptive faculties to perceive objects
fitted to gratify it; and that spectres, apparitions, spirits, &c. are
the kind of ideas suited to please an inordinate Wonder.’ They
class pretenders to supernatural messages and missions, the seers of
visions and dreamers of dreams, and workers of miracles, among
such patients. Separating the remark just quoted from its reference
to the organology of the phrenological science, we may hold it to
signify that the sentiment of wonder, when predominant in an
individual’s mind, will stimulate those faculties which take cognizance
of the forms, colours, sizes, &c. of material existences, to such a
pitch of activity, that illusory perceptions of objects, characterised by
qualities fitted to gratify wonder, will be formed in the brain. The
following case, contributed by Mr Simpson to the Phrenological
Journal, No. 6, affords an interesting example of the manner in
which spectral illusions are accounted for by the strict rules of this
science.
‘Miss S. L., a young lady under twenty years of age, of good
family, well educated, free from any superstitious fears, and in perfect
general health of body and soundness of mind, has, nevertheless,
been for some years occasionally troubled, both in the night and in
the day, with visions of persons and inanimate objects, in numerous
modes and forms. She was early subject to such illusions occasion
ally, and the first she remembers was that of a carpet spread out in
the air, which descended near her, and vanished away.
‘ After an interval of some years, she began to see human figures
in her room as she lay wide awake in bed, even in the daylight of
the morning. These figures were whitish, or rather gray, and trans
parent like cobweb, and generally above the size of life. At this
time she had acute headaches, very singularly confined to one small
spot of the head. On being asked to point out the spot, the utmost
care being taken not to lead her to the answer, our readers may
judge of our feelings as phrenologists when she touched with her
forefinger and thumb each side of the root of the nose, the com
as
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
mencement of the eyebrows, and the spot immediately over the top
of the nose—the ascertained seats of the organs of Form, Size, and
Individuality! Here, particularly on each side of the robt of the
nose, she said the sensation could only be compared to that of
running sharp knives into the part. The pain increased when she
held her head down, and was much relieved by holding'her face
upwards. Miss S. L., on being asked if the pain was confined to
that spot, answered, that ‘ some time afterwards the pain extended
to right and left along the eyebrows, and a little above them, and
completely round the eyes, which felt often as if they would have
burst from their sockets.’ When this happened, her visions were
varied precisely as the phrenologist would have anticipated, and she
detailed the progress without a single leading question. Weight,
Colouring, Order, Number, Locality, all became affected-; and let us
■observe what happened. The whitish or cobweb spectres assumed
the natural colour of the objects, but they continued often to present
themselves, though not always, above th'e size of life. She saw a
beggar one day out of doors, natural in size and colour, who
vanished as she came up to the spot. Colouring being overexcited,
began to occasion its specific and fantastical illusions. Bright spots,
like stars on a black ground, filled the room in the dark, and even in
daylight; and sudden and sometimes gradual illumination of the
room during the night seemed to take place. Innumerable balls of
fire seemed one day to pour like a torrentjjout of one of the rooms
of the house down the staircase. On onefbccasion the pain between
the eyes, and along the lower ridge of l^te brow, struck her suddenly
with great violence—when instantly thfe room filled with stars and
bright spots. On attempting on that occasion to go to bed, she said
she was conscious of an inability to balance herself, as if she had
been tipsy; and she fell, having made repeated efforts to seize the
bedpost, which, in the most unaccountable manner, eluded her
grasp, by shifting its place, and also by presenting her with a number
of bedposts instead of one. If the organ of Weight, situated between
Size and Colouring, be the organ of the instinct to preserve, and
power of preserving equilibrium, it must be the necessary consequence
of the derangement of that organ to overset the balance of the person.
Overexcited Number we should expect to produce multiplication of
objects, and the first experience she had of this illusion was the
multiplication of the bedposts, and subsequently of any inanimate
object she looked at, that object being in itself real and single : a
book, a footstool, a work-box, would increase to twenty, or fifty,
sometimes without order or arrangement, and at other times piled
regularly one above another. Such objects deluded her in another
way, by increasing in size, as she looked at them, to the most
amazing excess—again resuming their natural size—less than which
they never seemed to become—and again swelling out Locality,
overexcited, gave her the illusion of objects, which she had been
26
1
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
accustomed to regard as fixed, being out of their places; and she
thinks, but is not sure, that on one occasion a door and window in
one apartment seemed to have changed places; but, as she added,
she might have been deceived by a mirror. This qualification gave
us the more confidence in her accuracy, when, as she did with regard
to all her other illusions, she spoke more positively. She had not
hitherto observed a great and painful confusion in the visions which
visited her, so as to entitle us to infer the derangement of Order.
Individuality, Form, Size, Weight, Colouring, Locality, and Number
only seemed hitherto affected.
. ‘For nearly two years Miss S. L. was free from her frontal head
aches, and—mark the coincidence—untroubled by visions or any
other illusive perceptions. Some months ago, however, all her
distressing symptoms returned in great aggravation, when she was
conscious of a want of health. The pain was more acute than before
along the frontal bone, and round and in the eyeballs; and all the
organs there situated recommenced their game of illusion. Single
figures of absent and deceased friends were terribly real to her, both
in the day and the night, sometimes cobweb, but generally coloured.
She sometimes saw friends on the street, who proved phantoms
when she approached to speak to them; and instances occurred
where, from not having thus satisfied herself of the illusion, she
affirmed to such friends that she had seen them in certain places,
at certain times, when they proved to her the clearest alibi. The
confusion of her spectral forms now distressed her. (Order affected.)
The oppression and perplexity was intolerable when figures presented
themselves before her in inextricable disorder, and still more when
they changed—as with Nicolai—from whole figures to parts of
figures, faces and half faces, and limbs—sometimes of inordinate
size and dreadful deformity. One instance of illusive disorder which
she mentioned is curious, and has the further effect of exhibiting
what cannot be put in terms, except those of the derangement of the
just perception of gravitation or equilibrium. (Weight.) One night,
as she sat in her bedroom, and was about to go to bed, a stream of
spectres, persons’ faces, and limbs, in the most shocking confusion,
seemed to her to pour into her room from the window, in the manner
of a cascade ! Although the cascade continued apparently in rapid
descending motion, there was no accumulation of figures in the room,
the supply unaccountably vanishing after having formed the cascade.
Colossal figures are her frequent visitors. (Size.)
‘Real but inanimate objects have assumed to her the form of
animals ; and she has often attempted to lift articles from the
ground, which, like the oysters in the pothouse cellar, eluded her
grasp.
‘ More recently, she has experienced a great aggravation of her
alarms ; for, like Nicolai, she began to hear her spectral visitors
speak! (The organs of Language and Tune, or Sound, affected.)
87
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
At first her crowds kept up a buzzing and indescribable gibbering,
and occasionally joined in a loud and terribly disagreeable laugh,
which she could only impute to fiends. These unwelcome sounds
were generally followed by a rapid and always alarming advance of
the figures, which often on those occasions presented very large and
fearful faces, with insufferable glaring eyes close to her own. All
self-possession then failed her, and the cold sweat of terror stood
on her brow. Her single figures of the deceased and absent then
began to gibber, and soon more distinctly to address her ; but terror
has hitherto prevented her from understanding what they said.
‘ She went, not very wisely, to see that banquet of demonology,.
Der Freischutz ; and of course, for some time afterwards, the dram
atis persona of that edifying piece, not excepting his Satanic
majesty in person, were her nightly visitors. Some particular
figures are persevering in their visits to her. A Moor, with a turban,
frequently looks over her shoulder, very impertinently, when she uses
a mirror.
‘ Of the other illusive perceptions of Miss S. L., we may mention
the sensation of being lifted up, and of sinking down and falling
forward, with the puzzling perception of objects off their perpendic
ular ; for example, the room, floor, and all, sloping to one side.
(Weight affected.)
‘ Colours in her work, or otherwise, long looked at, are slow to
quit her sight. She has noises in her head, and a sensation of heat
all over it; and, last of all, when asked if she ever experienced acute
pain elsewhere about the head than in the lower range of the fore
head, she answered that three several times she was suddenly affected
with such excruciating throbbing pain on the top of the head, that
she had almost fainted; and when asked to put her finger on the
spot, she put the points of each forefinger precisely on the organ of
Wonder, on each side of the coronal surface I’
In the same paper Mr Simpson adduces the singular illusive
perceptions suffered occasionally by Mr John Hunter, the great
anatomist, several of which are identical with Miss S. L.’s. In the
eighteenth and other numbers of the Phrenological Journal, other
cases of spectral illusions are mentioned, several with local pain,
which are held to corroborate the inferences drawn from that of Miss
S. L. But the case of that lady seems to us the most comprehensive
on the subject.
In a subsequent paper by Mr Simpson (in No. 7), the most brief
and satisfactory explanation of the illusions of the English OpiumEater is given. The forms and faces that persecuted him in millions
(Form diseased)—the expansion of a night into a hundred years
(Time)—his insufferable lights and splendours (Colour)—his descent
for millions of miles without finding a bottom (Weight or Resistance,
giving the feeling of support, diseased)—all described by him with
an eloquence that startled the public—are only aggravated illusions,
28
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
•due to his irregularities. It is extremely probable that the intoxi
cating gas affects the same organs.
ILLUSIONS FROM ARTIFICE.
Illusions from the use of phantasmagoria, magic lanterns, mirrors,
and other means of deception connected with professed jugglery,
need not here be more than alluded to. Illusions arising from the
alleged appearance of, and intercourse with, spirits, are of a different
kind, and a regular notice of such would form a dark chapter in the
history of our popular superstitions. In all ages, there have been
persons who lived by imposing on the vulgar, and pretending to
possess supernatural powers. Others, either through heedlessness or
a wanton spirit of mischief, have inflicted scarcely less injury on
society by terrifying children and weak-minded persons with tales of
ghosts and other spectral appearances. It is little more than a cen
tury since the metropolis was thrown into a state of extraordinary
excitement by the Cock Lane ghost; and as the history of this affair
will best illustrate the absurdity of this class of illusions, we may be
allowed to add it to our list of apparition anecdotes.
About the year 1759, Mr Kempe, a gentleman from the county of
Norfolk, came to reside with the sister of his deceased wife, in the
house of a Mr Parsons in Cock Lane, near Smithfield. The lady, it
appears, slept with a girl, the daughter of Parsons, and complained
of being disturbed with very unaccountable noises. From this or
some other cause, Mr Kempe and his sister-in-law removed to
another lodging in Bartlett Street. Here, unfortunately, the lady,
who passed by the name of Mrs Kempe, was attacked with small-pox,
and died ; and on the 2d of February 1760, her body was interred in
a vault in St John’s Church, Clerkenwell.
From this event two years elapsed, when a report was propagated
that a great knocking and scratching had been heard in the night at
the house of Parsons, to the great terror of all the family ; all methods
employed to discover the cause of it being ineffectual. This noise
was always heard under the bed in which lay two children, the
eldest of whom had slept with Mrs Kempe, as already mentioned,
during her residence in this house. To find out whence it proceeded,
Mr Parsons ordered the wainscot to be taken down ; but the knocking
and scratching, instead of ceasing, became more violent than ever.
The children were then removed into the two pair of stairs room,
whither they were followed by the same noise, which sometimes
continued during the whole night.
From these circumstances, it was apprehended that the house was
haunted ; and the elder child declared that she had, some time
before, seen the apparition of a woman, surrounded, as it were, by a
blazing light. But the girl was not the only person who was favoured
with a sight of this luminous lady. A publican in the neighbour29
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
hood, bringing a pot of beer into the house, about eleven o’clock at
night, was so terrified that he let the beer fall, upon seeing on the
stairs, as he was looking up, the bright shining figure of a woman,
which cast such a light that he could see the dial in the charityschool, through a window in that building. The figure passed by him,
and beckoned him to follow ; but he was too much terrified to obey
its directions, ran home as fast as possible, and was taken very ill.
About an hour after this Mr Parsons himself, having occasion to go
into another room, saw the same apparition.
As the knocking and scratching only followed the children, the
girl who had seen the supposed apparition was interrogated what
she thought it was like. She declared it was Mrs Kempe, who about
two years before had lodged in the house. On this information,
the circumstances attending Mrs Kempe’s death were recollected,
and were pronounced by those who heard them to be of a dark and
disagreeable nature. Suspicions were whispered about, tending to
inculpate Mr Kempe ; fresh circumstances were brought to light, and
it was hinted that the deceased had not died a natural death ; that,
in fact, she had been poisoned.
The knocking and scratching now began to be more violent; they
seemed to proceed from underneath the bedstead of the child, who
was sometimes thrown into violent fits and agitations. In a word,
Parsons gave out that the spirit of Mrs Kempe had taken possession
of the girl. The noises increased in violence, and several gentle
men were requested to sit up all night in the child’s room. On the
13th of January, between eleven and twelve o’clock at night, a
respectable clergyman was sent for, who, addressing himself to the
supposed spirit, desired that, if any injury had been done to the
person who had lived in that house, he might be answered in the
affirmative, by one single knock ; if the contrary, by two knocks.
This was immediately answered by one knock. He then asked
several questions, which were all very rationally answered in the
same way. Crowds now went to hear the ghost; among others, Dr
Johnson, ‘the Colossus of British literature,’ who was imposed on like
the rest. Many persons, however, would not be duped. Suspecting
a trick, with the sanction of the lord mayor, they set themselves
carefully to watch the movements of the girl. The supposed ghost
having announced that it would attend any gentleman into the vault
under St John’s Church, in which the body of Mrs Kempe was
entombed, and point out the coffin by knocking on the lid, several
persons proceeded to the vault accordingly, there to await the result.
On entering this gloomy receptacle at midnight, the party waited
for some time in silence for the spirit to perform its promise, but
nothing ensued. . The person accused by the ghost then went down,
with several others, into the vault, but no effect was perceived.
Returning to the bedroom of the girl, the party examined her closely,
but could draw no confession from her; on their departure, however,
30
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
towards morning, they arrived at the conviction that the girl possessed
the art of counterfeiting noises. Further examinations took place, and
ultimately it was discovered that she was a finished impostor. They
found that she had been in the habit of taking with her to bed a thin
and sonorous piece of wood, on which she produced the noises that
had deceived such crowds of credulous individuals. Parsons, who had
been privy to the plot for injuring the reputation of Mr Kempe, with
his daughter and several accomplices, were now taken into custody;
and after a trial before Lord Mansfield, were condemned to variousterms of imprisonment; Parsons being, in addition, ordered to stand,
in the pillory. Such was the termination of an affair which not
only found partisans among the weak and credulous, but' even stag
gered many men reputed for possessing sound understandings. A
worthy clergyman, whose faith was stronger than his reason, and
who had warmly interested himself in behalf of the reality of the
spirit, was so overwhelmed with grief and chagrin, that he did not
long survive the detection of the imposture.
CONCLUSION.
A word of advice may now be given in conclusion to those whoare subject to illusions of a spectral kind. If hysteria, epilepsy,
or any well-marked bodily affection be an accompaniment of these
illusions, of course remedial measures should be used which have
a reference to these maladies, and the physician is the party to be
applied to. If, however, no well-defined bodily ailment exists, a
word of counsel may be useful from ourselves. We believe that,
in general, spectral illusions are caused by disorders originating
in the alimentary system, and that the continued use of stimulating
liquors is to be most commonly blamed for the visitation. If the
patient is conscious that this- is the case, his path to relief lies open
before him. The removal of the cause will almost always remove
the effect. At the same time, the process of cure may be slow.
The imagination becomes morbidly active in such cases, and many
maintain the illusions after the digestive system is restored to order.
But this will not be the case long, for the morbidity of the imagina
tion does not usually survive, for any length of time, the restoration
of the sanity of the body. To effect a cure of the fundamental
derangement of the alimentary system, aperient medicines may be
used in the first instance, and afterwards tonics—nourishing food,
in small quantities, at the outset—and gentle but frequent exercise
in the open air. Last, but not least, for the cure of the sufferer
from spectral illusions, the indulgence in cheerful society is to be
recommended. Solitude infallibly nurses the morbidity of the
imagination. The notion that the use of ardent spirits should only
be dropped by degrees, is found to be a mistake. Even in instances
of the most inveterate drunkards, no harm follows from instantaneous
31
�SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.
abstinence. Therefore, as a little too often leads to much in the
matter of drinking, those who would break off the practice should
not be over-indulgent to themselves, through fear of the consequences
•of change. If opium have been the cause of the illusions, a gradual
cessation from its use may be advisable.
Should the sufferer from spectral illusions be conscious of no error
as regards the use of stimulants or narcotics, some affection of
the brain may be suspected, and headaches will corroborate this
suspicion. . Local or general blood-letting will prove in most cases
the best remedy. Leeches or cupping may be tried in the first place,
and, if tried ineffectively, the lancet may then be employed.
With rdspect to the demonstrable truthfulness of stories of appari
tions, we consider that the whole may be referred to natural causes.
Let us think of the apparent reasons for the majority of spectral
communications, supposing them to be supernatural. Can we deem
it accordant with the dignity of that great Power which orders
the universe, that a spirit should be sent to warn a libertine of
his death ? Or that a spiritual messenger should be commissioned
to walk about an old manor-house, dressed in a white sheet, and
dragging clanking chains, for no better purpose than to frighten
old women and servant-girls, as said to be done in all hauntedchamber cases? Or that a supernatural being should be charged
with the notable task of tapping on bed-heads, pulling down plates,
and making a clatter among tea-cups, as in the case of the Stockwell ghost, and a thousand others ? The supposition is monstrous.
If to any one inhabitant of this earth—a petty atom, occupying a
speck of a place on a ball which is itself an insignificant unit among
millions of spheres—if .to such a one a supernatural communication
was deigned, certainly it would be for some purpose worthy, of the
all-wise Communicator, and fraught with importance to the recipient
of the message, as well, perhaps, as to his whole race.
32
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Spectral illusions
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 32 p. : ill. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Approximate date from LC record. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[ca. 1880?]
Identifier
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N619
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Spiritualism
Science
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[Unknown]
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Spectral illusions), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Apparitions
Hallucinations and illusions
NSS