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A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
“Enter Ghost.”
Hamlet.—“ Thou com’st in such a questionable shape.”—
Shakesteabe.
Questionable !—ay; so very questionable, in my opinion, is the fact of their
coming at all, that I am now going to question whether they ever did, or
can come. This opinion I know is opposed to a very general, a long-esta
blished, and with some a deeply-rooted belief in supernatural appearances,
and is opposed to what may be almost considered as well-authenticated facts,
which neither the repeated exposure of very many “ ghost tricks,” and
clearly-proved imposture, nor sound philosophical arguments, have been able
to set aside altogether. Most persons, therefore, will no doubt consider that
the task of “laying” all the ghosts that have appeared, and putting U stop
to any others ever making an appearance, is a most difficult task. This is
granted; and although I do not believe, like Owen Griendower, that I can
“ call the spirits from the vasty deep,” but on the contrary agree in this
respect with Hotspur, if I did call that they would not come, I nevertheless,
B
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A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
although no conjuror, do conjure up for the occasion hosts of ghosts which
I see I have to contend against. Yes, I do see before me, “ in my mind’s
eye
A. vast army, composed of ghost, goblin, and sprite !
With them .eyes full of fire, all gleaming with spite !
All lurking about in the “ dead of the night ”
With them faces so pale and their shrouds all so white I
Or hiding about in dark holes and corners,
To fright grown-up folk, or little “ Jack Horners.”
But though they all stand in this fierce grim array,
Armed with pen and with pencil, “ I’ll drive them away.”
It is not only, however, against these horrible and ghastly-looking cloud
of flimsy foes that one has to deal with in a question like this, but there are
numbers of respectable and respected authors, and highly respectable wit
nesses, on the side of the ghosts ; and it must be admitted that it is no easy
matter to .put aside the testimony of all these respectable persons. They
may have thought, and some may still think, that they have done, and are
doing, good, by supporting this belief; but I know on the contrary that they
have done, and are doing, great harm ; and I, therefore, stand forth in the ■
hope of “laying” all the ghosts, and settling this long-disputed question
for ever.
The belief in ghost, or apparition, is of course of very early date, originating
in what are called the “ dark ages,” and dark indeed those ages were ! as a
reference to the early history of the world will show ; and although we have
in these days a large diffusion of the blessed light of intelligence, nevertheless
there is still existing, even amongst civilized people, a fearful amount of
ignorance upon the subject of Ghosts, Witchcraft, Fortune-telling, and
“ Ruling the Stars,” besides a vast amount of this sort of imaginary and
mischievous nonsense. Now it will be as well here to inquire what good
has ever resulted from this belief in what is commonly understood to be a
ghost? None that I have ever heard of, and I have been familiar with all
the popular ghost stories from boyhood, and have of late waded through
almost all the works produced in support of this spiritual visiting theory,
but in no one instance have I discovered where any beneficial result has
followed from the supernatural or rather unnatural supposed appearances;
whereas, on the other hand, we do find unfortunately a large and serious
amount of suffering and injury arising from this belief in ghosts, and which
I shall have occasion to refer to further on; but I will now proceed to bring
forward some of the evidences which have been adduced from time to time,
all pretty much in the same style, in support of the probability and truth of
the appearance of ghosts—first, in fact, to call up the ghosts, in order that I
may put them down.
All the ghost story tellers, or writers upon this subject, seem to consider
that one most important point in the appearance of apparitions is, that the
ghost should be a most perfect and EXACT RESEMBLANCE, in every
respect, to the deceased person—the spirit of whom they are supposed to
be. Their faces appear the same, except in some cases where it is described
as being rather paler than when they were alive, and the general expression
�A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
n
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is described as “more in sorrow than in anger,” but this varies in some
instances according to circumstances; but in all these appearances the coun
tenances are so precisely similar, so minutely so, that in one case mentioned
by Mrs. Crowe in her “ Kight-side of Nature,” the very “ pock-pits ” or
“pock-marks” on the face were
visible. The narrators also all
agree that the spirits appear in similar, or the same dresses which they
were accustomed to wear during their lifetime (please to observe that this
is very important), so exactly alike that the ghost-seer could not possibly
be mistaken as to the identity of the individual, in face, figure, manner, and
dress ; and on the same authority in some cases the same spirit has appeared
at the same moment to different persons in different places, although perhaps
15,000 miles apart, in precisely the same dress.
In referring to the play of “Hamlet,” it will be found that Shakespeare
has been most particular in describing the general appearance of the Ghost
of Hamlet’s father, who was
“Doomed for a certain time to walk by night.”
Dor instance, when Marcellus says to Horatio,
“ Is it not like the king ?”
Horatio replies—
“ As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on,
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown’d he once, when, in angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polack on the ice.”
Horatio also, in describing the Ghost to Hamlet, says—•
“ A figure like your father,
MmeiZ at all points, exactly, cap-d-pe.”
And, in further explanation, it,is stated that the Ghost was armed “from
top to toe,” “from head to foot,” that “he wore his beaver up,” with
“ a countenance more in sorrow than in anger,” and was “ very pale.” Then,
again, when Hamlet sees his father’s spirit, he exclaims—
“ What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon.”
So also in the play of “Macbeth,” when the Ghost of Banquo rises, and
takes a seat at the table, Macbeth says to the apparition—
“ Never shake
Thy gory locks at me.”
And further on he says—“ Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with !”
Daniel de Foe also insists upon, and goes into the most minute details as to
the person and dress of a Ghost; and in a work which he published upon
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A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
apparitions,* we may see how careful and circumstantial the author is in
his descriptions of apparitions, whose appearance he vouches for in his
peculiar narrative and matter-of-fact style. One of these ghost stories is
of some robbers who broke into a mansion in the country, and whilst ran
sacking one of the chambers, they saw, sitting in a chair, “ a grave, ancient
man, with a long full-bottomed wig and a rich brocaded gown,” etc. One
of the robbers threatened to tear off his “rich brocaded gown;” another
hit at him with a fuzee, and was instantly alarmed at finding it passed
through air; and then the old gentleman “ changed into the most horrible
monster that ever was seen, with eyes like two fiery daggers red hot.”
They then rushed into another room, and found the same “ grave, ancient
man” seated there,! and so also in another chamber; and he was seen by
different robbers in three different rooms nt the same moment ! Just at this
time the servants, who were at the top of the house, threw some “ hand
grenades” down the chimneys of these rooms. The result altogether was
that some of the thieves were badly wounded, the others driven away, and
the mansion saved from being plundered. What a capital thing it would be
surely, if the police could attach some of these spirits to their force !
Another case, a clergyman (the Rev. Dr. Scot) was seated in his library,
with the door closed, when he suddenly saw “ an ancient, grave gentleman, in
a black velvet gown”—very particular, you observe, as to the material—“ and
a long wig.” This ghost was an entire stranger to Dr. Scot, and came to
ask the doctor to do him a favour—asking a favour under such circum
stances of course amounts to a command—which was to go to another part
of the country, to a house where the ghost’s son resided, and point out to
the son the place where an important family document was deposited.
Dr. Scot complied with this request, and the family property was secured
to the son of the ghost in the “black velvet gown and the long wig.”
Now one naturally asks here, why did not this old ghost go and point
the place out to his son himself ? And so also with the well-authenticated,
story of the ghost of Sir George Villars, who wanted to give a warning to
his son, the Duke of Buckingham; which warning, if properly delivered
and properly acted upon, might have saved the duke’s life; but instead of
warning his son himself (take notice), he appeared to one of the duke s
domestics, 11 in the very clothes he used to wear,” and commissioned him to
deliver the message. After all, this warning was of no use, so this ghost
might have saved himself the trouble of coming; but spirits are indeed
strange things, and of course act in strange ways.
About the year 1700, a translation from a Drench book was brought out
in London, entitled “ Drelincourt on Death and after it had been published
for some time, Daniel Defoe, at the request of Mr. Midwinter, the publisher,
wrote a preface to the 'work, and therein introduced a short story about
the ghost of a lady appearing to her friend. It was headed thus : “ A true
Relation of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal, next day after her death, to one
* “ An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions; being an account of what they
are and what they are not, when they come and when they come not; as also how we may
distinguish between Apparitions of Good and Evil Spirits, and how we ought to behave to
them; with a variety of surprising and diverting examples never published before.
London, 1727.
�A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
5
Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, on the 8th of September, 1705 ; which
Apparition recommends the perusal of Drelincourt’s book of Consolation
against the Fears of Death. (Thirteenth edition.)”
Mrs. Veal and Mrs. Bargrave, it appears, were intimate friends. One day
at twelve o’clock at noon, when Mrs. B. was sitting alone, Mrs. Veal entered
the room, dressed in a “riding habit,” hat, etc., as if going a journey. Mrs.
Bargrave advanced to welcome her friend, and was going to salute her, and
their lips almost touched, but Mrs. V. held back her head and passing her
hand before her face, said, “ I am not very well to-dayand avoided the
salute. In the course of a long talk which they had, Mrs. Veal strongly
recommends Drelincourt’s Book on Death to Mrs. Bargrave, and occasionally
“ claps her hand upon her knee, in great earnestness.” Mrs. Veal had been
subject to fits, and she asks if Mrs. Bargrave does not think she is “ mightily
impaired by her fits ?” Mrs. B.’s reply was, “ No! I think you look as well
as ever I knew you;” and during the conversation she took hold of Mrs. Veal’s
gown several times, and commended it. Mrs. V. told her it was a “ scoured
silk” and newly made up. Mrs. Veal at length took her departure, but
stood at the street door some short time, in the face of the beast market;
this was Saturday the market-day. She then went from Mrs. B., who saw
her walk in her view, till a turning interrupted the sight of her; this was
three quarters after one o’clock. Mrs. Veal had died that very day at noon ! ! !
at Dover, which is about twenty miles from Canterbury.
Some surprise was expressed to. Mrs. Bargrave, about the fact of her
feeling the gown, but she said she was quite sure that she felt the gown. It
was a striped silk, and Mrs. Veal had never been seen in such a dress; but
such a one was found in her wardrobe after her decease.
This story made a great sensation at the time it was published; and
“ Drelincourt on Death,” with the Preface and Defoe’s tale, became exceed
ingly popular.*
The absurdities and impossibilities of the foregoing narrative of this
apparition of Mrs. Veal need not be pointed out; but the story is introduced
here for two reasons; one of which will be explained further on, and the
* The introduction runs thus :—“This relation is a matter of fact, and attended with such
circumstances as may induce any reasonable man to believe it. It was sent by a gentleman,
a justice of peace, in Maidstone in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in
London, as it is here worded; which discourse is attested by a sober and understanding
gentlewoman, a kinswoman of the said gentleman’s, who fives at Canterbury within a few
doors of the house in which the within-named Mrs. Bargrave lives; who believes his kins
woman to be of so discerning a spirit as not to be put upon by fallacy, and who positively
assured him that the whole matter as related and laid down is really true; and what she
herself had in the same words (as near as may be) from Mrs. Bargrave’s own mouth ; who
she knows had no reason to invent and publish such a story; or design to forge and tell a lie,
being a woman of much honesty and virtue, and her whole life a course as it were of piety.
The use which we ought to make of it is, that there is a life to come after this, and a just
GOD, who will retribute to every one according to the deeds done in the body, and therefore
to reflect upon our past course of life we have lead in the world—that our time is short and
uncertain; if we would escape the punishment of the ungodly and receive the reward of
the righteous, which is the laying hold of eternal life, we ought for the time to come to
turn to GOD, by a speedy repentance, ceasing to do evil and learning to do well, to seek
after GOD early, if haply he may be found of us, and lead such lives for the future as may
be well pleasing in his sight.”
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A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS,
other is to show how the public have been imposed upon with these short
stories.
It has all along been known to the literary world that this “ true
Relation” was a falsehood, and brought forward under the following cir
cumstances :—
Mr. Midwinter, who published the translation of “ Drelincourt on Death,”
finding that the work did not sell, complained of this to Defoe, and asked him
if he could not write some preface or introduction to the work for the purpose
of calling the attention of the public to this rather uninviting subject.
Defoe undertook to do so, and produced this story about the ghost of Mrs.
Veal. The gullibility of the public was much greater at that time than now,
and they would then swallow anything in the shape of a ghost; a great
sensation was created, and the publisher’s purpose was answered, as the
work had an extraordinary sale ; but one cannot help expressing a very
deep regret that the author of “ Robinson Crusoe” should have so degraded
his talent, by thus deliberately foisting upon the public a gross and mis
chievous falsehood as a veritable truth; and, worse than this, guilty of
bringing in the most sacred names upon one of the most solemn subjects
which the mind of man can contemplate, for the purpose of supporting and
propagating a falsehood for a mercenary purpose.
As the belief in ghosts has long been popular, and considered as an
established fact, it may be quite allowable for an author to introduce a ghost
into his romance; and it may be argued that authors have thus been enabled
“ to point a moral” as well as to “ adorn a tale,” by using this poetical license,
or spiritual medium ; but in these cases the tales or poems were given out to
the world as inventions of the author to amuse the public, or to convey a
moral lesson, and were accepted by the public as such.
We find in these foregoing examples that apparitions do appear sometimes
to strangers, and sometimes in the dresses in which they had not been seen
when alive; but these dresses have been afterwards discovered or accounted
for, and it has also been discovered who these strange spirits repre
sented. But it will be seen by the cases cited, and others which are to follow,
that this exact appearance, this Vraisemblance is essential, nay, Indispensable,
in order that there shall be “ no mistake for should mistakes be made, it
would, in some cases, be perhaps a very serious matter. I fully assent to all
this, and to show that I wish to do battle in all fairness, that it shall be a
“fair fight and no favour,” I am willing even to illustrate my opponents’
statements in these particulars, and to do this I here introduce don’t start,
reader ! not a ghost, but a figure of Napoleon the Birst, but without a head ;
not that I mean to imply thereby that this military hero had no head. No,
no ! quite the contrary, but I have omitted this head and the head of the
ghost of Hamlet’s father for an especial purpose, as will be explained further
on, when I shall have occasion to touch upon these heads again. But if this
cut is held at a distance, by any one at all familiar with the portraits or
statues of “ Napoleon le Grand” in this costume, they will at once recognize
who the figure is intended to represent.
Let us now turn to “ The Night-side of Nature,” and through the dismal
gloom which surrounds these apparitions, call up some more spirits, who,
according to Mrs. Crowe, and, indeed, on the authority of all other
�A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
7
authors who support the ghost doctrine, 44 generally come in their habits as
they livedand it appears that there is no difference in this respect between
the beggar and the king, for they come
44 Some-in rags, and some in jags, and some in silken gowns.”
At page 289 of this exceedingly cleverly written but most ghastly
collection of ghost stories, it is related that the ghost of a beggar-man
appeared at the same time in two different apartments (all in his dirty
rags, of course), to a young man and a young woman who had allowed
this beggar to sleep in their master’s barn (unbeknown to their master),
where he died in the night, but could not rest after his death until some
money of his was found by these young people, who had both suffered
in their health in consequence of these visits of the beggar’s ghost. They
at length consulted and explained all this to a priest, who advised them
to distribute the money they had found under the straw (where the beggar
had slept and died) between three churches, which advice was accordingly
acted upon, and this settled the business, for the dirty ragged ghost never
troubled them again.
In contrast to this we have the story of the ghost of a lady of title, who
had been in her lifetime Princess Anna of Saxony. She came decked out
in 44 silks and satins,” gold lace, embroidery, and jewels, all so grand, and
appeared to one of the descendants of her family, Duke Christian of Saxe
Eisenburg, requesting him to be so kind as to try and 44 make it up ” be
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A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
tween her and her ghost hnsband, who, it seems, was a bad-tempered man,
had quarrelled with her, and had died without being reconciled.
Duke Christian consented to do this. She had walked into the duke’s
presence, although all the doors were shut, and one day after their first
interview she brought her husband to their relative in the same uncere
monious manner. Her ghost husband, who had been the Duke Casimer,
appeared dressed in his royal robes. They each told their story (these, you
will observe were talking ghosts as well as stalking ghosts). Duke Christian
most gallantly decided in favour of the lady, and the ghost duke very
properly acquiesced in the justice of the decision. Duke Christian then
took the “icy cold hand ” of the ghost-duke and placed it in the hand of the
ghost-wife, whose hand felt of a “ natural heat.” It appears to be the opinion
of the advocates of apparitions that naughty ghosts have cold hands. In this
case the husband was the offending party, and was very naughty, and there
fore his hands were very cold. It seems strange that his hands should
have been cold, for, being naughty, one would suppose he would come from
the same place that Hamlet’s father did; and from what he said we should
conclude that there was a roaring fire there, where the duke might have
warmed his cold hands. It further appears that these parties all “ prayed and
sung together!” after which the now happy ghosts disappeared sans ceremonie, without troubling the servants to open the doors, or allowing Duke
Christian to “ show them out.” One remarkable fact in connection with
this story is, that, upon referring to the portraits of these ghosts which hung
in the castle, was, that they had appeared in exactly the same dresses which
they had on, when these portraits were painted—one hundred years before
this time.
Duke Christian died two years after the ghosts’ visits, and by his own
orders was buried in “ quicklime,” to prevent, it is supposed, his ghost from
walking the earth ! He must indeed have been a poor ignorant creature,
although a duke, to suppose that “ quicklime,” or “ slow lime,” or any other
kind of lime, or anything else that would destroy the body, could make any
difference with respect to the appearance of the spirit.
The next case, then, is of the ghost of a soldier’s wife, who appeared to a
“ Corporal Q----- ” who was lying ill in bed, and also to a comrade who was
an invalid lying in the next bed. This was in the night, but the cor
poral could see that she was dressed in a “ flannel gown, edged with a black
ribbon,” exactly like the grave-clothes which he had helped to put on her
twelve months before. It appears, however, that he could see through her,
'flannel gown and all. This female ghost came to the bed-side of the sick man
to ask him to write to her husband, who was in Ireland, to communicate
something to him which was to be kept a “profound secret.”
This is certainly a strange story, but is it not still more strange that this
ghost did not go to her husband and tell him the important secret herself,
instead of trusting a stranger to do so ? It will be observed that there are
different classes of ghosts, as there are of living people—the princely, the
aristocratic, the genteel, and the common. The vulgar classes delight to
haunt in graveyards, dreary lanes, ruins, and all sorts of dirty dark holes
and corners, and in cellars. Yes, dark cellars seem to be a favourite abode
of these common ghosts? This fact raises the question whether the lower
�A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
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class of spirits are obliged to keep to the Zower parts of the house—to the
u low® regions ’’—and are not allowed to go into the parlours or the drawing
rooms, and not allowed to mix with the higher order of ghosts! Can this
be a law or regulation amongst the ghosts ? If so, is it not most extraordi
nary that these spirits should not be allowed to choose their own place of
residence, and take to the most comfortable apartments, instead of grovelling
amongst the rats and mice, the slugs, the crickets, and the blackbeetles ?
’Tis strange, ’tis passing strange ; but so it appears to be. By the by, some few
of these poor spirits of the humble class of ghosts do sometimes, it appears,
mount np to the bed-rooms, in the hope, I suppose, of getting occasionally
now and then a “ comfortable lodging ” and a ££ good night s rest.
At page 810 of this same work we have an account of a haunted cellar in a
gentleman’s house, out of town, in which were heard “ loud knockings,” il a
voice crying,” “ heavy feet walking,” etc. The old butler, with his “ acolytes,”
descended to the cellar (wine cellar) armed with sword, blunderbuss, and
Other offensive weapons, but the ghosts put them all to flight, and they
“ turned tail ” in a fright. Yes, they all ran up-stairs again, followed by the
a Hound of feet ” and ££ a visible shadow !” This, of course, is a fact; and it so
happens that I know another fact about a haunted wine-cellar, which, how
ever, had quite a different result to the foregoing.
In a wine-cellar of a gentleman’s house, somewhere near Blackheath, it
was found that strange noises were sometimes heard in the evenings and in
the night time, in this “ wine vault,” similar to those described above, such
as 'knocking, groaning, footsteps, etc., so that the servants were afraid to go into
the Cellar, particularly at a late hour. The master at length determined to
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“lay” this ghost, if possible, and one evening when these noises had been
heard, arming himself with a sword, and the servants with a fowling-piece
and a poker, they cantionsly descended into the cellar (with lighted candles,
of course). Nothing was to be seen there, and all was quiet except a strange,
smothered kind of sound, like the hard breathing of an animal, something
like snoring, that seemed to proceed out of the earth in one of the dark
corners of the vault, when,, lo and behold! in turning their lights in the
direction from which the sounds came, and advancing carefully, they dis
covered—what do you think ? Don’t be alarmed. Why, the ghost lying on
the ground, dead—drunk ! Yes, the ghost had laid himself, not with “ Bell,
Book, and Candle,” but by swallowing the spirit of alcohol, the spirit of
wine, beer, and brandy. Most disgraceful; in fact, this ghost had taken a
“ drop too much.”
Upon looking a little closer, they found that this ghost was one Tom
Brown, an under-gardener; and it was discovered that he had tunnelled a
hole from tjie “ tool-house” through the wall into the cellar. This spirit was
so over-charged with spirit, that he was unable to walk, so was doomed to be
carried in a cart to the “ cage ” and all the people living round about came
next morning to look at the ghost that had been haunting the squire’s wine
cellar. Oh! what a fortune it would be to any one who copld catch a ghost
—a real, right down, “ ’arnest” ghost, and put him in a cage tg show him
round the country ! I wish I had ope.* If yppuld cost little pr nothing to
keep such a thing ; only the lodging, as he <puld pequjrp neither food, pre,
clothing, nor washing!
At page 118, we find an account of an apparition, appearing to a gentleman,
who was staying at a friend’s house at Sarratt, jn Hertfordshire^ and was
awoke in the middle of the night by a pressure qn his feet, and, lopkigg PP,
saw, by the light thpt was burning in the fire-place, a “ well-dressed gentle
man,” in a “
coaf an^ bright gilt buttons,” leaning 011 fhe foot of tho hed,
witfyut a head1 It appears that this was reported tp he tpp ghost of a poor
geutleqian pf that neighbourhood who had been murdered, ppd whose head
had peen opt off! and could therefore only bp ppppgni^gd liy his “ blue coat
and bright gilt buttons.”
Under any real circumstance this would indeed be too horrible and too
serious a subject to turn into ridicule • but in this case, such an evident false
hood, it is surely allowable to “ lay” such a ghost as this, such a senseless ghost,
in any possible way ; in fact, to laugh such a ghost out of countenance—
I, therefore, with my rod of double H. blacklead,
Hold up to scorn this well-dressed ghost without a head.
Any one looking at this figure will clearly see that he does not belong to
this world, and has therefore no business here; for, although there may be
some persons in this world who, perhaps, go about with a very small allowance
of brain, yet every body here must have some sort of a head upon his shoulders,
* Some few years back, a ghost was said to have been seen frequently in the neighbour
hood of some Roman Catholic institution near Leicester, and upon one occasion had nearly
frightened a young woman to death. I was staying with a friend at Leicester at the time,
and offered £100 reward to any one who would show me the ghost, as I wanted very much
to make a sketch of it, but I could not get a sight of it for love nor money.
�A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
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no matter how handsome, or queer-looking it may be. Now I am sorry to
be rude to any “ well-dressed gentleman,” or, indeed, to any body or soul ; but
as it appears (from the story) that this ghost had really no real business upon
earth, what “on earth” does he come here for? Why, for no other object,
it appears, but to “ show himself offso, in my opinion, the sooner he “ walks
off” the better. By the by, perhaps we ought not to be too severe upon the
poor fellow, for, upon consideration, he is placed in rather an awkward
position, as his head may be on the look out for the body, and know where it
is, but having no legs it cannot get to the body. On the other hand, although
the body has legs and could walk to the head, yet, having no eyes, cannot see
where the head is; so some excuse may be made upon this head, particularly
if he is not a talking ghost.
There is a story, somewhere in the Roman Catholic chronicles, of a
martyr, who, after being beheaded, picked up his head, and walked away
with it under his arm; but our ghost here, in the “ blue coat and bright gilt
buttons,” is not allowed to do this sort of thing, and the question naturally
arises, what has become of, or where is the spirit of this unfortunate
gentleman’s head ? Can the believers in ghosts tell us that ? and surely we
shall all feel obliged if they can inform us whether the apparitions of all
decapitated persons appear without their heads ; and, if not, what becomes of
their heads ? and, further, whether the mutilation of the body can in any way
affect the spirit—the soul 7
I shall not in this case “ pause for a reply,” because I know I shall have
a very long time to wait for an answer; but in proceeding to bring to the light
of day some more facts about ghosts from the dark side of nature, I feel as if
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A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
some inquisitive spirit was irresistibly compelling me to put questions as I
go on writing; and therefore, under these circumstances, present my com
pliments to those persons who know about ghosts, and the various authors
who support this belief, and I shall feel greatly obliged if they will answer
my queries at their earliest convenience.—N.B. Shall be glad to hear the
replies from the ghosts themselves, provided they pay the postage.
In the first place, then, from the authority quoted above, it appears that a
widow lady had, strange to say, married a second time! and that the ghost
of her first husband paid her “constant visits.” Query, What did the ghost
come for, and was the second husband at all jealous of his coming? With
respect to a celebrated actor, who had married a second wife, we find that the
apparition of his first wife appeared to him, and which appearance unfortunately
threw him into a fit, and at the same moment this ghost appeared to the
second wife, although they were several hundred miles apart at the time. I
can understand why the ghost of his first wife came to visit him who once
was hers, that is, because he was such a great actor, and such a good fellow ;
but why did it appear to the second wife ? and how is it that the same spirit
can appear in several places at the same instant ? I should like to know that.
At page 274 we find a DOG frightened at the ghost of a soldier ! But this is not
the only “unlucky dog” that has been terrified by apparitions; several
instances are given in different works. Query, How do the “poor dogs”
know a ghost is a ghost when they see one, particularly as they appear in the
same dresses which they had on when “in the flesh;” and even, suppose they
know that they are in the presence of a ghost, what makes them “ turn tail ?”
Yes, why should a tZoy, especially if he is a spirited dog, do so ? for almost in
the same page we are told of a horse who recognized his old master, who
appeared in the same dress he wore when alive, a “ sky-blue coat.” This
horse did not “turn tail.” No! but followed the phantom of his dear old
master, who was walking about the farm, and no doubt wanted to give him
a ride. Query, If a horse is not frightened at a ghost, why should dogs be
frightened at the sight of them ? And also, if a goose would be frightened if
it saw a ghost ? Asses, we know, are sometimes frightened at nothing, and
as a ghost is “next to nothing,” they must of course be frightened at ghosts.
At page 459 we are told of the ghost of a “ horse and cart,” and also of the
“ ghosts of sheep.” If this be so, doubtless there must likewise be the
ghosts of dogs (what “ droll dogs ” they must be), also of puppies, and asses.
What an interesting subject of inquiry is this for the zoologist!
We find, as we dive into the dark mysteries of apparitions, that there
are ghosts of all sorts and sizes, and that there are even lame ghosts, as is
proved by the following true tale of the apparition of an officer in India,
as related by several of his brother officers, whose words dare not be
doubted:—One Major R----- , who was presumed to be of about fifty or
sixty years of age, was with some young officers, proceeding up a river
in a barge ; and as they came to a considerable bend in the river, the
major and the other officers went ashore, in order to cross the neck of
land, taking their fowling-pieces and powder and shot with them, in the
hopes of meeting some game ; and they also took something to refresh
themselves on the road. At one part of their journey they took their
“ tiffing,” and after this they had to jump across a ditch, which the young
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13
officers cleared, but the major “ jumped short.” He told his companions to
march on, and he would follow after he had dried and put himself a little
in marching order. They saw him lay down his fowling-piece and his hat,
and they moved on. After marching some time, they came in sight of the
barge, and were wondering why the major did not follow, when, on a sudden,
they were surprised to see him (the major) at some distance from them
making towards the barge, “ without his hat or gun,” limping hastily along
in his top boots, and he did not appear to observe them. When they arrived
at the barge, he was not there. They returned to the spot where they had
left him, and found his hat and his fowling-piece, and with the assistance of
Some natives they discovered the body of the major in a pit dug for trapping
wild animals!
I defer asking any questions upon the foregoing for the present, for a
reason, but as the next case related is that of the ghost of a young man who
had been drowned, and the poor old mother saw her son “ dripping with
water,” we may surely inquire here if there is or can be such a wonderful
sight as an apparition of “dripping water!” or ghosts of tears! for we
find at page 387 an account of a weeping ghost, who let his tears fall on the
face of a female, who “ often felt the tears on her cheek, icy cold, but burn
afterwards, and leave a blue mark !” And on the same authority we find that
there is the ghost of dirt, for the ghost of the old beggar-man was “ dirty.”
And then if the ghost of a chimney-sweep were to
appear—and why not the spirit of a sweep as well as
anybody else ? But if he came, he must also appear
“ in his habits as he lived.” In that case there must
be the ghost of soot! Thus there are not only the
apparitions cfifluids, and dust and dirt, but also of hard
substances, as in the case of a ghost who was seen in a
garden with the ghost of a “ spade in his hand!”
And not only have we, then, ghosts of all these
matters, but also a ghost of the “ rustling of silk,”
“ creaking of shoes,” and “ sounds of footsteps,” many
instances of which will be found in “Footfalls on
the Boundary of another World,” by Robert Dale
Owen, a work most elaborately compiled, and sin
cerely do I wish that such talent and such research
had been engaged and directed to illustrate and assist
with light, instead of darkness, the present progressive
state of society, instead of striving and endeavouring,
as .it does, to drive us back into the “ outer darkness”
of the ignorance of the “ dark ages,” to endeavour to support and to bring
back the mind of man to a belief in the visits of ghosts, of necromancy,
bewitching, and all the “ black arts ” all of which it was hoped, in the
progress of time, would ultimately be swept away from the face of the earth,
by pure and sound Christian religion, education and science, all of which go
clearly to prove that “ black arts” are matters contrary to the natural laws
of the creation and the laws of God.
In one of the tales brought forward by this author is an account of the
haunting of an old manor-house near Leigh, in Kent, called Ramhurst, where
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A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
there was heard “knockings and sounds of footsteps,” more especially voices
which could not be accounted for, usually in an unoccupied room; “ some
times as if talking in a loud tone, sometimes as if reading aloud, occasionally
screaming.” The servants never saw anything, but the cook told her
mistress that on one occasion, in broad daylight, hearing the rustling of a
silk dress behind her, and which seemed to touch her, she turned suddenly
round, supposing it to be her mistress, but to her great surprise and terror
could not see anybody.
Mr. Owen is so thoroughly master of this spirit subject that he must be
able to tell us all about this “ rustling” of the “silk dresses” of ghosts, and
surely every one will be curious to learn the secret of such a curious fact.
The lady of the house, a Mrs. R----- , drove over one day to the railway
station at Tunbridge to fetch a young lady friend who was coming to stay
with her for some weeks. This was a Miss S----- , who “had been in the
habit of seeing apparitions from early childhood,” and when, upon their
return, they drove up to the entrance of the manor-house, Miss S----perceived on the threshold the appearance of two figures, apparently an
elderly couple, habited to the costume of the time of Queen Anne. They appeared
as if standing on the ground. Miss S----- saw the same apparition several
times after this, and held conversations with them, and they told her that
they were husband and wife, and that them name was “ Children
and she
informed the lady of the house, Mrs. R----- , of what she had seen and heard;
and as Mbs. R----- was dressing hurriedly one day for dinner, “ and not dream
ing of anything spiritual, as she hastily turned to leave her bed-chamber, there,
in the doorway, stood the same female figure Miss S----- had described!
identiöal in appearance and costume—even to the old ‘ point-lace ’ on her
1 brocaded silk dress ’—while beside her, on the left, but less distinctly
visible, Was the figure of the old squire, her husband; they uttered no sound,
but above the figure of the lady, as if written in phosphoric light in the
dusk atmosphere that surrounded her, were the words, ‘ Dame Children,’
together with some other words intimating that having never aspired beyond
the joys aild sorrows of this world, she had remained ‘ earth bound.’’ These
last, however, Mrs. R----- scarcely paused to decipher, as her brother (who
was vöry hungry) called out to know if they were ‘going to have any
dinner fnht day F ’ ” There was no time for hesitation; “ she closed her eyes,
rushed through the apparition and into the dining-room, throwing up her
hands, fifid öxclaiming to Miss S----- , ‘ Oh, my dear, I’ve walked through
Mrs. Children!’” Only think of that, “gentle reader!” Only think of
Mrs. R----- walking right through 11 Dame Children ”—“ old point-lace,
brocaded silk dress,” and all—and as old “Squire Children” was standing
by the side of his “ dame,” Mrs. R----- must either have upset the old
ghost or have walked through him also.
Although this story looks very much like as if it were intended as an
additional chapter to “ Joe Miller’s Jest-book,” the reader will please to
observe that Mr. Owen does not relate this as a joke, but, on the contrary,
expects that it will be received as a solemn serious fact; there was a cause for
the haunting of this old manor-house, with the talking, screaming, and rustling
of silk, and the appearance of the old-fashioned ghosts; there was a secret
which these ghosts wished to impart to the persons in the house at that
�A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
15
time, and if the gentleman reader will brace up his nerves, and the lady
reader will get her “ smelling-bottle ” ready, I’ll let them into the secret.
Now, pray, dear madam, don’t be terrified! Squire Children had formerly
been proprietor of the mansion, and he and his “ dame ” had taken great
delight and interest in the house—when alive—and they were very sorry to
find that the property had gone out of the family, and he and his dame had
come on purpose to let Mrs. R----- and her friend know all this ! There
now, there’s a secret for you—what do you think of that ?
In the year 1854, a baron (of the rather funny name of Mdenstubbe)
was residing alone in apartments in the Rue St. Lazare, Paris, and one night
there appeared to him in his bed-room the ghost of a stout old gentleman.
It seems that he saw a column of “light grayish vapour,” or sort of “bluish
light,” out of which there gradually grew into sight, within it, the figure of
a “tall, portly old man, with a fresh colour, blue eyes,* snow white hair,
thin white whiskers, but without beard or moustache, and dressed with care.
He seemed to wear a white cravat and long white waistcoat, high stiff shirt
collar, and long black frock coat thrown back from his chest as is wont of
corpulent people like him in hot weather. He appeared to lean on a heavy
white 'cane.” After the baron had seen this portly ghost, he went to bed
and to sleep, and in a dream the same figure appeared to him again, and he
thought he heard it say, “ Hitherto you have not believed in the reality of
apparitions, considering them only as the recallings of memory ; now, since
you have seen a stranger, you cannot consider it the reproduction of former
ideas.”
Every one will acknowledge that this was exceedingly kind on the part
of the ghost, as he had no doubt to come a long way for the express purpose
of setting the baron’s mind right upon this point; and had also come from
a very warm place, as his frock coat “ was thrown from his chest, as is wont
with corpulent people in hot weather.”
This polite, good-natured, “blue’’-eyed apparition, who was “dressed
with care,” had been the proprietor of the maison—a Monsieur Caron—
who had dropped down in an apoplectic fit; and, oh, horror of horrors, had
actually “ died in the very bed now occupied by the baron !’.....
When the daughter heard of the ghost of her papa, appearing thus upon
one or two occasions, “ she caused masses to be said for the soul of her father,
and it is “ alleged that the apparition has not been seen in any of the apart
ments since or, to use a vulgarism, we might say here, that this ghost had
“ cut his stick.”
Mr. Robert Dale Owen had this narrative from the baron himself in.
Paris, on the 11th of May, 1859, and he is of opinion that this ‘ story
derives much of its value from the calm and dispassionate manner in which
the witness appears to have observed the succession of phenomena, and the
exact details which, in consequence, he has been enabled to furnish. It is
remarkable also, as well for the electrical influences which preceded the
appearance, as on account of the correspondence between the apparition to
the baron in his waking state, and that subsequently seen in his dream ; the
first cognizable by one sense only—that of sight—the second appealing
* The baron must have had good eyes to have seen the precise colour’ of the ghost’s eyes
under such circumstances.
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A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
(though in vision of the sight only) to the hearing also. The coincidences
as to personal peculiarities and details of dress are too numerous and minutely
exact to be fortuitous, let us adopt what theory we may.”
As this baron is no doubt a most respectable and well-conducted gentle
man, in every respect, I will not say—
That Monsieur the Baron de Guldenstubbc
Had taken too much out of a bottle or tub,
but this I will say, that his account seems to be nothing more or less than a
very exact description of some “ dissolving view ” trick played off upon the
baron and others by some clever French neighbour; and as to his dream, it
is surely hardly worth while to notice such nonsense, as dreams are now well
understood to be only the imperfect operations of the organs of thought, in a
semi-dormant state, “half asleep and half awake,” and are the effect some
times of agreeable sensations or painful emotions, during the waking hours,
and may be produced to any disagreeable amount by eating a very hearty
supper of underdone “ pork pies,” and going to sleep on the back instead of
reclining on the side. We cannot dream of anything of which we have not
seen or had something of a similar kind before, nor can we form either
awake or in a dream any form whatever—animate or inanimate, which does
not partake or form some part of nature’s general objects; and in fact we
cannot invent an animal form without combining the parts of existing animals
either of man or beast. I trust that this fact will be a sufficient answer
for Monsieur Caron. And then, as to the “laying” of this ghost, it does
seem to me to be extraordinary, that any person possessed of common under
standing in these days, let their religion be what it may, should believe that
the Almighty GtOd would not let a departed spirit rest, until “ masses” had
been said for the soul of such person ; until some money had been paid to a
priest to mumble over a few set forms of prayer. Paid for prayers—prayers
at a certain market price! Then, as to the “white cravat,” “white
waistcoat,” “high stiff shirt collar,” and “ black frock coat,” and more par
ticularly the “heavy white cane,” is it to be understood that these said
“masses ” put all these materials to rest, as well as the soul or spirit of the
body ? If not, where did they go to ? Had they to return to purgatory by
themselves—had the heavy white walking-stick to walk off without its
owner ?
In the frame of mind in which this story is written, it is not at all sur
prising that the author should have taken so much trouble to put these facts
together, and that he should evidently be altogether so satisfied with the
couclusion which he arrives at. But ghost stories, like many other matters, •
where a foundation is once laid and established in falsehood or nonsense,
such builders may go on, adding any amount of the same materials, upon this
false basis. They may go on, working in the dark—piling up one story upon
another, until the structure assumes the appearance in the dusk of a wellestablished and substantial edifice, and looking as if it would stand firm for
ever ; but undermine this apparently stronghold, with that which is always
considered as a great bore, when used in working under the foundations of
long-established error or prejudice, namely, Truth, guided by true Religion,
and when thus armed and prepared, “ spring the mine ” with a good “ blow
�A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
17
up ” of common sense, to lei in the light of Heaven and Christian civilized
intelligence, and the whole mass of ignorance and superstition is blown and
scattered to the winds, “like the baseless fabric of a vision.”
It may be said that the truth of this ghost story rests mainly on a stick—
leans upon a “ heavy white cane.” Take away the cane and down comes
the ghost! “white waistcoat,” “ high stiff shirt collar,” “ black coat,” “ blue
eyes,” and all!
The author of “ Footfalls on the Boundary of another World ” is evidently
a religious man, and had he but thought as deeply upon these matters as I
have done, I am sure he would never have been guilty of the impiety of
bringing forward such questions as to the spirituality of walking-sticks.
But I am well pleased that this “ heavy white cane ” has been introduced
here, because it affords me a handle to cane or to knock down and drive
away entirely these hideous and unnatural myths; and also because it enables
me to stick to the text, and to introduce here to the public an old friend, as
another illustration bearing upon the stick question. This is the apparition
of one Tom Straitshank, drawn, as you will see, by your humble servant.
This was a jolly bold daring spirit, and was seen when on board the
Victory at the battle of Trafalgar to emerge, like Monsieur Caron, out of some
light bluish vapour, very much like the smoke of gunpowder; and in that
battle it appears, like one of the heroes in “ Chevy Chase,” his “ legs were
smitten off!” but, unlike that warrior, he found that Tie could not fight
“upon his stumps,” so he had a pair of wooden legs made, and having
bought two stout walking-sticks, was thus enabled to hobble about on his
“timber toes.” He almost always appeared in various different parts of
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A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
“ Greenwich. Hospital,” and very often surrounded by, and sometimes
emerging from, a vapour very like the smoke of tobacco. I feel here that I
ought to have given Tom his pipe, but the drawing of this tar was done
many years since, and until I read Mrs. Crowe’s book lately, I was not
aware that ghosts smoked their pipes, but it actually appears that they do
smoke, for at page 210 of “ The Hight-side of Mature,” a ghost is introduced
with a “short pipe,” and it was found out that the reason of his “walking
by night ” was, that he owed “ a small debt for tobacco !”
And when this little bacca-bill was paid,
This ghost, with his little bacca-pipe, was “laid;”
and we may suppose the spirit laid down his pipe. This ghost of a tobaccopipe raises the question of what these spiritual pipes are made—of what clay,
or if the Meer Schum are only mere shams; what sort of tobacco-leaves
their cigars are made of, and if there are any spiritual “cabbage-leaves”
mixed up with them.
Yes, we’d just like to know, what weed ’tis they burns,
Whether “ Shortcut,” “ Shag,” “Bird’s eye,” or “Returns.”
As the gents here, light their pipes &nd cigars with a kind of Lucifer
match, we may be pretty sure that they will continue to do so elsewhere;
but one would like to know also if ghosts chaw tobacco, if they take a quid
of “pig-tail,” and if the smokers ilSe spittoons—faugh !—and further, as
ghosts do smoke, if they take a pikch bf snuff, if there is such a thing as
spiritual snuff, if there be such things OS th© spirit of “Irish blaguard ”
and “ Scotch rappee ?”
Some of these “ sensationb wlodrama'S, or rather farces, might vie in
the number of nights in which tile performances took place, with some of
the “ sensation ” or popular thbUtrical piece© Of the present day. Here is
one entitled, “ The Drummed bf Te ¿Worth” (What a capital heading for a
“ play bill!”), in which the ghb&t or evil spirit of a drummer, or the ghost
of a drum (for it does not appear clearly which of the two it was), performed
the principal part in thi§ drama, with slight intervals, for “ two entire
years.”
Oh I this drutiimer, oh! this drummer,
I’ll tbll you what he used to do,
He used to heat upon his drum,
The “ Old Gentleman’s tattoo.”
The “ plot ” runs thus:—In March, 1661, Mr. Mompesson, a magistrate,
caused a vagrant drummer to be arrested, who had been annoying the
country by noisy demands for charity, and had ordered his drum, “ oh that
drum!” to be taken from him, and left in the bailiff’s hands. About the
middle of April following (that is in 1661), when Mr. Mompesson was pre
paring for a journey to London, the bailiff sent the drum to his house.
Upon his return home he was informed that noises had been heard, and then
he heard the noises himself, which were a “ thumping and drumming,” accom
panied by “ a strange noise and hollow sound.” The sign of it when it
came, was like a hurling in the air, over the house, and at its going off, the
beating of a drum, like that at the “ breaking up of a guard.”
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19
“ After a month’s disturbance outside the house (‘ which was most of it
of board’) it came into the room where the drum lay.” “ For an hour together
it would beat ‘Roundheads and cockolds,’ the ‘tattoo,’ and several other
points of war, as well as any drummer.” Upon one occasion, “ when many
were present, a gentleman said, ‘ Satan, if the drummer set thee to work, give
three knocks, ’ which it did very distinctly and no more. ” And for further trial,
he bid it for confirmation, if it were the drummer, to give five knocks and no
more that night, which it did, and left the house quiet all the night after.”
All this seems very strange, about this drummer and his drum,
But for myself, I really think this drumming ghost was “ all a hum.”
But strange as it certainly was, is it not still more strange, that educated
gentlemen, and even clergymen, as in this case also, should believe that the
Almighty would suffer an evil spirit to disturb and affright a whole innocent
family, because the head of that family had, in his capacity as magistrate,
thought it his duty to take away a drum, from no doubt a drunken drummer,
who by his noisy conduct had become a nuisance and an annoyance to the
neighbourhood ?
The next case of supposed spiritual antics was not the drumming of a
drum, but a tune upon a warming-pan, the “ clatter ” of “ a warming-pan,”
and a vast variety of other earthly sounds, which it was proved to have been
heard at the Rev. Samuel Wesley’s, who was the father of the celebrated
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, at a place called Epworth, in
Lincolnshire. These sounds consisted of “ knockings,” and “ groanings,” of
“footsteps,” and “rustling of silk trailing along” (the “rustling of silk”
seems to be a favourite air with the ghosts), “ clattering ” of the “ iron case
ment,” and “clattering” of the “warming-pan,” and then as if a “vessel full
of silver was poured upon Mrs. Wesley’s breast and ran jingling down to
her feetand all sorts of frightful noises, not only enough to “ frighten
anybody,” but which frightened even a big dog !—a large mastiff, who used
at first, when he heard the noises, “ to bark and leap and snap on one side
and the other, and that frequently before any person in the room heard the
noises at all; but after two or three days, he used to tremble and creep
away before the noise began. And by this, the family knew it was at hand ■
nor did the observation ever fail.” Poor bow woo ! what cruel ghosts to be
sure, to go and frighten a poor dog in this way.
Mrs. Wesley at one time thought it was “rats, and sent for a horn to
blow them away;” but blowing the horn did not blow the ghosts away.
No ; for at first it only came at night, but after the horn was blown it came
in the daytime as well.
There were many opinions offered as to the cause of these disturbances,
by different persons at different times. Dr. Coleridge “ considered it to be a
contagious nervous disease, the acme or intensest form of which is cata
lepsy.” Mr. Owen here asks if the mastiff was cataleptic also ? It is rather
curious that a cat is mentioned in this narrative. Now supposing the dog
could not have been cataleptic, the cat might perhaps have been so.
Some of the Wesley family believed it to be supernatural hauntings, and
give the following reason for it:—It appears that at morning and evening
family prayers, “ when the Rev. Samuel "Wesley, the father, commenced the
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A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
prayer for the king, a knocking began all round the room, and a thundering
knock attended the Amen.” Mr. Wesley observed that his wife did not say
amen to the prayer for the king. She said she could not, for she did not
believe that the Prince of Orange was king. Mr. Wesley vowed he could
not live with her until she did. He took his horse and rode away, and she
heard nothing of him for a twelvemonth. He then came back and lived
with her, as before, and although he did so, they add, that they fear this
vow was not forgotten before God.
If any religious persons were asked whether they thought that any law,
natural or divine, could be suspended or set aside without the permission or
sanction of the Creator, their answer would be, nay, must be, certainly not.
Yes, this would be their answer. Then is it not extraordinary that the
members of this pious clergyman’s family, and from whence sprang the
founder of such a large and respectable religious sect, should have such a
mean idea of the Supreme Being, as to suppose that He would allow the
regular laws of the universe to be suspended or set aside, and whole families
(including unoffending innocent children) to be disturbed, terrified, and some
times seriously injured, for such contemptible, ridiculous, and senseless reasons,
or purposes, such as those assigned in the various cases already alluded to.
It is indeed to me surprising that any one possessing an atom of sound Chris
tian religion, can suppose and maintain for one moment that these silly, sup
posed supernatural sounds and appearances can be, as they say, “ of God.”
We may defy the supporters of this apparition doctrine to bring forward
one circumstance in connection with these ghosts, which corresponds in any
way with the real character of the Creator, where any real benefit has been
known to result from such sounds and such appearances—none, none, none;
whereas we know that there has been a large amount of human suffering,
illness, folly, and mischief, and in former times, we know, to a large and
serious extent, but even now, in this “ age of intellect,” when we come
to investigate the causes of some of the most painful diseases amongst
children and young persons, particularly young females, we find, on the
authority of the first medical men, that they are occasioned by being
frightened by mischievous, thoughtless, or cruel persons, mainly in conse
quence of being taught in their childhood to loelieve in ghosts. I know a young
lady who, when a child, was placed in a dark closet by her nurse, and so
terrified in this way that the poor little girl lost her speech, and has been
dumb ever since. Dr. Elliotson, in one of his reports of the Mesmeric
Hospital, cites several most distressing and painful cases of “ chorea,” or
St. Vitus’s dance, and dreadful fits, brought on through fright; and
Dr. Wood, physician to St. Luke’s Hospital (for lunatics), assures me that
many cases of insanity are produced by terror from these causes ; but even
supposing that there are not very many cases of positive insanity brought
on in this way, still the unnatural excitement thus acting on the brain, or
the mind dwelling upon such matters, must have an unhealthy tendency.
If all rational and religious persons will give this subject the attention
which it demands, they will, I feel confident, see, that this belief in ghosts
should not only be discountenanced, but put an end to altogether, if
possible, as such notions not only have an injurious effect upon the health
and comfort of many persons, particularly those of tender age, but it
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21
also debases the proper ideas which man ought to have of the Creator ;
and not only so, but it also interferes with and trenches upon that mys
terious and sacred question, the immortality of the soul; that it disturbs
that belief wliich, with a firm trust and reliance upon the goodness and
mercy of God, is the only consolation the afflicted mind can have, when
mourning for the loss of those they have loved dearer than themselves.
These hauntings of drumming and knocking, and thumping and bumping,
with thundering noises, almost shaking the houses down, accompanied
by the delicate rustlings of silk and trailing of gowns, etc., were at the time
suspected of being tricks; and by the perusal of the following cases the
reader will see that such tricks can and have been played, and such im
posture carried on so successfully as to deceive clergymen and others; and
but for the severe natural tests brought to bear upon the supposed super
natural actors, would no doubt have been quoted by Mr. Owen and others
as well-attested, well-established, veritable spiritual performances.
At the corner of a street which runs from Snow Hill into Smithfield,
stands whatZ consider a public nuisance, commonly called a “ public-house,”
the sign of “ The Cock,” and that which is now a street was formerly a
rustic lane, and took its name from the sign of that house, and therefore
called to this day “ Cock Lane,” which locality, in about the years 1754 to
1756, became one of the most celebrated places in London, in consequence,
as it was believed, of one of the houses therein being taken possession of by
a female ghost, who was designated “the Cock Lane ghost.”
A man of the name of Parsons kept the house, and in which lodged a
gentleman and his wife of the name of Kempe. This lady died at this
house, and after her death it was given out by Parsons that his daughter,
then eleven years of age (who used to sleep with Mrs. Kempe when her
husband was out of town), was “ possessed” with the spirit of the deceased
lady, and that the spirit had informed the little girl that she had been
murdered by her husband—that she had been “poisoned !” A vast number
of respectable ladies and gentlemen, including clergymen, were “ taken in”—•
but happily for themselves not “ done for”—by this ghost; audit is said that
even the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson was cowmced of the spirituality of
the “ knocks” which the ghost gave in answer to questions, for it kept up
conversations in precisely the same manner—that is, by “ knocks” or “ raps”
—as the “ spirit-rappers” do at the present day. The “ scratchings” and
“knocks” were only heard when Parson’s little daughter was in bed.
After this sort of thing had gone on for a considerable time, and a post
mortem examination of the body of the supposed murdered lady, which had
been deposited in the vaults of St. John’s, Clerkenwell Close, Mr. Kempe
found it necessary to take steps to defend his character. The child was
removed to the house of a highly-respectable lady, where “ not a sound was
heard,” no “scratchings” or “knocks,” for several nights; but the girl
Parsons, who was now a year or two older, upon going to bed one night
informed the watchers that the ghost would pay a visit the following
morning; but the servants of the house informed the watchers that the
young lady had taken a bit of wood, six inches long by four inches broad,
into bed with her, which she had concealed in her stays. This bit of
wood was used to “ stand the kettle on.” The imposture was discovered,
�22
A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
and the poor girl confessed to the wicked trickery which her parents had
tanght her to practise !
Mr. Kempe indicted Parsons and others for conspiracy against his life
and character, the case was tried before Lord Mansfield at Guildhall, July
10th, 1756, and all the parties convicted. The Rev. Mr. More and a printer,
with others, were heavily fined. Parsons was set in the pillory three times
in one month and imprisoned for two years, his wife for one year, and Mary
Eraser, the “Medium,” for six months in Bridewell, and kept to hard
labour. It came out in the course of investigation that Master Parsons had
borrowed some money of Mr. Kempe, and it was rather suspected that he
did not want to pay it back again.
Another celebrated spiritual farce was enacted in 1810, entitled “ The Sampford Ghost.” This is a village near Tiverton, in Devonshire, and the following
striking performances were “ attested by affidavit of the Rev. C. Cotton,” who,
by the by, was of opinion that “ a belief in ghosts is favourable to virtue.”
Imprimis, “ stamping on the boards answered by similar sounds under
neath the flooring, and these sounds followed the persons through the upper
apartments and answered the stamping of the feet. The servant women
were beaten in bed ‘ with a fist,’ a candlestick thrown at the master’s head but
did not hit him, heard footsteps, no one could be seen walking round, candles
were alight but could see no one, but steps were heard ‘ like a man’s foot in
a slipper,’ with rapping at the doors, etc. etc. After this the servants were
slapped, pushed, and buffeted. The bed was more than once stuck full of pins,
loud repeated knockings were heard in all the upper rooms, the house shook,
the windows rattled in their casements, and all the horrors of the most horrible
of romances were accumulated in this devoted habitation.” Amongst other
things it was declared by a man, of the rather suspicious name of “ Dodge,”
that the prentice boy had seen “ an old woman descend through the coiling.”
The house was tenanted by a man of the name of Chave, a huckster.
The landlord was a Mr. Tully, who determined to investigate this matter
himself, and went to sleep, or rather to pass the night, at the house for this
purpose. The account says that “ he took with him a reasonable degree
of scepticism, a considerable share of common senseand I believe a
good thick stick, which is, in my opinion, a much more powerful instru
ment in laying these kinds of ghosts than the old-fashioned remedy of
“ bell, book, and candle.”
When Mr. Tully went to the house he saw “ Dodge” speaking to Mrs,
Chave in the shop, and also saw him leave the house; but when he went up
stairs by himself who should he see but this same “ Dodge,” who had got up
stairs by a private entrance, but who could not dodge out of Mr. Tully’s
way. So Mr. Tully pounced upon him and locked him in the room, where
he also found a mopstick “ battered at the end into splinters and covered
with whitewash,” and this was the ghost that answered the stamping on the
floors. Mr. Tully went to bed, and as no ghosts thumped he went to sleep
and had a good night’s rest; and upon examining the house the next day,
found the ceilings below in “ a state of mutilation,” from the ghostly thumps
it had received.
The cause of the house being haunted was a conspiracy on the part of
Chave and his friends to get the house at a very low rent, as he would
�A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
23
not mind living on the premises, but other persons would not, of course, be
likely to take a “ haunted house.”
A drunken mob one day met and assaulted Chave after this trick was
exposed, and he took refuge in his “ haunted house,” from whence he fired a
pistol and shot one man dead. Another man was also killed at the same
time, thus two lives were sacrificed to this “ Sampford ghost.
The Rev.
C. Cotton died shortly after this ghost was discovered to be a flam, or sham
ghost; it was supposed of chagrin and vexation at being made a butt of by
the vulgar for his simplicity and credulity.
Another sensation farce was “ The Stockwell Grhost, which performed
its tricks very cleverly and successfully at a farm-house in that place in the
year 1772. It broke nearly every bit of glass, china, and crockery in the
house, and no discovery was made at the time of the how, the why, or the
wherefore. But in “ The Every Day Book,” edited and published by W.
Hone, the whole matter is explained in the confession of a woman who lived
at the house as servant girl at the time, and who played the part of the ghost
so well, that she escaped detection, and came off, only suspected by a few.
The inutility of attempting to do away entirely with this popular belief
in ghosts by arguments, however well founded on reason and science, has
already been hinted at; but it will be only fair that scn&fioo should just put a
word in, as it can do no harm and may do good.
Tn “ Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparition, or an Attempt to Trace
such Illusions to their Physical Causes, by Samuel Hibbert, M.D., E.R.S.E.,”
the author states his opinion to be that “ Apparitions are nothing more than
ideas or recollected images of the mind, which have been rendered more vivid
than actual impressions,” perhaps by morbid affections. It is also pointed out
that “ in ghost stories of a supposed supernatural character which by disease
are rendered so unduly intense as to induce spectral illusions, may be traced
to such fantastical objects of prior belief as are incorporated in the various
systems of superstition which for ages have possessed the minds of the vulgar. ’
“ Spectral illusions arise from a highly excited state of the nervous irrita
bility acting generally upon the system, or from inflammation of the brain.
“ The effect induced on the brain by intoxication from ardent spirits,
which have a strong tendency to inflame this organ, is attended with very
remarkable effects. These have lately been described as symptoms of
1 delirium tremens.’ Many cases are recorded which show the liability of the
patient to long-continued spectral impressions.”
Sir David Brewster represents these phenomena as images projected on
the retina—from the brain, and seen with the eyes open or shut.
Of the many causes assigned for spectral illusions the following may be
enumerated:—Holy ecstasies, various diseases of the brain, diseases of the
eye, extreme sensibility or nervous excitement from fright, various degrees
of fever, effects of opium, delirium tremens, ignorance and superstition, cata
lepsy, and confused, indistinct, or uncomprehended natural causes. Row all
persons who suppose they see ghosts are at liberty to select any of the fore
going causes for their being so deluded, for delusion it is, as I hope presently
to prove; but they may rest assured that these supposed spectres are always
produced either by disease or by over-excited imagination, which in some
cases it may be said amounts to disease.
�24
A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
However, to return to the ghosts. A vei’y common, or rather the common,
idea of a ghost is generally a very thin and scraggy figure; but if there are
such things there must be fat ghosts as well as thin ghosts; fat or thin
people are equally eligible “ to put in an appearance ” of this sort if they.
can; and to carry out this idea and make it quite clear, I here introduce an
old acquaintance of the public, Mr. Daniel ^Lambert, as he appeared to my
WTO-excited imagination whilst engaged on this work. How if Daniel came
as an apparition, he must, according to the authorities in these matters, not
only “ come in his habits as he lived,” that is, in the clothes he wore, but
must also come in his/«^ or he would not be recognized as the fattest man
“ and the heaviest man that ever lived,” and although he weighed “ 52 stone
11 pounds” (141b. to the stone) in the flesh, in the spirit, he would, of
course, be “ as light as a feather,” or rather an “ air bubbleand as he
could not dance and jump about when alive, I thought if I brought him in as
a ghost, I’d give him a bit of a treat, and let him dance upon the “ tight rope.”
�A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
25
Most persons will remember a story tolcl by “Pliny the younger ” of the
apparition of “ an old ” man appearing to Athenadorous, a Greek scholar.
This ghost was “lean, haggard, and dirty,” with “dishevelled hair and a
long beard.” He had “ chains on,” and came “shaking his'chains” at the
Greek scholar, who heeded him not, bnt went on with his studies. The old
o-host. however, “ came close to him and shook his chains over his head as
O''
he sat at the table,” whereupon Athenadorous arose and followed the dirty
old man in his chains, who went into the courtyard and “ stamped his foot
upon a stone about the centre of it, and—disappeared.” The Greek scholar
marked the spot, and next day had the place dug up, when, lo and behold,
they found there the skeleton of a human being.”
Going back to the days of “ Pliny the younger” is going back far enough
into early history for my purpose, which is to show that the notions about
apparitions which prevailed at that period are the same as those of the
present day, that is, of their appearing in the dresses they icore in their life
time, in every mi/nute particular, as to form, colour, and condition, new or old,
as the case might be ; but to prevent any mistake upon this head, I will just
add some few words from that reliable authority, Defoe, who, you will have
already remarked, is exceedingly particular as to the exactness of every article
of dress ; but in what follows he goes far beyond any other writer on this sub
ject, for instance he says, “We see them dressed in the very clothes which
we have cut to pieces, and given away, some to one body, some to another,
or applied to this or that use, so that we can give an account of every rag of them.
We can hear them speaking with the same voice and sound, though the organ
which formed their former speech we are sure is perished and gone.”
From the various instances of the appearance of apparitions which have
been brought before the reader, it will, I presume, be admitted that abundant
and sufficient proof has been given that the writers about ghosts, and all
those who have professed to have seen ghosts, declare that they appear in the
dresses ivhich they wore in their lifetime ; but from all I have been able to
learn, it does not appear that from the days'of Pliny the younger down to the
days of Shakespeare, and from thence down to the present time, THAT ANY
ONE HAS EVER THOUGHT OF THE GROSS ABSURDITY, AND
IMPOSSIBILITY, OF THERE BEING SUCH THINGS AS GHOSTS
OP WEARING APPAREL, IRON ARMOUR, WALKING STICKS, AND
SHOVELS! NO, NOT ONE, except myself, and this I claim as my
DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS, and that therefore it follows, as a
matter of course, that as ghosts cannot, must not, dare not, for decency’s sake,
appear WITHOUT CLOTHES; and as there can be no such things AS
GHOSTS OR SPIRITS OF CLOTHES, why, then, it appears that GHOSTS
NEVER DID APPEAR, AND NEVER CAN APPEAR, at any rate not in
the way in which they have been hitherto supposed to appear.
And now let us glance at the material question, or question of materialism.
In the year 1828, a work was published, entitled “ Past Feelings Reno
vated ; or, Ideas occasioned by the perusal of Dr. Hibbert’s Philosophy of
Apparitions,” which the author says were “ written with the view of coun
teracting any sentiments approaching materialism, which that work, however
unintentional on the part of the author, may have a tendency to produce.”
The author of “ Past Feelings Renovated ” is a firm believer in apparitions,
who generally “ come in their habits as they lived; ” and in his preface he says,
�26
A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
“The general tendency of Dr. Hibbert’s work, and evident fallacy of many of the
arguments in support of opinions too nearly approaching4materialism,’ induced
me togive the subject that serious consideration which it imperatively demands.”
This author, it will be perceived, is very much opposed to anything like
materialism in relation to this question, and is strongly in favour of
spiritualism,” but will he be so good as to tell us what “ a pair of Buckskins”
are made of? and what A pair of Top-boots are made of? and whether these
materials are spmfiiafecZ by any process, or whether THE CLOTHES WE
WEAR OX OUR BODIES BECOME A PART AND PARCEL
OF OUR SOULS ? And as it is clearly impossible for spirits to wear
dresses made of the materials of the earth, we should like to know if
there are spiritual-outfitting shops for the clothing of ghosts who pay
visits on earth, and if empty, haunted houses are used for this purpose,
in the same way as the establishments, and after the manner of 44 Moses
and Son,” or 44 Hyam Brothers,” or such like houses of business, or if so,
then there must be also the spirit of woollen cloth, the spirit of leather, the
spirit of a coat, the spirit of boots and shoes. There must also be the spirit
of trousers, spirits of gaiters, waistcoats, neckties, spirits of buckles, for
shoes and knees; spirit of buttons, 44 bright gilt buttonsspirits of hats,
caps, bonnets, gowns, and petticoats; spirits of hoops and crinoline, and
ghost’s stockings. Yes ; only think of the ghosts of stockings, but if the
ghost of a lady had to make her appearance here, she could not present her
self before company without her shoes and stockings, so there must be
GHOSTS OF STOCKINGS.
in
�A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
27
Most persons will surely feel some hesitation in accepting the assertions
made by Defoe, that ghosts appear in clothes that have been cut up, or
distributed in different places, or destroyed, or that they come in the same
garments that are being worn at the same moment by living persons, or
which are at the time of appearing, in wardrobes or old clothes shops ; or,
perhaps, thousands of miles away from the spot where the ghost pays his
unwelcome visit, or worn or torn into rags, and stuck upon a broomstick
“to frighten away the crows.” No, no, I think we may rest assured that
ghosts could not appear in these dresses, or shreds and patches; in fact,
that they could not show themselves in any dress made of the materials of
the earth as already suggested; and, therefore, if they did wear any dresses
they must have been composed of a spiritual material, if it be possible to
unite, in any way, two such opposites. Then comes the question, from
whence is this spiritual material obtained, and also if there are spirit manu
factories, spirit weavers and spinners, and spirit tanners and “tan pits ?”
If this be so, then there must, of course, be ghost tailors, working with
ghosts of needles (how sharp they must be !), and ghosts of threads (and how
fine they must be !), and the ghost of a “ sleeve board,” and the ghost of the
iron, which the tailors use to flatten the seams, called a “ goose ” (only think
of the ghost of a tailor’s “goose!”) Then there must be the ghost of a
“bootmaker,” with the ghost of a “lapstone,” and a “last,” and the spirit
of “ cobbler’s wax!” Ghost of “ button makers,” “ wig makers,” and
“hatters;” and, indeed, of every trade necessary to fit out a ghost, either
lady or gentleman, in order to make it appear that they really did appear
“ in their habits as they lived.”
There are, I know, many respectable worthy persons even at the present
day who believe they sometimes see apparitions, and I would here take the
liberty to advise such persons to ponder a little upon the above remarks
relative to the clothing of spirits, and, when again they think they see a
GHOST, recollect that with the exception of the face and a little bit of the
neck perhaps, and also the hands, if without gloves, that all the other parts are
CLOTHES. And I would also take the liberty to suggest that he should ask
the ghost these questions:—“ Who’s your tailor ?” and “ Who’s your hatter ?”
Whatever the belief of the “Bard of Avon” might have been with
respect to ghosts, it is quite clear that [in these cases he was merely exer
cising his great poetical talent to work out the several points of popular belief
in apparitions, for the purpose of producing a striking “ stage effectbut
all that he brings forward, goes to prove the long-established faith in these
aerial beings, and the general and almost universal requisites of character
and costume. But it probably never entered the great mind of this great
poet that there could be no such thing as a ghost of iron, for if it had, he
would, no doubt, have dressed up the ghost of Hamlet’s father in some sort
of suit rather more aerial than a suit of steel armour. There may be
“ more things ’twixt heaven and earth” than were dreamt of in Horatio’s
philosophy; but the ghost of Iron armour could not be one of these
things, be included in the list, and on reverting to this ghost, the reader
will observe that I have given no figure in that suit of armour, and no head
to the figure of Napoleon the Eirst, and for this reason, the art of drawing,
you will please to observe, is a severe critical test in matters of this sort.
For suppose an artist is employed to make a drawing of this ghost of
�28
A DISCOVERY CONCERNING GHOSTS.
Hamlet’s father, he will begin, or ought to begin, first to sketch out, very
lightly, the size and attitude of the figure required; then suppose he makes
out the face, and then begins to work on the helmet, but here he stops—■
why ? because if he has any thought, he will say this is not spirit, this is
manufactured iron ! And so with the other parts of the figure, all except
the face is material; and then to my old enemy in one sense, and friend in
another—Napoleon, for I volunteered, and armed myself to assist to keep him
from coming over here before I was twenty years of age; and as a carica
turist, what by turning him, sometimes into ridicule, and sometimes, in fact
very often I may say, killing him with my sharp etching needle, “little
Boney ” used very frequently to give me a good solid bit of meat, and make
my “pot boil.” But with respect to this headless figure, if the artist is
requested to make a drawing of the spirit of this great general, he would,
after making out the face, begin with the collar of the coat, and then stop—
and why ? Because the coat is no part of a spirit, and if the whole of the
figure were finished with the face in, what would that be but the spirit of the
face of Napoleon ; all the rest would consist of a cocked-hat, with tricolored
cockade; a military coat, with buttons; a waistcoat, a sword and sash,
leather gloves, and leather pantaloons, jack-boots, and spurs! Are, or can
these things be spiritual ? If the end of the finger is placed over the space
which is left for the face of Napoleon, the figure will be recognized as his
without the head; and so with Hamlet’s father, place the end of the finger
in front of the helmet, and the armour will pass for the ghost; and do the like
with the figure of Daniel Lambert, put the head out of sight, all the rest is
neck-handkerchief, a bit of shirt, a coat, a waistcoast, a pair of gloves, small
clothes (not very small by the by), an immense pair of stockings, and the points
of a pair of shoes; and as to the headless ghost of the gentleman in the blue
coat and gilt buttons, that is also NOTHING BUT A SUIT OF CLOTHES.
The reader will recollect that Daniel Defoe, Mrs. Crowe, and Mr. Owen,
and other authors have all introduced GHOSTS OF WIGS amongst their
facts, in support of spiritual apparitions, so if there are ghosts of “ wigs,”
there must also be GHOSTS OF “ PIGTAILS,” because they were some
times a part of a wig; and in taking leave of the reader, I take the liberty
of introducing a ghost of a wig and pigtail, who will make a polite bow
for the humble author and artist of this “DISCOVERY CONCERNING
�ADDENDA.
Just as I depicted the ghost of the wig and pigtail to bow out all the oldfashioned ghosts, methought I heard a voice say, “Well, sir, suppose it
granted that you have shown the utter impossibility of there being such
things as GHOSTS of hats, coats, sticks, and umbrellas ; admitting that yon
really have “laid” all these ghosts of the old style, what say you to the
“ spirit manifestations” of the present day ?
Well, this does certainly seem to be putting rather a “ Home question
a “ Home thrust,” if you please ; but sharp as the question may be, and
difficult as it may seem to answer, I am not going to shirk the question.
In the first place, this inquiring spirit must please to recollect that these
“spirit-rappers” of the present day are almost an entirely new-fashioned
spirit, a different sort of ghost altogether, or ghosts in “piecemeal;” only
bits of spirits, who never come of their own accord, and have to be squeezed
out of a table bit by bit, when they do hold up a hand, or tap or touch
people’s legs under the table with their hand, or a bit of one. But never
having attended a “séance,” I cannot give the
spirit any information
about these spirits from my own personal knowledge. If the inquirer wishes
to know “ all about” these spirits, he had better apply to Mr. D. D. Home,
who is quite “ at home” with these spirits, upon the most “ familiar” terms !
in fact, “hand and glove” with them ; and they feel so much at home with
Mr. Home, that they are constantly putting their hands and arms, if not
their legs, “ under his mahogany.” I therefore take the liberty of referring
“ Inquirer” to this Home medium, or any other medium, Home or foreign,
for a “full, true, and particular account” of the character and conduct of
these new-fashioned, New-found-ZancZ ghosts or spiritual gentlefolk, for it does
not appear that there are any of the “ working-class” amongst them.
It has been asserted by Mr. Home, that he has seen “ full length”
ghosts. These I shall put to the test a little further on.
As I intend putting a few gwsi/ows myself to these “ mediums,” or
through this medium, to the spirits, I have to hope that these questions of
mine will be taken by the inquiring spirits who question me as an answer to
their question upon what may be at present considered upon the whole as
almost, if not entirely, wzunsweraSZe, at least with the ordinary natural
organs of thought and judgment, and therefore it must be left to these
tabular spirits or their mediums to explain (that is, if they can) that which,
to the “ outsiders,” as the affair stands at this moment, is an inexplicable
puzzle.
In bringing forward my questions, I will take the liberty of making an
extract from the “ Times,” of the 9th of April last, where Mr. D. D. Home’s
book of “ Incidents in my Life,” is reviewed with considerable acumen and
�30
ADDENDA.
ability; and wherein the writer states that a Dr. Wilkinson was desirous of
obtaining some information and explanations respecting the “ways and
means” of these spirits. The Doctor asked Mr. Home why the effects
(that is, the manifestations) “ took place under the table and not upon it.”
Mr. Home said, that “ in habituated circles the results were easily obtained
above board, visibly to all, but that at the first sitting it was not so ; that
scepticism was almost universal in men’s intellects, and marred the forces
at work ; that the spirits accomplish what they do through our life sphere,
or atmosphere, which was permeated at our wills, and if the will was contrary,
the sphere was unfit for being operated upon.” Moreover, allowance must
be made for a certain indisposition on the part of the spirits (as we infer a
sort of spiritual bashfulness), “which deters them from exhibiting their
members m a state of imperfect formation.” When some had merely a single
finger put upon their knees, “ Mr. Home said that the presenting spirits
could often make one finger where they could not make two, and two where
they could not form an entire hand, just as they could form a hand where
they could not realize a whole human figure” (for there seems never to
have been life sphere at a séance adequate to the exhibition of an entire
figure, though Mr. Home has frequently seen spirits in their full
PROPORTIONS WHEN ALONE5’).
And now for one of my questions, which question is not only my question
but a public question, and one which Mr. Home is bound to answer, if he
can. I therefore publicly call upon that gentleman to inform the public if
these spirits, which he saw in their “ full proportions,” were in a state of
nudity, or if they had clothes on ? and if clothed, of what those clothes
were made ? If he does not know these particulars of his own knowledge,
as he has the ear of these spirits, their entire confidence, and as they have
his ear, let him call upon them to let him into the secret of the manufacture
of their garments, or how the spirits procure them ; and until Mr. Home
explains this satisfactorily to the public, we have a right to suspect that
either he has been himself deceived, or that he----- Perhaps I 'had better
not finish the sentence.
The “ inquiring spirit” will see that the clothes are the test, and this test
stands good here, as well as with the old fashioned ghosts, and this, I
presume, will be allowed as rather a “ Home question ” to Mr. Home ; a
Home thrust which he can only parry by giving the information asked ;
which, if he does not, I will not say “ Britons, strike Home,” but unless he
or the spirits “ rap” out a satisfactory answer, he may rely upon it that
he will feel the weight of public opinion, which will weigh rather heavily
upon him. But I give him a first-rate chance of becoming exceedingly
popular, for the mass, the millions, are ready to believe anything in the
shape of a fact, and I am confident that the whole world would be delighted
to get hold of such a secret as this. It would be, perhaps, extreme cruelty
to put this gentleman quite “ out of spirits but unless he tells us what
the clothes of spirits are made of, I should say that he will stand in rather
an awkward position before the bar of public opinion.
Another question here I’ll put, about this spirit “ D D outfit,”
Which I fear that the spirits won’t answer, just as yet—
�ADDENDA.
31
It is a question, I grant, that looks rather queer,
Which is—are their 11 togs ” made out of our atmosphere ?”
If the cloth is made out of stuff “permeated by our wills”—
And further, if these ghosts are honest, and pay their tailors’ bills ?
And then, as to the handy craft and crafty hands—
Oh tell us if warm hands, and cold—
So cold ! so cold ! oh dear !-—
Are made in any kind of mould,
Or how they trick ’em out of our “ life sphere ?”
Now supposing, nay even admitting, that the hands of spirits are exhi
bited at these séances, does it not really seem to be impossible to believe
that they are made out of the air that surrounds the persons who surround
the table ! ! !
Making fingers and hands out of our “ life-sphere ” or “ atmosphere !”
“ permeated by our wills !” Well, I was going to say, “ after that comes in
a horse to be shaved,” but really I hardly know what to say ; for whilst
reading the accounts of these spirits, I feel almost bewildered, and as the
mediums say that there is what they call“ spirit-writing,” and that spirits
seize the person’s wrist, and make them write just what they wist, I suspect
that the spirit of botheration has got hold of my hand, and is making me
write what it pleases ; and I therefore hope the “ gentle reader ” will excuse
me if I write down here ‘‘Handy pandy, Jack a dandy,” or any other
childish nonsense ; for as this table lifting and turning seems to alter and
set aside altogether the law of gravitation and all the universal laws of the
universe, that used to be thought by simple people as fixed and unalterable,
so likewise these “ spirit hands ” and “ spirit rapping ” seem to put reason
and rationality entirely out of the field. Therefore, as common sense cannot
be used in any sense on this question, as it is utterly useless in the present
state of affairs to attempt to “ chop logic ” with “ raps,” and their mediums
upon such tables as these, it will be here quite in place to talk a little non
sense. The reader will therefore, I am sure, bear with me if I make two or
three silly suggestions upon this phenomena of moving tables.
Under ordinary circumstances, when persons who are not “ habituated ”
have any natural substance to deal with—say, for instance, a deal table—the
mind naturally endeavours to account in a natural way for such apiece of fur
niture moving or being moved without any assignable natural cause. Common
sense in this case being “ put out of court,” and the scientific world having
seemingly “ given it up,” there is no other source left but to deal with the
spirits or their mediums in this matter ; and I would here ask if these tables,
heavy or light, are moved by this “ life-sphere ” or “ atmosphere ” which is
“permeated by our wills or if the hands made out of this airy n othin g -m ove
and lift the furniture ? As they can give an answer to the query, we shall
all surely be very much obliged to them if they will do so ; and whilst they
are preparing their answer, I will go on with a little more nonsense, and
make a most ridiculous suggestion upon the table lifting, quite as ridiculous
perhaps as anything that has emanated from the spirits òr their mediums.
It may seem absurd to bring “Dame Nature ” into this “ circle,” but never
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theless it does seem true that animals who are associated with man seem to
partake, to a very large extent, of man’s intelligence. Dogs particularly so,
cats pretty well, and even pigs have been known, when domesticated, to be
cleanly and polite, and of course we have all heard of the “learned pig.”
Dear little birds, and even asses and geese, have been known to share in
this “life sphere” or “atmosphere” of man’s brain. I knew a man who
was educating and training a goose, to come out before the public as a per
former as a learned goose, which intention was unfortunately not carried out,
in consequence of an accident which happened to the poor bird about
“ Michaelmas ” time. It appears that he got placed so near a large fire that
he was very soon “ done brown,” and upon a “ post mortem ” examination it
was discovered that he was stuffed full of sage and onion.
We are so accustomed to have intelligent animals about us, that we do
not look upon it as anything very extraordinary. Nevertheless, the pheno
mena is not the less wonderful for all that. Now I lay this question on the
table, for the spirits to rap out an answer—viz., as tables and chairs are
associated with man (and woman, of course), can, or is the vital spark, or
life principle, conveyed from the body into the wood, which is porous, and
can it make these otherwise inanimate objects “ all alive alive 0 ?” The
reader must excuse me for asking such a silly question, and will please to
recollect that I am not putting the question to him, but to the silly spirits
and their mediums, for these spirits, it is stated, are sometimes quite as silly
as any body can be. I therefore ask again whether the vital principle or
force is conveyed into the tables whilst the parties or “ circle ” are pressing
their hands upon it; and if not, please to tell us what it is, for the “ outer ”
world are very anxious and waiting to know. It must be observed that the
tables only move under this pressure, and whilst the “ circle ” is thus acting
and using its atmospheric influence, otherwise the tables might or would be
always jumping about the room; and if the tables are not thus moved by
animal heat, how would the animal man be able to get his meals ? And it
follows as a natural—beg pardon, spiritual—consequence, that if this be not
the case, or the cause, then are the spirits a very thoughtful and wellbehaved society, to be thus careful not to rattle or roll the table about and
jump it up and down when the dinner is spread; or perhaps these spirits
partake of the “ good things of this life,” as very poor Drench emigrants
used to do, namely, by merely smelling the viands at a cook’s shop “ sniff,
sniff, ah ! dat is nice a roast a bcf—sniff, sniff, ah ! dat nice piece de veal
ah ! sniff, sniff, dat a nice piece a de pork-—ah ! ah! sniff, sniff” but if they
don’t eat it appears they drink; for in an article by R. H. Hatton, in the
“ Victoria Magazine,”* entitled “ The Unspiritual World of Spirits, it states
that Mr. Howitt “ believes in a modern German ghost that drank beer,
which called forth the words (with a horrible exclamation), “ it swallows!
and at a “ seance ” held at a chateau near Paris, three years back, a gentle
man asked for some brandy and water, which when brought was “ snatched
out of his hold by a spirit-hand which carried it beneath the table,” and “ the
glass came back empty.” We are told that the spirits have difficulty in
making a finger; if so, they must have a greater difficulty in “ making
* Published by Emily Faithful. And I take this opportunity of wishing success to the
“ Victoria Magazine,” as a part of the good work in which that lady is engaged.
j
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•mouths;” but suppose they do make a mouth, and the spirits drink the
beer and spirits, where is the liquid to go to, if they have made no stomach
out of the atmosphere of the ladies and gentlemen forming the “ circle ”
round the table? This does not look as if it were “all fair and above
board;” but, on the contrary, very much as if there were some clever rascally
little bodies playing their pranks and taking the “ spirits ” under the table ;
however, if it be the real spirits who drank the beer and spirits, I as a teeto
taler must express my disgust at such conduct, and, for one, will have nothing
to do with such spirits ; indeed, I am quite shocked to find, contrary to all
former ideas of spiritual life, that even these “
spirits ” have still a taste
for the spirit of alcohol. I really begin to fear that these drinking, if not
drunken spirits, do haunt the “ spirit-vaults.” The beer they drink is, I
presume, “ Home-brewed.”
But to turn again to the “ table-turning.” One way that I would sug
gest this question, to test, as to whether it be the life principle that gives a
sort of life to these wooden Zqys, and drawers, and body, and flaps, from
which the spirits send out their “ raps,” would be, to substitute an iron table,
a good heavy iron table, and as it is said they can lift any weight, let ’em
lift that; and if not iron, then try a good large marble slab. If the iron will
not “ enter into their soul,” let them try if their soul will enter into the iron,
or if the stone will be moved by the “ atmosphere ” of their flesh and their
bone.
Wonders, it is said, will never cease, and most assuredly some of the
tales told of these “ seancesf and some of the reported spirit exhibitions are
so wonderful, so astounding, that one does not know how to believe them;
and there are certain circumstances in some parts of the performance that
1 look so like trickery, that it is impossible to accept the whole relation as
fact, however much-we might feel disposed to receive a part thereof. Some
of these performances are performed in the dark, in the “ pitch dark,” so dark
that the company cannot see each other ; and it is in this state of “ inner ”
and “ utter” darkness that the spirits prefer to lift Mr. Home, andyZoai him
up to the ceiling* so that the spirits who lift him are “invisible spirits,” and
Mr. Home is invisible also. And this makes me think that these spirits are
without clothing, and being so, are ashamed to show themselves. I put
this as a question to Mr. Home, and also, as they only make hands and
shake hands, if they are not “ ashamed to show their faces,” why don’t
they make faces ? (I don’t mean grimaces). But I should not only like to
know why they don’t make some “atmospheric” “life-sphere” faces, but
should also very much like to sketch their likenesses, or “take them off,” as
people say.
Touching upon these faces reminds me that a new feature has been
introduced in this new world, that is, taking up this new fashion of the old
world by having “ carte de visiles.” A Mr. AZkm-ler, of Boston, U.S., dis
covered that these spirits have a taste for art as well as music, and that they
have a little vanity like ourselves; and it has since been discovered that /raziiZ
has been discovered., of photographers—“palming off as spirit likeness—pic
tures of persons now alive!” But here comes the clothes test again, these
* I should like to ask a question here—
Is Home by spirits lifted, or by “ atmosphere ?”
D
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spirited portraits have all got their clothes on. Apparitions of suits of clothes,
spirits of coats, boots, and ladies' dresses 1!!
This test of the clothing is very severe, for without having clothes the
ghost can’t appear; for even that extraordinary clever invention of Professor
Pepper’s, the “ patent” ghost, which he exhibited at the Polytechnic Insti
tution, and which is introduced into a piece called “The Haunted Man and
the Ghost’s Bargain,” now performing at the Adelphi Theatre, and which
ghost, I am sorry to say, I have not yet had time to see, but this “ patent
ghost,” of course, has CLOTHES on. In fact, apparitions cannot appear
without clothes, and apparitions of clothes cannot appear; and so—but
really I had quite forgotten that I had left Mr. Home sticking up against
the ceiling, upon which it appears he makes his marZ>—all in the dark
as a kind of“ skylark.” “ Seeing is believing,” but as his friends could
not see him, he was obliged to do some thing of this sort, suspecting, I sup
pose, that his friends would not take his word. When a light was thrown
upon this scene, Mr. Home was discovered lying upon his back upon the
table ! It may be rude to say that all this was all a trick, but pardonable,
perhaps, to say it looks very like trickery.
Talking of “ skylarking,” reminds me, that in conversation with a friend
of mine, who is a believer in Mr. Home, and expressing a doubt about the
possibility of Mr. H. kicking his heels up in the air in this way, and
asking if it were not imaginary, my friend assured me that it was no “ flight
of fancy,” that it was quite true, and that it was not at all improbable but
that some day, in daylight, we might “ see Mr. Home floating across the
metropolis!” I suggested that Mr. H. had better mind what he was
about, as there was danger in such a flight, for some short-sighted sports
man, or if not short-sighted, he might be in such a state of fuddle as
not “to know a hawk from a hand saw,” and might mistake him for some
gigantic, monstrous blackbird,” or some “ rara avis,” and bring him down
with his gun, though in this case he would not want to “ bag his game.”
To prevent such a hit as this, or rather such a mischance, I would suggest
that due notice should be given to the public when Mr. Home intends
appearing up above the chimney-pots; and that in addition to his floating,
that the spirits should run him along the “ electric telegraph” wires. That
would be something worth seeing, and much better than the stupid, silly,
nonsensical tricks they now play either on the table or under the table.
There used formerly, even in my time—I don’t go back so far as the
reign of the Charles’s, but to the days of the “ charlies,” as the old
watchmen were called, and before the “new police” were introduced to
the public,—in those days ghost tricks were played in various parts of
London ; one favourite spot was in front of St. Giles’s churchyard, near unto
a “ spirit vault.” It used to be reported that there was a ghost every night
in this churchyard, but it was an invisible ghost, for it never was seen,
though there was a mob of people gaping and straining their eyes to get
a peep at it; but during this time, some low cunning spirits used to creep
out of the adjoining spirit vaults, mix amongst the crowd, and having very
fingers, used, instead of tapping the people-on the knees, as the spirits
do at the “seances,” they dipped their hands into the “atmosphere” of
respectable people’s pockets, and “ spirited away” their watches, handker
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chiefs, pocket-books, or anything else that came in their way, and then bolt
into the vaults again.
N.B.—These spirits conld swallow spirits, like those described in the
preceding pages.
Spirits of the old style used to delight in the darkness of night, but
sometimes they’d show their pale faces by moonlight. A “ seance” is de
scribed that took place by moonlight. I don’t mean to assert that it was
all “moonshine.” A table was placed in front of a window between the
curtains ; the “ circle” round the table and the space between the curtains
was the stage where the performance took place. Query : How did the
•mediums know, when they placed this table, that the spirits who “ lent a
hand” in the performance would act their play at that part of the table ?
By the by, the table plays an important part m these spirited pieces ; the
spirits surely would not be able to get on at all without a table ! At
each side of this stage, lit by the moon, and close to the window curtains,
which formed as it were the “ proscenium,” stood a gentleman, one on each
side, like two “prompters,” one of whom was Mr. Home; and when one
particular hand was thrust up above the rim of the table, and which hand
had a glove on, Mr. H. cried out, “ Oh ! keep me from that hand ! it is so
cold; do not let it touch me.” Query : How did Mr. H. know that this
hand was so cold? and had it put the glove on because it felt itself so
cold? And out of whose “atmosphere,” or “life sphere” had the spirit
made this hand ? if it were so cold, it must have got the stuff through
some very cold-hearted “medium.” Then comes my clothes test again, where
did the hand get the glove ? Suppose it was a spirit hand,, the hand of a soul
that once did live on earth, could it be the spirit of a glove ? Whilst waiting
for an answer to these queries, I would suggest to these “ mediums,” that if
they see this “ hand and glove” again, they should ask, “ Who’s your glover ?”
Yes, it would be important to obtain the name and address of such a glover,
as such gloves, we may suppose, would not wear out, nor require cleaning.
An old and valued friend of mine attended a séance in 1860, of
which he wrote a short account, and which he keeps (in manuscript) to
lend to his friends for their information and amusement, upon this subject ;
and although he confesses that, as a novice, he was rather startled upon one
or two occasions during the evening, that the extraordinary proceeding of
the séance had something of a supernatural tinge about it ; nevertheless,
upon mature reflection he came to the conclusion that the whole was a very
cleverly-managed piece of trickery and imposture. As I am permitted to
quote from this manuscript, I will here give a short extract to show the
reader how an American medium—a Dr. Dash—assisted by two other
“mediums,” also Americans, managed the spirits upon that occasion. A
party of eight were seated round a table :—
“ Shortly and anon, a change came o’er the spirit of the Doctor. He
jumped up and said, ‘ Hush! I hear a spirit rapping at the door.’
*******
11 The Doctor told us there was a spirit which wished to join our seance
the door was opened, a chair was most politely placed at the table, and
there the spirit sat, but, like ‘ Banquo’s ’ GhoBt, invisible to the company.”
In the Waterloo Road there resided—next door to each other—some
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years back, two paperhangers, who vied with each other in doing “ sten
cilling ”—that is, rnbbing colour on walls through a cut out pattern ; there
was great opposition between them, and one of them (No. 1) wrote on the
front of-his house in large letters, “ The Acme of Stencilling,” upon which
No. 2, determined not to be outdone in this style, wrote upon the front of his
house in letters cZowSZe the size of his neighbour’s, 11 The Heigth of the
Acme of Stencilling. ’ how, I do not know whether this pretended intro
duction of an invisible spirit, and putting a chair for this worse than nothing
to sit in, when he had nothing to sit down upon, may be considered as the
heigth of the acme of unprincipled, impudent imposture ; but it goes far
enough to show that trickery can be and is carried on, and carried on even as
a trade or “ calling ’ in this “ spirit-rapping ” business, for I have seen a
printed card where a y>ro/esswraaZ “medium” gives his name and address, and
has on it, “ Circles for Spiritual Manifestation—hours from 12 to 3 and
5 to 10 p.m. to which is added, “ Private Parties and Families visited.”
If such a card as this had been introduced in “ The Broad Grin Jest
Book,” some years back, it would have been quite in place, but to think that
such a card as this should be circulated in this “age of intellect,” as a
business card the card of a “ Maître de Ceremonie,” who undertakes to intro
duce invisible spirits, into parties and private families, is something more
than I ever expected to see, on the outside of Bethlem, or in the list of
impostures at a police station.
As this Dr. Fash pretended that spirits were “mixed up ” with this party
were indeed surrounding the “ circle,” and who had come into the room
without hnocking, and were not accommodated with chairs, why should this
gnost of nothing kriocK at the door, and how did the Dr. know that he
wished to join the séance, and why should this invisible Mr. Nobody have
a chair, and the other spirits be obliged to stand ? And then was this spirit
dressed in his best ? for as it was an evening party, he ought to have been
“ dressed with care.”
The calling up of one spirit seems to call up or raise another spirit, and
as Dr. Fash introduced a dumb and invisible spirit who was supposed to
take his seat at a table, I take this opportunity of introducing a spirit of a
very different character—one of the old fashioned spirits—one that could
both be seen and heard, and who was seen to take his seat at the table, and
enter into conversation with his friends. An extract from the “ Registry of
Brisley Church in 1706,” runs thus :—A Mr. Grose went to see a Mr. Shaw,
and whilst these gentlemen were quietly smoking their pipes, in comes
(without “rapping”) the ghost of their friend Mr. Naylor. They asked him
to sit down, which he did, and they conversed together for about two hours ;
he was asked how it fared ■with him, he replied, “Very well,” and when he
seemed about to move, they asked him if he could not stay a little longer,
he replied that he “ could not do so, for he had only three days’ leave of
absence, and had other business to attend to.”*
Now this is something like a ghost, whose visit you observe is recorded
As, according to Mrs. Crowe, ghosts can smoke, and upon equally good authority,
spirits can swallow spirits, no doubt this ghost of Mr. Naylor, who did not come without
tne help of his tailor, took a pipe with his friends, and took something to drink with them
also, for you may rely upon it, that the ghost’s friends were not smoking a (< cry pipe.”
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in the registry of a parish church, and as the party I believe were all clergy
men, of course the Rev. Mr. Naylor came in his clerical li habits as he lived,”
no doubt “ dressed with care.” Yes, this you see was a respectable sort of
ghost—one that you could see and listen to, not such a poor “ dummy ”
as Dr. Dash’s poor spiritless spirit, Mr. Nothing Nobody, Esq.,
Who could neither be seen nor heard,
Which even to name, seems quite absurd.
The reason for thus suddenly pretending to introduce a spirit, was to
produce an effect—a sensation—upon the nerves of the party assembled (par
ticularly the novices), for it is only under excited nervous feelings that any
thing like success can attend the operations of such “mediums.”
The Creator has so formed us that our nerves are more excitable in dark
ness than in the light, and our senses thus excited, are for our safety and pro
tection, when moving about in the dark, either in-doors or out, as we feel and
know, that there is a chance of our being seriously injured by running against
or fading over something, or that there might be evil spirits in the shape of
robbers lurking about, against whom it would be necessary to be ready to
defend ourselves, or to avoid. Our faculties being thus put on the “ qui
vive,” is natural, healthy, and proper; but when the mind has been imbued
from childhood with a belief in ghosts, and the individual should happen to
be in a dark and lonely place, and should hear or see indistinctly something
which the mind on the instant is not able to account for, naturally, or com
prehend rationally, then under such circumstances, to use a common expres
sion, “we are not ourselves,” and in giving way to imaginary fears, under the
impression of supernatural appearances, the stoutest hearts and the strongest
men, have been known “ to quiver and to quail,” to be confused and to feel
that thrilling sensation, that cold trickling down the back from head to heel,
which is produced from fright, and nothing but the rallying of their mental
and physical forces, and rousing up a determined resolution, has enabled
such men to overcome this coward-like fear, and to discover that they have
been scared by some natural sound, or some imperfectly-seen natural object,
that it was all “ a false alarm,” or perhaps a made up ghost, by some fool
or rogue, or both, who was playing his “ tricks upon travellers.”
But with weak and nervous persons, ' who believe in supernatural
appearances, the effects of fright, under such circumstances, produce the
most painful feelings, total prostration of the faculties, and sometimes
fatal consequences. Here is an instance where all the faculties were
prostrated by fright in consequence of seeing a supposed apparition, followed
by the death of an innocent person :—
In the year 1804, the inhabitants of Hammersmith, a village situated on
the west side of the metropolis, but now forming part of it, were much
terrified by the appearance of, as it was said, a spectre clothed in a winding
sheet. This apparition made its appearance in the dark evenings in the
churchyard, and in several avenues about the place. I well remember “ the
Hammersmith ghost,” as it was called, being the “ Town Talk ” of that day,
and not only in Hammersmith, but even in town, many persons were afraid
to leave their homes after dusk. Besides a man of the name of John
Graham, who was detected, and I believe imprisoned, there were several
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actors in this ghostly farce, which was however brought to an end in a
tragical manner—that is, by a young man of the name of Thomas Millwood,
a plasterer, being shot dead by one Francis Smith, an exciseman, who at the
time (as the narrator states) was rather “ warm over his liquor ”—that is
about half drunk ; and in this state he was allowed at the “ White Hart ”
public house to load a gun with shot, and go out for the purpose of dis
covering the ghost, and he no sooner saw a figure in a light dress (which
was the poor plasterer in his working dress, on his road to fetch his wife
home, who had been at work all day at a house in the neighbourhood of
“ Black Lion Lane,” where this murder was committed) than he lost the use
of his faculties, and was in such a state of fright that, as he said in his
defence, he “ did not know what he was about,” and unfortunately, under
these circumstances, killed an innocent man, which he never would have
done had he not been a believer in apparitions and ghosts.
In p. 46, of the “ Victoria Magazine,” the writer, in speaking of an
interview which Mr. Home had with the spirit of the Count Cagli ostro,
states that the said spirit diffused and wafted over his friend Mr. H. the most
“ delicious perfumes,” and that they “appeared to have been a part of the
Count’s personal resources and argues for various reasons that these spirits
are “ sensitive to sweet smells,” and that the spirits are “ adepts in per
fumery,” “ are fond of it,” and surround themselves and their medium
“ with exquisite odours.” And as Mr. Home is such a great favourite
with these “ spirits,” his “ life sphere ” and “ atmosphere ” must be
very highly scented and perfumed with smells, and this accounts at once
for the spirits playing “ Home, sweet Home ” upon the accordian, when he
holds it under the table with one hand, and they play upon it, I suppose,
with “ their hands of atmosphere I” Be this as it may, however “ sweet upon
themselves ” they may be, these spirits are at this moment in very “ bad
odour ” with a large body of the press, as also with the large body of the
public, and it therefore rests with the “ mediums” to bring these “spirits of
darkness ” into light, and that these supposed spirits, their mediums, and their friends should place themselves in a right position before the public.
“ Come out in the road ” (as the low folk say when they are going to fight).
By the by, there surely must be (as they are all spirited fellows) some
“prizefighters” amongst these “rapping” spirits, and if so, I would suggest
that mediums, as “backers” and “bottle-holders” (provided they don’t
have any “spirits” in their bottle), should get up a “prizefight” as a
public exhibition, between such spirits as Jem Belcher and Tom Crib, or any
of those celebrated deceased popular heroes; and there would be this advantage
in such contests, that the “sporting world ” would have all their favourite
sport, and be able to bet upon their favourites in these “ sham-fights ” with
out the attendant horrible and disgusting brutalities of the real fights ; for
although they would, of course, “ rap ” each other, their fists being only made
of “ atmosphere,” they could not hurt or disfigure each other as they do in
the earthly boxing. And if these aerial boxers did “ knock the wind out ”
of each other, it would be of no consequence, for as they would be sur
rounded with lots of their own kind of “life sphere,” or “ atmosphere,” they
could soon “ make themselves up ” again, if even they did not “ make it up ”
with each other. But I see some difficulties in carrying out these “sports,”
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which did not occur to me at first ; for instance, if they cannot make their
own thick heads out of the “ atmosphere ” of the heads about them, having
no heads then, how can they be “ set by the ears ?” Besides, they could
not hear when “time” was called, and then, again, the patrons of the
“ Prize ring ” would not be satisfied unless they could see these spirited
ghosts “ knock each other’s heads half off.”
If these spirits cannot “ make head,” and keep up with the intellectual pro
gress of the spirit of the times, and with the spirit of the world. If they cannot
be a “ body politic,” or a body of spirits, or any other body, let the mediums
set their hands to work, “All hands, ahoy !” Let them lend a hand to any
“ handiwork“ hand-looms,” “ or hand about the tea and bread and butter
at parties, or make themselves “ handy ” in any way, even if they were made
to use “hand-brooms.” Yes ; let them put their hands to any honest call
ing rather than keep their hands in idleness, for they should recollect what
Dr. Watts asserts—
“ That Satan finds some mischief still
Por idle hands to do.”
And if these “ spirit hands ” are too flimsy and delicate to work—to
do hard work—then let them play musical instruments, get up popular con
certs, and as they can make perfumes, or are themselves perfumers, they
could thus whilst playing gratify their audiences with sweet sounds and sweet
scents at the same time.
However absurd this asserted fact of tables being moved by spirits may
appear, and to many persons appearing not worth a “ second thought,”
yet it is natural that we should endeavour to account for such a movement
in a natural way, one cause assigned is natural heat, the other involuntary
muscular action, etc., etc. In this state of uncertainty a little “guess work”
about the table movement, may perhaps be excused, even if it be as absurd
as “table lifting” itself. We know that the common air, dry or moist,
affects all earthly materials, and that
The water and the air,
Are everywhere,
Changing, the flower and the stone,
The flesh and the bone.
And we also know that wood, being a very porous material, is powerfully
affected by the “broad and general casing air,” that it expands or contracts
according to the condition of the atmosphere, and thus we find when there
is any considerable change in the temperature, that all the book-cases, ward
robes, chests of drawers, clothes presses, tables, or “ what-nots,” in different
parts of the house, will indicate this change by a creaking, cracking noise.
I have in my studio an oaken cabinet, which acts under the influence of the
change of air, like a talking thermometer, and with which I sometimes hold a
sort of a “ cabinet council” upon the subject of the change of weather.
When seated in my room, with doors, and windows, and shutters shut, if it
has been dry weather for any length of time, and my cabinet begins creaking,
I know by this sound from the wood, that the warm moist air, which has been
wafted with the warm gulf stream from the West Indies, is diffusing itself
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around the room, and producing an effect upon me and my furniture, even
to the fire-irons and fender, and so, on the contrary, after wet or moist
weather, if the creaking is heard again, I know pretty well “ which way the
wind blows,” and that it is a dry wind, without looking out at the weather vane.
If it merely goes creak, creak, crack, and stops there, the change will not be
great, but when it goes cre-ak, cre-ak, creak, crack, crack, crack—rumble,
rumble, rumble, creak, crack ! then do I know, and find, that the charge will
be considerable, and can spell out, change—rain—rain—rain, much rain.
Many persons who have given any thought to this question, are of opinion
that electric currents passing from the human body is the cause of this “ table
moving,” and I introduce my “weather wise ” cabinet to the public here to
show, that if a little damp air, or a little dry air will move, and make a large
heavy cabinet talk in this way, how much more likely it is that a table should
be moved, and particularly if these “ electric currents ” fly “ like lightning”
through the passages or spiracles of this popular, but at present mysterious
piece of furniture.
No wonder then if the “ life sphere ” and “ the atmosphere ” of the “ light
headed,” “light-heeled,” who “permeate their wills” into this otherwise
inanimate object, should all of a sudden “ set the table in a roar,” and “rap
out their rappartees,” and that “ the head of the table ” should bob up and
down, so as to make the people stare, either standing around or stuck in a
chair, and that the legs all so clumsy, should caper and dance and kick up in
the air, to the tune of “ Well did you ever!” and “ Well I declare !” ! ! !
This cabinet of mine is filled with the spirited works of departed spirits,
including some of my dear father’s humorous works, also of the great Hogarth,
the great Gilray, and other masters, ancient and modern; the mediums
would, I suppose, say—
That when this cabinet begins a “ crack
or creaking,
It is these sprites of art, who thus to me are speaking.
And as one of the panels was split some years back, the mediums would
perhaps suggest that these “droll spirits” made the cabinet “split its
sides with laughter,” but I know it was the hot air of a hot summer, a,nd
certainly not done by a drum or a drummer—that this “splitting” or
“ flying,” only shows the force of the common air, and I hope adds to the
force of my argument in this respect, and further, of this I feel assured, that
if I were to “ clear the decks for action,” bring this cabinet out into the
middle of my studio, and could induce some of the lady and gentlemen
“mediums” to come and form a “circle,” and clap their hands on and
around this piece of furniture, that, although Monsieur Cabinet has no “ light
fantastic toe,” that he would nevertheless join in the merry dance, and cut
some curious capers on his castors, and even “beat time ” perhaps with his
curious creaks and cracks. By the by, glass being a non-conductor, a table
made of glass, would at once settle this question, as to whether the tables are
moved by electric currents or not.
I am now about to suggest what I feel assured every one will admit to be
a grand idea, and which would be to make these spirits useful in a way that
would be highly appreciated and patronized by the public, and put all the
* Scotch for talking.
�ADDENDA.
41
“fortune-tellers” and “rulers of the stars ” out of the field altogether, and
perhaps even damage the “ electric wires ” a little. It is to establish a com
pany, to be entitled, “ The Human Question and Spirit Answer Company !”
The principal “ capital" to work upon, would be the overpowering principle of
curiosity; in this case, instead of having a “cWr-man,” they would, I
suppose, have a ¡fuWe-man ; if so, then Homo would be the man, and of this
company it never could be said, that they had not a rap at their bankers.
“ Limited,” of course, but the business would be 'O'^-limited, with profits,
corresponding ; branch question and answer offices, branching out all
over the globe, with “letter-boxes” and “chatter-boxes”. If the busi
ness of such offices were worked and carried out in a “ proper spirit," it
would assuredly be “ a success.” I am supposing, of course, that these
spirits will be able to “ tell us something we don’t know,” for up to the
present time it does not appear that they have told anything to us that we
could not have told them, and in a more common sense and grammatical
style than most of the communications which they have “ rapped out,” but
if there are any reaZ, great, and good spirits amongst these gammocking
table-turners, they must, one would suppose, know all about everything and
everybody, and everybody would be asking questions, and if so, “ Oh, my !”
what a lot of funny questions there would be ! and what a lot of funny
answers ! {all 11 private and confidential," of course) as nobody would be sure
not to tell nobody any secrets that nobody wanted anybody to know.
Under ordinary circumstances I am not at all what might be called a
curious person, but although I should (like other people) like to know how
certain matters might turn out, and although I should never* think of asking
a “ fortune-teller” or of consulting the gentry who profess to “ rule the
stars,” yet if such a company as this were started, I feel that I should be
compelled to start off to the first office I could get to, for the purpose of
putting two or three questions, to which I want immediate answers if it
were possible, and should not mind paying something extra for favourable
answers. I will here just give a specimen of some of these questions.
Some literary gentleman and others belonging to the “ Urban Club,”
and also some members of the “ Dramatic Authors’ ” Society, have formed
themselves in a committee (upon which they have done me the honour to
place my name), for the purpose of setting on foot and assisting to raise a
fund, if possible, to erect a monument in honour of William Shakspeare,
as the 23rd of April, 1864, will be the ter-centenary of that poet’s birth
day. Another committee for the same purpose is also in formation, and
the two committees will either amalgamate or work together. I have
suggested to the first committee that in order to assist the funds for the
above-mentioned purpose, that a notice be sent out
the public to this
effect—that all persons having any works of art, either paintings, drawings,
or sculpture, should be invited and respectfully requested to lend such works
to a committee of artists, to form a gallery or national collection illustrating
this author’s works, to be called “ The Shakspeare Exhibition,” and in
which designs for the said monument could also be exhibited. The ques
tion, therefore, I would put to the spirits through the proper medium would
bo this, viz.—If such invitations were sent out, would the holders of such
works lend them for the purpose of thus being placed before the public ?
�42
ADDENDA.
And further—If the Government were applied to, would they “ lend the
loan” of a proper and fitting building to exhibit the various works in ? Anri
a little further, and “ though last not least,” would the nobility and gentry,
and the public at large, patronize such an exhibition largely, and what the
receipts would amount to ? I should like to have all this answered, and
that at an early day. But as it may be a long clay, before such a company
could get into working order, and as the members of the public press are
a good-natured, shrewd class of spirits—if the idea is worth anything, they
would most likely take it up, and I should be as much pleased to get an
answer through that medium as any other that I know of.
There are several other questions which I should put to this “ Spirit
Answer Company” if it were started, and which I feel that I could not well
put to any one else, as I do not think that any body would give themselves
the trouble to give me an answer; and it is not every body who coulcl give
me satisfactory answers, however much they might feel disposed to do so. I
enumerate two or three.
Firstly—After a dreadful railway accident which occurred the other
day, Lord Brougham in the House of Lords suggested, I believe, that an
act of Parliament should be passed compelling the public to travel at a
rational speed; and as civil engineers declare that if the public would be
content to do so, that it would decrease the risk of life to about 999 per
cent., I want to know if the public are ever likely to adopt the moderate
speed, or sort of safe and sure, mode of travelling by rail, instead of flying
along at such a risk of life and limb, as they do now, occasionally coming to
a dreadflcl smash, with an awful unnecessary sacrifice of life, picking up
the bodies or the pieces thereof, crying out “All right, go a-head,” and
dashing off at the same irrational speed with the probability of the like
accidents again ?
Secondly—If it is at all likely that “ lovely woman” will ever leave off
wearing dresses which constantly expose her to the risk of being burnt
to death ?
Upon looking, however, at some of the other questions, they appear so
frivolous and ridiculous, that I do not think I would put them even to these
spirits. For instance, one was, that supposing I took a part in one of
Shakspeare’s plays, for the purpose of assisting this proposed Shakspearian
fund, and for some other purposes, if, as I can draw a little, should I, under
such circumstances, draw a full house ?
There is a common saying amongst schoolboys, that “ If all //i; were liacls,
and all 7zad.$‘ were Shads, we never should be in want of fish for supper.”
How the if, in this spirit question, is an important if. for if ad be true, that is
asserted by the “medmms” of the marvels which they publish, then are those
marvels some of the most marvellous and astounding wonders that have
ever been known or heard of in the authentic history of the world. And
from the extent to which this belief has spread, and is still spreading, and
also from the injurious effects it has already produced, and is likely still
further to produce, on the mental and physical condition of a large number
of the people, it now becomes rather, indeed, I may say, a very serious ques
tion. Some of the effects produced by attending the soirees of these “ good,
bad, and indifferent” spirits, will be seen from the reasons stated by a staunch
�ADDENDA.
43
supporter of these supernatural, pastimes for giving up—in fact, being com
pelled to give up—seances,li because, in the first place (he states), it was too
exhausting to the vital fluids of the medium. (They “ took too long a pull,
or swallowed too much of his atmosphere.”') And also “ because the
necessity of keeping the mind elevated to a higher state of contemplation,
while we were repeating the alphabet and receiving messages letter by letter,
was too great a strain upon our faculties ; and because the undeveloped and
earth-bound spirits throng about the mediums, and struggle to enter into
parley with them, apparently with the purpose of getting possession of their
natures, or exchanging' natures; and I have heard of sittings terminating
from this cause in cases of paralysis or demonaical possession.”
In such a state, no doubt the poor creatures imagine that they see
apparitions. I had an old friend who was affected with paralysis of the
brain, but not from this cause, as he was a total and decided disbeliever in
apparitions ; but from the diseased condition of his brain he had the appear
ance of a person or ghost constantly by his side for a considerable time, at
which he used to laugh, and which I wanted him to introduce to me; but to
me it was always invisible. One day at dinner he stood up, and said to those
present, “ Don’t you see I’m going ?” and fell down—dead !
Although there is much to laugh at with respect to these modern spirits,
although some of the scenes at the seances are perfectly ridiculous—and
would have afforded capital subjects for the powerful pen of my dear deceased
friend, “ Thomas Ingoldsby”—the “raps” rapped out sometimes are positive
nonsense and sometimes positive falsehood; and “ evil communications,”
which all who have been to school know, “ corrupt good manners,” yet, on
the other hand, there are serious symptoms sometimes attended with serious
consequences.
The mediums tell us that these spiritual manifestations are permitted by
the “ Omnipotent ;” that Jesus Christ sanctions some of these spiritual
communications, and are indeed given us as if proceeding from Himself;
and yet we find that some persons who attend these “seances”- have their
nervous system so shaken as to distort them limbs, in fact, lose the use of
their limbs altogether, or are “ driven raving mad !”
In “ The Light in the Valley,” a work which I consider ought to be
entitled “ Darkness in the Valley,” but which I must do the author the
justice to say is written and edited in what is evidently intended as a pro
found, proper, and religious spirit, and with a good intent; but however
sincere and honest those pious feelings may be, they are nevertheless distorted
religious opinions, containing symbolical ideas as dark as any symbolical
emanations ever given forth in the darkest ages.
In this work specimens are given of “ spirit writing” and 11 spirit drawing
The “ spirit writing” consists of unmeaning, unintelligible scribbling scrawls,
and very rarely containing any letters or words. These productions are
ascribed to a “ spirit hand ” seizing and guiding the medium’s hand, but which
is nothing more than involuntary action of the muscles under an excited
and unnatural state of the nervous system; and the spirit drawings are
executed under similar conditions. The drawings profess to be designed
and conjointly executed in this way, by holy spirits or angels, and are given
as sacred guidances to man. These are the medium’s opinions and belief;
�44
ADDENDA.
but, unfortunately, too many of these sort of drawings may be seen in
certain asylums. But if I know anything of religion, which I have been
looking at carefully and critically for half a century; also if I know anything
of designing and drawing, in which profession I have been working in my
humble way for more than that time, I pronounce these spirit drawings
(in the language of art) to be “out of drawing,” and contrary to all healthy
emanations of thought as design and composition; and instead of repre
senting subjects or figures which would convey a proper and great idea of
Divine attributes, are, in fact, caricatures of such sacred subjects.
I shall here give a few extracts from the communication of these false
spirits, and spiritual explanations of these spirit scrawls and scratches ; but
some which I had intended to insert, upon reflection, I refrain from giving,
believing that they would not only be offensive to sensible religious persons,
but injurious to youthful minds. Some of the illustrations given in this book
are furnished by a “ drawing medium,” under the titles of “ Christ without
Hands,” “ the Bearded Christ,” “Christ among the Sphere,” “the Woman
Crucified,” etc., etc. In the first of these something like a figure is scribbled
in, and surrounded with scratches, called spirit writing; the “ Bearded Christ”
is merely a bust, very badly drawn, and produced in the same unnatural way,
and surrounded by the same sort of scribbling. The shape of the beard and
the atmosphere of the beard are, it appears, most important matters; and
the author, in speaking of this, says, in describing Him, “ In ‘ the Bearded
Christ’ the atmosphere of the beard, as well as the beard itself, is repre
sented ; and I am acquainted with a ‘seeing medium,’ who has seen the
beard-atmosphere, not only when the beard is worn, but about the shaven
chin, with sufficient precision to decide of what shape the beard would be
were it allowed to grow” !!! !!! !!! !!! !!!
The subject professing to represent “ Christ among the Spheres” is a
better and more finished drawing; but, according to all the laws and rules
of proportion, the figure of Christ, by the side of our globe, would be
30,000 miles in height, and a lily which he holds in his hand 15,000 miles
long ! All these gross absurdities show, that the real spirit has nothing
whatever to do with such absurd doctrines or productions. This “ drawing
medium” gives an account of the trials and sufferings, bodily and mental,
which she went through before she became an accomplished and complete
medium ; and, according to her own statement, she must have gone through
a most fearful and horrible schooling. In one part it is stated she went
through “ several months of most painful bewilderment and extreme distress of
mind; ’ and in another part she says that the intensest antagonism between
truth and falsehood, between light and darkness, encounters the astounded
and unprepared pilgrim upon his first entrance into the realm of spirit.
“ I felt frequently as if enveloped in an atmosphere which sent through
my whole frame warm streams of electricity in waving spirals from the
crown of my head to the soles of my feet; and occasionally, generally at
midnight, I was seized with twitchings and convulsive movements of my
whole body, which were distressing beyond words. All these symptoms at
length came to a crisis in a frightful trance.” And this drawing medium
signs herself “ Comfort !” and further states that—
“Waking in the night, the strange drawing process instantly commenced,
�ADDENDA.
45
and I felt and saw within me the figure of an angel, whose countenance
resembled that of Christ, descending from a morning sky towards me, and
bearing upon his shoulders a large cross, whilst from his lips proceeded these
words—‘ Love, mercy, peace, but not till after death.’ Again my soul
trembled with anguish, for that strange portentous word, ‘ death,'' was ever
written within me or without. This peculiar stage of development soon
produced a singular affection of my throat, an affection of the mucous
membrane, which caused several times a day, and especially when rising in
the morning, the most distressing sensations. After suffering thus for several
days, the mysterious writing informed me that I must take a certain quantity
of port wine every day, and then the sensation would leave me.” And she
adds, “I followed the spiritual direction, and found almost immediate relief.”
The spirit doctor, in fact, after the dreadful suffering the scholar had
gone through, prescribed a “ drop of comfort,” a drop of the spirit of
Alcohol, which spirit is very much like these rapping spirits, deceitful and
dangerous, and this, we may presume, is the reason why the medicine adopted
the name of “ comfort.” Well, some people will say that some little comfort
was needed after so much discomfort and suffering—but why, all this suffer
ing ? Cannot these spirit drawing-masters instruct their pupils in this poor,
wretched, miserable style of drawing, without all this misery and punishment?
If not, I should think that very few ladies or gentlemen would like to take
lessons in drawing, or, indeed, in any other art, under such painful circum
stances. A spirit drawing-master’s card would, I presume, be something
like the following:—
TOM PAIN,
MEDIUM SPIRIT DRAWING- TAUGHT, UNDER EXTREME TORTURE,
«
IN TWENTX-FOUR LESSONS, AT SO MUCH ILL-HEALTH
AND SUFFERING PER LESSON.
N.JB.—Private Residence, under the Table.
V All the Drawing and Writing Materials to be provided by the
Pupils. The lashing supplied by the Spirit, and the Medical Advice Gratis ;
but the Pupils to find the “ drop of spirit comfort” themselves.
In taking one more extract from “ Comfort,” I hope that I am not giving
any discomfort to that “medium,” who, from my mmost heart I hope and
trust, is now enjoying that rational and natural comfort which all well-wishers
to their fellow-creatures wish strangers to feel, as well as their friends. The
medium proceeds to say:—“Ignorance of their real nature and of their
alternate purposes in the progress of civilization and development of mind,
has already caused immense misery in many directions, and will cause more
and more, even infinitely worse, until the time arrives that the medical
world will follow the example of Dr. Garth Wilkinson in his valuable
pamphlet on the treatment of lunacy through spiritualism, and calmly regard
this growing development not as insanity, but as a key whereby to unlock
insanity ” !!!
I have not the slightest notion of what this pamphlet contains, but from
the above very -uncomfortable opinion expressed by “ Comfort” upon this
�46
>
ADDENDA.
matter, it seems to me that a sufficient 11 key” is here given to unlock, if not
all, at all events, the greater part of the mysteries of this spirit drawing and
spirit writing, and, indeed, the whole of this spirit movement.
I would here call the attention of the medical world to the way in which
the spirits are acting towards that body. I presume that they are the spirits
of deceased members of the profession; and if so they are acting in a
most unbrotherly, underhanded manner, in fact, undermining the pro
fession altogether by “rapping” out prescriptions from under the table, for
which they do not take a “rap” as a fee. Yes, “ advice gratis” for nothing.
I entreat medical men not to smile at my remarks, for they may be
assured that there is a dark conspiracy—I cannot say “ afoot,” because
spirits have no feet—but I may say in hand; and as matters stand at present,
it looks as if “ The D. without the M., and Da. Faustus” had entered into a
partnership to destroy all medical doctors by introducing a system which
they could not only not practise, but, as far as I am able to judge, could
never understand, and which, though it is given in the “ Light in the Valley,”
II read” they may, and “mark” they may, “Zetrm” they cannot, and “in
wardly digest” they never will.
In the concluding pages of the “ Light in the Valley,” a letter is intro
duced, which is evidently written by a highly-educated person, in support of
“ an occult law,” and from all that is stated in this letter the writer
might as well have said at once, I believe in witchcraft, or that craft
which enables an ignorant old woman, who is called a “witch,” to
make contracts with the Evil One, for the purpose of torturing, or
making miserable for life, or destroying unto death, her neighbours, their
children, or their cattle ; and that an ignorant old man, under the name of a
“wizard,” may do the same; also, in astrology, or “ruling the stars,” to
predict coming events, or the future fate of individuals born at particular
periods of the year, according to the position of the stars at that time; or in
“ fortune-telling,” performed either by “ crossing the hand” with a piece of
money, got out of some simpleton’s pocket for that purpose, but which never
gets back there again; or by bits of paper, called “ cardsto which also may
be added, as a matter of course, I believe in ghosts, hobgoblins, and in every
thing of a supernatural character.
We can readily understand why the ignorant and uneducated believe in
all these matters; the cause is traced and known; but it seems almost
impossible to believe that educated persons, even with a small amount
of reflection, can put their faith in such superstitious delusions ; and if the
question is put to such persons, as “ show us any good” resulting in the
existence of an “ occult law,” we may safely defy any one to show one
instance, where any good has ever resulted from such a belief in what they
term the deep “ arcana of Nature’s book,” or rather unnatural nonsense.
Whereas, on the othei' hand, the amount of evil arising from this source
has been fearfully great, and the murders many ; dragging poor old creatures
through ponds, and hanging them, and even torturing them to death in a way
too disgusting to describe. Our own records are, unfortunately, too massive
of such ignorant and savage atrocities ; but not only were such deeds enacted
in this (at that time) so misnamed Christian land, but also in other countries
denominated Christian; but which title their brutal acts gave them, like our
�ADDENDA,
47
selves, no right to assume ; not only in Europe, but also in America. In that
country, about the year 1642, many poor old women were persecuted to
death. One woman was hung at Salem for bewitching four children, and
the eldest daughter afterwards confessed to the tricks that she and her
sisters had played in pretending to be “ bewitched.”
But in our own time we find that this belief in the power of foretelling
events leads to much mischief and misery, and from certain facts we may be
assured that there is a larger amount of evil from this cause than is made
known to the public. The “ occult law” leads to many breaches of the law
of the land, and to serious crime; it opens the door to gross imposture,
swindling, and robbery, misleading the minds of simple people, and turning
their conduct and ways from their proper and natural course, and the
strange unaccountable conduct of some persons might be easily accounted for,
when traced to this “ fortune-telling” foolery. The happiness of one family
was destroyed only the other day by a deaf and dumb “ruler of the stars,”
who is now in penal servitude, and who would have been executed had the
offence been committed some years back. Several such “ rulers of the
stars,” or “fortune-tellers,” have been hung for similar crimes, in my time,
one I remember was a black man, hung at the Old Bailey.
The clothes test cannot be brought to bear upon the predicting of events,
but there is a test, which maybe brought with equal force upon this question,
which is, that although these prophets profess to tell what is going to
happen to others, they cannot foretell what is going to happen to them
selves, for if they could, they would have, of course, avoided the punish
ments which the law has, and is constantly inflicting upon them for their
offences. And Mr. “ Zadkiel,” for instance, would not have brought his
action against Admiral Sir Edward Belcher, if he could have foreseen the
result; after which, no doubt, he cried out, “ Oh ! my stars !—if I had known
as much as I know now, I never would have gone into court!”
A “Bow Street officer” (as a branch of the old police were styled) told
me that he had a warrant to take up a female fortune-teller, who was pluck
ing the geese to a large amount. Her principal dupes were females, and he
being a gander had some difficulty in managing to get an introduction (for
this tribe of swindlers use as much caution as they can). He however
succeeded in getting the wise woman to tell him his fortune, for which he
professed himself much obliged, and told her that as he had a little faculty
in that way himself, he would in return, tell her, her fortune, which was,
that she was that morning going before the magistrate at Bow Street,
who had some power in this way also, and he would likewise tell her her
fortune. She smiled at first and would not believe in what he said, but he
showed her the warrant, and all came true that he had told her; but
nothing came true of what she had told him.
Erom the high and pure character of many persons well known to me,
who are mixed up in these seances, it is almost impossible not to believe
their statements of these wonders, the truth of which wonders they so
positively assert. If true, they are indeed wonderful; but if tricks, then do
they surpass all other tricks, ever performed by all the “ sleight of hand”
gentry put together, who ever bamboozled poor credulous, simple creatures,
oi’ astonished and puzzled a delighted audience.
�48
ADDENDA.
There can be but two sides to a question, true or false; and, as already
hinted, it remains for the mediums to prove their case, and to place the
matter in a. better light than it stands at present, which is indeed a very dim
and uncertain sort of “ night light;” but as, up to this time, their assertions
are at variance with what has hitherto been considered as sound sense and
understanding, those outside the “ circle” have not only a right, to be cautious
of stepping into such a circle, but, until some more reasonable reasons are
given—even putting aside the cwi bono for the present—unless some rational
natural cause can be assigned, they have a right to suspect the whole, either
as a Delusion or a Disease.
But even if this party prove, that these “ thing-em bobs” are recd spirits,
they appear to be so dreadful and dangerous, and there really is such a
“ strong family likeness” between some of them, and a certain “ Old Gentle
man,” that I would say “the less they have to do with them the better;”
but even supposing they are not “ so black as they are painted ” (by their
mediums), if even they are a sort of “ half-and-half,” nevertheless, I
would say—
“ Rest, rest, perturbed spirits rest;”
For if not for you, for us ’twill be the best.
There may be, as already observed, more things between heaven and
earth than were dreamt of in the philosophy of Horatio ; but let the
“inquiring spirit” rest assured that amongst these “ things” there could not
be included the Ghost of Iron Armour; and though ’tis said “there’s
nothing like leather,” yet none of these said “ things” could have been the
leather of “ Top-boots”—no, not even the leather of the “ tops” nor the
leather of the “ soles” thereof.
In concluding, I will just add to this Addenda, that,—
Although I have seen, (in the “ mirage,” in the sky)
A ship “ upside down,” the great hull and big sails,
No one, has ever yet seen, such things, as the Gliosis,
Of Hats or Wigs, or of short, or long Pig—tails.
And this is the “long and the. short” of my
DISCOVERT CONCERNING GHOSTS,
with
A RAP AT THE RAPPERS.
THE END.
UiBBILD, PBIHTBB, LOX LOX.
��
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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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A discovery concerning ghosts. with a rap at the rappers
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Cruikshank, George [1792-1878]
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 48 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by Marrild, London. Tentative date of publication from KVK.
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[s.n.]
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[1864?]
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Spiritualism
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English
Conway Tracts
Ghosts
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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
THE
GHOSTS
BY
COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.
Let them cover their Eyeless Sockets with their Flesh
less Hands and fade for ever from the imagination
of Men.
Price Threepence.
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.O.
1893.
�LONDON :
PRINTED BY
G. W. FOOTE,
AT 11 CLERK F KWELL GREEN, E.C.
�THE GHOSTS.
Let them cover their Eyeless Sockets with their Fleshless Hands
and fade for ever from the imagination of Men.
There are three theories by which men. account for all phe
nomena, for everything that happens : First, the Supernatural; second, the Supernatural and Natural; third, the
Natural. Between these theories there has been, from the
dawn of civilisation, a continual conflict. In this great war
nearly all the soldiers have been in the ranks of the super
natural. The believers in the supernatural insist that matter
is controlled and directed entirely by powers from without;
while naturalists maintain that Nature acts from within;
that Nature is not acted upon; that the universe is all there
is; that Nature with infinite arms embraces everything that
exists, and that all supposed powers beyond the limits of the
material are simply ghosts. You say, “ Oh, this is material
ism!” What is matter? I take in my hand some earth
—in this dust put seeds. Let the arrows of light from the
quiver of the sun smite upon it; let the rain fall upon it;
the seeds will grow and a plant will bud and blossom. Do
you understand this ? Can you explain it better than you
can the production of thought ? Have you the slightest con
ception of what it really is ? And yet you speak of matter as
though acquainted with its origin, as though you had torn
from the clenched hands of the rocks the secrets of material
existence. Do you know what force is ? Can you account
for molecular action ? Are you really familiar with chem
istry, and can you account for the loves and hatreds of the
atoms ? Is there not something in matter that for ever
eludes? After all, can you get beyond, above, or below
appearances ? Before you cry “ materialism !” had you not
better ascertain what matter really is? Can you think even
of anything without a material basis ? Is it possible to
imagine the annihilation of a single atom ? Is it possible for
�( 4 )
you to conceive of the creation of an atom ? Can you have a
thought that was not suggested to you by what you call
matter ?
Our fathers denounced materialism, and accounted for all
phenomena by the caprice of gods and devils.
For thousands of years it was believed that ghosts, good
and bad, benevolent and malignant, weak and powerful, in
some mysterious way, produced all phenomena; that disease
and health, happiness and misery, fortune and misfortune,
peace and war, life and death, success and failure, were but
arrows from the quivers of these ghosts; that shadowy
phantoms rewarded and punished mankind; that they were
pleased and displeased by the actions of men; that they sent
and withheld the snow, the light, and the rain; that they
blessed the earth with harvests or cursed it with famine;
that they fed or starved the children of men; that they
crowned and uncrowned kings; that they took sides in war ;
that they controlled the winds; that they gave prosperous
voyages, allowing the brave mariner to meet his wife and
child inside the harbor bar, or sent the storms, strewing the
sad shore with wrecks of ships and the bodies of men.
Formerly, these ghosts were believed to be almost innu
merable. Earth, air, and water were filled with these phan
tom hosts. In modern times they have greatly decreased
in number, because the second theory—a mingling of the
supernatural and natural—has generally been adopted. The
remaining ghosts, however, are supposed to perform the same
offices as the hosts of yore.
It has always been believed that these ghosts could in some
way be appeased; that they could be flattered by sacrifices,
by prayer, by fasting, by the building of temples and
cathedrals, by the blood of men and beasts, by forms and
ceremonies, by chants, by kneelings and prostrations, by
flagellations and maimings, by renouncing the joys of home,
by living alone in a wide desert, by the practice of celibacy,
by inventing instruments of torture, by destroying men,
women, and children, by covering the earth with dungeons,
by burning unbelievers, by putting chains upon the thoughts
and manacles upon the limbs of men, by believing things
without evidence and against evidence, by disbelieving and
denying demonstration, by despising facts, by hating reason,
by denouncing liberty, by maligning heretics, by slandering
the dead, by subscribing to senseless and cruel creeds, by
discouraging investigation, by worshipping a book, by the
cultivation of credulity, by observing certain times and days,
by counting beads, by gazing at crosses, by hiring others to
repeat verses and prayers, by burning candles, and ringing
�( 5 )
bells, by enslaving each, other, and putting out the eyes of
the soul. All this has been done to appease and flatter this
monster of the air.
In the history of our poor world, no horror has been,
omitted, no infamy has been left undone by the believers in
ghosts,—by the worshippers of these fleshless phantoms.
And yet these shadows were born of cowardice and malignity.
They were painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of
ignorance by that artist called superstition.
From these ghosts our fathers received information. They
were the schoolmasters of our ancestors. They were the
scientists and philosophers, the geologists, legislators, astro
nomers, physicians, metaphysicians, and historians of the
past. For ages these ghosts were supposed to be the only
source of real knowledge. They inspired men to write
books, and the books were considered sacred. If facts were
found to be inconsistent with these books, so much the worse
for the facts, and especially for their discoverers. It was then,
and still is, believed that these books are the basis of the
idea of immortality; that to give up these volumes, or rather
the idea that they are inspired, is to renounce the idea of
immortality. This I deny.
The idea of immortality that like a sea has ebbed and
flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of
hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time
and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of
any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will
continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of
doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
It is the rainbow of hope shining-upon the tears of grief.
From the books written by the ghosts we have at last
ascertained that they knew nothing about the world in which
we live. . Did they know anything about the next? Upon
every point where contradiction is possible, they have been
contradicted.
By these ghosts, by these citizens of the air, the affairs of
government were administered; all authority to govern
came from. them. The emperors, kings, and potentates all
had commissions from these phantoms. Man was not con
sidered as the source of any powei’ whatever. To rebel
against the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing
less than the blood of the offender could appease the invisible
phantom or the visible tyrant. Kneeling was the proper
position to be assumed by the multitude. The prostrate
were the good. Those who stood erect were infidels and
traitors. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts,
man was enslaved, crushed, and plundered. The many
�( 6 )
toiled wearily in the storm and sun that the few favorites of
the ghosts might live in idleness. The many lived in huts,
and caves, and dens, that the few might dwell in palaces.
The many covered themselves with rags, that the few might
robe themselves in purple and in gold. . The many crept, and
cringed, and crawled, that the few might tread upon their
flesh with iron feet.
From the ghosts men received, not only authority, but
information of every kind. They told us the form of this
earth. They informed us that eclipses were caused by the
sins of man; that the universe was made in six days;
that astronomy and geology were devices of wicked men,
instigated by wicked ghosts ; that gazing at the sky with a
telescope was a dangerous thing ; that digging into the earth
was sinful curiosity ; that trying to be wise above what
they had written was born of a rebellious and irreverent
spirit.
They told us there was no virtue like belief, and no crime
like doubt ; that investigation was pure impudence, and the
punishment therefore, eternal torment. They not only told
us all about this world, but about two others ; and if their
statements about the other world are as true as about this,
no one can estimate the value of their information.
For countless ages the world was governed by ghosts, and
they spared no pains to change the eagle of the human intel
lect into a bat of darkness. To accomplish this infamous
purpose ; to drive the love of truth from the human heart ;
to prevent the advancement of mankind ; to shut out from
the world every ray of intellectual light; to pollute every
mind with superstition, the power of kings, the cunning
and cruelty of priests, and the wealth of nations were
exhausted.
During these years of persecution, ignorance, superstition,
and slavery, nearly all the people, the kings, lawyers, doctors,
the learned and the unlearned, believed in that frightful
production of ignorance, fear and faith, called witchcraft.
They believed that man was the sport and prey of devils.
They really thought that the very air was thick with
these enemies of man. With few exceptions, this hideous
and infamous belief was universal. Under these conditions,
progress was almost impossible.
Fear paralyses the brain. Progress is born of courage.
Fear believes—courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth
and prays—courage stands erect and thinks. Fear retreats
--courage advances. Fear is barbarism—courage is civilisa
tion. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils, and in ghosts.
Fear is religion—courage is science.
�( 7 )
The facts, upon which this terrible belief rested, were
proved over and over again in every court of Europe.
Thousands confessed themselves guilty—admitted that they
had sold themselves to the Devil. They gave the particulars
of the sale; told what they said and what the Devil replied.
They confessed this, when they knew that confession was
death; knew that their property would be confiscated, and
their children left to beg their bread. This is one of the
miracles of history—one of the strangest contradictions of
the human mind. Without doubt, they really believed
themselves guilty. In the first place, they believed in
witchcraft as a fact, and when charged with it they probably
became insane. In their insanity they confessed their guilt.
They found themselves abhorred and deserted—charged
with a crime that they could not disprove. Like a man in
quicksand, every effort only sunk them deeper. Caught in
this frightful web, at the mercy of the spiders of superstition,
hope fled, and nothing remained but the insanity of confession.
The whole world appeared to be insane.
In the time of James the First, a man was executed for
causing a storm at sea with the intention of drowning one of
the royal family. How could he disprove it ? How could
he show that he did not cause the storm ? All storms were
at that time generally supposed to be caused by the Devil—<
the prince of the power of the air—and by those whom he
assisted.
I implore you to remember that the believers in such
impossible things were the authors of our creeds and con
fessions of faith.
A woman was tried and convicted before Sir Matthew
Hale, one of the great judges and lawyers of England, for
having caused children to vomit crooked pins. She was
also charged with having nursed devils. The learned judge
charged the intelligent jury that there was no doubt as to
the existence of witches; that it was established by all
history, and expressly taught by the Bible.
The woman was hanged and her body burned.
Sir Thomas More declared that to give up witchcraft was
to throw away the sacred scriptures. In my judgment he
was right.
John.Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and witches,
and insisted upon it, years after all laws upon the subject
had been repealed in England. I beg of you to remember
that John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist Church.
In New England, a woman was charged with being a
witch, and with having changed herself into a fox. While
in that condition she was attacked and bitten by some dogs.
�( 8)
A committee of three men, by order of the court, examined
this woman. They removed her clothing and searched for
“ witch spots.” That is to say, spots into which needles
could be thrust without giving her pain. They reported to
the court that such spots were found. She denied, however,
that she ever had changed herself into a fox. Upon the
report of the committee she was found guilty and actually
executed. This was done by our Puritan fathers, by the
gentlemen who braved the dangers of the deep for the sake
of worshipping God and persecuting their fellow men.
In those days people believed in what was known as
lycanthropy—that is, that persons, with the assistance of the
Devil, could assume the form of wolves. An instance is
given where a man was attacked by a wolf. He defended
himself, and succeeded in cutting off one of the animal’s
paws. . The wolf ran away. The man picked up the paw,
put it in his pocket and carried it home. There he found his
wife with one of her hands gone. He took the paw from
his pocket.. It had changed to a human hand. He charged
his wife with being a witch. She was tried. She confessed
her guilt, and was burned.
People were burned for causing frosts in summer—for
destroying crops with hail—for causing storms—for making
cows go dry, and even for souring beer. There was no im
possibility for which someone was not tried and convicted.
The life of no one was secure. To be charged, was to be
convicted. Every man was at the mercy of every other.
This infamous belief was so firmly seated in the minds of
the people, that to express a doubu as to its truth was to be
suspected. Whoever denied the existence of witches 'and
devils was denounced as an infidel.
They believed that animals were often taken possession of
by devils, and that the killing of the animal would destroy
the devil. They absolutely tried, convicted, and executed
dumb beasts.
At Basle, in 1470, a rooster was tried upon the charge of
having laid an egg. .Rooster eggs were used only in making
witch ointment—this everybody knew. The rooster was
convicted, and with all due solemnity was burned in the
public square. So a hog and six pigs were tried for having
killed and. partially eaten a child. The hog was convicted,
but the pigs, on account probably of their extreme youth,
were acquitted. As late as 1740, a cow was tried and con
victed of being possessed by a devil.
They used to exorcise rats, locusts, snakes, and vermin.
They used to go through the alleys, streets, and fields, and
warn them to leave within a certain number of days. In
�( 9 )
case they disobeyed, they were threatened with pains and
penalties.
But let us be careful how we laugh at these things. Let us
not pride ourselves too much on the progress of our age. We
must not forget that some of our people are yet in the same
intelligent business. Only a little while ago, the Governor
of Minnesota appointed a day of fasting and prayer, to see if
some power could not be induced to kill the grasshoppers, or
send them into some other state.
About the close of the fifteenth century, so great was the
excitement with regard to the existence of witchcraft, that
Pope Innocent VII. issued a bull directing the inquisitors to
be vigilant in searching out and punishing ail guilty of this
crime. Forms for the trial were regularly laid down in a
book or pamphlet called the Malleus Maleficorum (Hammer
of Witches), which was issued by the Roman See. Popes
Alexander, Leo, and Adrian, issued like bulls. For two
hundred and fifty years the Church was busy in punishing
the impossible crime of witchcraft; in burning, hanging, and
torturing men, women, and children. Protestants were as
active as Catholics, and in Geneva five hundred witches were
burned at the stake in a period of three months. About one
thousand were executed in one year in the diocese of Como.
At least one hundred thousand victims suffered in Germany
alone: the last execution (in Wurtzburg) taking place as
late as 1749. Witches were burned in Switzerland as late
as 1780.
In England the same frightful scenes were enacted.
Statutes were passed from Henry VI. to James I., defining
the crime and its punishment. The last Act passed by the
feritish Parliament was when Lord Bacon was a member of
the House of Commons; and this Act was not repealed
until 1736.
Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws
of England, says : “ To deny the possibility, nay, actual
existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to con
tradict the Word of God in various passages both of the Old
and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which
every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony,
either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory
laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a commerce
with evil spirits.”
In Brown’s Dictionary of the Bible, published at Edin
burgh, Scotland, in 1807, it is said that: “ A witch is a
woman that has dealings with Satan. That such persons are
among men is abundantly plain from scripture, and that they
ought to be put to death.”
�( 10 )
This work was re-published in Albany, New York, in 1816.
No wonder the clergy of that city are ignorant and bigoted
even unto this day.
In 1716, Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, nine years of age,
were hanged for selling their souls to the Devil, and raisin«a storm by pulling off their stockings and making a lather of
soap.
In England it has been estimated that at least thirty thou
sand were hanged and burned. The last victim executed in
Scotland perished in 1722. “ She was an innocent old woman,
who had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice at the
sight of the fire which was destined to consume her. She
had a daughter, lame both of hands and of feet—a circum
stance attributed to the witch having been used to transform
her daughter into a pony and getting her shod by the Devil.”
In 1692, nineteen persons were executed and one pressed
to death in Salem, Massachusetts, for the crime of witch
craft.
It was thought, in those days, that men and women made
compacts with the Devil, orally and in writing. That they
abjured God and Jesus Christ, and dedicated themselves
wholly to the Devil. The contracts were confirmed at a
general meeting of witches and ghosts, over which the Devil
himself presided; and the persons generally signed the
articles of agreement with their own blood. These contracts
were, in some instances for a few years; in others, for life.
General assemblies of the witches were held at least once a
year,.at which they appeared entirely naked, besmeared with
an ointment made from the bodies of unbaptised infants.
“ To these meetings they rode from great distances on broom
sticks, pokers, goats, hogs, and dogs. Here they did homage
to the prince of hell, and offered him sacrifices of young
children, and practised all sorts of license until the break of
day.”
“ As late as 1815, Belgium was disgraced by a witch trial;
and guilt was established by the water ordeal.” “ In 1836,
the populace of Hela, near Dantzic, twice plunged into the
sea a woman reputed to be a sorceress ; and as the miserable
creature persisted in rising to the surface, she was pronounced
guilty, and beaten to death.”
“ It was believed that the bodies of devils are not like
those of men and animals, cast in an unchangeable mould.
It was thought they were like clouds, refined and subtle
matter, capable of assuming any form and penetrating into
any orifice. The horrible tortures they endured in their place
of punishment rendered them extremely sensitive to suffer
ing, and they continually sought a temperate and somewhat
�(11)
moist warmth in. order to allay their pangs. It was for this
reason they so frequently entered into men and women.”
The Devil could transport men, at his will, through the
gjy. He could beget children; and Martin Luther himself
had come in contact with one of these children.. He. recom
mended the mother to throw the child into the river,inorder
to free their house from the presence of a devil.
It was believed that the Devil could transform people into
any shape he pleased.
Whoever denied these things was denounced as an infidel.
All the believers in witchcraft confidently appealed to the
Bible. Their mouths were filled with passages demonstrating
the existence of witches and their power over human .beings.
By the Bible they proved that innumerable evil spirits were
ranging over the world endeavoring to ruin mankind; that
these spirits possessed a power and wisdom far transcending
the limits of human faculties ; that they delighted in. every
misfortune that could befall the world; that their malice was
superhuman. That they caused tempests was proved by the
action of the Devil toward Job; by the passage in the book of
Revelation describing the four angels who held the four winds,
and to whom it was given to afflict the earth. They believed
this, because they knew that Christ had been carried by the
Devil in the same manner and placed on a pinnacle of the
temple. “ The prophet Habakkuk had been transported.by
a spirit from Judea to Babylon; and Philip, the evangelist,
had been the object of a similar miracle; and in the same
way St. Paul had been carried in the body to the third
heaven.”
“ In those pious days, they believed that. Incubi and
Succubi were for ever wandering among mankind, alluring,
by more than human charms, the unwary to their destruction,
and laying plots, which were too often successful, against the
virtue of the saints. Sometimes the witches kindled in the
monastic priest a more terrestrial fire. People, told, with
bated breath, how, under the spell of a vindictive woman,
four successive abbots in a German monastery had been
wasted away by an unholy flame.”
An instance is given in which the Devil not only assumed
the appearance of a holy man, in order to pay his addresses
to a lady, but when discovered, crept under the bed, suffered
himself to be dragged out, and was impudent enough to
declare that he was the veritable bishop. So perfectly had
he assumed the form and features of the prelate that those
Who knew the bishop best were deceived.
One can hardly imagine the frightful state of the human
mind during these long centuries of darkness and supersti-
�()
tion. To them, these things were awful and frightful realities.
Hovering about them in the open air, in their houses, in the
bosoms of friends, in their very bodies, in all the darkness of
i* everywhero, around, above and below, were innumer
able hosts of unclean and malignant devils.
From the malice of those leering and vindictive vampires
ot the air, the Church pretended to defend mankind. Pursued
by those phantoms, the frightened multitudes fell upon their
theft aD<* imPl°red
of robed hypocrisy and sceptered
Take from the orthodox Church of to-day the threat and
tear ot hell, and it becomes an extinct volcano.
Take from the Church the miraculous, the supernatural,
the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the
unknowable and the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum
remains.
Notwithstanding all the infamous things justly laid to the
charge of the Church, we are told that the civilisation of
to-day is the child of what we are pleased to call the super
stition of the past.
1
Religion has not civilised man—man has civilised religion.
God improves as man advances.
Ca^ your attention to what we have received from
the followers of the ghosts. Let me give you an outline of
" a sciences as taught by these philosophers of the clouds.
j diseases were produced, either as a punishment by the
good ghosts, or out of pure malignity by the bad ones,
lhere were, properly speaking, no diseases. The sick were
possessed by ghosts. The science of medicine consisted in
knowing how to persuade these ghosts to vacate the premises,
kor thousands of years the diseased were treated with
incantations, with hideous noises, with drums and gongs.
.Everything was. done to make the visit of the ghost as un
pleasant as possible, and they generally succi-eded in making
things so disagreeable that if the ghost did not leave, the
patient did. These ghosts were supposed to be of different
rank, power and dignity. Now and then a man pretended
to have won the favor of some powerful ghost, and that gave
him power oyer the little ones. Such a man became an
eminent physician.
It was found that certain kinds of smoke, such as that
produced by burning the liver of a fish, the dried skin of a
serpent, the eyes of a toad, or the tongue of an adder, were
i 3gly offeQsive ,t0 the nostrils of an ordinary ghost.
With this smoke the sick room would be filled until the ghost
vanished or the patient died.
”
�It was also believed that certain words—the names of the
most powerful ghosts—when properly pronounced, were
very effective weapons. It was for a long time thought that
Isatin words were the best—Latin being a dead language,
and known by the clergy. Others thought that two sticks
laid across each other and held before the wicked ghost
Would cause it instantly to flee in dread away.
For thousands of years the practice of medicine consisted
in driving these evil spirits out of the bodies of men.
In some instances bargains and compromises were made
with the ghosts. One case is given where a multitude of
devils traded a man for a herd of swine. In this transaction
the devils were the losers, as the swine immediately drowned
themselves in the sea. This idea of disease appears to have
been almost universal, and is by no means yet extinct.
The contortions of the epileptic, the strange twitchings of
those afflicted with chorea, the shakings of palsy, dreams,
trances, and the numberless frightful phenomena produced
by diseases of the nerves, were all seized upon as so many
proofs that the bodies of men were filled with unclean and
malignant ghosts.
Whoever endeavored to account for these things by natural
causes, whoever attempted to cure diseases by natural means,
was denounced by the Church as an infidel. To explain
anything was a crime. It was to the interest of the priest
that all phenomena should be accounted for by the will and
bower of gods and devils. The moment it is admitted that
all phenomena are within the domain of the natural, the
necessity for a priest has disappeared. Religion breathes
the air of the supernatural. Take from the mind of man the
idea of the supernatural, and religion ceases to exist. For
this reason, the Church has always despised the man who
explained the wonderful. Upon this principle, nothing was
left undone to stay the science of medicine. As long as
plagues and pestilences could be stopped by prayer, the priest
was useful. The moment the physician found a cure, the
¡priest became an extravagance. The moment it began to be
apparent that prayer could do nothing for the body, the
priest shifted his ground and began praying for the soul.
Long after the devil idea was substantially abandoned in
the practice of medicine, and when it was admitted that God
had nothing to do With ordinary coughs and colds, it was
»till believed that all the frightful diseases were sent by him
as punishments for the wickedness of the people. It was
thought to be a kind of blasphemy to even try, by any
Natural means, to stay the ravages of pestilence. Formerly,
during the prevalence of plague and epidemics, the arro
�( 14 )
gance of the priest was boundless. He told the people that
they had slighted the clergy, that they had refused to pay
tithes, that they had doubted some of the doctrines of the
Church, and that God was now taking his revenge. The
people for the most part believed this infamous tissue of
priestcraft. They hastened to fall upon their knees; they
poured out their wealth upon the altars of hypocrisy; they
abased and debased themselves; from their minds they
banished all doubts, and made haste to crawl in the very
dust of humility.
The Church never wanted disease to be under the control
of man. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, preached
a sermon against vaccination. His idea was, that if God had
decreed from all eternity that a certain man should die with
the small-pox, it was a frightful sin to avoid and annul that
decree by the trick of vaccination. Small-pox being regarded
as one of the heaviest guns in the arsenal of heaven, to
spike it was the height of presumption. Plagues and
pestilences were instrumentalities in the hands of God with
which to gain the love and worship of mankind. To find
a cure for a disease was to take a weapon from the Church.
No one tries to cure the ague with prayer. Quinine has
been found altogether more reliable. Just as soon as a
specific is found for a disease, that disease will be left out
of the list of prayer. The number of diseases with which
God from time to time afflicts mankind is continually decreas
ing. In a few years all of them will be under the control of
man, the gods will be left unarmed, and the threats of their
priests will excite only a smile.
The science of medicine has had but one enemy—religion.
Man was afraid to save his body for fear he might lose his
soul.
Is it any wonder that the people in those days believed in
and taught the infamous doctrine of eternal punishment—a
doctrine that makes God a heartless monster and man a slimy
hypocrite and slave ?
The ghosts were historians, and their histories were the
grossest absurdities. “ Tales told by idiots, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.” In those days the histories were
written by the monks, who, as a rule, were almost as super
stitious as they were dishonest. They wrote as though they
had been witnesses of every occurrence they related. They
wrote the history of every country of importance. They told
all the past and predicted all the future with an impudence
that amounted to sublimity. “ They traced the order of St.
Michael, in Prance, to the archangel himself, and alleged that
�( 15 )
he was the founder of a chivalric order in heaven itself. They
said that Tartars originally came from hell, and that they
were called Tartars because Tartarus was one of the names of
perdition. They declared that Scotland was so named after
Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, who landed in Ireland, invaded
Scotland, and took it by force of arms. This statement was
made in a letter addressed to the Pope in the fourteenth
century, and was alluded to as a well-known fact. The letter
was written by some of the highest dignitaries, and by direc
tion of the King himself.”
These gentlemen accounted for the red on the breasts of
robins from the fact that these birds carried water to unbap
tised infants in hell.
Matthew, of Paris, an eminent historian of the fourteenth
century, gave the world the following piece of information :
“ It is well known that Mohammed was once a cardinal, and
became a heretic because he failed in his effort to be elected
Popeand that, having drank to excess, he fell by the road
side, and in this condition was killed by swine. “ And for
that reason his followers abhor pork even unto this day.”
Another eminent historian informs us that Nero was in the
habit of vomiting frogs. When I read this I said to myself:
Some of the croakers of the present day against Progress
would be the better for such a vomit.
The history of Charlemagne was written by Turpin, of
Rheims. He was a bishop. He assures us that the walls of
a city fell down in answer to prayer. That there were giants
in those days who could take fifty ordinary men under their
arms and walk away with them. “ With the greatest of these,
a direct descendant of Goliath, one Orlando had a theological
discussion, and that in the heat of the debate, when the giant
was overwhelmed with the argument, Orlando rushed forward
and inflicted a fatal stab.”
The history of Britain, written by the archdeacons of
Monmouth and Oxford, was wonderfully popular. According
to them, Brutus conquered England and built the city of
London. During his time it rained pure blood for three days.
At another time a monster came from the sea, and, after
having devoured great multitudes of people, swallowed the
king and disappeared. They tell us that King Arthur was
not born like other mortals, but was the result of a magical
contrivance; that he had great luck in killing giants; that
he killed one in France that had the cheerful habit of eating
some thirty men a.day. That this giant had clothes woven
of the beards of kings he had devoured. To cap the climax,
one of the authors of this book was promoted for having
w ri tten the only reli able history of his country.
�( 16 )
In all the histories of those days there is hardly a single
truth. Facts were considered unworthy of preservation.
Anything that really happened was not of sufficient interest
or importance to be recorded. The great religious historian,
Eusebius, ingeniously remarks that in his history he carefully
omitted whatever tended to discredit the Church, and that
he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory.
The same glorious principle was scrupulously adhered to by
all the historians of that time.
They wrote, and the people believed, that the tracts of
Pharaoh’s chariots were still visible on the sands of the Red
Sea, and that they had been miraculously preserved from the
winds and waves as perpetual witnesses of the great miracle
there performed.
It is safe to say that every truth in the histories of those
times is the result of accident or mistake.
They accounted for everything as the work of good and
evil spirits. With cause and effect they had nothing to do.
Facts were in no way related to each other. God governed
by infinite caprice, filled the world with miracles and discon
nected events. From the quiver of his hatred came the
arrows of famine, pestilence and death..
The moment that the idea is abandoned that all is
natural; that all phenomena are the necessary links in
the endless chain of being, the conception of history
becomes impossible. With the ghosts the present is not
the child of the past, nor the mother of the future. In the
domain of religion all is chance, accident and caprice.
Do not forget, I pray you, that our creeds were written by
the co-temporaries of these historians.
The same idea was applied to law. It was believed by our
intelligent ancestors that all law derived its sacredness and
its binding force from the fact that it had been communi
cated to man by the ghosts. Of course it was not pretended
that the ghosts told everybody the law ; but they told it to
a few, and the few told it to the people, and the people, as a
rule, paid them exceedingly well for their trouble. It was
thousands of ages before the people commenced making
laws for themselves, and strange as it may appear, most of
these laws were vastly superioi’ to the ghost article. Through
the web and woof of human legislation began to run and
shine and glitter the golden thread of justice.
During these years of darkness it was believed that rather
than see an act of injustice done ; rather than see the
innocent suffer ; rather than see the guilty triumph, some
ghost would interfere. This belief, as a rule, gave great
�( 17 )
Satisfaction to the victoi’ious party, and as the other man was
dead, no complaint was heard from him.
This doctrine was the sanctification of brute force and
chance. They had trials by battle, by fire, by water, and by
lot. Persons were made to grasp hot iron, and if it burnt
them their guilt was established. Others, with tied hands
and feet, were cast into the sea, and if they sank, the verdict
of guilty was unanimous—if they did not sink, they were in
league with devils.
So in England, persons charged with erime could appeal
to the corsned. The corsned was a piece of the sacramental
bread. If the defendant could swallow this piece he went
acquit. Godwin, Earl of Kent, in the time of Edward the
Confessor, appealed to the corsned. He failed to swallow
it and was choked to death.
The ghosts and their followers always took delight in
torture, in cruel and unusual punishments. For the infrac
tion of most of their laws, death was the penalty—death
produced by stoning and by fire. Sometimes, when man
committed only murder, he was allowed to flee to some
city of refuge. Murder was a crime against man. But for
saying certain words, or denying certain doctrines,_ or for
picking up sticks on certain days, or for worshipping the
wrong ghost, or for failing to pray to the right one, or for
laughing at a priest, or for saying that wine was not blood,
or that bread was not flesh, or for failing to regard ram’s
horns as artillery, or for insisting that a dry bone was
scarcely sufficient to take the place of water works, or that
a raven, as a ru e, made a poor landlord ¡—Death, produced
by all the ways that the ingenuity of hatred could devise,
was the penalty.
Law is a growth—it is a science. Right and wrong exist
in the nature of things. Things are not right because they
are commanded, nor wrong because they are prohibitedThere are real crimes enough without creating artificial
ones. All progress in legislation has for centuries consisted
in repealing the laws of the ghosts.
The idea of right and wrong is born of man’s capacity to
enjoy and suffer. If man could not suffer, if he could not
inflict injury upon his fellow, if he could neither feel nor
inflict pain, the idea of right and wrong never would have
entered his brain. But for this, the word “ conscience ” never
would have passed the lips of man.
There is one good—happiness. There is but one sin—
selfishness. All law should be for the preservation of the
one and the destruction of the other.
�( 18 )
Under the regime of the.ghosts, laws were not supposed toexist m the nature of things. They were supposed to be
simply the irresponsible command of a ghost. These commands were not supposed to rest upon reason, they were the
product of arbitrary will.
The penalties for the violation of these laws were as cruel
a0 the laws were senseless and absurd. Working on the
Sabbath and murder were both punished with death. The
tendency of . such laws is to blot from the human heart the
sense of justice.
To show you how perfectly every department of know
ledge, or ignorance rather, was saturated with superstition, I
will for a moment refer to the science of language.
It. was thought by our fathers, that Hebrew was the
°^jnal lan"ua#e 5 that it was taught to Adam in the Garden
of Eden by the Almighty, and that consequently all languages
came from, and can be traced to, the Hebrew. Every fact
inconsistent with that idea was discarded. According to the
ghosts, the trouble of the Tower of Babel accounted for the
fact, that all people did. not. speak Hebrew. The Babel
business settled all questions in the science of language.
After a time, so many facts were found to be inconsistent
with the Hebrew idea that it began to fall into disrepute,
and other languages began to compete for the honor of beiii0the original.
°
Andre Kemp, in 1569, published a work on the language of
Paradise,111 which he maintained that God spoke to A d am in
Swedish; that Adam answered in Danish; and that the
serpent—which appears to me quite probable-spoke to Eve
in French. Erro, m a work published at Madrid, took the
Basque was the.language spoken in the Garden
of Eden.; but in 1580 Goropius published his celebrated work
at Antwerp, m which he put the whole matter at rest by
showing, beyond all doubt, that the language spoken in
Paradise was neither more nor less than plain Holland Dutch.
The real founder of the science of language was Leibnitz,
a cotemporary of Sir Isaac Newton. He discarded the idea
that all languages could be traced to one language. He
maintained that language was a natural growth. Experience
teaches us that this must be so. Words are continually dying
out and continually being born. Words are naturally and
necessarily produced. Words are the garments of thought,
the robes of ideas. Some are as rude as the skins of wild
beasts, and others glisten and glitter like silk and gold They
have been born of hatred and revenge; of love and self
sacrifice ; of hope and fear, of agony and joy. These words
are born of the terror and beauty of nature. The stars have
�(ly)
fashioned them. In them mingle the darkness and the dawn.
From everything they have taken something. Words are the
crystalisations of human history, of all that man has enjoyed
and suffered—his victories and defeats—all that he has lost
and won. Words are the shadows of all that has been—the
mirrors of all that is.
The ghosts also enlightened our fathers in astronomy and
geology. According to them the earth was made out of
nothing, and a little more nothing having been taken than
was used in the construction of this world, the stars were
made out of what was left over. Cosmos, in the sixth century,
taught that the stars were impelled by angels, who either
carried them on their shoulders, rolled them in front of them,
or drew them after. He also taught that each angel that
pushed a star took great pains to observe what the other
angels were doing, so that the relative distances between the
stars might always remain the same. He also gave his idea
as to the form of the world.
He stated that the world was a vast parallelogram; that on
the outside was a strip of land, like the frame of a common
slate; that then there was a strip of water, and in the middle
a great piece of land; that Adam and Eve lived on the outer
strip; that their descendants, with the exception of the Noah
family, were drowned by a flood on this outer strip; that the
ark finally rested on the middle piece of land where we now
are. He accounted for night and day by saying that on the
outside strip of land there was a high mountain, around which
the sun and moon revolved, and that when the sun was on the
other side of the mountain it was night; and when on this
side it was day.
He also declared that the earth was flat. This he proved
by many passages from the Bible. Among other reasons for
believing the earth to be flat he brought forward the follow
ing : We are told in the New Testament that Christ shall
come again in glory and power, and all the world shall see
him. Now, if the world is round, how are the people on the
other side going to see Christ when he comes ? That settled
the question, and the Church, not only endorsed the book,
but declared that whoever believed less or more than stated
¡by Cosmos, was a heretic.
In those blessed days, Ignorance was a king and Science an
outcast.
They knew the moment this earth ceased to be the centre
of the universe, and became a mere speck in the starry heaven
of existence, that their religion would become a childish fable
of the past.
�( 20 )
In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, men
enslaved their fellow men; they trampled upon the rights of
women and children. In the name and by the authority of
the ghosts, they bought and sold and destroyed each other;
they filled heaven with tyrants and earth with slaves, the
present with despair and the future with horror. In the name
and by the authority of the ghosts, they imprisoned the
human mind, polluted the conscience, hardened the heart,
subverted justice, crowned robbery, sainted hypocrisy, and
extinguished for a thousand years the torch of reason.
I have endeavored, in some faint degree, to show you what
has happened, and what will always happen when men are
governed by superstition and fear; when they desert the
sublime standard of reason; when they take the words of
others and do not investigate for themselves.
Even the great men of those days were nearly as weak in
this matter as the most ignorant. Kepler, one of the greatest
men of the world, an astronomer second to none, although
he plucked from the stars the secrets of the universe, was an
astrologer, and really believed that he could predict the
career of a man by finding what star was in the ascendant
at his birth. This great man breathed, so to speak, the
atmosphere of his time. He believed in the music of the
spheres, and assigned alto, bass, tenor, and treble to certain
stars.
Tycho Brahe, another astronomer, kept an idiot, whose
disconnected and meaningless words he carefully set down,
and then put them together in such mannei’ as to make
prophecies, and then waited patiently to see them fulfilled.
Luther believed that he had actually seen the Devil, and had
discussed points of theology with him. The human mind
was in chains. Every idea almost was a monster. Thought
was deformed. Eacts were looked upon as worthless. Only
the wonderful was worth preserving. Things that actually
happened were not considered worth recording—real occur
rences were too common. Everybody expected the miraculous.
The ghosts were supposed to be busy; devils were thought
to be the most industrious things in the universe, and with
these imps every occurrence of an unusual character was in
someway connected. There was no order, no serenity, no
certainty in anything. Everything depended upon ghosts
and phantoms. . Man was, for the most part, at the mercy of
malevolent spirits. He protected himself as best he could
with holy water, and tapers, and wafers, and cathedrals. He
made noises and rung bells to frighten the ghosts, and he
made music to charm them. He used smoke to choke them,
and incense to please them. He wore beads and crosses.
�( 21 )
He said prayers, and hired others to say them. He fasted
when he was hungry, and feasted when he was not. He
believed everything that seemed unreasonable, just to
appease the ghosts. He humbled himself. He crawled in
the dust. He shut the doors and windows, and excluded
every ray of light from the temple of the soul. He debauched
and polluted his own mind, and toiled night and day to
repair the walls of his own prison. From the garden of his
heart he plucked and trampled upon the holy flowers of pity.
The priests revelled in horrible descriptions of hell. Con
cerning the wrath of God, they grew eloquent. They
denounced man as totally depraved. They made reason
blasphemy, and pity a crime. Nothing so delighted them as
painting the torments and sufferings of the lost. Over the
worm that never dies they grew poetic; and the second
death filled them with a kind of holy delight. According
to them, the smoke and cries ascending from hell were the
perfume and music of heaven.
At the risk of being tiresome, I have said what I have to
show you the productions of the human mind, when enslaved;
the effects of widespread ignorance—the results of fear. I
want to convince you that every form of slavery is a viper,
that, sooner or later, will strike its poison fangs into the
bosoms of men.
The first great step towards progress is, for man to cease
to be the slave of man ; the second, to cease to be the slave
of the monsters of his own creation—of the ghosts and
phantoms of the air.
For ages the human race was imprisoned. Through the
bars and grates came a few struggling rays of light. Against
these grates and bars Science pressed its pale and thoughtful
face, wooed by the holy dawn of human advancement.
Men found that the real was the useful; that what a man
knows is better than what a ghost says; that an event is
more valuable than a prophesy. They found that diseases
were not produced by spirits, and could not be cured by
frightening them away. They found that death was as
natural as life. They began to study the anatomy and
chemistry of the human body, and found that all was natural
and within the domain of law.
The conjnror and sorcerer were discarded, and the phy
sician and surgeon employed. They found that the earth
was not flat; that the stars were not mere specks. They
found that being born undei’ a particular planet had nothing
to do with the fortunes of men.
The astrologer was discharged and the astronomer took
his place.
�( ¿2 )
# They found that the earth had swept through the constella
tions for millions of ages. They found that good and evil
were produced by natural causes, and not by ghosts; that
man could not be good enough or bad enough to stop or cause
a rain; that diseases were produced as naturally as grass,
and were not sent as punishments upon man for failing
to believe a certain creed. They found that man, through
intelligence, could take advantage of the forces of nature—
that he could make the waves, the winds, the flames, and the
lightnings of heaven do his bidding and minister to his
wants. They found that the ghosts knew nothing of benefit
to man; that they were utterly ignorant of geology—of
astronomy—of geography;—that they knew nothing of
history;—that they were poor doctors and worse surgeons ;
—that they knew nothing of law and less of justice;—that
they were without brains, and utterly destitute of hearts;—
that they knew nothing of the rights of men;—that they
were despisers of women, the haters of progress, the enemies
of science, and the destroyers of liberty.
The condition of the world during the Dark Ages shows
exactly the result of enslaving the bodies and souls of men.
In those days there was no freedom. Labor was despised,
and a laborer was considered but little above a beast.
Ignorance, like a vast cowl, covered the brain of the world,
and superstition ran riot with the imagination of man. The
air was filled with angels, with demons and monsters.
Credulity sat upon the throne of the soul, and Reason was
an exiled king. A man to be distinguished must be a
soldier or a monk. War and theology, that is to say, murder
and hypocrisy, were the principal employments of man.
Industry was a slave, theft was commerce; murder was war,
hypocrisy was religion.
Every Christian country maintained that it was no robbery
to take the property of Mohammedans by force, and no
murder to kill the owners. Lord Bacon was the first man
of note who maintained that a Christian country was bound
to keep its plighted faith with an infidel nation. Reading
and writing were considered dangerous arts. Every layman
who could read and write was suspected of being a heretic.
All thought was discouraged. They forged chains of super
stition for the mind, and manacles of iron for the bodies of
men. The earth was ruled by the cowl and sword, by the
mitre and sceptre, by the altar and throne, by Fear and Foroe,
by Ignorance and Faith, by ghouls and ghosts.
In the fifteenth century the following law was in force in
England:
�( 23 )
“ That whosoever reads the scriptures in the mother
tongue, shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and goods from their
heirs for ever, and so be condemned for heretics to God,
enemies to the Crown, and most arrant traitors to the land.”
During the first year this law was in force, thirty-nine
were hanged for its violation and their bodies burned.
In the sixteenth century men were burned because they
failed to kneel to a procession of monks.
The slightest word uttered against the superstition of the
time was punished with death.
Even the reformers, so-called, of those days, had no idea
of intellectual liberty—no idea even of toleration. Luther,
Knox, Calvin, believed in religious liberty only when they
were in the minority. The moment they were clothed with
power they began to exterminate with fire and sword.
Castellio was the first minister who advocated the liberty
of the soul. He was regarded by the reformers as a
criminal, and treated as though he had committed the crime
of crimes.
Bodinus, a lawyer of France, about the same time, wrote a
few words in favoi’ of the freedom of conscience, but
public opinion was overwhelmingly against him. The
people were ready, anxious, and willing, with whip, and
chain, and fire, to drive from the mind of man the heresy
that he had a right to think.
Montaigne, a man blest with so much common sense that
he was the most uncommon man of his time, was the first to
raise a voice against torture in France. But what was the
voice of one man against the terrible cry of ignorant,
infatuated, superstitious and malevolent millions? It was
the cry of a drowning man in the wild roar of the cruel sea.
In spite of the efforts of the brave few the infamous war
against the freedom of the soul was waged until at least one
pundred millions of human beings—fathers, mothers,
brothers, sisters—with hopes, loves, and aspirations like
ourselves, were sacrificed upon the cruel altar of an ignorant
faith. They perished in every way by which death can be
broduced. Every nerve of pain was sought out and touched
by the believers in ghosts.
For my part I glory in the fact, that here in the new
world—in the United States—liberty of conscience was first
guaranteed to man, and that the Constitution of the United
•States was the first great decree entered in the high court of
human equity for ever divorcing Church and State—the
first injunction granted against the interference of the
ghosts. This was one of the grandest steps ever taken by
ijhe human race in the direction of Progress.
�( 24 )
You will ask what has caused this wonderful change in
three hundred years. And I answer—the inventions and
discoveries of the few ; the brave thoughts, the heroic utter
ances of the few—the acquisition of a few facts.
Besides, you must remember that every wrong in some way
tends to abolish itself. It is hard to make a lie stand always.
A lie will not fit a fact. It will only fit another lie made for
the purpose. The life of a lie is simply a question of time.
Nothing but truth is immortal. The nobles and kings quar
relled: the priests began to dispute ; the ideas of government
began to change.
In 1441 printing was discovered. At that time the past
was a vast cemetery with hardly an epitaph. The ideas of
men had mostly perished in the brain that produced them.
The lips of the human race had been sealed. Printing gave
pinions to thought. It preserved ideas. It made it possible
for man to bequeath to the future the riches of his brain, the
wealth of his soul. At first, it was used to flood the world
with the mistakes of the ancients, but since that time it has
been flooding the world with light.
When people read they begin to reason, and when they
reason they progress. This was another grand step in the
direction of Progress.
The discovery of powder, that put the peasant almost upon
a par with the prince; that put an end to the so-called age of
chivalry; that released a vast number of men from the
armies; that gave pluck and nerve a chance with brute
strength.
The discovery of America, whose shores were trod by the
restless feet of adventure; that brought people holding every
shade of superstition together ; that gave the world an oppor
tunity to compare notes, and to laugh at the follies of each
other. Out of this strange mingling of all creeds, and super
stitions, and facts, and theories, and countless opinions, came
the Great Republic.
Every fact has pushed a superstition from the brain and a
ghost from the clouds. Every mechanic art is an educator.
Every loom, every reaper and mower, every steamboat, every
locomotive, every engine, every press, every telegraph, is a
missionary of Science and an apostle of Progress. Every
mill, every furnace, every building with its wheels and levers,
in which something is made for the convenience, for the use,
and for the comfort and elevation of man, is a church, and
every school house is a temple.
Education is the most radical thing in the world.
To teach the alphabet is to inaugurate a revolution.
To build a school house is to construct a fort.
�(25)
Every library is an arsenal filled with the weapons and
ammunition of Progress, and every fact is a monitor with
fades of iron and a turret of steel.
T
I thank the inventors,., the discoverers, the thinkers. 1
thank Columbus and Magellan. I thank Galileo, and Coper
nicus, and Kepler, and Des Cartes, and Newton, and La
Place. I thank Locke, and Hume, and Bacon, and pbake'
speare, and Kant, and Fichte, and Liebmtz, and Goethe. 1
thank Fulton, and Watts, and Volta, and Galvani, and
Franklin, and Morse, who made lightning the messenger of
man. I thank Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science. 1
thank Crompton and Arkwright, from whose brains leaped
the looms and spindles that clothe the world. I thank Luther
for protesting against the abuses of the Church, and I
denounce him because he was the enemy of liberty. 1 thank
Calvin for writing a book in favor of religious freedom, and 1
abhor him because he burned Servetus. I thank Knox for
resisting episcopal persecution, and I hate him because he
persecuted in his turn. I thank the Puritans for saying,
“ Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God, and yet 1 am
compelled to say that they were tyrants themselves. 1 thank
Thomas Paine because he was a believer m liberty, and because
he did as much to make my country free as any other human
being. I thank Voltaire, that great man who, for halt a
century, was the intellectual emperor of Europe, and who,
from his throne at the foot of the Alps, pointed the finger of
scorn at every hypocrite in Christendom. I thank Darwin,
Haeckel and Biichner, Spencer, Tyndall and Huxley, Draper,
Lecky and Buckle.
,, ....
I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the thinkers, the
scientists, the explorers. I thank the honest millions who
have toiled.
,
,,
_ ..
I thank the brave men with brave thoughts. They are the
Atlases upon whose broad and mighty shoulders rests the
grand fabric of civilisation. They are the men who have
broken, and are still breaking, the chains of Superstition.
They are the Titans who carried Olympus by assault, ana
who will soon stand victors upon Sinai’s crags.
We are beginning to learn that to exchange a mistake or
the truth—a superstition for a fact—to ascertain the real is
t0Happiness is the only possible good, and all that tends to
the happiness of man is right, and is of value. All that
tends to develop the bodies and minds of men; all that gives
us better houses, better clothes, better food, better pictures,
grander music, better heads, better hearts; all that renders
us more intellectual and more loving, nearer just; that
�( 26 )
makes us better husbands and wives, better children, better
citizens—all these things combined produce what I call
Progress.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Man advances only as he overcomes the obstructions of
Nature, and this can be done only by labor and by thought.
Labor is the foundation of all. Without labor, and without
great labor, progress is impossible. The progress of the
world depends upon the men who talk in the fresh furrows
and through the rustling corn; upon those who sow and
reap; upon those whose faces are radiant with the glare of
furnace fires; upon the delvers in the mines, and the workers
in shops; upon those who give to the winter air the ringing
music of the axe; upon those who battle with the boisterous
billows of the sea; upon the inventors and discoverers; upon
the brave thinkers.
. From the surplus produced by labor, schools and univer
sities are built and fostered. From this surplus the painter
is paid for the productions of the pencil; the sculptor for
chiselling shapeless rock into forms divinely beautiful, and
the poet for singing the hopes, the loves, the memories, and
the aspirations of the world. This surplus has given us the
books in which we converse with the dead and living kings
of the human race. It has given us all there is of beauty, of
elegance, and of refined happiness.
I am aware that there is a vast difference of opinion as to
what progress really is; that many denounce the ideas of
to-day as destructive of all happiness—of all good. I know
that there are many worshippers of the past. They venerate
the ancient because it is ancient. They Bee no beauty in
anything from which they do not blow the dust of ages with
the breath of praise. They say, no masters like the old; no
religion, no governments like the ancient; no orators, no
poets, no statesmen like those who have been dust for two
thousand years. Others love the modern simply because it
is modern.
We should have gratitude enough to acknowledge the
obligations we are under to the great and heroic of antiquity,
and independence enough not to believe what they said
simply because they said it.
With the idea that labor is the basis of progress goes the
truth that labor must be free. The laborer must be a free man.
The free man, working for wife and child, gets his head
and hands in partnership.
To do the greatest amount of work in the shortest space of
time, is the problem of free labor.
Slavery does the least work in the longest space of time.
�( 27 )
Free labor will give us wealth. Free thought will give us
truth.
Slowly, but surely, man is freeing his imagination of these
sexless phantoms, of the cruel ghosts. Slowly, but surely,
he is rising above the superstitions of the past. He is
learning to rely upon himself. He is beginning to find that
labor is the only prayer that ought to be answered, and that
hoping, toiling, aspiring, suffering men and women are of
more importance than all the ghosts that ever wandered
through the fenceless fields of space.
The believers in ghosts claim still, that they are the only
wise and virtuous people upon the earth; claim still, that
there is a difference between them and unbelievers so vast,
that they will be infinitely rewarded, and the others infinitely
punished.
I ask you to-night, do the theories and doctrines of the
theologians satisfy the heart or brain of the nineteenth
century p
Have the churches the confidence of mankind ?
Does the merchant give credit to a man because he belongs
to a church ?
Does the banker loan money to a man because he is a
Methodist or Baptist P
Will a certificate of good standing in any church be taken
as collateral security for one dollar ?
Will you take the word of a church member, or his note, or
his oath, simply because he is a church member.
Are the clergy, as a class, better, kinder and more generous
to their families—to their fellow-mem—than doctors, lawyers,
merchants and farmers P
Does a belief in ghosts and unreasonable things necessarily
•make people honest ?
When a man loses confidence in Moses, must the people
lose confidence in him ?
Does not the credit system in morals breed extravagance
in sin ?
Why send missionaries to other lands while every peni
tentiary in ours iB filled with criminals ?
Is it philosophical to say that they who do right carry a
-cross ?
Is it a source of joy to think that perdition is the destinaon of nearly all of the children of men ?
Is it worth while to quarrel about original sin—when there
is so much copy ?
Does it pay to dispute about baptism, and the Trinity, and
predestination, and apostolic succession, and the infallibility
�( 28 )
of churches, of popes, and of books ? Does all this do anv
good ?
J
Are the theologians welcomers of new truths ? Are they
noted for their candor? Do they treat an opponent with
common fairness? Are they investigators? Do they pull
forward or do they hold back ?
Is science indebted to the Church for a solitary fact ?
What Church is an asylum for a persecuted truth ?
What great reform has been inaugurated by the Church ?
Did the Church abolish slavery ?
Has the Church raised its voice against war ?
. I used to think that there was in religion no real restrain
ing force. Upon this point my mind has changed. Religion
will prevent man from committing artificial crimes and
offences.
A man committed murder. The evidence was so conclusivethat he confessed his guilt.
He was asked why he killed his fellow man.
He replied: “Formoney.”
“Did you get any?”
“Yes.”
“ How much ?”
“ Fifteen cents.”
<< What did you do with this money ?”
li
Spent it.”
“ What for ?”
“ Liquor.”
“ What else did you find upon the dead man ?”
“ He had his dinner in a bucket—some meat and bread.”
“ What did you do with that ?”
“ I ate the bread.”
“ What did you do with the meat ?”
“ I threw it away.”
“ Why ?”
“ It was Friday.”
Just to the extent that man has freed himself from thehe has advanced. Just to the extent
that he has freed himself from the tyrants of his own creation
he has progressed. Just to the extent that he has investi. £or himself he has lost confidence in superstition.
With knowledge obedience becomes intelligent acquiescence.
It is no longer degrading. Acquiescence in the understood
in the known is the act of a sovereign, not of a slave. It
ennobles, it does not degrade.
Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order"
to have it himself. He has found that a master is also a
slave; that a tyrant is himself a serf. He has found that-
�( 29 )
■governments should be founded and administered by man
■and for man; that the rights of all are equal; that the
powers that be are not ordained by God ; that woman is at
least the equal of man; that men existed before books; that
relig'on is one of the phases of thought through which the
world is passing; that all creeds were made by man; that
everything is natural; that a miracle is an impos-ibility;
that we know nothing of origin and destiny; that concerning
the unknown we are equally ignorant; that the pew has a
right to contradict what the pulpit asserts; that man is
responsible only to himself and those he injures, and that all
have a right to think.
True religion must be free. Without perfect liberty of
the mind there can be no true religion, Without liberty the
brain is a dungeon—the mind a convict. The slave may
bow and cringe and crawl, but he cannot adore—he cannot
love.
True religion is the perfume of a free and grateful heart.
True religion is a subordination of the passions to the per
ceptions of the intellect. True religion is not a theory—it
is a practice. It is rot a creed—it is a life.
A theory that is afraid of investigation is undeserving a
place in the human mind.
I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I do not
pretend- to have fathomed the abyss, nor to have floated on
outstretched wings level with the dim heights of thought.
I simply plead for freedom. I denounce the cruelties and
horrors of slavery. I ask for light and air for the souls of
men. I say, take off those chains—break those manacles—
free those limbs—release that brain ! I plead for the right to
think—-to reason—to investigate. I ask that the future may
be enriched with the honest thoughts of men. I implore every
human being to be a soldier in the army of progress.
I will not invade the rights of others. You have no right
to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought. You
have no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and
strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have no
right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the altars of
ghosts Believe what you may; preach what you desire;
have all the forms and ceremonies you please; exercise your
liberty in your own way; but extend to all others the same
right.
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they
accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous,
if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one
$nd all, because they enslave the minds of men.
�( 30 )
I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination thathave ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room
room for the human mind.
Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have for one
we know not of? Why should we enslave ourselves? Why
should we forge fetters for our own hands ? Why should we
be the slaves of phantoms ? The darkness of barbarism was
the womb of the shadows. In the light of science they'
cannot cloud the sky for ever. They have reddened thehands of man with innocent blood. They made the cradle a
curse, and the grave a place of torment.
They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human
race. They subverted all ideas of justice by promising infinite
rewards for. finite virtues, and threatening infinite punish—i
ment for finite offences.
They filled the future with heavens and with hells, with
the shining peaks of selfish joy and the lurid abysses of flame.
For ages they kept the world in ignorance and awe, in want
and misery, in fear and chains.
I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for
individual independence. I plead for the rights of labor and
of thought. I plead for a chainless future. Let the ghostsgo—justice remains. Let them disappear—men and women
and children are left. Let the monsters fade away—the
world is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its
seasons of smiles and frowns, its spring of leaf and bud, its
summer of shade and flower and murmuring stream ; its
autumn with laden boughs, when the withered banners of
the corn are still, and gathered fields are growing strangely
wan; while death, poetic death, with hands that color what
they touch, weaves in the autumn wood her tapestries of
gold and brown.
The world remains with its winters and homes and firesides,
where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. All these
are left; and music, with its sad and thrilling voice, and all
there is of art and song and hopo and love and aspiration
high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go—we will worship
them no more.
Manis greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grander
than all the creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the
great sea, and these creeds, and books, and religions, are but
the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and these religions
and dogmas and theories are but the mists and clouds
changing continually, destined finally to melt away.
That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, and igno
rance, cannot endure. In the religion of the future there
�( 31 )
will be men and women and children, all the aspirations of
the soul, and all the tender1 humanities of the heart.
Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let
them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands,
and fade for ever from the imaginations of men.
�WORKS BY COL. R. G. INGERSOLL.
MISTAKES OF MOSES
...
...
...
Superior edition, in cloth ...
..
...
DEFENCE OF FREETHOUGHT
Five Hours’ Speech at the Trial of C. B.
Reynolds for Blasphemy. ...
...
. .
REPLY TO GLADSTONE
With a Biography by
J. M. Wheeler ...
...
...
...
ROME OR REASON ? Reply to Cardinal Manning
CRIMES AGAINST CRIMINALS
...
...
AN ORATION ON WALT WHITMAN...
...
ORATION ON VOLTAIRE ...
...
...
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
...
...
...
PAINE THE PIONEER
...
...
...
HUMANITY’S DEBT TO THOMAS PAINE
...
ERNEs 1' RENAN AND JESUS CHRIST
..
THE THREE PHILANTHROPISTS
...
...
TRUE RELIGION
...
...
...
...
FAITH AND FACT. Reply to Rev. Dr. Field
...
GOD AND MAN.Second Reply to Dr. Field
...
SKULLS ...
...
...
...
...
THE HOUSEHOLD OF FAITH
...
...
LOVE THE REDEEMER. Reply to Count Tolstoi
THE LIMITS OF TOLERATION
A Discussion with Hon. F. D. Coudert ...
THE DYING CREED
...
...
...
DO I BLASPHEME ?
...
...
...
THE CLERGY AND COMMON SENSE
...
SOCIAL SALVATION
...
...
...
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ...
...
...
GOD AND THE STATE
...
...
...
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ?
...
...
WHY AM I AN AGNOSTIC ? Part II.
...
ART AND MORALITY
...
...
...
CREEDS AND SPIRITUALITY
...
...
CHRIST AND MIRACLES
...
...
...
THE GREAT MISTAKE
...
...
...
LIVE TOPICS
...
.
...
REAL BLASPHEMY
...
...
...
REPAIRING THE IDOLS
...
...
...
MYTH AND MIRACtE
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Victorian Blogging
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The ghosts
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 31 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: "Works by Col. R.G. Ingersoll" listed on back cover. No. 26f in Stein checklist. Printed by G.W. Foote. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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1893
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Spiritualism
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Ghosts
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Supernatural
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32
Pa m p h Iets for the Million—No» 10
THE GHOSTS
By R. G. INGERSOLL
London:
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
�THE
RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION,
LIMITED.
Chairman :
Edward Clodd
Honorary Associates :
Alfred William Benn
Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner
Sir Edward Brabrook, C.B.
George Brandes
Dr. Charles Callaway
Dr. Paul Carus
Prof. B. H. Chamberlain
Dr. Stanton Coit
W. W. Collins
F. J. Gould
Prof. Ernst Haeckel
Leonard Huxley
'Joseph McCabe
Eden Phillpotts
John M. Robertson
Dr. W. R. Washington Sullivan
Prof. Lester F. Ward
Prof. Ed. A. Westermarck
Secretary and Registered Offices:
Charles E. Hooper, Nos. 5 & 6 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.
How to Join and Help the R.P. A.
The minimum subscription to constitute Membership is 5s., renewable in January of
each year.
A form of application for Membership, with full particulars, including latest Annual
Report and specimen copy of the Literary Guide (the unofficial organ of the Associa
tion), can be obtained gratis on application to the Secretary.
Copies of new publications are forwarded regularly on account of Members’sub
scriptions, or a Member can arrange to make his own selection from the lists of
new books which are issued from time to time.
To join the Association is to help on its work, but to subscribe liberally is of course
to help more effectually. As Subscribers of from 5s. to 10s. and more are entitled to
receive back the whole value of their subscriptions in books, on which there is little
if any profit made, the Association is dependent, for the capital required to carryout
its objects, upon subscriptions of a larger amount and upon donations and bequests.
Ube Xiterar^ Guide
(the unofficial organ of the' R. P. A.)
is published on the 1st of each month, price 2d., by post 2W. Annual subscrip
tion : 2S. 6d. post paid.
The contributors comprise the leading writers in the Rationalist Movement,
including Mr. Joseph McCabe, Mrs. H. Bradlaugh Bonner, Mr. F. J. Gould
Mr. Charles T. Gorham, Dr. C. Callaway, Mr. A. W. Benn, and “ Mimnermus
SPECIMEN COPY POST FREE.
London : Watts & Co., 17 Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�'B U <
Pamphletsfor the Million.—No. io
national secular society
R. G. INGERSOLL
THE GHOSTS
ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST
PRESS
ASSOCIATION,
LIMITED
WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON’S COURT,
FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C. — 1912
�PUBLISHERS ’ NOTE
This famous Lecture of Colonel Ingersoll is taken from the
Dresden edition of his works (12 vols.; £6 net), which was
published in America shortly after his death. In this country
nearly all his principal lectures and essays, apart from his
legal addresses, are included in the series of Lectures and
Essays issued in three parts at 6d. each (by post 8d.; the
three parts is. iod.), or in one handsome cloth volume at
2s. 6d. net (by post 2s. nd.).
PAMPHLETS FOR THE MILLION
ALREADY ISSUED
1. Why I Left the Church.
6. Liberty of Man, Woman,
By Joseph McCabe.
48
and Child.
By Colonel
PP-; id.
R. G. Ingersoll. 48 pp.; id.
2. Why Am I An Agnostic?
7. The Age of Reason. By
By Colonel R. G. Ingersoll.
Thomas Paine. 124 pp. ; 2d.
24 PP-; id.
8. Last Words on Evolu
3. Christianity’s Debt to
TO
tion. By Prof. Haeckel.
Earlier Religions.
By
64 pp.; id.
P. Vivian. (A Chapter from
9. Science and the Purpose
The Churches and Modern
OB' Life.
By Fridtjof
Thought.} 64 pp.; id.
Nansen. 16 pp.; £d.
4. How to Reform Mankind. 10. The Ghosts. By Colonel
By Colonel R. G. Ingersoll.
R. G. Ingersoll. 32 pp.; id.
24 pp.; ¿d.
11. The Passing of Histo
5. Myth or History in the
rical Christianity.
By
■Old Testament? By S.
Rev. R. Roberts. 16 pp.;
Laing. 48 pp.; id.
id.
�THE GHOSTS
let them cover their eyeless sockets with their flesh
less HANDS AND FADE FOREVER FROM THE IMAGINATION OF MEN.
HERE are three theories by which men account for all
phenomena, for everything that happens: first, the
supernatural; second, the supernatural and natural; third, the
natural. Between these theories there has been, from the
dawn of civilisation, a continual conflict. In this great war
nearly all the soldiers have been in the ranks of the super
natural. The believers in the supernatural insist that matter
is controlled and directed entirely by powers from without;
while naturalists maintain that nature acts from within;
that nature is not acted upon; that the universe is all there
is * that nature with infinite arms embraces everything that
exists, and that all supposed powers beyond the limits of
the material are simply ghosts.
You say,
Oh, this is
materialism 1 ” What is matter? I take in my hand some
earth—in this dust put seeds. Let the arrows of light from
the quiver of the sun smite upon it; let the rain fall upon it.
The seeds will grow, and a plant will bud and blossom.
Do you understand this? Can you explain it better than
you can the production of thought? Have you the slightest
conception of what it really is?
And yet you speak of
matter as though acquainted with its origin, as though you
had torn from the clenched hands of the rocks the secrets
of material existence. Do you know what force is? Can
you account for molecular action? Are you really familiar
with chemistry, and can you account for the loves and hatre s
of the atoms? Is there not something in matter that forever
-eludes?
After all, can you get beyond, above, or below
appearances? Before you cry “Materialism! ” had you not
better ascertain what matter really is? Can you think even
of anything without a material basis? Is it possible to
imagine annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible for you
to conceive of the creation of an atom? Can you have a
thought that was not suggested to you by what you call
matter ?
T
�4
THE GHOSTS
Our fathers denounced materialism, and accounted for all
phenomena by the caprice of gods and devils.
For thousands of years it was believed that ghosts, good
and bad, benevolent and malignant, weak and powerful
in some mysterious way, produced all phenomena: that
disease and health, happiness and misery, fortune and misortune, peace and war, life and death, success and failure
were but arrows from the quivers of these ghosts; that
shadowy phantoms rewarded and punished mankind; that
they were pleased and displeased by the actions of men;
that they sent and withheld the snow, the light, and the
rain ; that they blessed the earth with harvests or cursed
it with famine; that they fed or starved the children of men;
that they crowned and uncrowned kings; that they took
sides in war; that they controlled the winds; that they
gave prosperous voyages, allowing the brave mariner to
meet his wife and child inside the harbour bar, or sent
the storms, strewing the sad shores with wrecks of ships
and the bodies of men.
Formerly these ghosts were believed to be almost innumer
able. Earth, air, and water were filled with these phantom
hosts.
In modern times they have greatly decreased in
number, because the second theory—a mingling of the super
natural and natural—has generally been adopted.
The
remaining ghosts, however, are supposed to perform the same
offices as the hosts of yore.
It has always been believed that these ghosts could in
some way be appeased ; that they could be flattered by
sacrifices, by prayer, by fasting, by the building of temples
and cathedrals, by the blood of men and beasts, by forms
and ceremonies, by chants, by kneelings and prostrations,
by flagellations and maimings, by renouncing the joys of
home, by living alone in the wide desert, by the practice of
celibacy, by inventing instruments of torture, by destroying
men, women, and children, by covering the earth with
ungeons, by burning unbelievers, by putting chains upon the
thoughts and manacles upon the limbs of men, by believing
things without evidence and against evidence, by disbelieving
and denying demonstration, by despising facts, by hating
reason,, by denouncing liberty, by maligning heretics, by
slandering the dead, by subscribing to senseless and cruel
creeds, by discouraging investigation, by worshipping a book,
by the cultivation of credulity, by observing certain times
�THE GHOSTS
F
5
and days, by counting beads, by gazing at crosses, by hiring
others, to repeat verses and prayers, by burning candles and
ringing bells, by enslaving each other and putting out the
eyes of the soul. All this has been done to appease and
flatter these monsters of the air.
In the history of our poor world, no horror has been omitted,
no infamy has been left undone, by the believers in ghosts
by the worshippers of these fleshless phantoms.. And yet
these shadows were born of cowardice and malignity. They
were painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of ignorance
by that artist called superstition.
.
From these ghosts our fathers received information. They
were the schoolmasters of our ancestors.. They were the
scientists and philosophers, the geologists, legislators,
astronomers, physicians, metaphysicians, and historians of
the past. For ages these ghosts were supposed to be the
only source of real knowledge. They inspired men to write
books, and the books were considered sacred. If facts were
found to be inconsistent with these books, so much the
worse tor the facts, and especially for their discoverers. It
was then, and still is, believed that these books are the
basis of the idea of immortality; that to give up these volumes,
or, rather, the idea that they are inspired, is to renounce
the idea of immortality. This I deny.
The idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and
flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope
and fear beating against the shores and rocks of time and
fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any
religion.
It was born of human affection, and it will
continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of
doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
It is the rainbow—Hope shining upon the tears of grief.
From the books written by the ghosts we have at last
ascertained that they knew nothing about the world in which
we live. Did they know anything about the next? Upon
every point where contradiction is possible they have been
contradicted.
By these ghosts, by these citizens of the air, the affairs
of government were administered; all authority to govern
came from them. The emperors, kings, and potentates all
had commissions from these phantoms.
Man was not
considered as the source of any power whatever. T<? rebel
against the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing
�6
THE GHOSTS
less than the blood of the offender could appease the invisible
phantom or the visible tyrant. Kneeling was the proper
position to ,be assumed by the multitude. The prostrate
were thé good. Those who stood erect were infidels and
traitors. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts,
man was enslaved, crushed, and plundered. The many toiled
wearily in the storm and sun that the few favourites of the
ghosts might live in idleness. The many lived in huts, and
caves, and dens, that the few might dwell in palaces. The
many covered themselves with rags, that the few might
robe themselves in purple and in gold. The many crept, and
cringed, and crawled, that the few might tread upon their
flesh with iron feet.
From the ghosts men received, not only authority, but
information of every kind. They told us the form of this
earth. They informed us that eclipses were caused by the
sins of man ; that the universe was made in six days ; that
astronomy and geology were devices of wicked men,
instigated by wicked ghosts ; that gazing at the sky with a
telescope was a dangerous thing ; that digging into the earth
was sinful curiosity ; that trying to be wise above what they
had written was born of a rebellious and irreverent spirit.
They told us there was no virtue like belief, and no crime
like doubt ; that investigation was pure impudence, and the
punishment therefor eternal torment. They not only told
us all about this world, but about two others ; and, if their
statements about the other worlds are as true as about this,
no one can estimate the value of their information.
For counless ages the world was governed by ghosts, and
they spared no pains to change the eagle of the human
intellect into a bat of darkness. To accomplish this infamous
purpose ; to drive the love of truth from the human heart ;
to prevent the advancement of mankind ; to shut out from
the world every ray of intellectual light ; to pollute every
mind with superstition, the power of kings, the cunning and
cruelty of priests, and the wealth of nations were exhausted.
During these years of persecution, ignorance, superstition,
and slavery, nearly all the people, the kings, lawyers, doctors,
the learned and the unlearned, believed in that frightful
production of ignorance, fear, and faith, called witchcraft.
They believed that man was the sport and prey of devils.
They really thought that the very air was thick with these
enemies of man.
With few exceptions, this hideous and
�i
/
/
THE GHOSTS
7{
infamous belief was universal.
Under these conditions
progress was almost impossible.
Fear paralyses the brain. Progress is born of courage.
Fear_ believes courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth
and prays—courage stands erect and thinks. Fear retreats__
courage advances. Fear is barbarism—courage is civilisa
tion. _ Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils, and in ghosts.
Fear is religion—courage is science.
The facts upon which this terrible belief rested were proved
over and over again in every court of Europe. Thousands
confessed themselves guilty—admitted that they had sold
themselves to the devil. They gave the particulars of the
sale; told what they said and what the devil replied. They
confessed this, when they knew that confession was death;
their property would be confiscated, and their
children left to beg their bread. This is one of the miracles
of history—one of the strangest contradictions of the human
mind Without doubt, they really believed themselves guilty.
In the first place they believed in witchcraft as a fact, and
when charged with it they probably became insane. In their
insanity they confessed their guilt. They found themselves
abhorred and deserted—charged with a crime that they could
not disprove. Like a man in quicksand, every effort only
sank them deeper.
Caught in this frightful web, at the
mercy of the spiders of superstition, hope fled, and nothing
remained but the insanity of confession. The whole world
appeared to be insane.
In the time of James the First a man was executed for
causing a storm at sea with the intention of drowning one
of the royal family. How could he disprove it? How could he
snow that he did not cause the storm? All storms were at
that time generally supposed to be caused by the devil—the
prince of the power of the air—and by those whom he assisted.
. 1 implore you to remember that the believers in such
impossible things were the authors of our creeds and
confessions of faith.
A woman was tried and convicted before Sir Matthew Hale
one of the great judges and lawyers of England, for having
caused children to vomit crooked pins. She was also charged
with having nursed devils. The learned judge charged the
intelligent jury that there was no doubt as to the existence
teujht by the’ Kfe’ eStabHshed by a11 llis,or-v- “d exPr“sl>-
�THE GHOSTS
The woman was hanged and her body burned.
Sir Thomas More declared that to give up witchcraft was to
throwaway the sacred Scriptures. In my judgment, he was right.
John Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and witches,
and insisted upon it, years after all laws upon the subject had
been repealed in England. I beg of you to remember that
John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist Church..
In New England a woman was charged with being a. witch,and with having changed herself into a fox. While in that
condition she was attacked and bitten by some dogs. A
committee of three men, by order of the court, examined this
woman. They removed her clothing and searched for witch
spots.” That is to say, spots into which needles could be
thrust without giving her pain. They, reported to the court
that such spots were found. She denied, however, that she
ever had changed herself into a fox. Upon the report of the
committee she was found guilty and actually executed. 1 his
was done by our Puritan fathers, by the gentlemen who
braved the dangers of the deep for the sake of worshipping
God and persecuting their fellow-men.
In those days people believed in what was known as
lycanthrophy—that is, that persons, with the assistance of. the
devil, could assume the form of wolves. An instance is. given
where a man was attacked by a wolf. He defended himself,
and succeeded in cutting off one of the animal’s paws. . lne
wolf ran away. The man picked up the paw, put it in his
pocket, and carried it home. There he found his wife with one '
of her hands gone. He took the paw from his pocket. It had
changed to a human hand. He charged his wife with being a
witch. She was tried. She confessed her guilt, and was burned.
People were burned for causing frosts in summer-tor
destroying crops with hail—for causing storms for making
cows go dry, and even for souring beer. There was no
impossibility for which someone was not tried and convicted.
The life of no one was secure. To be charged was to be
convicted. Every man was at the mercy of every, other
This infamous belief was so firmly seated in the minds ot
the people that to express a doubt as to its truth, was to be
suspected. Whoever denied the existence of witches and
devils was denounced as an infidel.
.
They believed that animals were often taken possession ot by
devils, and that the killing of the animal would destroy the
devil. They absolutely tried, convicted, and executed dumb beasts.
�THE GHOSTS
9
At Basle, in 1470, a rooster was tried upon the charge
of having laid an egg. Rooster eggs were used only in
making witch ointment—this everybody knew. The rooster
was convicted, and with all due solemnity was burned in the
public square. So a hog and six pigs were tried for having
killed and partially eaten a child. The hog was convicted,
but the pigs, on account probably of their extreme youth,
were acquitted. As late as 1740 a cow was tried and
convicted of being possessed by a devil.
They used to exorcise rats, locusts, snakes, and vermin.
They used to go through the alleys, streets, and fields, and
warn them to leave within a certain number of days. In case
they disobeyed, they were threatened with pains and penalties.
But let us be careful how we laugh at these things. Let
us not pride ourselves too much on the progress of our age.
We must not forget that some of our people are yet in the
same intelligent business.
Only a little while ago the
Governor of Minnesota appointed a day of fasting and prayer,
to see if some power could not be induced to kill the grass
hoppers, or send them into some other State.
About the close of the fifteenth century, so great was the
excitement with regard to the existence of witchcraft that
Pope Innocent VIII. issued a bull directing the inquisitors
to be vigilant in searching out and punishing all guilty of
this crime. Forms for the trial were regularly laid down in
a book or pamphlet called the Malleus Maleficorum (Hammer
of Witches), which was issued by the Roman See. Popes
Alexander, Leo, and Adrian issued like bulls.
For two
hundred and fifty years the Church was busy in punishing
the impossible crime of witchcraft; in burning, hanging, and
torturing men, women, and children. Protestants were as
active as Catholics, and in Geneva five hundred witches were
burned at the stake in a period of three months. About one
thousand were executed in one year in the diocese of Como.
At least one hundred thousand victims suffered in Germany
alone, the last execution (in Wurzburg) taking place as late
as 1739. Witches were burned in Switzerland as late as 1780.
In England the same frightful scenes were enacted.
Statutes were passed from Henry VI. to James I. defining
the crime and its punishment. The last Act passed by the
British Parliament was when Lord Bacon was a member of
theHouseof Commons; and this Act was not repealed until 1736*
Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws
�IO
THE GHOSTS
of England, says: “ To deny the possibility, nay, actual
existence, of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to
contradict the word of God in various passages both of the
Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to
which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testi
mony, either by examples seemingly well attested or by
prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of a
commerce with evil spirits.”
In Brown’s Dictionary of the Bible, published at
Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1807, it is said that “A witch is a
woman that has dealings with Satan. That such persons
are among men is abundantly plain fr.om Scripture, and that
they ought to be put to death.”
This work was' republished in Albany, New York, in 1816.
No wonder the clergy of that city are ignorant and bigoted
even unto this day.
In 1716 Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, nine years of age,
were hanged for selling their souls to the devil, and raising
a storm by pulling off their stockings and making a lather
of soap.
In England it has been estimated that at least thirty
thousand were hanged and burned. The last victim executed
in Scotland perished in 1722. “She was an innocent old
woman, who had so little idea of her situation as to rejoice
at the sight of the fire which was destined to consume her.
She had a daughter, lame of both hands and of feet—a
circumstance attributed to the witch having been used to
transform her daughter into a pony and getting her shod
by the devil.”
In 1692 nineteen persons were executed and one pressed
to death in Salem, Massachusetts, for the crime of witchcraft.
It was thought in those days that men and women made
compacts with the devil, orally and in writing; that they
abjured God and Jesus Christ, and dedicated themselves
wholly to the devil.
The contracts were confirmed at a
general meeting of witches and ghosts, over which the
devil himself presided; and the persons generally signed the
articles of agreement with their own blood. These contracts
were, in some instances, for a few years; in others, for life.
General assemblies of the witches were held at least once a
year, at which they appeared entirely naked, besmeared with
an ointment made from the bodies of unbaptised infants. “To
these meetings they rode from great distances on broomsticks,
�THE GHOSTS
ii
pokers, goats, hogs, and dogs. Here they did homage to the
prince of hell, and offered him sacrifices of young children,
and practised all sorts of license until the break of day.”
“As late as 1815 Belgium was disgraced by a witch trial;
and guilt was established by the water ordeal.” “ In 1836
the populace of Hela, near Dantzic, twice plunged into the
sea a woman reputed to be a sorceress; and as the miserable
creature persisted in rising to the surface, she was
pronounced guilty and beaten to death.”
“ It was believed that the bodies of devils are not, like those
of men and animals, cast in an unchangeable mould. It
\Vas thought they were like clouds, refined and subtle matter,
capable of assuming any form and penetrating into any
orifice. The horrible tortures they endured in their place
of punishment rendered them extremely sensitive to suffering,
and they continually sought a temperate and somewhat moist
warmth in order to allay their pangs. It was for this reason
they so frequently entered into men and women.”
The devil could transport men, at his will, through the
air. He could beget children; and Martin Luther himself
had come into contact with one of these children. He
recommended the mother to throw the child into the river,
in order to free their house from the presence of the devil.
It was believed that the devil could transform people into
any shape he pleased.
Whoever denied these things was denounced as an infidel.
All the believers in witchcraft confidently appealed to the
Bible. Their mouths were filled with passages demonstra
ting the existence of witches and their power over human
beings. By the Bible they proved that innumerable evil
spirits were ranging over the world endeavouring to ruin
mankind; that these spirits possessed a power and wisdom
far. transcending the limits of human faculties; that they
delighted in every misfortune that could befall the world;
that their malice was superhuman.
That they caused
tempests was proved by the action of the devil towards Job;
by the passage in the' book of Revelation describing the four
angels who held the four winds, and to whom it was given
to afflict the earth. They believed the devil could carry
persons hundreds of miles, in a few seconds, through the
air. They believed this, because they knew that Christ had
been carried by the devil in the same manner and placed on
a pinnacle of the temple. “The prophet Habakkuk had been
�12
THE GHOSTS
transported by a spirit from Judea to Babylon; and Philip,
the evangelist, had been the object of a similar miracle;
and in the same way St. Paul had been carried in the body
into the third heaven.”
“ In those pious days they believed that Incubi and Succubi
were forever wandering among mankind, alluring, by more
than human charms, the unwary to their destruction, and
laying plots, which were too often successful, against the
virtue of the saints. Sometimes the witches kindled in the
monastic priest a more terrestrial fire. People told, with
bated breath, how, under the spell of a vindictive woman,
four successive abbots in a Germian monastery had been
wasted away by an unholy flame.”
An instance is given in which the devil not only assumed
the appearance of a holy man, in order to pay his addresses
to a lady, but, when discovered, crept under the bed, suffered
himself to be dragged out, and was impudent enough to
declare that he was the veritable bishop. So perfectly had
he assumed the form and features of the prelate that those
who knew the bishop best were deceived.
One can hardly imagine the frightful state of the human
mind during these long centuries of darkness and super
stition.
To them these things were awful and frightful
realities. Hovering above them in the air, in their houses,
in the bosoms of friends, in their very bodies, in all the
darkness of night, everywhere, around, above, and below,
were innumerable hosts of unclean and malignant devils.
From the malice of those leering and vindictive vampires
of the air the Church pretended to defend mankind. Pursuedby these phantoms, the frightened multitudes fell upon their
faces and implored the aid of robed hypocrisy and sceptred
theft.
Take from the orthodox Church of to-day the threat and
fear of hell, and it becomes an extinct volcano.
Take from the Church the miraculous, the supernatural,
the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the un
knowable, and the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.
Notwithstanding all the infamous things justly laid to
the charge of the Church, we are told that the civilisation of
to-day is the child of what we are pleased to call the super
stition of the past.
Religion has not civilised man—man has civilised religion.
God improves as man advances.
�THE GHOSTS
13
Let me call your attention to what we have received from
the followers of the ghosts. Let me give you an outline of
the sciences as taught by these philosophers of the clouds.
All diseases were produced either as a punishment by the
good ghosts or out of pure malignity by the bad ones. There
were, properly speaking, no diseases. The sick were
possessed by ghosts. The science of medicine consisted in
knowing how to persuade these ghosts to vacate the premises.
For thousands of years the diseased were treated with
incantations, with hideous noises, with drums and gongs.
Everything was done to make the visit of the ghost as
unpleasant as possible, and they generally succeeded in
making things so disagreeable that, if the ghost did not leave,
the patient did. These ghosts were supposed to be of different
rank, power, and dignity. Now and then a man pretended
to have won the favour of some powerful ghost, and that
gave him power over the little ones. Such a man became
an eminent physician.
It was found that certain kinds of smoke, such as that
produced by burning the liver of a fish, the dried skin of a
serpent, the eyes of a toad, or the tongue of an adder, were
exceedingly offensive to the nostrils of an ordinary ghost.
With this smoke the sick room would be filled until the ghost
had vanished or the patient died.
It was also believed that certain words—the names of the
most powerful ghosts—when properly pronounced, were very
effective weapons. It was for a long time thought that
Latin words were .the best, Latin being a dead language,
and known by the clergy. , Others thought that two sticks
laid across each other and held before thé wicked ghost
would cause it instantly to flee in dread away.
For thousands of years ,the practice of medicine consisted
in driving these evil spirits out of the bodies of men.
In some instances bargains and compromises were made
with the ghosts. One case is given where a multitude of
devils traded a man for a herd of swine. In this transaction
the devils were the losers, as the swine immediately drowned
themselves in the sea. This idea of disease appears to have
been almost universal, and is by no means yet extinct.
The contortions of the epileptic, the strange twitchings
of those afflicted with chorea, the shakings of palsy, dreams,
trances, and the numberless frightful phenomena produced
by diseases of the nerves, were all seized upon as so many
\
.
�14
THE GHOSTS
proofs that the bodies of men were filled with unclean and
malignant g*hosts.
Whoever endeavoured to account for these things by
natural causes, whoever attempted to cure diseases by
natural means, was denounced by the Church as an infidel.
To explain anything was a crime. It was to the interest of
the priest that all phenomena should be accounted for by the
will and power of gods and devils.
The moment it is
admitted that all phenomena are within the domain of the
natural, the necessity for a priest has disappeared. Religion
breathes the air of the supernatural. Take from the mind of
man the idea of the supernatural, and religion ceases to exist.
For this reason, the Church has always despised the man who
explained the wonderful. Upon this principle, nothing was
left undone to stay the science of medicine. As long as
plagues and pestilences could be stopped by prayer, the priest
was useful. The moment the physician found a cure, the
priest became an extravagance. The moment it began to
be apparent that prayer could do nothing for the body, the
priest shifted his ground and began praying for the soul.
Long after the devil idea was substantially abandoned in
the practice of medicine, and when it was admitted that
God had nothing to do with ordinary coughs and colds, it
was still believed that all the frightful diseases were sent
by him as punishments for the wickedness of the people. It
was thought to be a kind of blasphemy to even try, by any
natural means,.to stay the ravages of pestilence. Formerly,
during the prevalence of plague and epidemics, the arrogance
of the priest was boundless. He told the people that they
had slighted the clergy, that they had refused to pay tithes,
that they had doubted some of the doctrines of the Church,
and that God was now taking his revenge. The people,
for the most part, believed this infamous tissue of priest
craft. They hastened to fall upon their knees; they poured
out their wealth upon the altars of hypocrisy; they abased
and debased themselves; from their minds they banished all
doubts, and made haste to crawl in the very dust of humility.
The Church never wanted disease to be under the control
of man.
Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College,
preached a sermon against vaccination. His idea was that,
if God had decreed from all eternity that a certain man should
die with the small-pox, it was a frightful sin to avoid and
annul that decree by the trick of vaccination. Small-pox
�THE GHOSTS
ij
being regarded as one of the heaviest guns in the arsenal of
heaven, to spike it was the height of presumption. Plagues
and pestilences were instrumentalities' in the hands of God
with which to gain the love arid worship of mankind. To
find a cure for disease was to take a weapon from the Church.
No one tries to cure the ague with prayer. Quinine has
been found altogether more reliable.
Just as soon as a
specific is found for a disease, that disease will be left out
of the list of prayer. The number of diseases with which
God from time to time afflicts mankind is continually decreas
ing. In a few years all of them will be under the control
of& man, the gods will be left unarmed, and the threats of
their priests will excite only a smile.
The science of medicine has had but one enemy—religion.
Man was afraid to save his body for fear he might lose his soul.
Is it any wonder that the people in those days believed in
and taught the infamous doctrine of eternal punishment—
a doctrine that makes God a heartless monster and man a
slimy hypocrite and slave?
The ghosts were historians, and their histories were the
grossest absurdities. “Tales told by idiots, full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing.” In those days the histories
were written by the monks, who, as a rule, were almost as
superstitious as they were dishonest. They wrote as though
they had been witnesses of every occurrence they related.
They wrote the history of every country of importance. They
told all the past, and predicted all the future with an impu
dence that amounted to sublimity. “ They traced the order of
St. Michael, in France, to the archangel himself, and alleged
that he was the founder of a chivalric order in heaven itself.
They said that Tartars originally came from hell, and that
they were called Tartars because Tartarus was one of the
names of perdition. They declared that Scotland was so
named after Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, who landed in
Ireland, invaded Scotland, and took it by force of arms.
This statement was made in a letter addressed to the Pope
in the fourteenth century, and was alluded to as a well-known
fact. The letter was written by some of the highest digni
taries, and by the direction of the King himself.
These gentlemen accounted for the red on the breasts of
robins from the fact that these birds carried water to
unbaptised infants in hell.
�16
THE GHOSTS
Matthew, of Paris, an eminent historian of the fourteenth
century, gaye the world the following piece of information :
It is well known that Mohammed was once a cardinal, and
became a heretic because he failed in his effort to be elected
Pope ; and that, haying drank to excess, he fell by the road
side, and in this condition was killed by swine. “And for that
reason his followers abhor pork even unto this day.”
Another eminent historian informs us that Nero was in
the habit of vomiting frogs. When I read this I said to
myself : Some of the croakers of the present day against
progress would be the better for such a vomit.
The history of Charlemagne was written by Turpin, of
Rheims. He was a bishop. He assures us that the walls
of a city fell down in answer to prayer; that there were
giants in those days who could take fifty ordinary men under
their arms and walk away with them. “ With the greatest
of these, a direct descendant of Goliath, one Orlando, had a
theological discussion; and in the heat of the debate, when
the giant was overwhelmed with the argument, Orlando
rushed forward and inflicted a fatal stab.”
The history of Britain, written by the archdeacons of
Monmouth and Oxford, was wonderfully popular. According
to them, Brutus conquered England and built the city of
London. During his time it rained pure blood for three days.
At another time a monster came from the sea, and, after
having devoured great multitudes of people, swallowed the
king and disappeared. They tell us that King Arthur was
not born like other mortals, but was the result of a magical
Contrivance; that he had great luck in killing giants; that
he killed one in France that had the cheerful habit of eating
some thirty men a day; that this giant had clothes woven
of the beards of the kings he had devoured. To cap the
climax, one of the authors of this book was promoted for
having written the only reliable history of his country.
In all the histories of those days there is hardly a single
truth.
Facts were considered unworthy of preservation.
Anything that really happened was not of sufficient interest
or importance to be recorded. The great religious historian,
Eusebius, ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully
omitted whatever tended to discredit the Church, and that
he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory.
The same glorious principle was scrupulously adhered to
by all the historians of that time.
�THE GHOSTS
• i7
They wrote, and the people believed, that .the tracks of
Pharaoh’s chariots were still visible on the sands of the Red
Sea, and that they had been miraculously preserved from the
winds and waves as perpetual witnesses of the great miracle
there performed.
It is safe to say that every truth in the histories of those
times is the result of accident or mistake.
They accounted for everything as the work of good and
evil spirits. With cause and effect they had nothing to do.
Facts were in no way related to each other. God, governed
by infinite caprice, filled the world with miracles and dis
connected events. From the quiver of his hatred came the
arrows of famine, pestilence, and death.
The moment the idea is abandoned that all is natural, that
all phenomena are the necessary links in the endless chain
of being, the conception of history becomes impossible. With
the ghosts, the present is not the child of the past, nor the
mother of the future. In the domain of religion all is chance,
accident, and caprice.
Do not forget, I pray you, that our creeds were written
by the contemporaries of these historians.
The same idea was applied to law. It was believed by
our intelligent ancestors that all law derived its sacredness
and its binding force from the fact that it had been com
municated to man by the ghosts.
Of course it was not
pretended that the ghosts told everybody the law; but they
told it to a few, and the few told it to the people, and the
people, as a rule, paid them exceedingly well for their trouble.
It was thousands of ages before the people commenced
making laws for themselves, and, strange as it may appear,
most of these laws were vastly superior to the ghost article.
Through the web and woof of human legislation began to
run and shine and glitter the golden thread of justice.
During these years of darkness it was believed that rather
than see an act of injustice done, rather than see the
innocent suffer, rather than see the guilty triumph, some
ghost would interfere. This belief, as a rule, gave great
satisfaction to the victorious party, and, as the other man
was dead, no complaint was heard from him.
This doctrine was the sanctification of brute force and
chance. They had trials by battle, by fire, by water, and by
lot. Persons were made to grasp hot iron, and if it burned
them their guilt was established. Others, with tied hands
�THE GHOSTS
and feet, were cast into the sea, and if they sank the verdict
of guilty was unanimous; if they did not sink, they were in
league with devils.
So, in England, persons charged with crime could appeal
to the corsned. The corsned was a piece of the sacramental
bread. If the defendant could swallow this piece, he went
acquit. Godwin, Earl of Kent, in the time of Edward the
Confessor, appealed to the corsned. He failed to swallow it,
and was choked to death.
. The ghosts and their followers always took delight in
torture, in cruel and unusual punishments. For the infrac
tion of most of their laws death was the penalty—death
produced by stoning and by fire.
Sometimes, when man
committed only murder, he was allowed to flee to some city
of refuge. Murder was a 'crime against man. But for
saying certain words, or denying certain doctrines, or for
picking up sticks on certain days, or for worshipping the
wrong ghost, or for failing to pray to the right
one, or for laughing at a priest, or for saying that
wine was not blood, or that bread was not flesh, or for
failing to regard rams’ horns as artillery, or for insisting
that a dry bone was scarcely sufficient to take the place
of water works, or that a raven, as a rule, made a poor
landlord—death, produced by all the ways that the ingenuity
of hatred could devise, was the penalty.
Law is a growth—it is a science. Right and wrong exist
in the nature of things. Things are not right because they
are commanded, nor wrong because they are prohibited.
There are real crimes enough without creating artificial ones.
All progress in legislation has for centuries consisted in
repealing the laws of the ghosts.
The idea of right and wrong is born of man’s capacity
to enjoy and suffer. If man could not suffer, if he could not
inflict injury upon his fellow, if he could neither feel nor
inflict pain, the idea of right and wrong never would have
entered his brain.
But for this, the word “conscience”
never would have passed the lips of man. *
There is one good—happiness. There is but one sin—
selfishness.
All law should be for the preservation of
the one and the destruction of the other.
Under the regime of the ghosts, laws were not supposed
to exist in the nature of things. They were supposed to be
simply the irresponsible command of a ghost. These com-
�THE GHOSTS
19
mands were not supposed to rest upon reason ; they were
the product of arbitrary will.
The penalties for the violation of these laws were as cruel as
the laws were senseless and absurd. Working on the Sabbath
and murder were both punished with death. The tendency of
such laws is to blot from the human heart the sense of justice.
To show you how perfectly every department of knowledge,
or ignorance rather, was saturated with superstition, I will
for a moment refer to the science of language.
It was thought by our fathers that Hebrew was the original
language ; that it was taught to Adam in the Garden of Eden
by the Almighty, and that consequently all languages came
from, and could be traced to, the Hebrew. Every fact incon
sistent with that idea was discarded.
According to the
ghosts, the trouble at the tower of Babel accounted for the
fact that all people did not speak Hebrew.
The Babel
business settled all questions in the science of language.
After a time, so many facts were found to be inconsistent
with the Hebrew idea that it began to fall into disrepute, and
other languages began to compete for the honour of being
the original.
André Kempe, in 1569, published a work on the language
of Paradise, in which he maintained that God spoke to Adam
in Swedish ; that Adam answered in Danish ; and that the
serpent—which appears to me quite probable—spoke to Eve
in French. Erro, in a work published at Madrid, took the
ground that Basque was the language spoken in the Garden
of Eden; but in 1580 Goropius published his celebrated work
at Antwerp, in which he put the whole matter at rest by
showing, beyond all doubt, that the language spoken in
Paradise was neither more nor less than plain Holland Dutch.
The real founder of the science of language was Leibnitz,
, a contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton. He discarded the idea
that all languages could be traced to one language.
He
maintained that language was a natural growth. Experience
teaches us that this must be so. Words are continually dying
and continually being born.
Words are naturally and
necessarily produced.. Words are the garments of thought,
the robes of ideas. Some are as rude as the skins of wild
beasts, and others glisten and glitter like silk and gold.
They have been born of hatred and revenge ; of love and
self-sacrifice ; of hope and fear ; of agony and joy. These
�20
THE GHOSTS
words are born of the terror and beauty of nature.
The
stars have fashioned them. In them mingle the darkness
and the dawn. From everything they have taken something.
Words are the crystallisations of human history, of all that
man has enjoyed and suffered—his victories and defeats—all
that he has lost and won. Words are the shadows of all
that has been—the mirrors of all that is.
The ghosts also enlightened our fathers in astronomy and
geology. According to them, the earth was made out of
nothing, and, a little more nothing having been taken than
was used in the construction of the world, the stars were
made out of what was left over.'- Cosmos, in the sixth
century, taught that the stars were impelled by angels, who
either carried them on their shoulders, rolled them in front
of them, or drew them after. He also taught that each angel
that pushed a star took great pains to observe what the other
angels were doing, so that the relative distances between the
stars might always remain the same. He also gave his idea
as to the form of the world.
He stated that the world was a vast parallelogram ; that
on the outside was a strip of land, like the frame of a common
slate; that then there was a strip of water, and in the middle
a great piece of land; that Adam and Eve lived on the
outer strip; that their descendants, with the exception of the
Noah family, were drowned by a flood on this outer strip;
that the ark finally rested on the middle piece of land where
we now are. He accounted for night and day by saying that
on the outside strip of land there was a high mountain around
which the sun and moon revolved, and that when the sun
was on the other side of the mountain it was night, and when
on this side it was day.
He also declared that the earth was flat. This he proved
by many passages from the Bible.
Among other reasons
for believing the earth to be flat, he brought forward the
following : We are told in the New Testament that Christ
shall come again in glory and power, and all the world shall
see him. Now, if the world is round, how are the people
on the other side going to see Christ if he comes? That
settled the question, and the Church not only endorsed he
book, but declared that whoever believed less or more than
stated by Cosmos was a heretic.
In those blessed days Ignorance was a king and Science an
outcast.
�THE GHOSTS
21
They knew the moment this earth ceased to.be the centre
of the universe, and became a mere speck in the starry
heaven of existence, that their religion would become a child
ish fable of the past.
In the name and by the authority of the ghosts men enslaved
their fellow-men; they trampled upon the rights of women
and children. In the name and by the authority of the ghosts
they bought and sold and destroyed each other; they filled
heaven with tyrants and earth with slaves, the present with
despair and the future with horror. In the name and by the
authority of the ghosts they imprisoned the human, mind,
polluted the conscience, hardened the heart, subverted justice,
crowned robbery, sainted hypocrisy, and extinguished for a
thousand years the torch of reason.
I have endeavoured, in some faint degree, to show you
what has happened, and what always will happen when men
are governed by superstition and fear; when they desert the
sublime standard of reason; when they take the words of
others and do not investigate for themselves.
Even the great men of those days were nearly as weak
in this matter as the most ignorant.
Kepler, one of the
greatest men of the world, an astronomer second to none,
although he plucked from the stars the secrets of the universe,
was an astrologer, and really believed that he could predict the
career of a man by finding what star was in the ascendant at
his birth. This great man breathed, so to speak, the atmos
phere of his time. He believed in the music of the spheres,
and assigned alto, bass, tenor, and treble to certain stars.
Tycho Brahe, another astronomer, kept an idiot, whose
disconnected and meaningless words he carefully set down,
and then put them together in such manner as to make
prophecies, and waited patiently to see them fulfilled. . Luther
believed that he had actually seen the devil, and had discussed
points of theology with him. The human mind was in chains.
Every idea almost was a monster. Thought was deformed.
Facts were looked upon as worthless. Only the wonderful
was worth preserving. Things that actually happened were
not considered worth recording—real occurrences were too
common. Everybody expected the miraculous.
I'he ghosts were supposed to be busy ; devils were thought
to be the most industrious things in the universe, and with
these imps every occurrence of an unusual character was in
some way connected. There was no order, no serenity, no
/
�-
the ghosts
certainty in anything.
Everything depended upon ghosts
and phantoms. Man. was, for the most part, at the mercy
of maleyoient ^Pints. He protected himself as best he could
with holy water and tapers and wafers and cathedrals He
made noises and rung bells to frighten the ghosts, and he
made music to charm them. He used smoke to choke them
and incense to please them. He wore beads and crosses.
He said prayers, and hired others to say them. He fasted
when he was hungry, and feasted when he was not
He
believed everything that seemed unreasonable, just to appease
the ghosts. He humbled himself. He crawled in the dust.
He shut the doors and windows, and excluded every ray of
light from the temple of the soul. He debauched and polluted
his own mind, and toiled night and day to repair the walls
of his own prison. From the garden of his heart he plucked
and trampled upon the holy flowers of pity.
The priests reveiiea in horrible descriptions of hell
revelled
hell. Con
xue
cerning the wrath of God they grew eloquent. They
HPnniinf'Pri
x
J
denounced mor* oo 4-^4-nllr, depraved. mt
man as totally J;____________ 1
They made reason
blasphemy and pity a crime. Nothing so delighted them as
painting the torments and sufferings of the. lost. Over the
,never dies they grew poetic; and the second
death filled them with a kind of holy delight. According to
them, the smoke and cries ascending from hell were the
perfume and music of heaven.
At the risk of being tiresome, I have said what I have
to show you the productions of the human mind, when
enslaved; the effects of widespread ignorance—the results
of fear. I want to convince you that every form of slavery
is a viper that, sooner or later, will strike its poison fang's
into the bosoms of men.
The first great step towards progress is for man to cease
to be the slave of man ; the second, to cease to be the slave of
the monsters of his own creation—of the ghosts and phantoms
of the air.
For ages the human race was imprisoned. Through the
bars and grates came a few struggling rays of light. Against
these grates and bars Science pressed its pale and thoughtful
face, wooed by the holy dawn of human advancement.
Men found that the real was the useful; that what a man
knows is better than what a ghost says; that an event is
more valuable than a prophecy.
They found that diseases
were not produced by spirits, and could not be cured by
�THE GHOSTS
23
frightening them away. They found that death was as natural
as life. They began to study the anatomy and chemistry of
the human body, and found that all was natural and within the
domain of law.
The conjurer and sorceror were discarded, and the physician
and surgeon employed. They found that the earth was not
flat; that the stars were not mere specks. They found that
being born under a particular planet had nothing to do with
the fortunes of men.
The astrologer was discharged, and the astronomer took
his place.
They found that the earth had swept through the constella
tions for millions of ages. They found that good and evil
were produced by natural causes, and not by ghosts; that
man could not be good or bad enough to stop or cause a rain ;
that diseases were produced as naturally as grass, and were
not sent as punishments upon man for failing to believe a
certain creed. They found that man, through intelligence,
could take advantage of the forces of Nature—that he could
make the waves, the winds, the flames, and the lightnings
of heaven do his bidding and minister to his wants. They
found that the ghosts knew nothing of benefit to man; that
they were utterly ignorant of geology, of astronomy, of geo
graphy ; that they knew nothing of history; that they were
poor doctors and worse surgeons; that they knew nothing of
’law and less of justice ; that they were without brains,, and
utterly destitute of hearts ; that they knew nothing of the rights
of men; that they were despisers of women, the haters of
progress, the enemies of science, and the destroyers of liberty.
The condition of the world during the Dark Ages shows
exactly the result of enslaving the bodies and souls of men.
In those days there was no freedom. Labour was despised,
and a labourer was considered but little above a beast.
Ignorance, like a vast cowl, covered the brain of the world,
¿ind superstition ran riot with the imagination of man. The air
was filled with angels, with demons and monsters. Credulity
sat upon the throne of the soul, and Reason was an exiled
king. A man to be distinguished must be a soldier or a monk.
War and theology—that is to say, murder and hypocrisy—
were the principal employments of man. Industry was a slave,
theft was commerce ; murder was war, hypocrisy was religion.
Every Christian country maintained that it was no robbery
�24
THE GHOSTS
to take the property of Mohammedans by force, and no
murder to kill the owners. Lord Bacon was the first man
of note who maintained that a Christian country was bound
to keep its plighted faith with an infidel nation. Reading
and writing were considered dangerous arts. Every layman
who could read and write was suspected of being a heretic.
All thought was discouraged. They forged chains of super
stition for the minds and manacles of iron for the bodies of
men. The earth was ruled by the cowl and sword, by the
mitre and sceptre, by the altar and throne, by Fear and Force,
by Ignorance and Faith, by ghouls and ghosts.
In the fifteenth century the following law was in force in
England :—
“ That whosoever reads the Scriptures in the mother tongue
shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and goods from their heirs for
ever, and so be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to
the Crown, and most arrant traitors to the land.”
During the first year this law was in force thirty-nine were
hanged for its violation and their bodies burned.
In the sixteenth century men were burned because they
failed to kneel to a procession of monks.
The slightest word uttered against the superstition of the
time was published with death.
Even the reformers, so-called, of those days had no idea
of intellectual liberty—no idea even of toleration. Luther,
Knox, Calvin, believed in religious liberty only when they*
were in the minority. The moment they were clothed with
power they began to exterminate with fire and sword.
Castellio was the first minister who advocated the liberty
of the soul. He was regarded by the reformers as a criminal,
and treated as though he had committed the crime of crimes.
Bodinus, a lawyer of France, about the same time, wrote a
few words in favour of the freedom of conscience, but public
opinion was overwhelmingly against him. The people were
ready, anxious, and willing with whip and chain and fire to
drive from the mind of man the heresy that he had a right,
to think.
Montaigne, a man blessed with so much common sense that
he was the most uncommon man of his time, was the first
to raise a voice against torture in France. But what was
the voice of one man against the terrible cry of ignorant,
infatuated, superstitious, and malevolent millions? It was
the cry of a drowning man in the wild roar of the cruel sea.
�THE GHOSTS
25
In spite of the efforts of the brave few, the infamous war
against the freedom of the soul was waged until at least one
hundred millions of human beings—fathers, mothers, brothers,
sisters—with hopes, loves, and aspirations like ourselves,
were sacrificed upon the cruel altar of an ignorant faith.
They perished in every way by which death can be produced.
Every nerve of pain was sought out and touched by the
believers in ghosts.
.
. ,
For my part, I glory in the fact that here in the new world —in the United States—liberty of conscience was first
guaranteed to man, and that the Constitution of the United
States was the first great decree entered in the high court of
human equity forever divorcing Church and State—the first
injunction granted against the interference of the ghosts.
This was one of the grandest steps ever taken by the human
race in the direction of progress.
.
You will ask what has caused this wonderful change in
three hundred years. And I answer—the inventions and
discoveries of the few; the brave thoughts, the heroic utter
ances of the few; the acquisition of a few facts.
Besides, you must remember that every wrong in some
way tends to abolish itself. It is hard to make a he stand
always. A lie will not fit a fact. It will only fit another
lie made for the purpose. The life of a lie is simply a question
of time. Nothing but truth is immortal. The nobles and
kings quarrelled; the priests began to dispute; the ideas of
government began to change.
,
In 1441 printing was discovered. At that time the past
was a vast cemetery, with hardly an epitaph. The ideas of
men had mostly perished in the brain that produced them.
The lips of the human race had been sealed. Printing gave
”• pinions to thought. It preserved ideas. It made it possible
for man to bequeath to the future the riches of his brain,
the wealth of his soul. At first it was used to flood the world
with the mistakes of the ancients, but since that time it has
been flooding the world with light.
When people read they begin to reason, and when they
reason they progress. This was another grand step in the
direction of progress.
The discovery of gunpowder, that put the peasant almos
upon a par with the prince; that put an end to the so-called
age of chivalry ; that released a vast number of men from the
armies ; that gave pluck and nerve a chance with brute strength.
�26
THE GHOSTS
resdessdi«7ofradvLtori“ha7broe it“'68 T? ‘r°d by the
°f -> * • <tt
• iSr
o build a school-house is to construct a fort
livery library is an arsenal filled with the weanons and
~Z ix»
is a ™“b
niTui fndK^er“6 ^eIlan
^ank Gahleo^^
nicus, and Kepler, and Descartes, and Newton, and Lanlace
I thank Locke and Hume, and Bacon, and Shakespearfind
IndW^ts andVnknd
Goetbe' 1 thank Fu’lton’
wt>r>
a’ vt. °.ta’ an^ Galvani, and Franklin, and Morse
^ho made lightning- the messenger of man
r think
Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science. I thank Crompton
and Arkwright, from whose brains leaped the looms find
spindles that clothe the world. I thank Luther for protesting
S ' „ ‘ Je abuses of tht Church, and I denounce him becausf
he was the enemy of liberty. I thank Calvin for wridnTa
book m favour of religious freedom, and I abhor him because
pLtecX XVh / XX
resistin“opal
persecution, and I hate him because he persecuted in his
is obed efcT M C 7’’f°r SaTying’ “ Resistance to tyrants
is obedience to God, and yet I am compelled to say that
they were tyrants themselves. I thank Thomas Paine because
he was a believer in liberty, and because he did as much to
vfuG.my c°untry free as any other human being. I thank
A oltaire, that great man who, for half a century, was the
�THE GHOSTS
intellectual emperor of Europe, and who, from his throne at
the foot of the Alps, pointed the finger of scorn at every
hypocrite in Christendom. I thank Darwin, • Haeckel, and
Buchner, Spencer, Tyndall, and Huxley, Draper, Lecky, and
Buckle.
I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the thinkers, the
scientists, the explorers. I thank the honest millions who
have toiled.
I thank the brave men with brave thoughts. They are
the Atlases upon whose broad and mighty shoulders rests
the grand fabric of civilisation. They are the men who have
broken, and are still breaking, the chains of Superstition.
They are the Titans who carried Olympus by assault, and
who will soon stand victors upon’s Sinai’s crags.
We are beginning to learn that to exchange a mistake
for the truth—a superstition for a fact—to ascertain the
real—is to progress.
Happiness is the only possible good, and all that tends
to the happiness of man is right, and is of value. All that
tends to develop the bodies and minds of men; all that gives
us better houses, better clothes, better food, better pictures,
grander music, better heads, better hearts; all that renders
us more intellectual and more loving, nearer just; that makes
us better husbands and wives, better children, better citizens
—all these things combined produce what I call Progress.
Man advances only as he overcomes the obstructions of
Nature, and this can be done only by labour and by thought.
Labour is the foundation of all. Without labour, and without
great labour, progress is impossible. The progress of the
world depends upon the men who walk in the fresh furrows
and through the rustling corn ; upon those who sow and reap ;
upon those whose faces are radiant with the glare of furnace
fires; upon the delvers in the mines, and the workers in
shops; upon those who give to the winter air the ringing
music of the axe; upon those who battle with the boisterous
billows of the sea; upon the inventors and discoverers; upon
the brave thinkers.
From the surplus produced by labour schools and
universities are built and fostered. From this surplus the
painter is paid for the productions of the pencil; the sculptor
for chiselling shapeless rock into forms divinely beautiful, and
the poet for singing the hopes, the loves, the memories, and
�28
•
THE GHOSTS
the aspirations of the world. This surplus has given us the
books in which we converse with the dead and living kings
of the human race. It has given us all there is of beauty,
of elegance, and of refined happiness.
I am aware that there is a vast difference of opinion as to
what progress really is; that many denounce the ideas of
to-day as destructive of all happiness—of all good. I know
that there are many worshippers of the past. They venerate
the ancient because it is ancient. They see no beauty in
anything from which they do not blow the dust of ages with
the breath of praise. They say, no masters like the old;
no religion, no governments, like the ancient; no orators,
no poets, no statesmen, like those who have been dust for
two thousand years. Others love the modern simply because
it is modern.
We should have gratitude enough to acknowledge the
obligations we are under to the great and heroic of antiquity,
and independence enough not to believe what they said simply
because they said it.
With the idea that labour is the basis of progress goes the
truth that labour must be free. The labourer must be a free man.
The free man, working for wife and child, gets his head
and hands in partnership.
To do the greatest amount of work in the shortest space of
time is the problem of free labour.
Slavery does the least work in the longest space of time.
Free labour will give us wealth. Free thought will give
us truth.
Slowly but surely man is freeing his imagination of these
sexless phantoms, of these cruel ghosts. Slowly but surely
he is rising above the superstitions of the past. He is learning
to rely upon himself. He is beginning to find that labour
is the only prayer that ought to be answered, and that hoping,
toiling, aspiring, suffering men and women are of more
importance than all the ghosts that ever wandered through
the fenceless fields of space.
The believers in ghosts claim still that they are the only
wise and virtuous people upon the earth ; claim still that there
is a difference between them and unbelievers so vast that they
will be infinitely rewarded and the others infinitely punished.
I ask you to-night, do the theories and doctrines of the
theologians satisfy the heart or brain of the nineteenth century ?
Have the Churches the confidence of mankind?
�THE GHOSTS
29
Does the merchant give credit to a man because he belongs
to a Church?
Does the banker loan money to a man because he is
Methodist or Baptist?
Will a certificate of good standing in any Church be taken
as collateral security for one dollar?
Will you take the word of a Church member, or his note,
or his oath, simply because he is a Church member?
Are the clergy, as a class, better, kinder, and more generous
to their families—to their fellow-men—than doctors, lawyers,
merchants, and farmers?
Does a belief in ghosts and unreasonable things necessarily
make people honest?
When a man loses confidence in Moses, must the people
lose confidence in him?
Does not the credit system in morals breed extravagance
L
in sin ?
Why send missionaries to other lands while every peniten
tiary in ours is filled with criminals?
Is it philosophical to say that they who do right carry a cross ?
Is it a source of joy to think that perdition is the destina
tion of nearly all of the children of men ?
Is it worth while to quarrel about original sin—when there
is so much copy?
Does it pay to dispute about baptism, and the Trinity,
and predestination, and Apostolic succession, and the infalli|. bility of Churches, of Popes, and of books? Does all this
do any good?
Are the theologians welcomers of new truths? Are they
noted for their candour? Do they treat an opponent with
common fairness ?
Are they investigators ?
Do they pull
forward, or do they hold back? s
Is science indebted to the Church for a solitary fact?
'
What Church is an asylum for a persecuted truth?
What great reform has been inaugurated by the Church?
Did the Church abolish slavery?
Has the Church raised its voice against war?
I * I used to think that there was in religion no real restrainf ing force. Upon this point my mind has changed. Religion
I will prevent man from committing artificial crimes and offences.
■*
A man committed murder. The evidence was so conclusive
i
that he confessed his guilt.
He was asked why he killed his fellow-man.
�3°
THE GHOSTS
He replied: “For money.”
“ Did you get any? ”
“Yes.”
“ How much? ”
“Fifteen cents.”
“What did you do with the money?”
“ Spent it.”
“What for?”
“ Liquor.”
“What else did you find upon the dead man? ”
“He had his dinner in a bucket—some meat and bread.”
“What did you do with that?”
“ I ate the bread.”
“What did you do with the meat? ”
“I threw it away.”
“Why? ”
“ It was Friday.”
Just to the extent that man has freed himself from the
dominion of ghosts he has advanced. Just to the extent that
he has freed himself from the tyrants of his own creation he
has progressed. Just to the extent that he has investigated
for himself he has lost confidence in superstition.
With knowledge, obedience becomes intelligent acqui
escence—it is no longer degrading. Acquiescence in the
understood—in the known-—is the act of a sovereign, not
of a slave. It ennobles, it does not degrade.
Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order
to have it himself. He has found that a master is also a
slave; that a tyrant is himself a serf. He has found that
Governments should be founded and administered by man
and for man ; that the rights of all are equal; that the powers
that be are not ordained by God; that woman is at least
the equal of man; that men existed before books; that
religion is one of the phases of thought through which the
world is passing; that all creeds were made by man; that
everything is natural; that a miracle is an impossibility;
that we know nothing of origin and destiny; that concern
ing the unknown we are all equally ignorant; that the pew
has the right to contradict what the pulpit asserts; that man
is responsible only to himself and those he injures, and that
all have a right to think.
True religion must be free. Without perfect liberty of the
�THE GHOSTS
3i
mind there can be no true religion. Without liberty the brain
is a dungeon—the mind a convict. The slave may bow and
cringe and crawl, but he cannot adore—he cannot love.
True religion is the perfume of a free and grateful heart.
True religion is a subordination of the passions to the percep
tions of the intellect. True religion is not a theory—it is
a practice. It is not a creed—it is a life.
A theory that is afraid of investigation is undeserving a
place in the human mind.
I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I do not
pretend to have fathomed the abyss, nor to have floated on
outstretched wings level with the dim heights of thought.
I simply plead for freedom.
I denounce the cruelties and
horrors of slavery. I ask for light and air for the souls
of men. I say, Take off those chains—break those manacles
—free those limbs—release that brain ! I plead for the right
to think—to reason—to investigate. I ask that the future
may be enriched with the honest thoughts of men. I implore
every human being to be a soldier in the army of progress.
I will not invade the rights of others. You have no right
to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought. You
have no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and
strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have no
right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the altars of
ghosts. Believe what you may; preach what you desire;
have all the forms and ceremonies you please; exercise your
liberty in your own way, but extend to all others the same right.
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they
accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous
—if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one
and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that
have ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room—
room for the human mind.
Why should we sacrifice a real world that we have for one
we know not of? Why should we enslave ourselves?
Why should we forge fetters for our own hands?
Why
should we be the slaves of phantoms? The darkness of
barbarism was the womb of these shadows. In the light
of science they cannot cloud the sky forever. They have
reddened the hands of man with innocent blood. They made
the cradle a curse, and the grave a place of torment.
�32
THE GHOSTS
They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of the human
race. They subverted all ideas of justice by promising infinite
rewards for finite virtues, and threatening infinite punish
ment for finite offences.
They filled the future with heavens and with hells, with
the shining peaks of selfish joy and the lurid abysses of
flame. For ages they kept the world in ignorance and awe,
in want and misery, in fear and chains.
I plead for light, for air, for opportunity.
I plead for
individual independence. I plead for the rights of labour
and of thought. I plead for a chainless future. Let the
ghosts go—justice remains. Let them disappear—men and
women and children are left. Let the monsters fade away—
the world is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its
seasons of smiles and frowns; its spring of leaf and bud;
its summer of shade and flower and murmuring stream;
its autumn with the laden boughs, when the withered
banners of the corn are stilly and gathered fields are growing
strangely wan; while death, poetic death, with hands that
colour what they touch, weaves in the autumn wood her
tapestries of gold and brown.
The world remains, with its winters and homes and fire
sides, where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. All
these are left; and music, with its sad and thrilling voice,
and all there is of art and song and hope and love and
aspiration high. All these remain. Let the ghosts go—we
will worship them no more.
Man i's greater than these phantoms.
Humanity is
grander than all the creeds, than all the books. Humanity
is the great sea, and these creeds, and books, and religions
are but the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and these
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clouds changing continually, destined finally to melt away.
That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, and ignor
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be men and women and children, all the aspirations of the
soul, and all the tender humanities of the heart.
Let the ghosts go. We will worship them no more. Let
them cover their eyeless sockets with their fleshless hands,
and fade forever from the imaginations of men.
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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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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The ghosts
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 32 p. : ill. (front. port) ; 19 cm.
Series title: Pamphlets for the Millions
Series number: No. 10
Notes: Issued for the Rationalist Press Association. RPA "Sixpenny books" listed inside and on back cover. No. 26h in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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1912
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G1062
RA1765
N351
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Spiritualism
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Ghosts
Materialism
NSS
Supernatural
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DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY,
ON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 7th FEBRUARY, 1875.
BY
G. G. ZERFFI, Ph.D., F.R.Hist.S., F.R.S.L.,
Lecturer on Historic Ornament, National Art Training School,
South Kensington.
Author of Goethe's 1 Faust, with Commentaries,' '■Spiritualism and
Animal Magnetism,’ <fc, <fc.
BOND ON:
PUBLISHED BY THE SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
1875.
Price Threepence.
�SYLLABUS.
Naturalism and Spiritualism.
Astrologers and Philosophers.
Perceptions either sensual or cerebral.
Dreams. Object and subject blended into one.
“ Noctambulatio.”
Dreams of reality.
Hallucinations.
Nikolai of Berlin. Abercrombie. Brierre de
Boismont.
Natural or Supernatural agencies.
Hysteria and Revivals.
Are Ghosts possible ?
How to treat those who see them.
Shakespeare’s Ghosts.
Some practical points to be taken into con
sideration.
Conclusion. .
�DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
IND is assumed to be opposed to Matter,
Nature to be different from Spirit, and
Reality to be unconnected with Ideality. These
assumptions, and a continuous misuse of words, have
for thousands of years produced misunderstandings
of the utmost importance to Science and the welfare
of Humanity.
Mysticism and Rationalism, Naturalism and
Spiritualism, have been arrayed against one another
like two hostile armies ; and whilst the one party
took everything literally, and required a certain
notion to be attached to every word, as the result
of a clear perception, the other roamed into the field
of the allegorical or parabolical, performed tropological gambols with exquisite cunning, and terrified
us by an anagogical treatment of the simplest
matters. If a certain substance was stated to be
black or white, it might be black only in substance,
whilst in essence it was white ; all depended whether
it was taken in its reality or in its ideality.
A fluid may be in substance, say, oil, but in
essence fire ; allegorically it may be food for hungry
souls; tropologically it may represent virtue gliding
smoothly through the heavenly gates, and anagogically it may be spiritual balm on our wounded
hearts to cool their passionate throbbing for the
vanities and pleasures of this world.
The difficulties were made still greater by the
combinations of these four categories ; a thing might
be to one mind allegorico-tropological, whilst to
another it appeared litero-anagogical. The term
B
M
�4
Drtams and Ghosts.
allegorical is used when you say one thing and
mean another ; the terms tropological or symbolic
are synonymous, and imply when you mean one
thing and say another; and anagogical, is to argue
from generalities to particulars; namely, “ all men
are sinners ; Joe Smith is a man, therefore he must
be a sinner.” A syllogism, which, at all events, is
not very complimentary to Joe Smith.
For centuries, nay for thousands of years, science
had often no other task than to sift the allegoricotropologico-anagogical nonsense that was propounded
by mystics, dogmatists, and metaphysicians, who
brought confusion into the simplest phenomena of
this world. The differences between mystics and
rationalists often existed in mere words,—the one
trying to oppose a common-sense explanation upon
which the other insisted. Obstinacy on both sides
made the struggle still fiercer and hindered the real
progress of knowledge. I said in one of my Lec
tures, that the “unknown” had always a mysterious
charm for man. Astrologers need not know as much
as philosophers. The astrologer gazes at the stars,
sees threads millions of miles in length extending
from certain stars to particular individuals, and
talks of the influence these mystic ties must exer
cise on the destinies of those thus attached to
heavenly bodies. If the individual believes in this
star-theory, the philosopher tries in vain to detach
him from his star, and all he can do is to prove the
impossibility of the man’s having anything to do
with the star or the star with him. So it is with
the great question in dispute concerning mind and
matter. If people start with the conviction that
there is something above nature, or as they call it
“ supernatural,” that impressions on our senses are
possible, even though an outward object to create
such impressions be wanting, that there exists
beyond nature a realm peopled by various strange
beings, how are we to proceed to argue the point ?
�Dreams and Ghosts.
5
■ What is Supernatural ?
The very expression, though continually used,
designates in itself a “ nonentity.” All things must
exist in space and time; space and time are the
first conditions of anything existent, but all nature
with its attributes of space and time fills the Uni
verse, and there is undoubtedly no room for any
thing above or beyond nature as a Universe.
Super-earthly or supersensual might have some
meaning as referring to that which is beyond our
globe, but supernatural has certainly no sense.
In discoursing on dreams and ghosts, I shall
endeavour to avoid being dogmatic, and simply take
up certain psychological phenomena, lay them before
you, and you will be kind enough to draw your
own conclusions.
First of all it must be borne in mind that our
perceptions of the outer world are not only sen
sual (by means of our senses) but also intellectual
(by means of ideas produced in the brain), that is
cerebral. The senses produce nothing but mere
sensations in their special organs, furnishing thus
the material from which intellect, by applying the
laws of causation, forms the outer world under the
existing conditions of space and time.
All our perceptions when in a waking and nor
mal state, are certainly results of impressions on
our senses, which produce an effect of which our
intellect causes us to become conscious. Now is it
possible that impressions may reach our brain from
quite a different source than the outer world,
impressions produced by our own organisation, work
ing on our brain exactly like impressions of the outer
world ? If this be possible, we should endeavour
to find out the relation in which such a phenomenon
would stand to its effect, and whether such
effect would afford us means of making ourselves
acquainted with its real cause; and we should be
at once obliged, as in the material world, to investi-
�6
Dreams and Ghosts.
gate the apparition, that is the outward impression
on our senses in its relation to its own reality.
People do dream, have dreamt, and will dream;
Apparitions, or to speak more colloquially, ghosts
have been really seen.
Dreams and spectral visions are the strong points
of those who assume an Empire of Spirits altogether
independent of matter. There was probably a time
in the phase of the progressive development of
humanity, when man was not yet able to discrimi
nate between dreams and reality. I am inclined to
consider the whole period during which myths, nur
sery tales, miracles, and pious wonders, such as flying
monks and nuns who “ levitated ” from the ground,
were assumed to be realities—a period of dreams.
For the question, whether perceptible visions, as
perfect and distinct as those caused by the impres
sions of the material world can be produced in the
brain, must be answered in the affirmative ; pheno
mena known to us all, phenomena, the effects of
which we experience nearly every night, prove this
with incontestable force, namely Dreams !
What are dreams ?
They are not, as has been assumed, a mere play of
our fancy, an echo of our imaginary faculty, or an
epilogue of those outward impressions which we
received when still awake. Fancies, as the effects
of our imagination, are weak, imperfect, and transi
tory ; so that the most vivid imagination is scarcely
able to reproduce the image of an absent person,
even for a few seconds. In oui' dreams everything
affecting our perceptive faculty appears as exterior
to ourselves as are the impressions received from
the outer world. All objects appear clear and defined,
exactly as in reality, not only with regard to our
selves, but perfectly finished in all their details,
surrounded by all real impediments; every body
with its shadow, every object with its peculiar form
and special substance. That our dreams are entirely ■.
�Dreams and Ghosts.
7
objective is shown by the actions that take place in
them being often contrary to our expectations and
our wishes. Our astonishment is excited by the
dramatic truth of the characters and their actions;
so much so that it may almost be asserted that a
person dreaming is, for the time, a kind of Shake
speare.
The deception produced by dreams is sometimes
so great that, reality stepping into its rights when
we awake, has to combat our vivid impressions to
prove that what has been was only the airy creation
of a dream. This goes far to prove that dreams are
not a function of our brain, and totally distinct
from its power of imagination. Aristotle already
called “ sleep a special sense,” and made the obser
vation that in dreams our imagination is often
engaged in representing extraneous objects. This
leads us to the conclusion that during dreams our
faculty of imagination is at our disposal, and that
this cannot be at the same time the in strum ent or
organ of our dreams.
Dreams resemble madness, they may be called a
short and passing madness, whilst madness is a long
and sometimes lasting dream. The essential con
dition of dreams is sleep, in which the normal
activity of our brain and senses is suspended.
Only when this activity ceases dreams begin to
work; just as the pictures of a magic lantern
appear in a room deprived of light. It is a further
-fact that in our very dreams our reasoning faculty
is often at work: we reason about their incongruity, their ridiculous combinations. There is,
therefore, in us a force by means of which
we can fill space with forms, we can hear and
understand voices, can see, smell, and taste with
out any outward influences on our senses ; which
influences are necessary when we are awake;
we ourselves, therefore, are the sole cause, object,
and empirical basis of our thoughts, though in no
�8
Dreams and Ghosts.
way identical with them. In working on our
imagination this force does not gather impressions
through our senses from without—but undoubtedly
from within. For our senses are closed to the
outer world, and all the objects of our dreams
appear to be the creations of our own subjectivity.
Object and subject are thus blended into one. Let
us not lose sight of this important assertion ; for
I intend to lead you step by step to the most
incredible phenomena, which, however, are facts,
and may be explained in a very rational way. We
must.only give up the old “shell and kernel theory,”
and see that there is no contest between the within
and without, but that mind and matter, however
complicated, marvellous, and incomprehensible their
functions may be, are one. The “ gross and brutal
materialism” and the “moonshiny, dreamy idealism”
formulae must be given up. If dreams are facts
whilst we are asleep, might dreams not be possible
whilst we are half or entirely awake ?
The Scotch have for this state an excellent term
—they call it “ second sightwhilst one sight
through our eyes is going on, another faculty of
seeing, as in our dreams, is at work in us. We see
and at the same time create what we see. Our
imagination is impressed, but its impressions are
produced by an inner force of our own. The term
“ second sight,” however, is applicable to a “ species ”
of our mental and bodily functions, we cannot use
it for the genus. To designate that indisputable
and undeniable force in us which produces per
ceptions without any outward influences on our
senses, we will use the expression “ organ of
dreams.” So soon as we assume an organ we
naturally wish to know its construction and mode
of acting, and, in fact, are anxious to see the
machine and its working; I must content myself at
this moment with merely giving you some further
effects of which this organ must be the cause.
�Dreams and Ghosts.
9
There are undoubtedly different degrees of dreams;
of some we are only dimly conscious, of others we
often are in doubt whether the incidents of our
dream did not happen in reality. We have dreams
in which we dream only of those realities which
surround us. What we dream is at the same time
true and real. It is as if our skull were trans
parent, as if the outer world were directly affecting
our brain, instead of impressing it by means of our
senses.
This mysterious state we might call “half
dreams,” or, still better, “ dreams of reality.”
These dreams often reach a higher phase when the
horizon of the dreamer is enlarged so as to enable
him to see beyond the walls of his bedroom. Our
“ organ of dreams ” appears often to lead us to
distant places, often utterly unknown to us, never
before seen. Instances of this are numberless.
Recently a gentleman wrote to a newspaper “ that
he was lifted up, or rather levitated on the tower
of St. Mark at Venice; that he looked down upon
the town, seeing it in all its reality as clearly as if
he had known the place before, though he had
never been at Venice.” Of course he might have
seen many engravings or paintings of the town,
and have read many descriptions of it; to this he
does not allude, but, at all events, we can have no
reason to doubt that, whilst asleep, he was trans
ferred to Venice, and was impressed by the visionary
city as though it had been the real one.
A still higher effect of which the “ organ of
dreams ” may be assumed to be the cause is “ Noctambulatio,” described by the Greeks as “upnobateia” (sleep-wandering), that is somnambulism.
It is very common in Austria and Germany, France
and Italy; less common in England, but more fre
quent in Scotland. Somnambulists dream, and at
the same time often perform their daily occupa
tions ; some have copied music, others have made
�IO
Dreams and Ghosts.
notes of sermons, others have put their rooms in
order, others have climbed dangerous heights, or
walked on parapets; and though their senses are
perfectly asleep, all the sensual functions are
performed.
They see, they feel, they avoid
chairs, tables they move about, and hear the noise
they make; this is also the case with people arti
ficially put into this peculiar state. The brain
appears to be in the deepest sleep, that is in perfect
inactivity—what organ is there active in us ? Have
we after all really a double life; is there something
active in us whilst our brain, the organ of our
mighty intellectual faculties, is at rest ? If so,
there must be in us a separate Spirit that enters
and leaves our body, and is strangely occupied not
only when still attached to us, but also when it has
left the shell and floats through the infinite. But
is this so ? I think that the theory of psycholo
gists and physiologists is much more likely to be
near the truth, than the assumption that there are
lively sprites in us which are altogether independent
of our material organisation. Modern psycholo
gists assume that in such a state as I have alluded
to, a total depression of the vital functions of-the
brain and an accumulation of all vital force in the
ganglia take place.
These ganglia have their
centre in the “ plexus Solaris,” or “ cerebrum abdominale,” (the brain of the stomach), which con
sists of a few annular vessels filled with a nervous
fluid, standing in the same relation to the ganglia
as the brain to our nervous system. This has given
origin to the hypothesis that dreams have a special
organ, which during a total depression of the func
tions of the brain is most active, so much so “ that
apparently an accumulation of all the vital force
takes place in the ganglia, whose larger tissues,
with the ‘plexus Solaris,’ are turned into a sensorium, which, as if by substitution, performs the
functions of the brain, dispensing with the aid of
�Dreams and Ghosts.
11
the senses to receive impressions from without, and
still exercising all the faculties of the brain, some
times even with greater perfection than when
awake.”—(See my work, ‘Spiritualism and Animal
Magnetism.’ London: Robert Hardwicke. 1872.
Second Edition, page 33.) By this means we may
trace a positive, self-conscious force in us, and a
negative or unconscious force ; a positive and nega
tive element in our nature. The equilibrium of
these forces or elements may be disturbed ; the
brain or the positive force may be with all its glo
rious structure, its intricate and complicated wind
ings, its admirable power of consciousness, if de
ranged, lowered, depressed, exhausted under the in
fluence of the ganglia, and the brain of the stomach
may rule the brain of the head. That is, the
“ organ of dreams ” becomes master of the “ organ
of intellect.” It is a well-authenticated fact that
somnambulists move with great decision, extreme
quickness, that they conform to anything surround
ing them ; that they observe everything with the
“ organ of dreams,” that they dare more when led
by this mysterious organ than when awake.
Our nerves of motion originate in the spine, they
are connected by the “ medulla oblongata ” with
the cerebellum, the regulator of our motions, which
again is connected with the cerebrum, the seat of
our consciousness and perception. Now, how is it
possible that perceptions which determine our
motives for movements, when transferred to the
tissue of the ganglia in the stomach, should direct
the steps of a somnambulist with the swiftness of
lightning ? All we can assume is that the cerebral
force of the somnambulist in such a state is not
entirely asleep, but only sufficiently awake to direct
his steps, to receive impressions through organs
which are different from our senses; thus dreams,
half-dreams, and somnambulism are but effects of a
special organ in us which becomes the more active
�12
Dreams and Ghosts.
the more passive our brain is. We must consider
a still stranger state, arising from a complication of
the disturbed balance between the functions of the
brain and those of the “ plexus Solaris.”
Let us assume a state in which our brain is, at
least, partially awake; we see the objects in our
room with perfect clearness; the lamp on our
writing table, the books on our shelves, the pictures,
&c., and still we suddenly see a figure before us,—
a dear relation not long dead, a beloved child, whose
last parting words still resound in our ears. Such
cases are recorded by perfectly credible persons.
How is this ? Our answer would be: we do not
doubt your assertion; we believe your having seen
your dead mother, but you were in a half-dream ;
your brain was, in spite of its partial capacity of
receiving certain impressions through your senses,
depressed, and your ganglionic system hard at work
to make you dream, whilst in this state. All cases
of hallucinations and spectral visions may be
reduced to this natural cause. If we admit that
our “ organ of dreams ” can produce impressions on
our senses when asleep, we may assume, with great
probability, and without leaving the firm ground of
physical possibility, that this organ may work in us
whilst our senses of vision and hearing are awake.
The perceptive faculties of our brain ’ will be
influenced exactly as in our dreams, though we be
not asleep. The phantom or object of our visual
organ will stand before us in a given form, as perfect
as any object of our dreams. But its immediate
cause of existence must be looked for in our own
inner organism. These phantoms, in accordance
with the faculties of our “ organ of dreams,” will
assume form, colour; emit sounds which will affect
us like the language of living beings; and if our
organ of dreams is in an excited state of activity,
the phantoms presenting themselves will be hazy in
appearance, pale, greyish, ghastly, nearly transpa-
�Dreams and Ghosts.
13
rent; their voices will be hollow and whispering, or
hoarse and whistling. A heavy supper (say, a Welsh
rare-bit,) nervous debility, over-work, great grief,
or a glass of grog as an overdose, will produce the
most important changes in these phantoms ; but as
soon as the visionary tries to bring his faculty of
reasoning into play, that is, as soon as his positive
or cerebral force becomes master of the negative or
abdominal element, the phantoms vanish. Nothing
can more speedily cure our propensity to see spectres
than a firm will to verify, by close investigation, the
reality, the substance of the apparition.
Spectres, like dealers in mysticism and dogmatic
incredibilities, prefer above all the twilight, or rather
no light at all. Visionaries of whatever sort and
stamp do not like to be disturbed in their manipu
lations by candles and gas-jets, and least of all by
some rays of common sense and sound logic. Mid
night, dark abodes with painted windows, have been
set down from old as the time and places when not
only Erin’s but “ any clouds are hung round with
ghosts.”
That visions and apparitions are facts produced
by our own selves cannot be denied, but they do not
prove anything extraneous to us, or the existence
of some undiscovered country from whose bourne
some travellers do return.
We may now investigate their causes, and we shall
find that some very material physical derangement
of our constitution is the principal one. Already
Hippokrates and Galen drew the attention of medi
cal men to phenomena of this kind, and tried to
classify the diseases according to the visions of the
sick person. It is pretty well known that those
suffering from “ delirium tremens ” generally see
rats, cats, mice, serpents, black dogs, elephants,
devils with big horns, grotesque monkeys, or some
terrifying monster of the animal kingdom. So
much so, that even the visionary realm of ghosts
�14
Dreams and Ghosts.
appears to abominate drunkenness as something
loathsome and bestial. Those suffering from con
sumption have pleasant visions; bright, sunny plains,
beautiful cool woods, present themselves to their
eyes; they see angels in long robes with broad, airy
wings, and hear strange melodies resounding through
space. The sooner people having such visions con
sult a physician the better. Madness is, not neces
sarily always, but frequently accompanied by
hallucinations.
There are some rare cases, perfectly authenticated,
in which apparitions have been seen by individuals
who at least were in a state of perfect bodily
health. The most known is that of Nikolai,' the
celebrated author and bookseller of Berlin. This
case was laid before the Academy of Sciences at
Berlin, 1799. Nikolai’s statement was the follow
ing :—“ On the 24th of February, 1791, after a sharp
altercation (the excited, nervous state of the vision
ary is to be taken into special consideration), I
suddenly perceived, at the distance of ten paces, a
dead body. (The great accuracy with which the
distance is recorded shows at once that Nikolai was
altogether dreaming; whoever heard of a man seeing
a dead body before him and trying to measure the
distance between the apparition and himself.) I
inquired of my wife whether she did not see it. My
question alarmed her. The apparition lasted eight
minutes. (Another peculiarity of these kind of
visionaries is that they always are most particular
with regard to dates and time. Is anybody childish
enough to suppose that a man seeing a dead body
takes out his watch, and counts the minutes, and
notes them down ? The tale, as told, bears in its
intrinsic evidence all the usual traces of impossi
bility which we may study in all reports on so-called
“ supernatural ” matters.) At four in the afternoon
the same vision appeared. I was then alone and
much disturbed by it. I went to my wife’s apart-
�Dreams and Ghosts.
ment. The vision followed me. At six I perceived
several figures that had no connection with the
former vision.” Nikolai was undoubtedly dreaming
whilst awake : he was bled by a judicious medical
man, and the vision did not return.
“A. stranger in Edinburgh died suddenly in an
omnibus. The corpse was exposed, and a medical
man called in to report on the cause of death. After
several days’ close study of a medical subject, he
perceived, on raising his eyes, the form of the dead
stranger opposite him, as distinctly as he had seen
him on the table of the police office.” The.over
wrought cerebral faculty was under the dominion of
the sympathetic nerve, which, in its turn, still
affected by the impression of the corpse, represented
it to the debilitated powers of the brain.
Abercrombie, in his ‘ Inquiries Concerning the
Intellectual Powers ’ (11th Ed., Lond., 1841, p. 380),
relates the case of a man who was beset with hallu
cinations all his life. “ His disposition was such
that, when he met a friend in the streets, he was
uncertain whether he were a real person or a
phantom.”
Unscientifically trained persons often give them
selves up to credulity, and to that craving after
abnormal supernatural agencies which has done so
much evil throughout the whole progressive develop
ment of humanity. They take these kind of visions
for granted, and jump at the conclusion that, as
visions were seen, they must be substances or
essences from another world. I recommend any
body suffering from “ Psycho-mania,” or from
“ Table-danceology,” or paralysis of the brain from
knock-conversation, or who has “levitation fits,”
or “ air-floating paroxysms,” to read Brierre de
Boismont ‘On Hallucination,’ 1845. His cases are,
unhappily, neither systematically arranged nor
psychologically or physiologically explained; yet
they must convince anybody believing in super-
�16
Dreams and Ghosts.
sensual agencies, that strange things may happen,
all taking their origin in a derangement of our ner
vous and cerebral system, without troubling any
spirits from another world. If spirits really exist,
why have they not yet proven themselves useful ?
Why do they not appear half-an-hour before a ship
burns down, and 400 human beings are killed and
drowned, to warn the captain ; or why do they not
alter the signals of a railway in right time to prevent
a collision and to save an infinity of wretchedness ?
Because they do not choose to do it—might be the
answer of some “ Supernaturalistbut why should
spirits come and talk nonsense at the bidding of A
or B, and why not teach us in an evening the
multiplication table, or give us some information
which might be turned to some use or comfort for
humanity ?
Hysteria on the one hand, and a reaction against
the growing materialistic and utilitarian tendencies
of our times on the other, drive those who are
endowed with a vivid emotional nature into the
regions of ghostly shadows. They tremble that
there should be no more mysteries; no more tidings
from another world, no more communications with
dear pretty angels, no horrible monsters to frighten
young and old babies ! Why do they not throw
themselves into the arms of poetry and art, num
berless spirits and fancy-wrought forms may be
brought up from the depths of our cultivated minds.
We ought not allow ourselves to be dragged into a
lowering of our cerebral powers, our faculty of
reasoning, by the inordinate use of our sympathetic
nerves, or the unconscious emotional, ganglionic
element in us. For there can be no doubt that an
unusual mental excitement, paired with bodily
depression, may abnormally develope the emotional
element in us, and produce the most destructive and
pernicious results. This statement was born, out
during the period of St. John s “ dance mania 5
�Dreams and Ghosts.
17
people in their paroxysms saw the Saviour enthroned
with the Virgin Mary. We do not doubt these
visions ; we only are convinced that Christ and the
Virgin Mary were no realities; they formed no
more the outer phenomena that impressed the
visionaries than do the forms we see in our dreams,
but the excited organs of dreams produced them.
For Ghosts are impossibilities—they can neither be
seen nor heard; except they are bodies—but then
there is an end of the so-called spiritual kingdom.
So that those who call themselves Spiritualists, are
the greatest materialists, and work into the hands
of those who intend to reduce everything to mere
ponderable and calculable substances.
In order to see—a body or a substance is required,
which by means of reflection of the rays of light
acts on our retina; in order to hear—a body or
substance is required to act by means of the vibra
tion of the air on our tympanum. All that
visionaries or ghost-see-ers may justly assert, is that
they are conscious of the impression on their per
ceptive faculties of something that reflects light,
creates sounds, though there is nothing which could
produce these phenomena—that is they dream—for
all other phenomena, if they really happen, how
ever mysterious they may appear, however incredible,
are mere deceptions a la Dr. Lynn, or Maskelyne
and Cooke, and of course not worthy of any scientific
treatment.
The danger in playing with the so-called super
natural ” is that the derangement in one individual
becomes contagious. One hysteric girl in a school
is capable of infecting all the others. But for any
such derangement the best cures are rational ones,
or wherever these do not suffice a drastic physical
one will do. An English physician was called into
a ladies’ school, where one hysterical girl had infec
ted many others ; after he had in vain tried various
remedies, he one day observed to the mistress of the
�18
Dreams and Ghosts.
establishment in the hearing of the patients that
there remained but one chance of effecting a cure,—
the application of a red-hot iron to the spine of the
patients so as to quiet their nervously excited sys
tem. Strange to say, the red-hot iron was never
applied, for the hysterical attacks ceased as if by
magic. The same was the case with a revival
mania in a large school near Cologne ; Government
sent an inspector down ; the boys pretended to
have visions of Jesus Christ, but the implacable
officer threatened to close the school if any other
spiritual inspector should interfere with his business,
and the students should be for ever excluded from
pursuing their studies : the effect was as magical as
the red-hot iron remedy—the revivals ceased at
once.
Shakespeare, that master-mind, who knew the
most hidden recesses of our hearts, whose writings
form the most complete and exhaustive psycho
logical essays, who made many a ghost “ revisit the
glimpses of the moon, to make night hideous,” has
solved the “Spirit Question” in a clear, commonsense, and exhaustive way in “ Macbeth,” when he
makes the ambitious thane exclaim :—
“ Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand 1 Come, let me clutch thee !
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight ? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? ”
To beware of false creations in science and
religion, not to allow our heat-oppressed brain an
unruly dominion over our intellectual faculties, is
conveyed by those few lines of our immortal bard.
The brief consideration of dreams and ghosts
which I have placed before you may be summed up
in the following points :—
�Dreams and Ghosts.
’9
1. That we have an organ in us which can act
on the perceptive faculties of our brain from
within.
2. That this “ organ of dreams ” has its seat in
the centre of our ganglionic system or the sym
pathetic nerves, namely in the “ plexus Solaris.”
3. That our cerebral faculties may be lowered
and the faculty of our ganglia heightened.
4. That spectral visions, religious excitements,
emotional extravagances, mysticism, and symbolic
charlatanism are merely products of a deranged
balance between our vegetable or ganglionic and
our cerebral or intellectual life.
5. That there is nothing in nature that ought
not to be capable of explanation from a natural
point of view, as there is no room for anything to
be above or without nature.
6. That instead of admitting in some instances
our ignorance of the laws of nature with regard to
certain phenomena, to assume some “ supernatural ”
interference is an insult to the all-pervading spirit of
the Creator, who cannot allow his spirits to wander
about to serve small table-talk. Anything beyond
the horizon of human intellect is of evil. This
evil peopled heaven and earth with gods, goddesses,
angels, and demons ; it formed a strong element in
our double nature, and took its origin in our
craving to fathom the unfathomable. It is, in fact,
nothing but a piece of pride. We think ourselves
better than others when we have dear little
apparitions which others have not; we consider
ourselves chosen, elected, specially inspired, small
prophets, benighted evangelists, and mighty instru
ments to testify that God takes us more into his
councils than others. The roaming in the Empire
of Ghosts, the taking of dreams for realities, the
neglect of this world for the sake of other distant
unknown worlds is nothing but inordinate pride.
If I have erred in trying to explain hypotheti-
�20
Dreams and Ghosts.
cally some curious phenomena of our nature, I can
only plead that the striving of finite beings in
whom the cerebral functions are not lowered by
tropological or anagogical studies should be after
truth in the sense of the immortal Lessing :—
“If God were to hold in His right hand all
truth, and in his left the everlasting active desire
for truth though veiled in eternal error, and were to
bid me choose, I would humbly grasp his left,
praying, Almighty Father, grant me this gift—
absolute truth is for Thee alone.”
SUNDAY LECTURE SOCIETY.
To provide for the delivery on Sundays in the Metropolis, and
to encourage the delivery elsewhere, of Lectures on Science,
—physical, intellectual, and moral,—History, Literature,
and Art; especially in their bearing upon the improvement
and social well-being of mankind.
THE SOCIETY’S LECTURES
ARE DELIVERED AT
ST GEORGE’S HALL, LANGHAM PLACE,
On SUNDAY Afternoons, at FOUR o'clock precisely.
(Annually—from November to May).
Twenty-Four Lectures (in three series), ending 2nd May,
1875, will be given.
Members’ £1 subscription entitles them to an annual ticket
(transferable and admitting to the reserved seats), and to eight
single reserved-seat tickets available for any lecture.
Tickets for each series (one for each lecture) as below,—
To the Shilling Reserved Seats—5s. 6d.
To the Sixpenny Seats— 2s., being at the rate of Threepence
each lecture.
’
For tickets apply (by letter) to the Hon. Treasurer, Wm. Henry
Domville, Esq., 15 Gloucester Crescent, Hyde Park, W.
Payment at the door :—One Penny ;—Sixpence
and
(Reserved Seats) One Shilling.
PRINTED BY C. W. RRYNELL, LITTLE PULTBNBY STREET, HAYMARKET.
�
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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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Dreams and ghosts. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday Afternoon, 7th February, 1875
Creator
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Zerffi, G. G. (Gustavus George)
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 20 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
Publisher
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Sunday Lecture Society
Date
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1875
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CT12
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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 (Dreams and ghosts. A lecture delivered before the Sunday Lecture Society on Sunday Afternoon, 7th February, 1875), 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
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Dreams
Ghosts
Naturalism
Spiritualism