MIRACLES AND MODERN SPIRITUALISM MIRACLES AND MODERN SPIRITUALISM BY ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S. REVISED EDITION, WITH CHAPTERS ON APPARITIONS AND PHANTASMS LONDON GEORGE REDWAY 1896 UNIVERSITY (!. SAM A BARBARA 1 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION (1874) THE Essays which form this volume were written at different times and for different purposes. The first in order (though not the earliest in date) was read before the Dialectical Society, with the intention of inducing sceptics to reconsider the fundamental question of the inherent credibility or incredibility of Miracles. The second was written in 1866 for the pages of a Secu- larist periodical, and a very limited number of copies printed, chiefly for private circulation. The third is the article which appeared in the Fortnightly Review of May and June 1874 All have been carefully revised, and con- siderable additions have been made of illustrative fact, argument, and personal experience, together with a few critical remarks on Dr. Carpenter's latest work. As the second and third Essays were each intended to give a general view of the same subject, there is neces- sarily some repetition in the matters treated of, and the same authorities are in many cases quoted ; but it is believed that no actual repetition of details will be found, care having been taken to introduce new facts and fresh illustrations, so that the one Essay will be found to supplement and support the other. VI PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION I must now say a few words on a somewhat personal matter. I am well aware that my scientific friends are some- what puzzled to account for what they consider to be my delusion, and believe that it has injuriously affected what- ever power I may have once possessed of dealing with the philosophy of Natural History. One of them Mr. Anton Dohrn has expressed this plainly. I am informed that, in an article entitled " Englische Kritiker und Anti- Kritiker des Darwinismus," published in 1861, he has put forth the opinion that Spiritualism and Natural Selection are incompatible, and that my divergence from the views of Mr. Darwin arises from my belief in Spiritualism. He also supposes that in accepting the spiritual doctrines I have been to some extent influenced by clerical and reli- gious prejudice. As Mr. Dohrn's views may be those of other scientific friends, I may perhaps be excused for entering into some personal details in reply. From the age of fourteen I lived with an elder brother, of advanced liberal and philosophical opinions, and I soon lost (and have never since regained) all capacity of being affected in my judgments either by clerical influence or religious prejudice. Up to the time when I first became acquainted with the facts of Spiritualism, I was a con- firmed philosophical sceptic, rejoicing in the works of Voltaire, Strauss, and Carl Vogt, and an ardent admirer (as I am still) of Herbert Spencer. I was so thorough and confirmed a materialist that I could not at that time find a place in my mind for the conception of spiritual existence, or for any other agencies in the universe than PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION Vll matter and force. Facts, however, are stubborn things. My curiosity was at first excited by some slight but in- explicable phenomena occurring in a friend's family, and my desire for knowledge and love of truth forced me to continue the inquiry. The facts became more and more assured, more and more varied, more and more removed from anything that modern science taught or modern philosophy speculated on. The facts beat me. They compelled me to accept them as facts long before I could accept the spiritual explanation of them ; there was at that time " no place in my fabric of thought into which it could be fitted." By slow degrees a place was made ; but it was made, not by any preconceived or theoretical opinions, but by the continuous action of fact after fact, which could not be got rid of in any other way. So much for Mr. Anton Dohrn's theory of the causes which led me to accept Spiritualism. Let us now consider the state- ment as to its incompatibility with Natural Selection. Having, as above indicated, been led, by a strict induc- tion from facts, to a belief Istly, In the existence of a number of preterhuman intelligences of various grades and, 2ndly, That some of these intelligences, although usually invisible and intangible to us, can and do act on matter, and do influence our minds, I am surely follow- ing a strictly logical and scientific course in seeing how far this doctrine will enable us to account for some of those residual phenomena which Natural Selection alone will not explain. In the 10th chapter of my Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection I have pointed out what I consider to be some of those residual phenomena ; and Vlll PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION I have suggested that they may be due to the action of some of the various intelligences above referred to. This view was, however, put forward with hesitation, and I myself suggested difficulties in the way of its acceptance ; but I maintained, and still maintain, that it is one which is logically tenable, and is in no way inconsistent with a thorough acceptance of the grand doctrine of Evolution, through Natural Selection, although implying (as indeed many of the chief supporters of that doctrine admit) that it is not the all-powerful, all-sufficient, and only cause of the development of organic forms. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION ANOTHER edition of this little work being called for, I have carefully revised the text, inserted dates, and given a few additional facts either in the body of the work or in footnotes. I have also added two chapters on Apparitions and Phantasms, which appeared in the Boston Arena in 1891, and which constitute my latest contribution to the philo- sophy of Spiritualism. Having been more or less acquainted with psychical phenomena for half a century, it appears to my publisher that a few notes on the changes of opinion I have wit- nessed during that period may not be uninteresting to readers of my book. It was about the year 1843 that I first became in- terested in psychical phenomena, owing to the violent discussion then going on as to the reality of the painless surgical operations performed on patients in the mesmeric trance by Dr. Elliotson and other English surgeons. The greatest surgical and physiological authorities of the day declared that the patients were either impostors or per- sons naturally insensible to pain ; the operating surgeons were accused of bribing their patients ; and Dr. Elliotson was described as "polluting the temple of science." The lx X PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION Medico-Chirurgical Society opposed the reading of a paper describing an amputation during the magnetic trance, while Dr. Elliotson himself was ejected from his professorship in the University of London. It was at this time generally believed that all the now well-known phenomena of hypnotism were the result of imposture. It so happened that in the year 1844 I heard an able lecture on mesmerism by Mr. Spencer Hall, and the lecturer assured his audience that most healthy persons could mesmerise some of their friends and reproduce many of the phenomena he had shown on the platform. This led me to try for myself, and I soon found that I could mesmerise with varying degrees of success, and before long I succeeded in producing in my own room, either alone with my patient or in the presence of friends, most of the usual phenomena. Partial or complete cata- lepsy, paralysis of the motor nerves in certain directions, or of any special sense, every kind of delusion produced by suggestion, insensibility to pain, and community of sensation with myself when at a considerable distance from the patient, were all demonstrated, in such a number of patients and under such varied conditions, as to satisfy me of the genuineness of the phenomena. I thus learnt my first great lesson in the inquiry into these obscure fields of knowledge, never to accept the disbelief of great men, or their accusations of imposture or of imbecility, as of any weight when opposed to the repeated observation of facts by other men admittedly sane and honest. The whole history of science shows us that, whenever the educated and scientific men of any age have denied the PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION XI facts of other investigators on a priori grounds of absur- dity or impossibility, the deniers have always been wrong. A few years later, and all the more familiar facts of mesmerism were accepted by medical men, and explained, more or less satisfactorily to themselves, as not being essentially different from known diseases of the nervous system ; and of late years the more remarkable phe- nomena, including clairvoyance both as to facts known and those unknown to the mesmeriser, have been estab- lished as absolute realities. Next we come to the researches of Baron von Reichen- bach on the action of magnets and crystals upon sensi- tives. I well remember how these were scouted by the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter and Professor Tyndall, and how I was pitied for my credulity in accepting them. But many of his results have now been tested by French and English observers and have been found to be correct. Then we all remember how the phenomena of the stigmata, which have occurred at many epochs in the Catholic Church, were always looked upon by sceptics as gross imposture, and the believers in its reality as too far gone in credulity to be seriously reasoned with. Yet when the case of Louise Lateau was thoroughly investi- gated by sceptical physicians, and could be no longer doubted, the facts were admitted; and when, later on, somewhat similar appearances were produced in hypnotic patients by suggestion, the whole matter was held to be explained. Second -sight, crystal- seeing, automatic writing, and allied phenomena have been usually treated either as Xll PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION self-delusion or as imposture, but now that they have been carefully studied by Mr. Myers, Mr. Stead, and other inquirers, they have been found to be genuine facts; and it has been further proved that they often give information not known to any one present at the time, and even sometimes predict future events with accuracy. Trance mediums who give similar information to tha obtained through crystal-seeing or automatic writing, have long been held up to scorn as impostors of the grossest kind. They have been the butt of newspaper writers, and have been punished for obtaining money under false pretences; yet when one of these trance mediums, the well-known Mrs. Piper, was subjected to a stringent examination by some of the acutest members of the Society for Psychical Research, the unanimous testi- mony was that there was no imposture in the case, and that, however the knowledge exhibited was acquired, Mrs. Piper herself could never have acquired it through the medium of her ordinary senses. Nothing has been more constantly disbelieved and ridi- culed than the alleged appearance of phantasms of the living or of the recently dead, whether seen by one person alone or by several together. Imagination, disease, im- posture, or erroneous observation have been again and again put forth as sufficient explanation of these appear- ances. But when carefully examined they do not prove to be impostures, but stand out with greater distinctness as veridical and sometimes objective phenomena, as is sufficiently proved by the mass of well-attested and well- PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION Xlll sifted evidence published by the Society for Psychical Research. Still more subject to ridicule and contempt are ghosts and haunted houses. It has been said that these disappeared with the advent of gas ; but so far from this being the case, there is ample testimony at the present day to phenomena which come under these categories. In this connection also we have not merely appear- ances which may be explained away as collective halluci- nations, but actual physical phenomena of such a material character as stone-throwing, bell-ringing, movements of furniture, independent writing and drawing, and many other manifestations of force guided by intelligence which is yet not the force or the intelligence of those present. Records of such phenomena pervade history, and during the last century, and especially during the last half- century, they have been increasingly prevalent, and have been supported by the same kind and the same amount of cumulative testimony as all the preceding classes of phenomena. Some of these cases are now being in- vestigated, and there is no sign of their being traced to imposture. From personal knowledge and careful ex- periments I can testify that some of these physical phenomena are realities, and I cannot doubt that the fullest investigation will result, as in all the other cases, in their recognition as facts which any comprehensive theory must recognise and explain. What are termed spirit-photographs the appearance on a photographic plate of other figures besides those of the sitters, often those of deceased friends of the sitters have XIV PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION now been known for more than twenty years. Many com- petent observers have tried experiments successfully ; but the facts seemed too extraordinary to carry conviction to any but the experimenters themselves, and any allusion to the matter has usually been met with a smile of incredulity or a confident assertion of imposture. It mattered not that most of the witnesses were experienced photographers who took precautions which rendered it absolutely impossible that they were imposed upon. The most incredible sup- positions were put forth by those who had only ignorance and incredulity to qualify them as judges, in order to show that deception was possible. And now we have another competent witness, Mr. Traill Taylor, for many years editor of the British Journal of Photography, who, taking every precaution that his life-long experience could sug- gest, yet obtained on his plates figures which, so far as normal photography is concerned, ought not to have been there. Lastly, we come to consider the claim of the intel- ligences who are connected with most of these varied phenomena to be the spirits of deceased men and women; such claim being supported by tests of various kinds, especially by giving accurate information regarding them- selves as to facts totally unknown to the medium or to any person present. Records of such tests are numerous in spiritual literature as well as in the publications of the Society for Psychical Research, but at present they are re- garded as inconclusive, and various theories of a double or multiple personality, of a subconscious or second self, or of a lower stratum of consciousness, are called in to PREFACK TO THE THIRD EDITION XV explain them or to attempt to explain them. The stupen- dous difficulty that, if these phenomena and these tests are to be all attributed to the "second self" of living persons, then that second self is almost always a deceiv- ing and a lying self, however moral and truthful the visible and tangible first self may be, has, so far as I know, never been rationally explained ; yet this cum- brous and unintelligible hypothesis finds great favour with those who have always been accustomed to regard the belief in a spirit-world, and more particularly a belief that the spirits of our dead friends can and do sometimes communicate with us, as unscientific, unphilosophical, and superstitious. Why it should be unscientific, more than any other hypothesis which alone serves to explain intel- ligibly a great body of facts, has never been explained. The antagonism which it excites seems to be mainly due to the fact that it is, and has long been in some form or other, the belief of the religious world and of the ignorant and superstitious of all ages, while a total disbelief in spiri- tual existence has been the distinctive badge of modern scientific scepticism. The belief of the uneducated and unscientific multitude, however, rested on a broad basis of alleged facts which the scientific world scouted and scoffed at as absurd and impossible. But they are now discover- ing, as this brief sketch has shown, that the alleged facts, one after another, prove to be real facts, and strange to say, with little or no exaggeration, since almost every one of them, though implying abnormal powers in human beings or the agency of a spirit- world around us, has been strictly paralleled in the present day, and has been sub- XVI PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION jected to the close scrutiny of the scientific and sceptical with little or no modification of their essential nature. Since, then, the scientific world has been proved to have been totally wrong in its denial of the facts, as being con- trary to laws of nature and therefore incredible, it seems highly probable, a priori, it may have been equally wrong as to the spirit hypothesis, the dislike of which mainly led to their disbelief in the facts. For myself, I have never been able to see why any one hypothesis should be less scientific than another, except so far as one explains the whole of the facts and the other explains only a part of them. It was this alone that rendered the theory of gravitation more scientific than that of cycles and epi- cycles, the undulatory theory of light more scientific than the emission theory, and the theory of Darwin more scien- tific than that of Lamarck. It is often said that we must exhaust known causes before we call in unknown causes to explain phenomena. This may be admitted, but I cannot see how it applies to the present question. The "second" or "subconscious self," with its wide stores of knowledge, how gained no one knows, its distinct character, its low morality, its constant lies, is as purely a theoretical cause as is the spirit of a deceased person or any other spirit. It can in no sense be termed " a known cause." To call this hypothesis "scientific," and that of spirit agency " unscientific," is to beg the question at issue. That theory is most scientific which best explains the whole series of phenomena ; and I therefore claim that the spirit-hypothesis is the most scientific, since even those who oppose it most strenuously often admit that it does PREFACE TO THE THIKD EDITION XV11 explain all the facts, which cannot be said of any other hypothesis. This very brief and very imperfect sketch of the pro- gress of opinion on the questions dealt with in the following pages leads us, I think, to some valuable and reassuring conclusions. We are taught first that human nature is not so wholly and utterly the slave of delu- sion as has sometimes been alleged, since almost every alleged superstition is now shown to have had a basis of fact. Secondly, those who believe, as I do, that spiritual beings can and do, subject to general laws and for cer- tain purposes, communicate with us, and even produce material effects in the world around us, must see in the steady advance of inquiry and of interest in these ques- tions the assurance that, so far as their beliefs are logical deductions from the phenomena they have witnessed, those beliefs will at no distant date be accepted by all truth- seekiog inquirers. October 3Qth, 1895. CONTENTS PAOK AN ANSWER TO THE ARGUMENTS OF HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS AGAINST MIRACLES 1 THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL I. INTRODUCTORY 33 II. MIRACLES AND MODERN SCIENCE .... 37 III. MODERN MIRACLES VIEWED AS NATURAL PHENO- MENA 46 IV. OD-FORCE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE 54 V. THE EVIDENCE OF THE REALITY OF APPARITIONS . 71 VI. MODERN SPIRITUALISM : EVIDENCE OF MEN OF SCIENCE 82 VII. EVIDENCE OF LITERARY AND PROFESSIONAL MEN TO THE FACTS OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM ... 93 VIII. THE THEORY OF SPIRITUALISM .... 107 IX. THE MORAL TEACHINGS OF SPIRITUALISM . .115 X. NOTES OF PERSONAL EVIDENCE . . . . 126 A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM .... 145 ARE THERE OBJECTIVE APPARITIONS 231 WHAT ARE PHANTASMS, AND WHY DO THEY APPEAR . 255 APPENDIX TO "A DEFENCE OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM" .. 279 INDEX 287 " A presumptuous scepticism that rejects facts without examination of their truth, is, in some respects, more injurious than unquestioning credulity. " HUMBOLDT. 14 One good experiment is of more value than the ingenuity of a brain like Newton's. Facts are more useful when they contradict, than when they support, received theories." Sir HCMPHBY DAVY. " The perfect observer in any department of science will have his eyes, as it were, opened, that they may be struck at once by any occurrence which, according to received theories, ought not to happen, for these are the facts which serve as clues to new discoveries." Sir JOHN HBRSCHELL. " Before experience itself can be used with advantage, there is one preliminary step to make which depends wholly on ourselves ; it is the absolute dismissal and clearing the mind of all prejudice, and the deter- mination to stand or fall by the result of a direct appeal to facts in the first instance, and of strict logical deduction from them afterwards." Sir JOHN HKBSOHELL. " With regard to the miracle question, I can only say that the word ' impossible ' is not, to my mind, applicable to matters of philosophy. That the possibilities of nature are infinite is an aphorism with which I am wont to worry my friends." Professor HUXLEY. MIRACLES AN ANSWER TO THE ARGUMENTS OF HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS, AGAINST MIRACLES (A Paper read before the Dialectical Society in 1871.) IT is now generally admitted, that those opinions and beliefs in which men have been educated generation after generation, and which have thus come to form part of their mental nature, are especially liable to be erroneous, because they keep alive and perpetuate the ideas and prejudices of a bygone and less enlightened age. It is therefore in the interests of truth that every doctrine or belief, however well established or sacred they may appear to be, should at certain intervals be challenged to arm themselves with such facts and reasonings as they possess, to meet their opponents in the open field of controversy, and do battle for their right to live. Nor can any exemp- tion be claimed in favour of those beliefs which are the product of modern civilisation, and which have, for several generations, been held unquestioned by the great mass of the educated community ; for the prejudice in their favour will be proportionately great, and, as was the case with the doctrines of Aristotle and the dogmas of the school- men, they may live on by mere weight of authority and A 2 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS force of habit, long after they have been shown to be opposed alike to fact and to reason. There have been times when popular beliefs were defended by the terrors of the law, and when the sceptic could only attack them at the peril of his life. Now, we all admit that truth can take care of itself, and that only error needs protection. But there is another mode of defence which equally implies a claim to certain and absolute truth, and which is therefore equally unworthy and unphilosophical that of ridicule and misrepresentation of our opponents, or a contemptuous refusal to discuss the question at all. This method is used among us even now ; for there is one belief, or rather disbelief, whose advocates claim more than Papal infallibility, by refusing to examine the evidence brought against it, and by alleging general arguments which have been in use for two centuries to prove that it cannot be erroneous. The belief to which I allude is, that all alleged miracles are false ; that what is commonly understood by the term supernatural does not exist, or if it does, is in- capable of proof by any amount of human testimony ; that all the phenomena we can have cognisance of depend on ascertainable physical laws, and that no other intelligent beings than man and the inferior animals can or do act upon our material world. These views have been now held almost unquestioned for many generations ; they are inculcated as an essential part of a liberal education ; they are popular, and are held to be one of the indications of our intellectual advancement; and they have become so much a part of our mental nature that all facts and argu- ments brought against them are either ignored as un- worthy of serious consideration, or listened to with undis- guised contempt. Now this frame of mind is certainly not one favourable to the discovery of truth, and strik- ingly resembles that by which, in former ages, systems of HUME ON MIRACLES 3 error have been fostered and maintained. The time has, therefore, come when it must be called upon to justify itself. This is the more necessary, because the doctrine, whether true or false, actually rests upon a most unsafe and rotten foundation ; for I propose to show that the best arguments hitherto relied upon to prove it are, one and all, fallacious, and prove nothing of the kind. But a theory or belief may be supported by very bad arguments, and yet be true ; while it may be supported by some good arguments, and yet be false. But there never was a true theory which had no good arguments to support it. If, therefore, all the arguments hitherto used against miracles in general can be shown to be bad, it will behove sceptics to discover good ones; and if they cannot do so, the evidence in favour of miracles must be fairly met and judged on its own merits, not ruled out of court as it is now. It will be perceived, therefore, that my present purpose is to clear the ground for the discussion of the great ques- tion of the so-called supernatural. I shall not attempt to bring arguments either for or against the main proposition, but shall confine myself to an examination of the allega- tions and the reasonings which have been supposed to settle the whole question on general grounds. One of the most remarkable works of the great Scotch philosopher, David Hume, is An Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, and the tenth chapter of this work is On Miracles, in which occur the arguments which are so often quoted to show that no evidence can prove a miracle. Hume himself had a very high opinion of this part of his work, for he says at the beginning of the chapter, "I flatter myself that I have discovered an argument which, 4 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS if just, will with the wise and learned be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and conse- quently will be useful as long as the world endures ; for so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and pro- fane." DEFINITION OF THE TERM "MIRACLE." After a few general observations on the nature of evi- dence and the value of human testimony in different cases, he proceeds to define what he means by a miracle. And here at the very beginning of the subject we find that we have to take objection to Hume's definition of a miracle, which exhibits unfounded assumptions and false premises. He gives two definitions in different parts of his essay. The first is, "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature." The second is, " A miracle is a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition pf the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent." Now both these definitions are bad or imperfect.; CThe first assumes that we know all the laws of nature"] that the particular effect could not be produced by some unknown law of nature overcoming the law we do know ; it assumes also, that if an invisible intelligent being held an apple suspended in the air, that act would violate the law of gravity. The second is not precise ; it should be " some invisible intelli- gent agent," otherwise the action of galvanism or elec- tricity, when these agents were first discovered, and before they were ascertained to form part of the order of nature, would answer accurately to this definition of a miracle The words " violation " and " transgression " are both im- properly used, and really beg the question by the defini- tion. How does Hume know that any particular miracle, is a violation of a law of nature ? He assumes this with- DEFINITION OF " MIRACLE 5 out a shadow of proof, and on these words, as we shall see, rests his whole argument. Before proceeding further, it is necessary for us to con- sider what is the true definition of a miracle, or what is commonly meant by that word. A miracle, as distin- guished from a new and unheard-of natural phenomenon, supposes an intelligent superhuman agent, either visible or invisible. It is not necessary that what is done should be beyond the power of man to do. The simplest action, if performed independently of human or visible agency, such as a teacup lifted in the air at request as by an in- visible hand and without assignable cause, would be uni- versally admitted to be a miracle, as much so as the lifting of a house into the air, the instantaneous healing of a wound, or the instantaneous production of an elaborate drawing. It_ is true that miracles have been generally held to be, either directly or indirectly, due to the action of the Deity ; and some persons will not, perhaps, admit that any event not socaused deserves the name of miracle. But this is to advance an unprovable hypotheses, not to give a definition. It is not possible to prove that any supposed miraculousTevent is either the direct act of God or indirectly produced by Him to prove the divine mission of some individual, but it may be possible to prove that it is produced by the action of some invisible preterhuman intelligent being. The definition of a miracle I would propose is therefore as follows : " Any act or event neces- sarily implying the existence and agency of superhuman intelligences," considering the human soul or spirit, if manifested out of the body, as one of these superhuman intelligences. This definition is more complete than that of Hume, and defines more accurately the essence of that which is commonly termed a miracle. ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS THE EVIDENCE OF THE REALITY OF MIRACLES. We now have to consider Hume's arguments. The first is as follows : ""A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argu- ment from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable that all men must die ; that lead cannot of itself remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water ; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or, in other words, a miracle, to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happened in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man seemingly in good health should die on a sudden ; because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life ; because that has never been observed in any age or country. \JThere must, therefore, be an uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as an uniform expe- rience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle ; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof which is superior." This argument is radically fallacious, because if it were sound, no perfectly new fact could ever be proved, since the first and each succeeding witness would be assumed to have universal experience against him. Such a simple fact as the existence of flying fish could never be proved, if Hume's argument is a good one ; for the first man who saw and described one would have the universal experience against him that fish do not fly, or make any approach to flying ; and his evidence being rejected, the same argument would apply to the second, and to every subsequent wit- NO UNIFORM EXPERIENCE AGAINST MIRACLES 7 ness ; and thus no man at the present day who has not seen a flying fish alive, and actually flying, ought to believe that such things exist. Again, painless operations in a state produced by mere passes of the hand, were, in the first half of the present century, maintained to be contrary to the laws of nature, contrary to all human experience, and therefore incredible. On Hume's principles they were miracles, and no amount of testimony could ever prove them to be real. Yet these are now admitted to be genuine facts by most physiologists, who even attempt, not very successfully, to explain them. But miracles do not, as assumed, stand alone single facts opposed to uniform experience. Eeputed miracles abound in all periods of history ; every one has a host of others leading up to it ; and every one has strictly analogous facts testified to at the present day. The uniform op- posing experience, therefore, on which Hume lays so much stress, does not exist. What, for instance, can be a more striking miracle than the levitatiou or raising of the human body into the air without visible cause, yet this fact has been testified to during a long series of centuries. A few well-known examples are those of St. Francis d'Assisi, who was often seen by many persons to rise in the air, and the fact is testified by his secretary, who could only reach his feet. St. Theresa, a nun in a convent in Spain, was often raised into the air in the sight of all the sisterhood. Lord Orrery and Mr. Valentine Greatrak both' informed Dr. Henry More and Mr. Glanvil that at Lord Conway's house at Ilagley, in Ireland, a gentleman's butler, in their presence and in broad daylight, rose into the air and floated about the room above their heads. This is related by Glanvil in his Sadducismus Triumph atus. A. similar fact is related by eye-witnesses of Ignatius de 8 ANSWER TO HUME, LEdtY, AND OTHERS Loyola ; and Mr. Madden, in his life of Savonarola, after narrating a similar circumstance of that saint, remarks, that similar phenomena are related in numerous instances, and that the evidence upon which some of the narratives rest is as reliable as any human testimony can be. Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, says that many such facts are related by persons of undoubted veracity,- who testify that they themselves were eye-witnesses of them. So we all know that at least fifty persons of high character may be found in London who will testify that they have seen the same thing happen to Mr. Home. I do not here adduce this testimony as proving that the circumstances related really took place ; I merely bring it forward now to show how utterly unfounded is Hume's argument, which rests upon the assumption of universal testimony on the one side, and no testimony on the other. THE CONTRADICTORY NATURE OF HUME'S STATEMENTS. I now have to show that in Hume's efforts to prove his point, he contradicts himself in a manner so gross and complete, as is, perhaps, not to be found in the works of any other eminent author. The first passage I will quote is as follows : " For, first, there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves ; of such undoubted integrity, as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others ; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood ; and at the same time attesting facts performed in such a public manner, and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable ; all which circumstances are requisite to give us a full assurance in the testi- mony of men." HUME'S CONTRADICTIONS 9 A few pages farther on we find this passage : " There surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person than those which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the tomb of Abbe Paris, the famous Jansenist, with whose sanctity the people were so long deluded. The curing of the sick, giving hearing to the deaf, and sight to the blind, were every- where talked of as the usual effects of that holy sepulchre. But what is more extraordinary, many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by ivitnesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the world. Nor is this all. A relation of them was published and dispersed everywhere ; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the civil magistrate, and determined enemies to those opinions in whose favour the miracles were said to have been wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them. Where shall we find such a number of circumstances agreeing to the corroboration of one fact ? And what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility, or miraculous nature of the events which they relate ? And this, surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be regarded as a sufficient refutation." In the second passage he affirms the existence of every single fact and quality which in the first passage he de- clared never existed (as shown by the italicised passages), and he entirely changes his ground of argument by appeal- ing to the inherent impossibility of the fact, and not at all to the insufficiency of the evidence. He even makes this contradiction still more remarkable by a note which he has himself given to this passage, a portion of which is as follows : " This book was writ by Mons. Montgeron, councillor or judge of the Parliament of Paris, a man of figure and character, who was also a martyr to the cause, and is now said to be somewhere in a dungeon on account of his book. . . . " Many of the miracles of Abbe Paris were proved immediately by witnesses before the officiality or bishop's court at Paris, under 10 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS the eye of Cardinal Noailles, whose character for integrity and capacity was never contested, even by his enemies. " His successor in the archbishopric was an enemy to the Jan- senists, and for that reason promoted to the see by the court. Yet, twenty-two rectors or cures of Paris, with infinite earnestness, press him to examine those miracles, which they assert to be known to the whole world, and indisputably certain ; but he wisely fore- bore. . . . " All who have been in France aboxit that time have heard of the reputation of Mons. Herault, the lieiitenant of police, whose vigi- lance, penetration, activity, and extensive intelligence have been much talked of. The magistrate, who, by the nature of his office, is almost absolute, was invested with full powers on purpose to sup- press or discredit these miracles ; and he frequently seized immedi- ately, and examined the witnesses and subjects to them ; but never could reach anything satisfactory against them. "In the case of Mademoiselle Thibaut he sent the famous De Sylva to examine her, whose evidence is very curious. The physician declares that it was impossible that she could have been so ill as was proved by witnesses, because it was impossible she could in so short a time have recovered so perfectly as he found her. He reasoned like a man of sense, from natural causes ; but the opposite party told him that the whole was a miracle, and that his evidence was the very best proof of it. ... " No less a man than the Due de Chatillon, a duke and peer of France, of the highest rank and family, gives evidence of a miracu- lous cure performed upon a servant of his, who had lived several years in his house with a visible and palpable infirmity. " I shall conclude with observing, that no clergy are more cele- brated for strictness of life and manners than the regular clergy of France, particularly the rectors or cures of Paris, who bear testi- mony to these impostures. " The learning, genius, and probity of the gentlemen, and the austerity of the nuns of Port-Royal, have been much celebrated all over Europe. Yet they all give evidence for a miracle wrought on the niece of the famous Pascal, whose sanctity of life, as well as extraordinary capacity, is well known. The famous Racine gives an account of this miracle in his famous history of Port- Royal, and fortifies it with all the proofs which a multitude of nuns, priests, physicians, and men of the world, all of them of undoubted credit, MIRACULOUS CURE 11 could bestow Upon it. Several men of letters, particularly the Bishop of Tournay, thought this miracle so certain, as to employ it in the refutation of Atheists and Freethinkers. The Queen-regent of France, who was extremely prejudiced against the Port-Royal, sent her own physician to examine the miracle, who returned an absolute convert. In short, the supernatural cure was so incontestable, that it saved for a time that famous monastery from the ruin with which it was threatened by the Jesuits. Sad it been a cheat, it had cer- tainly been detected by such sagacious and powerful antagonists, and must have hastened the ruin of the contrivers." It seems almost incredible that this can have been written by the great sceptic David Hume, and written in the same work in which he has already affirmed that in all history no such evidence is to be found. In order to show how very remarkable is the evidence to which he alludes, I think it well to give one of the cases in greater detail, as recorded in the original work of Montgeron, and quoted in William Howitt's History of the Super- natural : " Mademoiselle Coirin was afflicted, amongst other ailments, with a cancer in the left breast, for twelve years. The breast was de- stroyed by it and came away in a mass ; the effluvia from the cancer was horrible, and the whole blood of the system was pronounced infected by it. Every physician pronounced the case utterly in- curable, yet, by a visit to the tomb, she was perfectly cured ; and, what was more astonishing, the breast and nipple were wholly re- stored, "with the skin pure and fresh, and free from any trace of scar. This case was known to the highest people in the realm. When the miracle was denied, Mademoiselle Coirin went to Paris, was examined by the royal physician, and made a formal deposition of her cure before a public notary. Mademoiselle Coirin was daughter of an officer of the royal household, and had two brothers in attendance on the person of the king. The testimonies of the doctors are of the most decisive kind. M. Gaulard, physician to the king, deposed officially, that, ' to restore a nipple actually destroyed, and separated from the breast, was an actual creation, because a nipple is not merely a continuity of the vessels of the breast, but a particular 12 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS body, which is of a distinct and peculiar organisation.' M. Souchay, surgeon to the Prince of Conti, not only pronounced the cancer in- curable, but, having examined the breast after the cure, went of himself to the public notary, and made a formal deposition ' that the cure was perfect ; that each breast had its nipple in its natural form and condition, with the colours and attributes proper to those parts.' Such also are the testimonies of Seguier, the surgeon of the hospital at Nanterre ; of M. Deshieres, surgeon to the Duchess of Berry ; of M. Hequet, one of the most celebrated surgeons in France ; and numbers of others, as well as of public officers and parties of the greatest reputation, universally known ; all of whose depositions are officially and fully given by Montgeron." This is only one out of a great number of cases equally marvellous, and equally well attested, and we therefore cannot be surprised at Hume's being obliged to give up the argument of the insufficiency of the evidence for miracles and of the uniform experience against them, the wonder being that he ever put forth an argument which he was himself able to refute so completely. We have now another argument which Hume brings forward, but which is, if possible, still weaker than the last. He says : " I may add, as a fourth reason, which diminishes the authority of prodigies, that there is no testimony for any, even those which have not been expressly detected, that is not opposed by an infinite num- ber of witnesses ; so that not only the miracle destroys the credit of testimony, but the testimony destroys itself. To make this the better understood, let us consider that, in matters of religion, whatever is different is contrary ; and that it is impossible the religions of ancient Rome, of Turkey, and Siam, and of China, should, all of them, be established on any solid foundation. Every miracle, therefore, pre- tended to have been wrought in any of these religions (and all of them abound in miracles), as its direct scope is to establish the par- ticular system to which it is attributed ; so has it the same force, though more indirectly, to overthrow every other system. In de- stroying a rival system, it likewise destroys the credit of those miracles on which that system was established ; so that all the prodigies of FALLACIES OF HUME 13 different religions are to be regarded as contrary facts ; and the evi- dences of these prodigies, whether weak or strong, as opposite to each other. According to this method of reasoning, when we believe any miracle of Mahomet or his successors, we have for our warrant the testimony of a few barbarous Arabians. And, on the other hand, we are to regard the authority of Titus Livius, Plutarch, Tacitus, and, in short, of all the authors and witnesses, Grecian, Chinese, and Roman Catholic, who have related any miracle in their par- ticular religion ; I say, we are to regard their testimony in the same light as if they had mentioned that Mahometan miracle, and had in express terms contradicted it, with the same certainty as they have for the miracle they relate." Now this argument, if argument it can be called, rests upon the extraordinary assumption that a miracle, if real, can only come from God, and must therefore support only a true religion. It assumes also that religions cannot be true unless given by God. Mr. Hume assumes, therefore, to know that nothing which we term a miracle can possibly be performed by any of the probably infinite number of intelligent beings who may exist in the universe between ourselves and the Deity. He confounds the evidence for the fact with the theories to account for the fact, and most illogically and unphilosophically argues, that if the theories lead to contradictions, the facts themselves do not exist. I think, therefore, that I have now shown that 1. Hume gives a false definition of miracles, which begs the question of their possibility. 2. He states the fallacy that miracles are isolated facts, to which the entire course of human testimony is opposed. 3. He deliberately and absolutely contradicts himself as to the amount and quality of the testimony in favour of miracles. 4. He propounds the palpable fallacy as to miracles connected with opposing religions destroying each other. 14 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS MODERN OBJECTIONS TO MIRACLES. We will now proceed to some of the more modern argu- ments against miracles. One of the most popular modern objections consists of making what is supposed to be an impossible supposition, and drawing an inference from it which looks like a dilemma, but which is really none at all. This argument has been put in several forms. One is, " If a man tells me he came from York by the telegraph- wire, I do not believe him. If fifty men tell me they came from York by telegraph wires, I do not believe them. If any number of men tell me the same, I do not believe them. Therefore, Mr. Home did not float in the air, not- withstanding any amount of testimony you may bring to prove it." Another is, " If a man tells me that he saw the statue of Nelson descend from his column into Trafalgar Square and drink water from the fountains, I should not believe him. If fifty men, or any number of men, informed me of the same thing, I should still not believe them." Hence it is inferred that there are certain things so absurd and so incredible, that no amount of testimony could possibly make a sane man believe them. These illustrations look like arguments, and at first sight it is not easy to see the proper way to answer them ; but the fact is that they are utter fallacies, because their whole force depends upon an assumed proposition which has never been proved, and which I venture to assert never can be proved. The proposition is, that a large number of independent, honest, sane, and sensible witnesses, can separately and repeatedly testify to a plain matter of fact which never happened at all. FALLACIOUS ARGUMENT 15 Now, no evidence has been adduced to show that this ever has occurred or ever could occur. But the assump- tion is rendered still more monstrous when we consider the circumstances attending such cases as those of the cures at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, and the cases of living scientific men being converted to a belief in the reality of the phenomena of modern Spiritualism ; for we must as- sume that, being fully warned that the alleged facts are held to be impossible and are therefore delusions, and having the source of the supposed delusion pointed out, and all the prejudices of the age and the whole tone of educated thought being against the reality of such facts, yet num- bers of educated men, including physicians and men of science, remain convinced of the reality of such facts after the most searching personal investigation. Yet the assump- tion that such an amount and quality of independent converging evidence can be all false, must be proved, if the argument is to have the slightest value, otherwise it is merely begging the question. It must be remembered that we have to consider, not absurd beliefs or false inferences, but plain matters of fact ; and it never has been proved, and cannot be proved, that any large amount of cumulative evi- dence of disinterested and sensible men was ever obtained for an absolute and entire delusion. To put the matter in a simple form, the asserted fact is either possible, or not possible. If possible, such evidence as we have been con- sidering would prove it; if not possible, such evidence could not exist. The argument is, therefore, an absolute fallacy, since its fundamental assumption cannot be proved. If it is intended merely to enunciate the proposition that the more strange and unusual a thing is the more and better evidence we require for it, that we all admit ; but I maintain that human testimony increases in value in such an enormous ratio with each additional independent and honest witness, 16 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS that no fact ought to be rejected when attested by such a body of evidence as exists for many of the events termed miraculous or supernatural, and which occur now daily among us. The burden of proof lies on those who main- tain that such evidence can possibly be fallacious ; let them point out one case in which such cumulative evidence existed, and which yet proved to be false. Let them give not supposition, but proof. And it must be remembered that no proof is complete which does not explain the exact source of the fallacy in all its details. It will not do, for instance, to say, that there was this cumulative evidence for witchcraft, and that witchcraft is absurd and impossible. That is begging the question. The diabolic theories of the witch mania may be absurd and false ; but the facts of witchcraft as proved, not by the tortured witches, but by independent witnesses, so far from being disproved, are supported by a whole body of analogous facts occurring at the present day. THE UNCERTAINTY OF THE ASSERTED PHENOMENA OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. Another modern argument is used more especially against the reality of the so-called Spiritual phenomena. It is said, " These phenomena are so uncertain ; you have no control over them ; they follow no law. Prove to us that they follow definite laws like all other groups of natural phenomena, and we will believe them." This argu- ment appears to have weight with some persons, and yet it is really an absurdity. The essence of the alleged phe- nomena (whether they be true or not is of no importance) is, that they seem to be the result of the action of inde- pendent intelligences, and are therefore deemed to be Spiritual or superhuman. If they had been found to fol- MISTAKES OP SCIENTIFIC MEN 17 low strict law and not independent will, no one would have ever supposed them to be spiritual. The argument, therefore, is merely the statement of a foregone conclusion, namely, "As long as your facts go to prove the existence of distinct intelligences, we will not believe them ; demon- strate that they follow fixed law, and not intelligence, and then we will believe them." This argument appears to me to be childish, and yet it is used by some persons who claim to be philosophical. THE NECESSITY OF SCIENTIFIC TESTIMONY. Another objection which I have heard stated in public, and received with applause, is, that it requires immense scientific knowledge to decide on the reality of any un- common or incredible facts, and that till scientific men investigate and prove them they are not worthy of credit. Now I venture to say that a greater fallacy than this was never put forth. The subject is very important, and the error is very common, but the fact is the exact opposite of what is stated ; for I assert, without fear of contradiction, that whenever the scientific men of any age have denied the facts of investigators on CL priori grounds, they have always been wrong. It is not necessary to do more than refer to the world- known names of Copernicus, Galileo, and Harvey. The great discoveries they made were, as we know, violently op- posed by all their scientific contemporaries, to whom they appeared absurd and incredible ; but we have equally strik- ing examples much nearer to our own day. When Ben- jamin Franklin brought the subject of lightning-conductors before the Royal Society, he was laughed at as a dreamer, and his paper was not admitted to the Philosophical Trans- actions. When Young put forth his wonderful proofs of the undulatory theory of light, he was equally hooted at B 18 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS as absurd by the popular scientific writers of the day. 1 The Edinburgh Review called upon the public to put Thomas Gray into a strait jacket for maintaining the prac- ticability of railroads. Sir Humphrey Davy laughed at the idea of London ever being lighted with gas. When Stephenson proposed to use locomotives on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, learned men gave evidence that it was impossible that they could go even twelve miles an hour. Another great scientific authority declared it to be equally impossible for ocean steamers ever to cross the Atlantic. The French Academy of Sciences ridiculed the great astronomer Arago when he wanted even to discuss the subject of the electric telegraph. Medical men ridi- culed the stethoscope when it was first discovered. Pain- less operations during the mesmeric coma were pronounced impossible, and therefore impostures. But one of the most striking, because one of the most recent cases of this opposition to, or rather disbelief in, facts opposed to the current belief of the day, among men who are generally charged with going too far in the other direc- tion, is that of the doctrine of the " Antiquity of Man." Boue, an experienced French geologist, in 1823 discovered a human skeleton eighty feet deep in the loess or hardened mud of the Rhine. It was sent to the great anatomist Cuvier, who so utterly discredited the fact that he threw 1 The following are choice specimens from Edinburgh Review articles in 1803 and 1804 : "Another Bakerian lecture, containing more fancies, more blunders, more unfounded hypotheses, more gratuitous fictions, all upon the same field, and from the fertile yet fruitless brain of the same eternal Dr. Young." And again " It teaches no truths, reconciles no contradictions, arranges no ano- malous facts, suggests no new experiments, and leads to no new inquiries. " One might almost suppose it to be a modern scientific writer hurling scorn at Spiritualism ! SCIENTIFIC MISTAKES 19 aside this invaluable fossil as worthless, and it was lost. Sir 0. Lyell, from personal investigation on the spot, now believes that the statements of the original observer were quite accurate. So early as 1715 flint weapons were found with the skeleton of an elephant in an excavation in Gray's Inn Lane, in the presence of Mr. Conyers, who placed them in the British Museum, where they remained utterly un- noticed till quite recently. In 1800 Mr. Frere found flint weapons along with the remains of extinct animals at Hoxne, in Suffolk. From 1841 to 1846, the celebrated French geologist, Bouches de Perthes, discovered great quantities of flint weapons in the drift gravels of the North of France ; but for many years he could convince none of his fellow scientific men that they were works of art, or worthy of the slightest attention. At length, how- ever, in 1853, he began to make converts. In 1859-60, some of our own most eminent geologists visited the spot, and fully confirmed the truth of his observations and deductions. Another branch of the subject was, if possible, still worse treated. In 1825, Mr. McEnery, of Torquay, discovered worked flints along with the remains of extinct animals in the celebrated King's Hole Cavern ; but his account of his discoveries was simply laughed at. In 1840, one of our first geologists, the late Mr. Godwin Austen, brought this matter before the Geological Society, and Mr. Vivian, of Torquay, sent in a paper fully confirming Mr. McEnery's discoveries ; but it was thought too improbable to be pub- lished. Fourteen years later, the Torquay Natural History Society made further observations, entirely confirming the previous ones, and sent an account of them to the Geolo- gical Society of London ; but the paper was rejected as too improbable for publication. Now, however, the cave has been systematically explored under the superintendence 20 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS of a Committee of the British Association, and all the pre- vious reports for forty years have been confirmed, and have been shown to be even less wonderful than the reality. It may be said that " this was proper scientific caution." Perhaps it was ; but at all events, it proves this important fact that in this, as in every other case, the humble and often unknown observers have been right ; the men of science who rejected their observations have been wrong. Now, are the modern observers of some phenomena, usually termed supernatural and incredible, less worthy of attention than those already quoted ? Let us take, first, the reality of what is called clairvoyance. The men who have observed this phenomenon, who have carefully tested it through long years or through their whole lives, will rank in scientific knowledge and in intellectual ability as quite equal to the observers in any other branch of dis- covery. We have no less than seven competent medical men Drs. Elliotson, Gregory, Ashburner, Lee, Herbert Mayo, Esdaile, and Haddock, besides persons of such high ability as Miss Martineau, Mr. H. G. Atkinson, Mr. Charles Bray, and Baron Reichenbach. With the history of pre- vious discoverers before us, is it more likely that these eleven educated persons, knowing all the arguments against the facts, and investigating them carefully, should be all wrong, and those who say h priori that the thing is impossible should be all right, or the contrary ? If we are to learn anything by history and experience, then we may safely prognosticate that in this case, as in so many others, those who disbelieve other men's observations without inquiry will be found to be in the wrong. REVIEW OF MR. LECKY'S ASSERTIONS ABOUT MIRACLES. We now come to the modern philosophic objectors, most eminent among whom is Mr. Lecky, author of the History MR. LECKY ON MIRACLES 21 of Rationalism and the History of Morals. In the latter work he has devoted some space to this question, and his clear and well-expressed views may be taken to represent the general opinions and feelings of the educated portion of modern society. He says : " The attitude of ordinary educated people towards miracles is not that of doubt, of hesitation, of discontent with the existing evidence, but rather of absolute, derisive, and even unexamining incredulity." He then goes on to explain why this is so : " In certain stages of society, and under the action of certain in- fluences, an accretion of miracles is invariably formed around every prominent person or institution. We can analyse the general causes that have impelled men towards the miraculous ; we can show that these causes have never failed to produce the effect ; and we can trace the gradual alteration of mental conditions invariably accompanying the decline of the belief. "When men are destitute of the critical spirit, when the notion of uniform law is yet unborn, and when their imaginations are still incapable of rising to abstract ideas, histories of miracles are always formed and always believed ; and they continue to flourish and to multiply until these conditions are altered. Miracles cease when men cease to believe and expect them. . . ." Again : "We do not say they are impossible, or even that they are not authenticated by as much evidence as many facts we believe. We only say that, in certain states of society, illusions of this kind in- evitably appear. . . ." " Sometimes we can discover the precise natural fact which the superstition has misread, but more frequently we can give only a general explanation, enabling us to assign these legends to their place, as the normal expression of a certain stage of knowledge or intellectual power ; and this explanation is their refutation." Now, in these statements and arguments of Mr. Lecky we find some fallacies hardly less striking than those of Hume. His assertion that in certain stages of society an 22 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS accretion of miracles is invariably formed round every prominent person or institution, appears to me to be absolutely contradicted by well-known historical facts. The Church of Rome has ever been the great theatre of miracles, whether ancient or modern. The most prominent person in the Church of Rome is the Pope ; the most prominent institution is the Papacy. We should expect, therefore, if Mr. Lecky's statement be correct, that the Popes would be pre-eminently miracle-workers. But the fact is, that, with the exception of one or two very early ones, no miracles whatever are recorded of the great majority of the Popes. On the contrary, it has been generally among the very humblest members of the Romish Church, whether clergy or laity, that the power of working miracles has appeared, and which has led to their being canonised as saints. Again, to take another instance, the most prominent person connected with the Reformed Churches is Luther. He himself believed in miracles ; the whole world in his day believed in miracles ; and miracles, though generally of a demoniac character, continued rife in all Protestant churches for many generations after his death ; yet there has been no accretion of miracles round this remarkable man. Nearer to our own day we have Irving, at the head of a church of miracle-workers ; and Joe Smith, the founder of the miracle-working Mormons ; yet there is not the slightest sign of any tendency to impute any miracles to either of these men, other than those which the latter individual claimed for himself before his sect was established. These very striking facts seem to me to prove that there must be some basis of truth in nearly every alleged miracle, and that the theory of any growth or accretion round pro- minent individuals is utterly without evidence to support MR. LBCKY'S FALLACIES 23 it. It is one of those convenient general statements which sound very plausible and very philosophical, but for which no proof whatever is offered. 1 Another of Mr. Lecky's statements is, that there is an alteration of mental conditions invariably accompanying the decline of belief. But this "invariable accompaniment " certainly cannot be proved, because the decline of the belief has only occurred once in the history of the world ; and, what is still more remarkable, while the mental con- ditions which accompanied that one decline have continued in force or have even increased in energy and are much more widely diffused, belief has now, for more than forty years, been growing up again. In the highest states of ancient civilisation, both among the Greeks and Romans, the belief existed in full force, and has been testified to by the highest and. most intellectual men of every age. The decline which in the last and present centuries has certainly taken place cannot, therefore, be imputed to any general law, since it is but an exceptional instance. 2 1 Quite recently in a paper on "The Voices of Jeanne d'Arc," read before the Society for Psychical Research, after a careful examination of the whole literature of the subject, Mr. Andrew Lang says, " In the whole story I am struck by the comparative lack of miraculous undergrowth of legend." And after giving some illustrations of this fact he concludes : "Thus it seems that 'contagious enthusiasm in a credulous age,' even in the presence of one who was herself a miracle, does not always generate a rich undergrowth of legend." (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xi. p. 211, July 1895.) 2 The decline of the belief may, however, be due (as a friend has sug- gested to me) to a real decline in the occurrence of the phenomena which compelled the belief, due to a well-known natural law. It is certain that witches, and the persons subject to their influence, were what are now termed " mediums ; " that is, persons of the peculiar organisation required for the manifestation of modern spiritual phenomena. For several centuries all persons endowed in almost any degree with these peculiar powers were persecuted as witches, and burnt or destroyed by thousands all over the so-called civilised world. The mediums being destroyed, the production 24 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS Again, Mr. Lecky says that the belief in the super- natural only exists " when men are destitute of the critical spirit, and when the notion of uniform law is yet unborn." Mr. Lecky in this matter contradicts himself almost as much as Hume did. One of the greatest advocates for the reality of the so-called supernatural was Glanvil ; and this is what Mr. Lecky says of Glanvil : " The predominating characteristic of Glanvil's mind was an in- tense scepticism. He has even been termed by a modern critic the first English writer who has thrown scepticism into a definite form ; and if we regard this expression as simply implying a profound distrust of human faculties, the judgment can hardly be denied. And certainly it would be difficult to find a work displaying less of credulity and superstition than the treatise on ' The Vanity of Dogmatising,' afterwards published as Scepsis Scientifica, in which Glanvil expounded his philosophical views. . . . The Sadducismus Triumphatus is probably the ablest book ever published in defence of the reality of witchcraft. Dr. Henry Moore, the illustrious Boyle, and the scarcely less eminent Cudworth, warmly supported Glanvil ; and no writer comparable to these in ability or influence appeared on the other side ; yet the scepticism steadily increased." Again Mr. Lecky thus speaks of Glanvil : " It was between the writings of Bacon and Locke that that lati- tudinarian school was formed which was irradiated by the genius of Taylor, Glanvil, and Hales, and which became the very centre and seed-plot of religious liberty." of the phenomena became impossible ; added to which the persecution would lead to concealment of all incipient manifestations. Just at this time, too, physical science began to make those rapid strides which have changed the face of the world, and induced a frame of mind which led men to look with horror and loathing at the barbarities and absurdities of the witch -persecutors. A century of repose has allowed the human organism to regain its normal powers ; and the phenomena which were formerly im- puted to the direct agency of Satan are now looked upon by Spiritualists as, for the most part, the work of invisible intelligences very little better or worse than ourselves. GLANVIL ON WITCHCRAFT 25 These are the men and these the mental conditions which are favourable to superstition and delusion! 1 1 The Rev. Joseph Glanvil, who witnessed some of the extraordinary disturbances at Mr. Mompesson's, and has given a full account of them, and has also collected the evidence for many remarkable cases of supposed witchcraft, was not the credulous fool many who hear that he wrote in favour of the reality of witches will suppose him to have been, but a man of education, talent, and judgment. Mr. Lecky, in his " History of the Rise and Progress of Rationalism in Europe," says of him : " A divine who in his own day was very famous, and who I venture to think has been surpassed in genius by few of his successors. The works of Glanvil are far less known than they should be." I here give a few extracts from his " Introduction to the Proof of the Existence of Apparitions, Spirits, and Witches." "Section IV. What things the author concedes in this controversy about witches and witchcraft : " First : He grants that there are " witty and ingenious men " opposed to him in the matter. Secondly : He admits that some who deny witches are good Christians. Thirdly : He says, " I allow that the great body of mankind is very credu- lous, and in this[matter, so that they do believe vain impossible things in relation to it. That converse with the Devil and real transmutation of men and women into other creatures are such. That people are apt to impute the extraordinaries of art or nature to witchcraft, and that their credulity is often abused by subtle and designing knaves through these. That there are ten thousand silly, lying stories of witchcraft and apparitions among the vulgar." Fourthly : " I grant that melancholy and imagination have very great force and beget strange persuasions ; and that many stories of witches and apparitions have been but melancholy fancies." Fifthly : " I know and yield that there are many strange natural dis- eases that have odd symptoms, and produce wonderful and astonishing effects beyond the usual course of nature, and that such are sometimes falsely ascribed to witchcraft." Sixthly : " I own the Popish Inquisitors and other witch-finders have done much wrong, that they have destroyed innocent persons for witches, and that watching and torture have extorted extraordinary confessions from some that were not guilty. " Seventhly : He acknowledges that of the facts which he affirms to be real many are very strange, uncouth, and improbable, and that we cannot understand them or reconcile them with the commonly received notions of spirits and the future state, 26 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS The critical spirit and the notion of uniform law are cer- tainly powerful enough in the present day, yet in every country in the civilised world there are now hundreds and thousands of intelligent men who believe, on the testimony of their own senses, in phenomena which Mr. Lecky and others would term miraculous, and therefore incredible, but which the witnesses maintain to be part of the order of nature. Instead of being, as Mr. Lecky says, an indication of " certain states of society " " the normal expression of a certain stage of knowledge or intellectual power " this Having made these concessions to his adversaries he demands others in return. " Section V. The postulata which the author demands of his adver- saries as his just right are, viz. : First : That whether witches are or are not is a question of fact. Secondly : That matter of fact can only be proved by immediate sense or the testimony of others. To endeavour to demonstrate fact by abstract reasoning or speculation is as if a man should prove that Julius Caesar founded the Empire of Rome by algebra or metaphysics. Thirdly : That Scripture is not all allegory, but generally has a plain, literal, and obvious meaning. Fourthly : That some human testimonies are credible and certain, viz. : They may be so circumstantiated as to leave no reason of doubt ; for our senses sometimes report truth, and all mankind are not liars, cheats, and knaves at least they are not all liars when they have no interest to be so. Fifthly : That which is sufficiently and undeniably proved ought not to be denied because we know not how it can be, that is, because there are difficulties in the conceiving of it ; otherwise sense and knowledge is gone as well as faith. For the modus of most things is unknown, and the most obvious in nature have inextricable difficulties in the con- ceiving of them, as I have shown in my Scepsis Scientifica. Sixthly : We know scarcely anything of the nature of Spirits and the conditions of the future state. And he concludes : " These are my postulata or demands, which I suppose will be thought reasonable, and such as need no more proof." The evidence adduced by a man who thus philosophically lays down his basis of investigation cannot be despised ; and a perusal of Glanvil's works will well repay any one who takes an interest in this inquiry, MR. E. B. TYLOR'S VIEWS 27 belief has existed in all states of society, and has accom- panied every stage of intellectual power. Socrates, Plu- tarch, and St. Augustine alike give personal testimony to supernatural facts ; this testimony never ceased through the Middle Ages ; the early reformers, Luther and Calvin, throng the ranks of witnesses ; all the philosophers, and all the judges of England, down to Sir Matthew Hale, admitted that the evidence for such facts was irrefutable. Many cases have been rigidly investigated by the police authorities of various countries ; and, as we have already seen, the miracles at the tomb of the Abbe* Paris, which occurred in the most sceptical period of French history, in the age of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, were proved by such an array of evidence, and were so open to investi- gation, that one of the noblemen of that court convinced of their reality after the closest scrutiny suffered the martyrdom of imprisonment in the Bastille for insisting upon making them public. And in our own day we have, at the lowest estimate, many millions of believers in modern Spiritualism in all classes of society ; so that the belief which Mr. Lecky imputes to a certain stage of intellectual culture only, appears, on the contrary, to have all the attri- butes of universality. IS THE BELIEF IN MIRACLES A SURVIVAL OF SAVAGE THOUGHT? The philosophical argument has been put in another form by Mr. E. B. Tylor, in a lecture at the Royal Institution, and in several passages in his other works. He maintains that all Spiritualistic and other beliefs in the supernatural are examples of the survival of savage thought among civi- lised people ; but he ignores the facts which compel the beliefs. The thoughts of those educated men who know, from the evidence of their own senses, and by repeated and 28 ANSWER TO HUME, LECKY, AND OTHERS careful investigation, that things called supernatural are true and real facts, are as totally distinct from those of savages as are their thoughts respecting the sun, or thun- der, or disease, or any other natural phenomenon. As well might he maintain that the modern belief that the sun is a fiery mass is a survival of savage thought, because some savages believe so too ; or that our belief that certain diseases are contagious is a similar survival of the savage idea that a man can convey a disease to his enemy. The question is a question of facts, not of theories or thoughts, and I entirely deny the value or relevance of any general arguments, theories, or analogies, when we have to decide on matters of fact. Thousands of intelligent men now living know, from personal observation, that some of the strange phenomena which have been pronounced absurd and impossible by scientific men, are nevertheless true. It is no answer to these, and no explanation of the facts, to tell them that such beliefs only occur when men are destitute of the critical spirit, and when the notion of uniform law is yet unborn ; that in certain states of society illusions of this kind inevitably appear, that they are only the normal expression of certain stages of knowledge and of intellec- tual power, and. that they clearly prove the survival of savage modes of thought in the midst of modern civilisation. I believe that I have now shown 1. That Hume's argu- ments against miracles are full of unwarranted assumptions, fallacies, and contradictions, and have no logical force whatever. 2. That the modern argument of the telegraph- wire conveyance and drinking statue is positively no argu- ment at all, since it rests on false or unproved, premises. 3. That the argument that dependence is to be placed upon the opinions of men of science rather than on the facts CONCLUSION 29 observed by other men, is opposed to universal experience and the whole history of science. 4. That the philoso- phical argument, so well put by Mr. Lecky and Mr. Tylor, rests on false or unproved assumptions, and is therefore valueless. In conclusion, I must again emphatically point out that the question I have been here discussing is in no way, whether miracles are true or false, or whether modern Spiritualism rests upon a basis of fact or of delusion, but solely whether the arguments_that have hitherto been supposed fwynlnsiYft against them have any weighfr or value. If I have shown as I flatter myself I have done -^^^^^S^^- that the arguments which have been supposed to settle the general question so completely as to render it quite unnecessary to go into particular cases, are all utterly fallacious, then I shall have cleared the ground for the production of evidence ; and no honest man desirous of arriving at truth will be able to evade an inquiry into the nature and amount of that evidence by moving the previous question that miracles are unprovable by any amount of human testimony. It is time that the " derisive and un examining incredulity " which has hitherto existed should give way to a less dogmatic and more philosophical spirit, or history will again have to record the melancholy spectacle of men, who should have known better, assuming to limit the discovery of new powers and agencies in the universe, and deciding, without investigation, whether other men's observations are true or false. THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL INTRODUCTORY IN the following pages I have brought together a few examples of the evidence for facts usually deemed miracu- lous or supernatural, and therefore incredible ; and I have prefixed to these some general considerations on the nature of miracle, and on the possibility that much which has been discredited as such is not really miraculous in the sense of implying any alteration of the laws of nature. In that sense I would repudiate miracles as entirely as the most thorough sceptic. It may be asked if I have myself seen any of the wonders narrated in the following pages. I answer that I have witnessed facts of a similar nature to some of them, and have satisfied myself of their genuine- ness ; and therefore feel that I have no right to reject the evidence of still more marvellous facts witnessed by others. 1 1 In the late Dr. Carpenter's well-known work on " Mental Physiology " (p. 627) he refers to me, by name, as one of those who have "committed them- selves to the extraordinary proposition, that if we admit the reality of the lower phenomena" (Class I., denned as "those which are conformable to our previous knowledge," &c.), the testimony which we accept as'good for these ought to convince us of the higher (Classes II. and III., denned as " those which are in direct contrariety to our existing knowledge," &c.). As he must refer to the above passage and that eight lines farther on, my readers will have an opportunity of judging of the accuracy of Dr. C.'s unqualified 33 84 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL A single new and strange fact is, on its first announce- ment, often treated as a miracle, and not believed because it is contrary to the hitherto observed order of nature. Half-a-dozen such facts, however, constitute a little " order of nature " for themselves. They may not be a whit more understood than at first ; but they cease to be regarded as miracles. Thus it will be with the many thousands of facts of which I have culled a few examples here. If but one or two of them are proved to be real, the whole argu- ment against the rest of " impossibility " and " reversal of the laws of nature " falls to the ground. I would ask any man desirous of knowing the truth to read the following five works carefully through, and then say whether he can believe that the whole of the facts stated in them are to be explained by imposture or self-delusion. And let him remember that if but one or two of them are true, there ceases to be any strong presumption against the truth of the rest. These works are 1. Keichenbach's Researches on Magnetism, Electricity, Heat, Light, &c., in their relations to the vital force. Translated by Dr. Gregory. 2. Dr. Gregory's Letters on Animal Magnetism. 3. R. Dale Owen's Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. 4. Hare's Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations. 5. Home's Incidents of my Life. statement that I refer to different classes of facts, when my words are "facts of a similar nature." It will be seen farther on that I have witnessed numerous facts quite incredible to Dr. C., because "in direct contrariety to his existing knowledge," but that other observers, whom I quote, have witnessed much more remarkable facts of the same class, which / therefore feel bound to accept on their testimony. This Dr. C. twists into an " extraordinary proposition 1 " INTRODUCTORY 35 All these are easily obtained, except the 4th, which may, however, be found in most collections of occult literature. I subjoin a list of the persons whose names I have adduced in the following pages, as having been convinced of the truth and reality of most of these phenomena. I presume it will be admitted that they are honest men. If, then, these facts, which many of them declare they have repeatedly witnessed, never took place, I must leave my readers to account for the undoubted fact of their belief in them as best they can. I can only do so by supposing these well-known men to have been all fools or madmen, which is to me more difficult than believing they are sane men, capable of observing matters of fact, and of forming a sound judgment as to whether or no they could possibly have been deceived in them. A man of sense will not lightly declare, as many of these do, not only that he has witnessed what others deem absurd and incredible, but that he feels morally certain he was not deceived in what he saw. LIST. 1. Professor A. DE MORGAN Mathematician and Logician. 2. Professor OHALLIS Astronomer. 3. Professor WM. GREGORY, M.D. Chemist. 4. Professor EGBERT HARE, M.D. Chemist. 5. ProfessorHERBERTMAYO,M.D.F.E.S. Physiologist. 6. Mr. EUTTER Chemist. 7. Dr. ELLIOTSON Physiologist. 8. Dr. HADDOCK Physician. 9. Dr. GULLY Physician. 10. Judge EDMONDS Lawyer. 11. Lord LYNDHURST Lawyer. 12. CHARLES BRAY Philosophical Writer. 36 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL 13. Archbishop WHATELY Clergyman. 14 Rev. W. KERR, M.A. Clergyman. 15. Hon. Col. E. B. WILBRAHAM Military Man. 16. Sir EICHARD BURTON Explorer, Linguist, and Author. 17. NASSAU E. SENIOR Political Economist. 18. W. M. THACKERAY Author. 19. T. A. TROLLOPE Author. 20. B. D. OWEN Author and Diplomatist. 21. W. Ho WITT Author. 22. S. C. HALL Author. MIRACLES AND MODERN SCIENCE 37 II MIRACLES AND MODERN SCIENCE A miracle is generally defined to be a violation or suspen- sion of a law of nature, and as the laws of nature are the most complete expression of the accumulated experiences of the human race, Hume was of opinion that no amount of human testimony could prove a miracle. Strauss bases the whole argument of his elaborate work on the same ground, that no amount of testimony coming to us through the depth of eighteen centuries can prove that those laws were ever subverted, which the unanimous experience of men now shows to be invariable. Modern science has placed this argument on a wider basis, by showing the interdependence of all these laws, and by rendering it inconceivable that force and motion, any more than matter, can be absolutely originated or destroyed. Prof. Tyndall, in his paper on The Constitution of the Universe in the Fortniyhtly Review, says, "A miracle is strictly defined as an invasion of the law of the conservation of energy. 1 To create or annihilate matter would be deemed on all hands a miracle; the creation or annihilation of energy would be equally a miracle to those who understand the principle of conservation." Mr. Lecky, in his great work on " Eationalism," shows us that during the last two or three centuries there has been a continually increasing disposition to adopt secular rather than theological views, 1 This supposed definition of a miracle is a pure assumption. Miracles do not imply any " invasion of the law of the conservation of energy," but merely the existence of intelligent beings invisible to us, yet capable of acting on matter, as explained farther on. 38 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL in history, politics, and science. The great physical dis- coveries of the last half century have pushed forward this movement with still greater rapidity, and have led to a firm conviction in the minds of most men of education that the universe is governed by wide and immutable laws, under which all phenomena whatever may be classed, and to which no fact in nature can ever be opposed. If, there- fore, we define miracle as a contravention of any one of these laws, it must be admitted that modern science has no place for it ; and we cannot be surprised at the many and varied attempts by writers of widely different opinions to account for or explain away all recorded facts in history or religion which they believe could only have happened on the supposition of miraculous or supernatural agency. This task has been by no means an easy one. The amount of direct testimony to miracles in all ages is very great. The belief in miracles has been, till comparatively recent times, almost universal, and it may safely be asserted that, of those who are, on general grounds, most firmly convinced of the impossibility of events deemed miraculous, few if any have thoroughly and honestly investigated the nature and amount of the evidence that those events really happened. On this subject, however, I do not now intend to enter. It appears to me that the very basis of the whole question has been to some extent misstated and misunderstood, and that in every well-authenticated case of supposed miracle a solution may be found which will remove many of our difficulties. One common fallacy appears to me to run through all the arguments against facts deemed miraculous, when it is asserted that they violate, or invade, or subvert the laws of nature. This is really assuming the very point to be decided, for if the disputed fact did happen, it could only be in accordance with the laws of nature, since the only MIRACLES AND MOfcEttN SCIENCE 30 complete definition of the " laws of nature " is that they are the laws which regulate all phenomena. The very word " supernatural," as applied to a, fact, is an absurdity; and " miracle," if retained at all, requires a more accurate defi- nition than has yet been given of it. To refuse to admit, what in other cases would be absolutely conclusive evidence of a fact, because it cannot be explained by those laws of nature with which we are now acquainted, is really to maintain that we have complete knowledge of those laws, and can determine beforehand what is or is not possible. The whole history of the progress of human knowledge shows us that the disputed prodigy of one age becomes the accepted natural phenomenon of the next, and that many apparent miracles have been due to laws of nature subsequently discovered. Many phenomena of the simplest kind would appear supernatural to men having limited knowledge. Ice and snow might easily be made to appear so to inhabitants of the tropics. The ascent of a balloon would be supernatural to persons who knew nothing of the cause of its upward motion ; and we may well conceive that, if no gas lighter than atmospheric air had ever been discovered, and if in the minds of all (philosophers and chemists included), air had become indissolubly connected with the idea of the light- est form of terrestrial matter, the testimony of those who had seen a balloon ascend might be discredited, on the grounds that a law of nature must be suspended in order that anything could freely ascend through the atmosphere in direct contravention to the law of gravitation. A century ago, a telegram from three thousand miles' distance, or a photograph taken in a fraction of a second, would not have been believed possible, and would not have been credited on any testimony, except by the ignorant and superstitious who believed in miracles. Five centuries ago 40 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL the effects produced by the modern telescope and micro- scope would have been deemed miraculous, and if related only by travellers as existing in China or Japan, would certainly have been disbelieved. The power of dipping the hand into melted metals unhurt is a remarkable case of an effect of natural laws appearing to contravene another natural law ; and it is one which certainly might have been, and probably has been, regarded as a miracle, and the fact believed or disbelieved, not according to the amount or quality of the testimony to it, but according to the cre- dulity or supposed superior knowledge of the recipient. About fifty years ago the fact that surgical operations could be performed on patients in the mesmeric trance without their being conscious of pain was strenuously denied by most scientific and medical men in this country, and the patients, and sometimes the operators, denounced as impostors ; the asserted phenomenon was believed to be contrary to the laws of nature. Now, probably every man of intelligence believes the facts, and it is seen that there must be some as yet unknown law of which they are a consequence. When Castellet informed Reaumur that he had reared perfect silkworms from the eggs laid by a virgin moth, the answer was Ex nihilo nihilfit, and the fact was disbelieved. It was contrary to one of the widest and best established laws of nature ; yet it is now universally admitted to be true, and the supposed law ceases to be universal. These few illustrations will enable us to under- stand how some reputed miracles may have been due to yet unknown laws of nature. We know so little of what nerve or life-force really is, how it acts or can act, and in what degree it is capable of transmission from one human being to another, that it would be indeed rash to affirm that under no exceptional conditions could phenomena, such as the apparently miraculous cure of many diseases, or per- MIRACLES AND MODERN SCIENCE 41 ception through other channels than the ordinary senses, ever take place. To illustrate how gradually the natural glides into the miraculous, and how easily our beliefs are determined by preconceived ideas rather than by evidence, take the fol- lowing pair of cases : Forty or fifty years ago an account appeared in the London Medical Times of an experiment on four Eussians who had been condemned to death. They were made, without knowing it, to sleep in beds whereon persons had died of epidemic cholera, but not one of them caught the disease. Subsequently they were told that they must sleep in the beds of cholera patients, but were put into perfectly clean and wholesome beds, yet three of them now took the disease in its most malignant form, and died within four hours. About two hundred years ago Valentine Greatrak cured people of various diseases by stroking them with his hand. The Rev. Dr. B. Dean, writing an account from personal observation, says : " I was three weeks together with him at my Lord Conway's, and saw him lay his hands upon (I think) a thousand persons : and really there is something in it more than ordinary, but I am convinced 'tis not mira- culous. I have seen deafness cured by his touch, grievous sores of many months date in a few days healed, obstruc- tions and stoppings removed, and cancerous knots in the breast dissolved." The detailed evidence of eye-witnesses of high character and ability as to these extraordinary cures is overwhelming, but cannot here be given. Now, of these two cases the first will be generally be- lieved ; the second disbelieved. The first is supposed to be a natural effect of "imagination," the second is generally held to be of the nature of a miracle. Yet to impute any definite physical effect to imagination is merely to state 42 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL the facts and to hide our complete ignorance of the causes or laws which govern them. And to hold that there can be no curative power in the repeated contact of a peculiarly constituted human being, when the analogy of the admitted facts of mesmerism proves how powerful and curious are the effects of human beings on each other, would seem to be a very great degree of presumption in our present almost complete ignorance of the relation of the mind to the body. But it will be objected that it is only the least important class of miracles that can possibly be explained in this manner. In many cases dead matter is said to have been endowed with force and motion, or to have been suddenly increased immensely in weight and bulk ; things altogether non-terrestrial are said to have appeared on earth, and the orderly progress of the great phenomena of nature is affirmed to have been suddenly interrupted. Now one characteristic of most of this class of reputed miracles is, that they seem to imply the action of another power and intelligence than that of the individual to whose miracu- lous power they are vulgarly imputed. One of the most common and best attested of these phenomena is the move- ment of various solid bodies in the presence of many wit- nesses, without any discoverable cause. In reading the accounts of these occurrences by eye-witnesses one little point of detail often recurs that an object appears to be thrown or to fall suddenly, and yet comes down gently and without noise. This curious point is to be found mentioned in old trials for witchcraft, as well as in the most^ modern phenomena of haunted houses or of spiri- tualism, and is strikingly suggestive of the objects being carried by an invisible agent. To render such things intelligible or possible from the point of view of modern science, we must, therefore, have recourse to the supposi- tion that intelligent beings may exist, capable of acting MIEACLES AND MODEEN SCIENCE 43 on matter, though they themselves are uncognisable directly by our senses. That intelligent beings may exist around and among us, unperceived during our whole lives, and yet capable under certain conditions of making their presence known by acting on matter, will be inconceivable to some, and will be doubted by many more, but we venture to say that no man acquainted with the latest discoveries and the highest speculations of modern science will deny its possibility. The difficulty which this conception presents will be of quite a different nature from that which obstructs our belief in the possibility of miracle, when defined as a contravention of those great natural laws which the whole tendency of modern science declares to be absolute and immutable. The existence of sentient beings uncognisable by our senses would no more contravene these laws than did the discovery of the true nature of the Protozoa, those structureless gelatinous organisms which exhibit so many of the higher phenomena of animal life without any of that differentiation of parts or specialisation of organs which the necessary functions of animal life seem to require. The existence of such preter-human intelligences, if proved, would only add another and more striking illustration than any we have yet received of how small a portion of the great cosmos our senses give us cognisance. Even such sceptics on the subject of the supernatural as Hume or Strauss would probably not deny the validity of the conception of such intelligences, or the abstract possibility of their existence. They would perhaps say, "We have no sufficient proof of the fact ; the difficulty of conceiving their mode of existence is great ; most intelligent men pass their whole lives in total ignorance of any such unseen intelligences : it is amongst the ignorant and superstitious alone that the belief in them prevails. As philosophers, 44 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL we cannot deny the possibility you postulate, but we must have the most clear and satisfactory proof before we can receive it as a fact." But it may be argued, even if such beings should exist, they could consist only of the most diffused and subtle forms of matter. How then could they act upon pon- derable bodies, how produce effects at all comparable to those which constitute so many reputed miracles ? These objectors may be reminded that all the most powerful and universal forces of nature are now referred to minute vibra- tions of an almost infinitely attenuated form of matter; and that, by the grandest generalisations of modern sci- ence, the most varied natural phenomena have been traced back to these recondite forces. Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and probably vitality and gravitation, are believed to be but "modes of motion" of a space-filling ether ; and there is not a single manifestation of force or development of beauty but is derived from one or other of these. The whole surface of the globe has been modelled and remodelled, mountains have been cut down to plains, and plains have been grooved and furrowed into mountains and valleys, all by the power of ethereal heat vibrations set in motion by the sun. Metallic veins and glittering crystals buried deep down under miles of rock and moun- tain have been formed by a distinct set of forces developed by vibrations of the same ether. Every green blade and bright blossom that gladdens the surface of the earth owes its power of growth and life to those vibrations we call heat and light, while in animals and man the powers of that wondrous telegraph whose battery is the brain and whose wires are nerves, are probably due to the manifestation of a yet totally distinct " mode of motion " in the same all- pervading ether. In some cases we are able to perceive the effects of these recondite forces yet more directly. We MIRACLES AND MODERN SCIENCE 45 see a magnet, without contact, or impact of any ponderable matter capable to our imagination of exerting force, yet overcoming gravity and inertia, raising and moving solid bodies. We behold electricity in the form of lightning riving the solid oak, throwing down lofty towers and steeples, or destroying man and beast, sometimes without a wound. And these manifestations of force are produced by a form of matter so impalpable, that only by its effects does it become known to us. With such phenomena everywhere around us, we must admit that if intelligences of what we may call an ethereal nature do exist, we have no reason to deny them the use of those ethereal forces which are the overflowing fountain from which all force, all motion, all life upon the earth originate. Our limited senses and intellects enable us to receive impressions from, and to trace some of the varied manifestations of ethereal motion under phases so distinct as light, heat, electricity, and gravity ; but no thinker will for a moment assert that there can be no other possible modes of action of this primal element. To a race of blind men, how utterly in- conceivable would be the faculty of vision, how absolutely unknowable the very existence of light and its myriad manifestations of form, colour, and beauty. Without this one sense, our knowledge of nature and of the universe could not be a thousandth part of what it is. By its absence our very intellect would have been dwarfed, we cannot say to what extent ; and we must almost believe that our moral nature could never have been fully developed without it, and that we could hardly have attained to the dignity and supremacy of man. Yet it is possible and even probable that there may be modes of sensation as superior to all ours as is sight to that of touch and hearing. In the next chapter we shall consider the bearings of this view of the subject on the more recent developments of so-called supernaturalism. 46 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATUKAL III One very powerful argument against miracles with men of intelligence (and especially with such as are acquainted with the full scope of the revelations of modern science), is derived from the prevalent assumption that, if real, they are the direct acts of the Deity. The nature of these acts is often such, that no cultivated mind can for a moment impute them to an infinite and supreme being. Few, if any, reputed miracles seem to us at all worthy of God ; and it is the man of science who is best enabled to form a proper conception of the lofty and unapproachable nature of the attributes which must pertain to the supreme mind of the universe. Strange to say, however, he is in most cases illogical enough to consider the difficulties in the way of this assumption as a valid argument against the facts in question having ever occurred, instead of being merely an argument against the mode of interpreting them. He even carries this objection further, by the equally unfounded assumption that any beings who could possibly produce the asserted phenomena must be mentally of a high order, and therefore, if the phenomena do not accord with his ideas of the dignity of superior intelligences, he simply denies the facts without examination. Yet many of these objectors admit that the mind of man is probably not annihilated at death, and that therefore countless millions of beings are constantly passing into another mode of existence, who, unless a miracle of mental transformation takes place, must be very far inferior to himself. Any argument, therefore. MODERN MIRACLES VIEWED AS NATURAL PHENOMENA 47 against certain phenomena having been produced by preter-human intelligences, on account of the trivial or apparently useless nature of such phenomena, has really no logical bearing whatever upon the question. The as- sumption that all preter-human intelligences are more intellectual than the average of mankind is as utterly gratuitous, and as powerless to disprove facts, as that of the opponents of Galileo when they asserted that the planets could not exceed the perfect number, seven, and that therefore the satellites of Jupiter could not exist. Let us now return to the consideration of the probable nature and powers of these preter-human intelligences, whose- possible existence only it is my object at present to maintain. I have in the first part of this paper given reasons for supposing that there might be, and probably are, other (and perhaps infinitely varied) forms of matter and modes of ethereal motion, than those which our senses enable us to recognise. We must therefore admit that there may be and probably are organisations adapted to act upon and to receive impressions from them. In the infinite universe there may be infinite possibilities of sensation, each one as distinct from all the rest as sight is from smell or hearing, and as capable of extending the sphere of the possessor's knowledge and the development of his intellect as would the sense of sight when first added to the other senses we possess. Beings of an ethereal order, if such exist, would probably possess some sense or senses of the nature above indicated, giving them increased insight into the constitu- tion of the universe, and proportionately increased intelli- gence to guide and direct for special ends those new modes of ethereal motion'with which they would in^ that case be able to deal. Their every faculty might be proportionate to the modes of action of the ether. They might have a 48 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL power of motion as rapid as that of light or the electric current. They might have a power of vision as acute as that of our most powerful telescopes and microscopes. They might have a sense somewhat analogous to the powers of the last triumph of science, the spectroscope, and by it be enabled to perceive instantaneously, the intimate con- stitution of matter under every form, whether in organised beings or in stars and nebulas. Such existences, possessed of such, to us, inconceivable powers, would not be super- natural, except in a very limited and incorrect sense of the term. And if those powers were exerted in a manner to be perceived by us, the result would not be a miracle, in the sense in which the term is used by Hume or Tyndall. There would be no " violation of a law of nature ; " there would be no " invasion of the law of conservation of energy." Neither matter nor force would be created or annihilated, even though it might appear so to us. In an infinite universe the great reservoir of matter and force must be infinite ; and the fact that an ethereal being should be able to exert force, drawn perhaps from the boundless ether, perhaps from the vital energies of human beings, and make its effects visible to us as an apparent " creation," would be no more a real miracle than is the perpetual raising of millions of tons of water from the ocean, or the perpetual exertion of animal force upon the earth, both of which we have only recently traced immediately to the sun, and perhaps remotely to other and varied sources lost in the immensity of the universe. All would be still natural. The great laws of nature would still maintain their inviolable supremacy. We should simply have to confess with a modern man of science, that " our five senses are but clumsy instruments to investigate the imponder- ables," and might see a new and deeper meaning in the oft-quoted but little heeded words of the great poet, when MODERN MIRACLES VIEWED A3 NATURAL PHENOMENA 49 he reminds us that " there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." It would appear, then, if my argument has any weight, that there is nothing self-contradictory, nothing absolutely inconceivable, in the idea of intelligences uncognisable directly by our senses, and yet capable of acting more or less powerfully on matter. There is only to some minds a high improbability, arising from the supposed absence of all proof that there are such beings. Let direct proof be forthcoming, and there seems no reason why the most scep- tical philosopher should refuse to accept it. It would be simply a matter to be investigated and tested like any other question of science. The evidence would have to be collected and examined. The results of the inquiries of different observers would have to be compared. The pre- vious character of the observers for knowledge, accuracy, and honesty would have to be weighed, and some, at least, of the facts relied on would have to be re-observed. In this manner only could all sources of error be elimi- nated, and a doctrine of such overwhelming importance be established as truth. I propose now to inquire whether such proof has been given, and whether the evidence is attainable by any one who may wish to investigate the subject in the only manner by which truth can be reached by direct observation and experiment. The first fact capable of proof is this : That during the last forty years, while physical science has been pro- gressing with rapid strides, and the growing spirit of rationalism has led to a very general questioning of all facts of a supposed miraculous or supernatural character, a continually increasing number of persons maintain their belief in the existence of beings of the nature of those we have hitherto postulated as a bare possibility. All these persons declare that they have received direct and D 50 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL oft-repeated proofs of the existence of such beings. Most of them tell us they have been convinced against all their previous notions and prepossessions. Many of these per- sons have been materialists, not believing in the existence of any intelligences disconnected from a visible, tangible form, nor in the continued existence of the mind of man after death. At the present time there are probably three millions of persons in the United States of America who have received to them satisfactory proofs of the exist- ence of invisible intelligences ; and in this country there are many thousands who declare the same thing. A large number of these persons continually receive fresh proofs in the privacy of their own homes, and so much interest is felt in the subject that four periodicals are published in this country, several on the Continent, and a very large number in America, which are exclusively devoted to dis- seminating information relating to the existence of these invisible intelligences and the means of communicating with them. A little inquiry into the literature of the subject, which is already very extensive, reveals the startling fact that this revival of so-called supernaturalism is not confined to the ignorant or superstitious, or to the lower classes of society. On the contrary, it is rather among the middle and upper classes that the larger pro- portion of its adherents are to be found ; and among those who have declared themselves convinced of the reality of facts such as have been always classed as miracles, are numbers of literary, scientific, and professional men, who always have borne and still continue to bear high characters, are above the imputation either of falsehood or trickery, and have never manifested indications of insanity. Neither is the belief confined to any one religious sect or party. On the contrary, men of all religions and of no religion are alike to be found in the ranks of the believers ; and, as already MODERN MIRACLES VIEWED AS NATURAL PHENOMENA 51 stated, many entire sceptics as to there being any super- human intelligences in the universe have declared that by the force of direct evidence they have been, however unwill- ingly, compelled to believe that such intelligences do exist. Here is certainly a phenomenon altogether unique in the history of the human mind. In examining the evi- dence of similar prodigies during past ages, we have to make much allowance for early education and the almost universal pre-existing belief in the possibility and frequent occurrence of miracles and supernatural appearances. In the present day it is a notorious fact that among the edu- cated classes, and especially among students of medicine and science, the scepticism on such subjects is almost uni- versal. But what seems the most extraordinary fact of all, and one that would appear to be absolutely inconsistent with any theory of fraud, imposture, or self-delusion, is, that during the forty-seven years which have elapsed since the revival of a belief in the supernatural in America, not one single individual has carefully investigated the subject without accepting the reality of the phenomena, and while thousands have been converted to the belief, not one adhe- rent has ever been converted back from it. While the peculiarly constituted individuals who are the media of the phenomena may be counted by thousands, not one has ever exploded the imposture, if imposture it be. And of the few who receive payment for giving up their time to those who wish to witness the manifestations, it is remarkable that no one has yet tried to be first in the market with a full history of the wonderfully ingenious apparatus and extraordinary dexterity that must have been requisite to make dupes of many millions of people, and to establish a new literature and a new religion. They must be very blind not to see that such a work would be a most profitable speculation. 52 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL If there is any one thing which modern philosophy teaches more consistently than another, it is that we can have no a priori knowledge of natural phenomena or of natural laws. But to declare that any facts, testified to by several independent witnesses, are impossible, and to act upon this declaration so far as to refuse to examine these facts when opportunity offers, is to lay claim to this very a priori knowledge of nature which has been univer- sally given up. One of our most celebrated modern men of science fell into the same error when he made his un- fortunate statement that, " before we proceed to consider any question involving physical principles, we should set out with clear ideas of the naturally possible and impos- sible ; " for no man can be sure that, however " clear" his ideas may be in this matter, they will be equally true ones. It was very "clearly impossible" to the minds of the philosophers at Pisa that a great and a small weight could fall from the top of the heavy tower in the same time ; and if this principle is of any use, they were right in disbelieving the evidence of their senses, which assured them that they did; and Galileo, who accepted that evidence, was, to use the words of the same eminent authority, " not only ignorant as respects the education of the judgment, but ignorant of his ignorance." Men who repeatedly, and under conditions which render doubt im- possible to them, witness plain facts that their scientific teachers declare cannot be real, but yet decline to disprove by the only means possible, that of a full and impartial examination, may be excused for thinking that theirs is a parallel case to that of Galileo and his opponents. In order that my readers may judge for themselves whether delusion or deception will best account for these facts, or whether we have indeed made a discovery more important and more extraordinary than any that has yet MODERN MIRACLES VIEWED AS NATURAL PHENOMENA 53 distinguished the nineteenth century, I propose to bring before them a few witnesses, whose evidence it will be well for them to hear before forming a hasty judgment. I shall call chiefly persons connected with science, art, or literature, and whose intelligence and truthfulness in nar- rating their own observations are above suspicion; and I would particularly insist that no objections of a general kind can have any weight against direct evidence to special facts, many of which are of such a nature that there is absolutely no choice between believing that they did occur, or imputing to all who declare they witnessed them wilful and purposeless falsehood. 54 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL IV OD. FORCE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE Before proceeding to adduce the evidence of those persons who have witnessed phenomena which, if real, can only be attributed to preter-human intelligences, it will be well to take note of a series of curious observations on human beings, which prove that certain individuals are gifted with unusual powers of perception, sometimes by the ordinary senses leading to the discovery of new forces in nature, sometimes in a manner which no abnormal power of the ordinary senses will account for, but which imply the existence of faculties in the human mind of a nature ana- logous to those which are generally termed supernatural, and are attributed to the action of unembodied intelli- gences. It will be seen that we are thus naturally led up to higher phenomena, and are enabled, to some extent, to bridge over the great gulf between the so-called natural and supernatural. I wish first to call my reader's attention to the researches of Baron Reichenbach, as detailed in Dr. Gregory's transla- tion of his elaborate work. He observed that persons in a peculiar nervous condition experienced well-marked and definite sensations on contact with magnets and crystals, and in total darkness saw luminous emanations from them. He afterwards found that numbers of persons in perfect health and of superior intellect could perceive the same phenomena. As an example, I may mention that among the numerous persons experimented on by Baron Reichen- bach were : OD-FORCE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE 55 Dr. ENDLICHER, Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanic Garden of Vienna. Dr. NIED, a Physician at Vienna, in extensive practice, very active and healthy. M. WILHELM HOCHSTETTER, son of Professor Hochstetter of Esslingen. M. THEODORE KOTSCHY, a Clergyman, Botanist, and well- known traveller in Africa and Persia ; a powerful, vigorous, perfectly healthy man. Dr. Huss, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Stockholm, and Physician to the King of Sweden. Dr. RAGSKY, Professor of Chemistry in the Medical and Surgical Josephakademie in Vienna. M. CONSTANTIN DELHEZ, a French Philologist, residing in Vienna. M. ERNEST PAUER, Consistorial Councillor, Vienna. M. GUSTAV AUSCHNETZ, Artist, Vienna. BARON VON OBERLAENDER, Forest Superintendent in Moravia. All these saw the lights and flames on magnets, and described the various details of their comparative size, form, and colour, their relative magnitude on the positive and negative poles, and their appearance under various conditions, such as combinations of several magnets, images formed by lenses, &c. ; and their evidence exactly confirmed the descriptions already given by the " sensi- tive " patients of a lower class, whose testimony had been objected to, when the observations were first published. In addition to these, Dr. Diesing, Curator in the Imperial Academy of Natural History at Vienna, and the Chevalier Hubert von Rainer, Barrister of Klagenfurt, did not see the luminous phenomena, but were highly sensitive to the various sensations excited by magnets and crystals. About 56 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL fifty other persons in all conditions of life, of all ages, and of both sexes, saw and felt the same phenomena. In an elaborate review of Reichenbach's work in the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, the evidence of these twelve gentlemen, men of position and science, and three of them medical men, is completely ignored, and it is again and again asserted that the phenomena are subjective, or purely imaginary. The only particle of argument to support this view is, that a mesmeric patient was by suggestion made to see " lights " as well without as with a magnet. It appears to me that it would be as reasonable to tell Gordon Gum- ming or Dr. Livingstone that they had never seen a real lion, because, by suggestion, a score of mesmeric patients can be made to believe they see lions in a lecture-room. Unless it can be proved that Reichenbacli and these twelve gentlemen have none of them sense enough to apply simple tests (which, however, the details of the experiments show were again and again applied), I do not see how the general objections made in the above-mentioned article, that Reich- enbach is not a physiologist, and that he did not apply sufficient tests, can have the slightest weight against the mass of evidence he adduces. It is certainly not credit- able to modern science that these elaborate investigations should be rejected without a particle of disproof ; and we can only impute it to the distasteful character of some of the higher phenomena produced, and which it is still the fashion of professors of the physical sciences to ignore without examination. I have seen it stated also, that Reichenbach's theory has been disproved by the use of an electro-magnet, and that a patient could not tell whether the current was on or off. But there is the detail of this experiment published, and how often has it been confirmed, and under what conditions ? And if true in one case, how does it affect the question when similar tests were applied OD-FOECE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCK 57 to Reichenbach's patients, and how does it apply to facts like this, which Reichenbach gives literally by the hundred? " Prof. D. Endlicher saw on the poles of an electro-magnet flames forty inches high, unsteady, exhibiting a rich play of colours, and ending in a luminous smoke, which rose to the ceiling and illuminated it " (Gregory's Trans., p. 342). The least the deniers of the facts can do is to request these well-known individuals who gave their evidence to Reichenbach to repeat the experiments again under exactly similar conditions, as no doubt in the interests of science they would be willing to do. If then, by suggestion, they can all be led to describe equally well defined and varied appearances when only sham magnets are used, the odylic flames and other phenomena will have been fairly shown to be very doubtful. But as long as negative state- ments only are made, and the whole body of facts, testified to by men at least equal in scientific attainments to their opponents, are left untouched, no unprejudiced individual can fail to acknowledge that the researches of Reichenbach have established the existence of a vast and connected series of new and important natural phenomena. Doctors Gregory and Ashburner in England state that they have repeated several of Reichenbach's experiments under test conditions, and have found them quite accurate. The late Mr. Rutter, of Brighton, made, quite indepen- dently, a number of curious experiments, which he has de- tailed in his little work on Magnetised Currents and the Magnetoscope, and which were witnessed by hundreds of medical and scientific men. He showed that the various metals and other substances, the contact of a male or female hand, or even of a letter written by a male or female, each produced distinct effects on the magnetoscope. And a single drop of water from a glass in which a homoeo- pathic globule had been dissolved caused a characteristic 58 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL motion of the instrument when dropped upon the hand of the operator, even when he did not know the substance employed. Dr. King corroborates these experiments, and states that he has seen a decillionth of a grain of silex and a billionth of a grain of quinine cause motion by means of this apparatus. Every caution was taken in conducting the experiments, which were equally successful when a third party was placed between Mr. E. and the magneto- scope. Magnets and crystals also produced powerful effects, as indicated by Reichenbach. Yet Mr. Rutter's experiments, like Reichenbach's, are ignored by our scien- tific men, although during several years he offered facility for their investigation. 1 The case of Jacques Aymar, whose powers were imputed by himself and others to the divining-rod, but which were evidently personal, is one of the best attested on record, and one which indisputably proves the possession by him 1 Dr. Carpenter (Mental Physiology, p. 287) states that Mr. Rutter's experiments were shown to be fallacies by Dr. Madden, who found that unless he knew the substance operated on, no definite indications were given. But this only proves that different operators have different degrees of power. And Dr. Carpenter very unfairly omits to notice three very important classes of test experiments made by Mr. Rutter. In one a crystal is placed on a stand altogether detached from the instrument or the table on which it stands. Yet when this is touched, it sets the pendulum in motion ; and the direction of the motion changes as the direction of the axis of the crystal is changed (Rutter's Human Electricity p. 151). Again, when the pendulum has acquired its full momentum, either rotary or oscillatory, it takes from 7 to 10 minutes to come to a state of rest. But if any piece of bone or other dead animal matter is placed in the operator's hand, the pendulum comes to a dead stop in from 5 to 20 seconds ; a feat which cannot be performed voluntarily or by any amount of "expectant attention" (op. cit., p. 147, and App. p. lv.). Again, knowledge of the substance operated on is not necessary with all operators, to produce definite and correct results (loc. cit. App. p. Ivi.). What are we to think of a writer who comes forward as a master to teach the public, and 'sets before them such a partial and one-sided account of the evidence as this ? OD-FORCE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE 59 of a new sense in some degree resembling that of many other clairvoyants. Mr. Baring-Gould, in his Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, gives a full account of the case with a reference to the original authorities. These are, M. Chauvin, a doctor of medicine, who was an eye-witness, and who published his narrative ; the Sieur Pauthot, Dean of the College of Medicine at Lyons ; and the Proces- verbal of the Procureur du Eoi. The facts of the case are briefly as follows. On the 5th of July 1692, a wine-seller and his wife were murdered and the bodies found in their cellar in Lyons, their money having been carried off. A bloody hedging bill was found by the side of the bodies, but no trace of the murderers was discovered. The officers of justice were completely at fault, when they were told of a man named Jacques Aymar, who, four years before, had discovered a thief at Grenoble who was quite unsuspected of the crime. The man was sent for and taken to the cellar, where his divining-rod became violently agitated, and his pulse rose as though he were in a fever. He then went out of the house, and walked along the streets like a hound following a scent. He crossed the court of the Archbishop's palace and down to the gate of the Rhone, when, it being night, the quest was relinquished. The next day, accompanied by three officers, he followed the track down the bank of the river to a gardener's cottage. He had declared that so far he had followed three murderers, but here two only entered the cottage, where he declared, they had seated themselves at a table and had drunk wine from a particular bottle. The owner declared positively no one had been there, but Aymar, on testing each indi- vidual in the house, found two children who had been in contact with the murderers, and these reluctantly confessed that on Sunday morning when they were alone, two men had suddenly entered and had seated themselves and taken 60 SCIENTIFIC ASPKCT OF THE SUPERNATURAL wine from the very bottle which had been pointed out. He then followed them down the river and discovered the places where they slept, and the particular chairs or benches they had used. After a time he reached the military camp of Sablon, and ultimately reached Beaucaire, where the murderers had parted company, but he traced one of them into the prison, and among fourteen or fifteen prisoners pointed out a hunchback (who had only been an hour in the prison) as the murderer. He protested his innocence, but on being taken back along the road, was recognised in every house where Aymar had previously traced him. This so confounded him that he confessed, and was ulti- mately executed for the murder. During the process of this wonderful experiment, which occupied several days, Aymar was subjected to other tests by the Procurator-General. The hedging bill with which the murder was committed, with three others exactly like it, were secretly buried in different places in a garden. The diviner was then brought in ; and his rod indicated where the blood-stained weapon was buried, but showed no move- ment over the others. Again they were all exhumed and reinterred, and the Comptroller of the Province himself bandaged Aymar's eyes and led him into the garden, with the same result. The two other murderers were after- wards traced, but they had escaped out of France. Pierre Gamier, Physician of the Medical College of Montpelier, has also given an account of various tests to which Aymar was subjected by himself, the Lieutenant-General, and two other gentlemen, to detect imposture ; but they failed to discover any sign of deception, and he traced the course of a man who had robbed the Lieutenant-General some months before, pointing out the exact side of a bed on which he had slept with another man. Here is a case which one would think was demonstrated ; OD-FORCE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE 61 the investigation having been carried on under the eyes of magistrates, officers, and physicians, and resulting in the discovery of a murder and the tracking out of his course with more minute accuracy than ever bloodhound tracked a fugitive slave ; yet Mr. Baring- Gould calls the man an " impostor," and speaks of his " expos6 and downfall." And what are the grounds on which these harsh terms are used ? Merely that at a later period, when brought to Paris to satisfy the curiosity of the great and learned, his power left him, and he seems to have either had totally false impressions or to have told lies to conceal his want of power. But how does this in the least affect the question ? The fact that he was so easily found out at Paris, or rather that he there possessed no extraordinary powers, would surely prove rather that there could not possibly have been any imposture in the former case when he stood every test, and instead of failing, succeeded. He can only be proved an impostor by proving all the witnesses to be also impostors, or by showing that no such crime was ever committed or ever discovered. This, however, neither Mr. Baring-Gould nor any one else has ever attempted to do ; and we must therefore conclude that the murder was really discovered by Jacques Aymar in the manner de- scribed, and that he undoubtedly possessed the equivalent of a new sense in many respects resembling the powers of some modern clairvoyants. The subject of Animal Magnetism is still so much a dis- puted one among scientific men, and many of its alleged phenomena so closely border on, if they do not actually reach, what is classed as supernatural, that I wish to give a few illustrations of the kind of facts by whichit is supported. I will first quote the evidence of Dr. William Gregory, late Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, who for many years made continued personal investigations 62 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL into this subject, and has recorded them in his Letters on Animal Magnetism, published in 1851. The simpler phe- nomena of what are usually termed " Hypnotism " and " Electro-Biology " are now universally admitted to be real ; though it must never be forgotten that they too had to fight their way through the same denials, accusations, and imputations that are now made against clairvoyance and phreno-mesmerism. The same men who advocated, tested, and established the truth of the more simple facts, claim that they have done the same for the higher phenomena ; the same class of scientific and medical men who once denied the former, now deny the latter. Let us see, then, if the evidence for the one is as good as it was for the other. Dr. Gregory defines several stages of clairvoyance, some- times existing in the same, sometimes in different patients. The chief division, however, is into 1. Sympathy or thought- reading, and 2. True clairvoyance. The evidence for the first is so overwhelming, it is to be met with almost every- where, and is so generally admitted, that I shall not occupy space by giving examples, although it is, I believe, still denied by the more materialistic physiologists. We will, therefore, confine our attention to the various phases of true clairvoyance. Dr. Haddock, residing at Bolton, had a very remarkable clairvoyante (E.) under his care. Dr. Gregory says, " After I returned to Edinburgh, I had very frequent communica- tion with Dr. H., and tried many experiments with this remarkable subject, sending specimens of writing, locks of hair, and other objects, the origin of which was perfectly unknown to Dr. H., and in every case, without exception, E. saw and described with accuracy the persons con- cerned " (p. 403). Sir Walter C. Trevelyan, Bart., received a letter from a OD-FORCE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE 63 lady in London, in which the loss of a gold watch was mentioned. He sent the letter to Dr. H. to see if E. could trace the watch. She described the lady accurately, and her house and furniture minutely, and described the watch and chain, and described the person who had it, who, she said, was not a habitual thief, and said further that she could tell her handwriting. The lady, to whom these accounts were sent, acknowledged their perfect accuracy, but said the description of the thief applied to one of her maids whom she did not suspect, so she sent several pieces of handwriting, including that of both her maids. The clair- voyante immediately selected that of the one she had described, and said "she was thinking of restoring the watch, saying she had found it." Sir W. Trevelyan wrote with this information, but a letter from the lady crossed his, saying the girl mentioned before by the clairvoyante had restored the watch and said she had found it (p. 405). Sir W. Trevelyan communicated to Dr. Gregory another experiment he had made. He requested the Secretary of the Geographical Society to send him the writing of several persons abroad, not known to him, and without their names. Three were sent. E. discovered in each case where they were ; in two of them described their persons accurately ; described in all three cases the cities and countries in which they were, so that they could be easily recognised, and told the time by the clocks, which verified the place by difference of longitude (p. 407). Many other cases, equally well tested, are given in great detail by Dr. Gregory ; and numerous cases are given of tests of what may be called simple direct clairvoyance. For example, persons going to see the phenomena purchase in any shop they please a few dozens of printed mottoes enclosed in nutshells. These are placed in a bag, and the clairvoyante takes out a nutshell and reads the motto. 64 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL The shell is then broken open and examined, and hundreds of mottoes have been thus read correctly. One motto thus read contained ninety-eight words. Numbers of other equally severe test cases are given by Dr. Gregory, devised and tried by himself and by other well-known persons. Now, will it be believed, that in the very elaborate article in the British and Foreign Medico -Chirurgical Jteview, already referred to, on Dr. Gregory's and other works of an allied nature, not one single experiment of this land is mentioned or alluded to ? There is a great deal of general objection to Dr. Gregory's views, because he was a chemist and not specially devoted to physiology (forgetting that Dr. Elliotson and Dr. Mayo, who testify to similar facts, were both specially devoted to physiology), and a few quotations of a general nature only are given ; so that no reader could imagine that the work criticised was the result of observation or experiment at all. The case is a complete illustration of judicial blindness. The opponents dare not impute wilful falsehood to Dr. Gregory, Dr. Mayo, Dr. Haddock, Sir Walter Trevelyan, Sir T. Willshire, and other gentlemen who vouch for these facts ; and yet the facts are of such an unmistakable nature, that without imputing wilful falsehood they cannot be explained away. They are therefore silently ignored, or more probably the records of them are never read. But the silence or con- tempt of our modern scientific men cannot blind the world any longer to those grand and mysterious phenomena of mind, the investigation of which can alone conduct us to a knowledge of what we really are. Dr. Herbert Mayo, F.RS., late Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in King's College, and of Comparative Anatomy in the Royal College of Surgeons, also gives his personal testimony to facts of a similar nature. In his Letters on the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions OD-FORCE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE 65 (2nd edit., p. 178), he says : " From Boppard, where I was residing in the years 1845-46, I sent to an American gentleman in Paris a lock of hair, which Col. C , an invalid then under my care, had cut from his own head and wrapped in writing-paper from his own writing-desk. Col. C was unknown even by name to this American gentleman, who had no clue whatever whereby to identify the proprietor of the hair. And all that he did was to place the paper in the hands of a noted Parisian somnam- bulist. She stated, in the opinion she gave on the case, that Col. C had partial palsy of the hips and legs, and that for another complaint he was in the habit of using a surgical instrument. The patient laughed heartily at the idea of the distant somnambulist having so completely realised him." Dr. Mayo also announces his conversion to a belief in the truth of phrenology and phreno-mesmerism, and Dr. Gregory gives copious details of experiments in which special care has been taken to avoid all the supposed sources of fallacy in phreno-mesmerism ; yet, although Dr. Mayo's work is included in the criticism already referred to, none of the facts he himself testifies to, nor the latest opinions he puts forward, are so much as once mentioned. Dr. Joseph Haddock, the physician resident and prac- tising at Bolton who has been already mentioned, has published a work entitled Somnolism and Psycheism, in which he endeavours to classify the facts of mesmerism and clairvoyance, and to account for them on physiological and psychical principles. The work is well worth reading, but my purpose here is to bring forward one or two facts from those which he gives in an appendix to his work. Nothing is more common than for those who deny the reality of clairvoyance to ask contemptuously, "If it is true, why is not use made of it to discover lost property, or v. 66 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL to get news from abroad ? " To such I commend the follow- ing statement, of which I can only give an abstract. On Wednesday evening, December the 20th, 1848, Mr. Wood, grocer, of Cheapside, Bolton, had his cash-box with its contents stolen from his counting-house. He applied to the police and could get no clue, though he suspected one individual. He then came to Dr. Haddock to see if the girl, Emma, could discover the thief or the property. When put in rapport with Emma, she was asked about the lost cash-box, and after a few moments she began to talk as if to some one not present, described where the box was, what were its contents, how the person took it, where he first hid it ; and then described the person, dress, associa- tions of the thief so vividly, that Mr. Wood recognised a person he had not the least suspected. Mr. Wood imme- diately sought out this person, and gave him the option of coming at once to Dr. Haddock's or to the police-office. He chose the former, and when he came into the room Emma started back, told him he was a bad man, and had not on the same clothes as when he took the box. He at first denied all knowledge of the robbery, but after a time acknowledged that he had taken it exactly in the manner described by Emma, and it was accordingly recovered. Now as the names, place, and date of this occurrence are given, and it is narrated by an English physician, it can hardly be denied without first making some inquiry at the place where it is said to have happened. The next instance is of clairvoyance at a much greater distance. A young man had sailed suddenly from Liverpool for New York. His parents immediately remitted him some money by the mail- steamer, but they heard, some time afterwards, that he had never applied for it. The mother came twenty miles to Bolton to see if, by Emma's means, she could learn any- thing of him. After a little time Emma found him, de- OD-FORCE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE 67 scribed his appearance correctly, and entered into so many details as to induce his mother to rely upon her statements, and to request Dr. Haddock to make inquiries at intervals of about a fortnight. He did so, traced the young man by her means to several places, and the information thus ac- quired was sent to his parents. Shortly after, Dr. Haddock received information from the father that a letter had arrived from his son, and that "it was a most striking confirmation of Emma's testimony from first to last." Dr. Edwin Lee, in his work on Animal Magnetism, gives an account of fourteen stances at Brighton in private houses with Alexis Didier, the well-known clairvoyant. On every one of these occasions he played at cards blind- folded, often naming his adversary's cards as well as his own, read numbers of cards written by the visitors and enclosed in envelopes, read any line as^ed for in any book eight or ten pages farther on than the page opened, and described the contents of numbers of boxes, card-cases, and other envelopes. Dr. Lee also gives an account of the cele- brated Robert Houdin's interview with Alexis, when similar tests were applied by that great conjuror, who brought his own cards and dealt them himself, and yet Alexis immedi- ately told his every card in both the hands without turning them up. Houdin took a book from his pocket and open- ing it, asked Alexis to read a line at a particular level eight pages in advance. The clairvoyant stuck a pin in to mark the line and read four words which were found on the corresponding line at the ninth page forward. Houdin proclaimed it " stupefying," and the next day signed this declaration : "I cannot help stating that the facts above related are scrupulously exact, and the more I reflect upon them, the more impossible do I find it to class them among the tricks which are the object of my art." A fortnight later he sent a letter to M. de Mirville (by 68 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL whom he had been introduced to Alexis) giving an account of a second stance, where the same results were repeated, and concluding : " I therefore came away from this stance as astonished as any one can be, and fully convinced that it would be quite impossible for any one to produce such surprising effects by mere skill." The late Mr. H. G. Atkinson, F.G.S., showed me one of the tests of clairvoyance by Adolphe Didier, brother of Alexis, which he saw produced himself at a private house in London. A well-known nobleman wrote a word at the bottom of a piece of paper which he folded over repeatedly, so that it was covered by five or six layers of paper. It was then given to Adolphe, who was surrounded by a circle of observers while he wrote with a pencil outside what had been written within. The curious point is that he made several trials and crossed them out again, but at length wrote the exact word, the others being approxima- tions to it. This is very curious, and indicates the exist- ence of a new sense, a kind of rudimentary perception, which can only get at the exact truth by degrees, and it corresponds remarkably with the manner in which clair- voyants generally describe objects. They do not say at once, " It is a medal," but " It is metal," " It is round and flat," " It has writing on it," and so on. Now, when we have the evidence of Dr. Gregory, Dr. Mayo, Dr. Lee, Dr. Haddock, and of hundreds of other equally honest if not equally capable men who have wit- nessed similar facts, is it a satisfactory solution of the difficulty that all of these persons in every case were the victims of imposture ? Medical men are not very easily imposed on, especially in a matter which they can observe and test repeatedly ; and when we find that such a cele- brated professor of legerdemain asHoudin not only detected no imposture, but declared the phenomena impossible to be OD-FORCE, ANIMAL MAGNETISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE 69 the effect of skill or trick, we have a complete answer to all who, without investigation, proclaim the whole a cheat. In this case it is clear that there is no room for self-decep- tion. Either every one of the cases of clairvoyance yet recorded (and they certainly number thousands) is the result of imposture, or we have ample proof that certain individuals possess a new sense of which it is probable we all have the rudiments, If ordinary vision were as rare as clairvoyance, it would be just as difficult to prove its reality as it is now to establish the reality of this won- derful power. The evidence in its favour is absolutely conclusive to any one who will examine it, and who is not deluded by that most unphilosophical dogma that he knows a priori what is possible and what is impossible. In a paper by Dr. T. Edwards Clark, of New York, on the Physiology of Trance, which appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Psychological Medicine, it is stated that a cata- leptic patient was under the care of M. Despine, late Inspector of the Mineral Waters of Aix, in Savoy, who says of her : " Not only could our patient hear by means of the palms of her hands, but we have seen her read without the assistance of the eyes, merely with the tips of the fingers, which she passed rapidly over the page that she wished to read. At other times we have seen her copy a letter word for word, reading it with her left elbow while she wrote with her right hand. During these proceedings a thick pasteboard completely intercepted any visual ray that might have reached her eyes. The same phenomenon was manifested at the soles of her feet, on the epigastrium, and other parts of the body." Dr. Clark adds : " There are many other cases equally as strange as these that have [been noted by different persons standing high in the medical profession." The above test of holding a pasteboard before the eyes 70 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL is one which Dr. Carpenter informed me he considered inconclusive, as he found that supposed clairvoyants always failed to see through it. But it is evident that he had never met with a case of very perfect clairvoyance like that above described. 1 We will now pass to the evidence for the facts of what is termed Modern Spiritualism. 1 Not one of the important facts mentioned in this chapter, on the authority of medical men, nor any others of a like nature to be found in the works here quoted, are taken notice of by Dr. Carpenter in his elaborate work on Mental Physiology, in which he nevertheless boldly attempts to settle the whole question of the reality of such facts ! It is, we suppose, owing to his limited space that, in a work of over 700 pages, none of the well-attested facts opposed to his views could be brought to the notice of his readers. THE EVIDENCE OP THE REALITY OF APPARITIONS 71 V THE EVIDENCE OF THE REALITY OF APPARITIONS I now propose to give a few instances in which the evidence of the appearance of preter-humau or spiritual beings is as good and definite as it is possible for any evidence of any fact to be. For this purpose I shall use some of the remarkable cases collected and investigated by the late Eobert Dale Owen, formerly member of Congress and American Minister at Naples. Mr. Owen is the author of works of a varied character; JSssays, Moral Physiology, The Policy of Emancipation, and many others. He was, I believe, throughout his life a consistent and philosophical sceptic, and his writings show him to have been well educated, logical, and extremely cautious in accepting evidence. In 1855, during his official residence at Naples, his attention seems to have been first attracted to the sub- ject of the " supernatural " by witnessing the phenomena occurring in the presence of Mr. Home. He tells us that " sitting in his own well-lighted apartment, in company with three or four friends, all curious observers like him- self," a table and lamp weighing ninety-six pounds "rose eight or ten inches from the floor, and remained suspended in the air while one might .count six or seven, the hands of all present being laid upon the table." And on another occasion he states: "In the dining- room of a French nobleman, the Count d'Ourches, residing near Paris, I saw on the first day of October 1858, in broad daylight, at the close of a dejetiner a la fourchette, a 72 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL dinner-table seating seven persons, with fruit and wine on it, rise and settle down as already described, while all the guests were standing around it, and not one of them touching it. All present saw the same thing." He then commenced collecting evidence of so-called supernatural phenomena, occurring unsought for, and has brought together, in his Footfalls on the Boundary of An- other World, one of the best arranged and best authenti- cated series of facts which have yet been given to the public on this subject. This work will certainly rank among the most philoso- phical that have yet appeared upon the subject of which it treats; and perhaps had it been entitled "A Critical Examination into the Evidence of the Supernatural," which it really is, it would have attracted more attention than it appears to have done. Nothing is more common than the assertion that all supposed apparitions, when not impostures, are hallucina- tions; because, it is said, there is no well-authenticated case of an apparition having been seen by two persons at once. It is therefore advisable to give an outline here of one case of this kind, which is given more fully at p. 278 of Mr. Owen's book. Sir John Sherbroke and G eneral George Wynyard were Captain and Lieutenant in the 33rd Regiment, stationed in the year 1785 at Sydney, in the island of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. On the 15th of October of that year, about nine in the morning, as they were sitting together at coffee in Wynyard's parlour, Sherbroke, happening to look up, saw the figure of a pale youth standing at a door leading into the passage. He called the attention of his companion to the stranger, who passed slowly through the room into the adjoining bed-chamber. Wynyard, on see- ing the figure, turned as pale as death, grasped his friend's THE EVIDENCE OF THE REALITY OF APPARITIONS 73 arm, and, as soon as it had disappeared, exclaimed, " Great God ! iny brother ! " Sherbroke thinking there was some trick, had a search immediately made, but could find no one either in the bedroom or about the premises. A brother officer, Lieutenant Gore, coming in at the time, assisted in the search, and at his suggestion Sherbroke made a memorandum of the date, and all waited with anxiety for letters from England, where Wynyard's brother was. The expected letter came to Captain Sherbroke, asking him to break to his friends the news of his brother John's death, which had occurred on the day and hour when he had been seen by the two officers. In 1823 Lieutenant-Colonel Gore gave his account in writing to Sir John Harvey, Adjutant-General of the Forces in Canada. He also stated that some years afterwards Sir John Sherbroke, who had never seen John Wynyard alive, recognised in England a brother of the deceased, who was remarkably like him, by the resemblance to the figure he had seen in Canada. Mr. Owen has obtained additional proof of the correctness of these details from Captain Henry Scott, R.N., who was told by General Paul Ander- son, C.B., that Sir John Sherbroke had, shortly before his death, related the story to him in almost exactly the same words as Mr. Owen has given it, and which was communi- cated in manuscript to Captain Scott. The evidence in this case of the fact of the appearance of the same apparition to two people (one of whom did not know the individual) is very complete ; and I cannot rest satisfied with any theory which requires me to reject such evidence without offering any intelligible explanation of what occurred. I will now give an abstract of a few more of Mr. Owen's cases, to illustrate their general character and the careful manner in which they have been authenticated and tested. 74 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL The first is one which he calls "The Fourteenth of November." (Footfalls, p. 299.) On the night between the 14th and 15th November 1857, the wife of Captain G. Wheatcroft, residing in Cam- bridge, dreamed that she saw her husband (then in India). She immediately awoke, and looking up, she perceived the same figure standing by her bedside. He appeared in his uniform, the hands pressed across the breast, the hair dishevelled, the face very pale. His large dark eyes were fixed full upon her; their expression was that of great excitement, and there was a peculiar contraction of the mouth, habitual to him when agitated. She saw him, even to each minute particular of his dress, as distinctly as she had ever done in her life. The figure seemed to bend forward as if in pain, and to make an effort to speak, but there was no sound. It remained visible, the wife thinks, as long as a minute, and then disappeared. She did not sleep again that night. Next morning she related all this to her mother, expressing her belief that Captain W. was either killed or wounded. In due course a telegram was received to the effect that Captain W. had been killed before Lucknow on the 15th of November. The widow informed the Captain's solicitor, Mr. Wilkinson, that she had been quite prepared for the fatal news, but she felt sure there was a mistake of a day in the date of his death. Mr. Wilkinson then obtained a certificate from the War Office, which was as follows : "9579. NO. . " WAR OFFICE, 30th January 1858. " These are to certify that it appears, by the records in this office, that Captain G. Wheatcroft, of the 6th Dragoon Guards, was killed in action on the 15th of November 1857. (Signed) " B. HAWES. THE EVIDENCE OF THE REALITY OF APPARITIONS 75 A remarkable incident now occurred. Mr. Wilkinson was visiting a friend in London, whose wife has all her life had perception of apparitions, while her husband is a " medium." He related to them the vision of the Captain's widow, and described the figure as it appeared to her, when Mrs. N. instantly said, " That must be the very person I saw on the evening we were talking of India." In answer to Mr. Wilkinson's questions, she said they had obtained a communication from him through her husband, and he had said that he had been killed in India that afternoon by a wound in the breast. It was about nine o'clock in the evening : she did not recollect the date. On further in- quiry, she remembered that she had been interrupted by a tradesman, and had paid a bill that evening ; and on bringing it for Mr. Wilkinson's inspection, the receipt bore date the Fourteenth of November. In March 1858, the family of Captain Wheatcroft received a letter from Cap- tain G C , dated Lucknow, 19th of December 1857, in which he said he had been close to Captain W. when he fell, and that it was on the fourteenth in the after- noon, and not on the 15th, as reported in Sir Colin Camp- bell's despatches. He was struck by a fragment of shell in the breast. He was buried at Dilkoosha, and on a wooden cross at the head of his grave are cut the initials G. W., and the date of his death, 14th of November. The War Office corrected their mistake. Mr. Wilkinson obtained another copy of the certificate in April 1859, and found it in the same words as that already given, only that the 14th of November had been substituted for the 15th. Mr. Owen obtained the whole of these facts directly from the parties themselves. The widow of Captain Wheatcroft examined and corrected his MSS., and showed him a copy of Captain C.'s letter. Mr. Wilkinson did the same; and Mrs. N herself related to him the facts which occurred 76 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL to her. Mrs. N had also related the circumstances to Mr. Howitt before Mr. Owen's investigations, as he cer- tifies in his History of the Supernatural, vol. ii. p. 225. Mr. Owen also states that he has in his possession both the War Office certificates, the first showing the erroneous, and the second the corrected date. Here we have the same apparition appearing to two ladies unknown to and remote from each other on the same night ; the communication obtained through a third person, declaring the time and mode of death ; and all coinciding exactly with the events happening many thousand miles away. We presume the facts thus attested will not be disputed ; and to attribute the whole to " coincidence" must surely be too great a stretch of credulity, even for the most incredulous. The next case is one of haunting, and is called THE OLD KENT MANOR HOUSE (p. 304). In October 1857, and for several months afterwards, Mrs. K., the wife of a field-officer of high rank, was resid- ing in Eamhurst Manor House, near Leigh, in Kent. From her first occupying it, every inmate of the house was more or less disturbed at night by knocking, and sounds as of footsteps, but more especially by voices, which could not be accounted for. Mrs. E.'s brother, a young officer, heard these voices at night, and tried every means to discover the source of them in vain. The servants were much frightened. On the second Saturday in October, Miss S., a young lady who had been in the habit of seeing appari- tions from her childhood, came to visit Mrs. R., who met her at the railway station. On arriving at the house, Miss S. saw on the threshold two figures, apparently an elderly couple, in old-fashioned dress. Not wishing to make her friend uneasy, she said nothing about them at the time. THE EVIDENCE OF THE REALITY OF APPARITIONS 77 During the next ten days she saw the same figures several times in different parts of the house, always by daylight. They appeared surrounded by an atmosphere of a neutral tint. On the third occasion they spoke to her, and said that they had formerly possessed that house, and that their name was Children. They appeared sad and downcast, and said that they had idolised their property, and that it troubled them to know that it had passed away from their family, and was now in the hands of strangers. On Mrs. R asking Miss S. if she had heard or seen anything, she related this to her. Mrs. E. had herself heard the noises and voices continually, but had seen nothing, and after a month had given up all expectation of doing so, when one day, as she had just finished dressing for dinner, in a well-lighted room with a .fire in it, and was coming down hastily, having been repeatedly called by her brother who was impatiently waiting for her, she beheld the two figures standing in the doorway, dressed just as Miss S. had described them, but above the figure of the lady, written in the dusky atmosphere in letters of phosphoric light, the words "Dame Children," and some other words intimating that she was " earth-bound." At this moment her brother again called out to her that dinner was waiting, and, closing her eyes, she rushed through the figures. Inquiries were made by the ladies as to who had lived in the house formerly, and it was only after four months that they found out, through a very old woman, who remembered an old man, who had told her that he had in his boyhood assisted to keep the hounds for the Children family, who then lived at Eamhurst. All these particulars Mr. Owen received himself from the two ladies in Decem- ber 1858. Miss S. had had many conversations with the apparitions, and on Mr. Owen's inquiring for any details they had communicated, she told him that the husband 78 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPKRNATURAL had said his name was Richard, and that he had died in 1753. Mr. Owen now determined, if possible, to ascertain the accuracy of these facts, and after a long search among churchyards and antiquarian clergymen, he was directed to the " Hasted Papers " in the British Museum. From these he ascertained that " Richard Children settled him- self at Kamhurst," his family having previously resided at a house called " Childrens," in the parish of Tunbridge. It required further research to determine the date. This was found several months later in an old "History of Kent," by the same "Hasted," published in 1778, where it is stated that " Ramhurst passed by sale to Richard Children, Esq., who resided here, and died possessed of it in 1753, aged eighty-three years." In the " Hasted Papers " it was also stated that his son did not live at Ramhurst, and that the family seat after Richard's time was Ferox Hall, near Tunbridge. Since 1816 the mansion has been occupied as a farmhouse, having passed away entirely from the Children family. However much any one of these incidents might have been scouted as a delusion, what are we to say to the com- bination of them ? A whole household hear distinct and definite noises of persons walking and speaking. Two ladies see the same appearances, at different times, and under circumstances 'the least favourable for delusion. The name is given to one by voice, to the other by writing ; the date of death is communicated. An independent in- quirer, by much research, finds out that all these facts are true : that the Christian name of the only " Children " who occupied and died in the house was Richard, and that his death took place in the year given by the appari- tion, 1753. Mr. Owen's own full account of this case and the obser- vations on it should be read, but this imperfect abstract THE EVIDENCE OF THE REALITY OF APPARITIONS 79 will serve to show that none of the ordinary modes of escaping from the difficulties of a "ghost story " are here applicable. DISTURBANCES AT CIDEVILLE IN FRANCE. At page 195 of Mr. Owen's volume we have a most interesting account of disturbances occurring at the par- sonage of Cideville, in the department of Seine Infe'rieure, France, in the winter of 1850-51. The circumstances gave rise to a trial, and the whole of the facts were brought out by the examination of a great number of witnesses. The Marquis de Mirville collected from the legal record all the documents connected with the trial, including the procbs verbal of the testimony. It is from these official documents Mr. Owen gives his details of the occurrences. The disturbances commenced from the time when two boys, aged 12 and 14, came to be educated by M. Tinel, the parish priest of Cideville, and continued two months and a half, until the children were removed from the par- sonage. They consisted of knockings as if with a hammer on the wainscot, scratchings, shakings of the house so that all the furniture rattled, a din as if every one in the house were beating the floor with mallets, the beatings forming tunes when asked, and answering questions by numbers agreed on. Besides these noises there were strange and unaccountable exhibitions of force. The tables and desks moved about without visible cause ; the fire-irons flew repeatedly into the middle of the room, windows were broken ; a hammer was thrown into the middle of the room, and yet fell without noise, as if put down by an invisible hand ; persons standing quite alone had their dresses pulled. On the Mayor of Cideville coming to examine into the matter, a table at which he 80 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL sat with another person, moved away in spite of their endeavours to hold it back, while the children were standing in the middle of the room ; and many other facts of a similar nature were observed repeatedly by numerous persons of respectability and position, every one of whom, going with the intention of finding out a trick, were, after deliberate examination, convinced that the phenomena were not produced by any person present. The Marquis de Mirville was himself one of the witnesses. The interest of this case consists, first, in the evidence having been brought out before a legal tribunal ; and secondly, in the remarkable resemblance of the phenomena to those which had occurred a short time previously in America, but had not yet become much known in Europe. There is also the closest resemblance to what occurred at Epworth Parsonage in the family of Wesley's father, and which is almost equally well authenticated. 1 Now when 1 In an article entitled " Spirit Rapping a Century Ago," in an early number of the Fortnightly Review, an account is given of the disturbances at Epworth Parsonage, the residence of the Wesley family, and it is attempted to account for them by the supposition that they were entirely produced by Hester Wesley, one of John Wesley's sisters ; yet the pheno- mena, even as related by this writer, are such as no human being could possibly have produced, while the moral difficulties of the case are admitted to be quite as great as the physical ones. Every reader of the article must have perceived how lame and impotent is the explanation suggested ; and one is almost forced to conclude that the writer did not believe in it him- self, so different is the tone of the first part of the article in which he details the facts, from the latter part in which he attempts to account for them. When taken in connection with other similar occurrences narrated by Mr. Owen, all equally well authenticated, and all thoroughly investi- gated at the time, it will be impossible to receive as an explanation that they were in every case mere childish tricks, since that will not account for more than a minute fraction of the established facts. If we are to reject all the facts this assumption will not explain, it will be much simpler and quite as satisfactory to deny that there are any facts that need explaining. 81 in three different countries, phenomena occur of an exactly similar nature and which are all open to the fullest exa- mination at the time, and when no trick or delusion is in either case found out, but every individual of many hundreds who go to see them become convinced of their reality, the fact of the similarity of the occurrences even in many details is of great weight, as indicating a similar natural origin. In such cases we cannot fairly accept the general explanation of "imposture," given by those who have not witnessed the phenomena, when none of those who did witness them could ever detect imposture. The examples I have quoted give a very imperfect idea of the variety and interest of Mr. Owen's work, but they will serve to indicate the nature of the evidence he has in every case adduced, and may lead some of my readers to examine the work itself. If they do so, they will see that similar phenomena to those which puzzled our forefathers at Epworth Parsonage, and at Mr. Mompesson's at Ted- worth, have recurred in our own time, and have been sub- jected to the most searching examination, without any discovery of trick or imposture ; and they may perhaps be led to conclude that, though often asserted, it is not yet quite proved that "ghosts have been everywhere banished by the introduction of gaslight." 82 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF TBE SUPERNATURAL VI MODERN SPIRITUALISM: EVIDENCE OF MEN OF SCIENCE We have now come to the consideration of what is more especially termed " Modern Spiritualism," or those pheno- mena which occur only in the presence or through the influence of peculiarly constituted individuals, hence termed " mediums." The evidence is here so abundant, coming from various parts of the world, and from persons differing widely in education, tastes, and religion, that it is difficult to give any notion of its force and bearing by short extracts. I will first adduce that of three men of the highest eminence in their respective departments Pro- fessor De Morgan, Professor Hare, and Judge Edmonds. The late AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN, many years Professor of Mathematics and afterwards Dean of University Col- lege London, was educated at Cambridge, where he took his degree as fourth wrangler. He studied for the bar, and was a voluminous writer on mathematics, logic, and biography. He was for eighteen years Secretary to the Eoyal Astronomical Society, and was a strong advocate for a decimal coinage. In 1863 a work appeared entitled From Matter to Spirit, the Result of Ten Years' Experience in Spirit Manifestations, by C. D., with a preface by A. B. It is very generally known that A. B. is Professor De Morgan, and C. D. Mrs. De Morgan. The internal evi- dence of the preface is sufficient to all who know the Professor's style ; it has been frequently imputed to him in print without contradiction, and in the Athenceum for 1865, in the " Budget of Paradoxes," he notices the work SPIRITUALISM : EVIDENCE OF MEN OF SCIENCE 83 in such a manner as to show that he accepts the imputation of the authorship, and still holds the opinions therein ex- pressed. 1 From this preface, which is well worth reading for its vigorous and sarcastic style, I proceed to give a few extracts : " I am satisfied from the evidence of my own senses of some of the facts narrated (in the body of the work), of some others I have evidence as good as testimony can give. I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen and heard, in a manner that should make unbelief impossible, things called spiritual, which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake. So far I feel the ground firm under me " (p. 1). " The Spiritualists, beyond a doubt, are in the track that has led to all advancement in physical science ; their oppo- nents are the representatives of those who have striven against progress." . . . "I have said that the deluded spirit-rappers are on the right track : they have the spirit and the method of the grand times when those paths were cut through the un- cleared forest in which it is now the daily routine to walk. What was that spirit? It was the spirit of universal examination wholly unchecked by fear of being detected in the investigation of nonsense. " But to those who know the truth of facts, and who do not know what can and what cannot be, it will appear on reflection that the most probable direction of inquiry the best chance of eliciting a satisfactory result, is that which is suggested by the spirit hypothesis. I mean the hypo- thesis that some intelligence which is not that of any human being clothed in flesh and blood, has a direct share in the phenomena. 1 The work has been since advertised as by Professor and Mrs. De Moryan. 84 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE StJPEfcNATtJRAL " Take the hypothesis on its own A priori probability, and compare it with that of attraction. Suppose a person wholly new to both subjects, wholly undrilled both in theology and physics. He is to choose between two asser- tions, one true and one false, and to lose his life if he choose the false one. The first assertion is that there are incorporeal intelligences in the universe, and that they sometimes communicate with men ; the second is that the particles of the stars in the Milky Way give infinitesimal permanent pulls to the particles of our earth. I suppose that most men among those who have all-existing pre- possessions would feel rather puzzled to know which they would have chosen had they been situated as above described." . . . "My state of mind, which refers the whole either to some unseen intelligence, or something which man has never had any conception of, proves me to be out of the pale of the Royal Society." . . . " Of the future state we are informed by some theolo- gians, but quite out of their own heads, that all wants will be supplied without effort, and all doubts resolved without thought. This a state ! not a bit of it ; a mere phase of non-existence ; annihilation with a consciousness of it. The rapping spirits know better than that ; their views, should they really be human impostures, are very, very singular. In spite of the inconsistencies, the eccentricities, and the puerilities which some of them have exhibited, there is a uniform vein of description running through their accounts, which, supposing it to be laid down by a combi- nation of impostors, is more than remarkable even mar- vellous. The agreement is one part of the wonder, it being remembered that the ' mediums ' are scattered through the world ; but the other and greater part of it is, that the impostors, if impostors they be, have combined to oppose SPIRITUALISM : EVIDENCE OF MEN OF SCIENCE 85 all the current ideas of a future state, in order to gain belief in the genuineness of their pretensions ! " " Ten years ago Mrs. Hayden, the well-known American medium, came to my house alone. The sitting began im- mediately after her arrival. Eight or nine persons were present, of all ages and of all degrees of belief and unbelief in the whole thing being imposture. The raps began in the usual way. They were to my ear clear, clean, faint sounds such as would be said to ring had they lasted. I likened them at the time to the noise which the ends of knitting- needles would make if dropped from a small distance upon a marble slab, and instantly checked by a damper of some kind. . . . Mrs. Hayden was seated at some distance from the table, and her feet were watched. . . . On being asked to put a question to the first spirit, I begged that I might be allowed to put my question mentally that is, without speaking it, or writing it, or pointing it out to myself on an alphabet and that Mrs. Hayden might hold both arms extended while the answer was in progress. Both demands were instantly granted by a couple of raps. I put the question, and desired the answer might be in one word, which I assigned, all mentally. I then took the printed alphabet, put a book upright before it, and bending my eyes upon it, proceeded to point to the letters in the usual way. The word chess was given by a rap at each letter. I had now reasonable certainty of the following alternative : either some thought-reading of a character wholly inexpli- cable, or such superhuman acuteness on the part of Mrs. Hayden that she could detect the letter I wanted by my bearing, though she (seated six feet from the book which hid my alphabet) could see neither my hand nor my eye, nor at what rate I was going through the letters. I was fated to be driven out of the second alternative before the evening was done. 86 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL " At a later period of the evening, when another spirit was under examination, I asked him whether he remem- bered a certain review which was published soon after his death, and whether he could give me the initials of an epithet (which happened to be in five words) therein applied to himself. Consent having been given, I began my way through the alphabet as above ; the only differ- ence of circumstances being that a bright table-lamp was now between me and the medium. I expected to be brought up at, say, the letter F; and when my pencil passed that letter without any signal, I was surprised, and by the time I came to K or thereabouts, I paused, intend- ing to announce a failure. But some one called out, ' You have passed it ; I heard a rap long ago.' I began again, and distinct raps came first at C, then at D. I was now satisfied that the spirit had failed ; but stopping to consider a little more, it flashed into my mind that C. D. were his own initials, and that he had chosen to commence the clause which contained the epithet. I then said nothing but ' I see what you are at ; pray go on,' and I then got T (for The), then the E I wanted of which not a word had been said and then the remaining four initials. I was now satisfied that the contents of my mind had been read, which could not have been detected by my method of pointing to the alphabet, even supposing that could have been seen. . . . The things which I have set down were the beginning of a long series of experiences, many as re- markable as what I have given." From Matter to Spirit, Preface, pp. xli., xlii. From the body of the same work I give one short ex- tract : " The most remarkable instance of table-moving with a purpose which ever came under my notice occurred at the house of a friend, whose family, like my own, were staying at the seaside. My friend's family consisted of six SPIRITUALISM : EVIDENCE OF MKN OF SCIENCE 87 persons, and a gentleman, now the husband of one of the daughters, joined them, and I was accompanied by a young member of my own family. No paid person was present. A gentleman who had been expressing himself in a very sceptical manner, not only with reference to spirit manifestations, but on the subject of spiritual existence generally, sat on a sofa two or three feet from the dining- room table, round which we were placed. After sitting some time we were directed by the rapping to join hands and stand up round the table without touching it. All did so for a quarter of an hour ; wondering whether anything would happen, or whether we were hoaxed by the unseen power. Just as one or two of the party talked of sitting down, the old table, which was large enough for eight or ten persons, moved entirely by itself as we surrounded and followed it with our hands joined, went towards the gen- tleman out of the circle, and literally pushed him up to the back of the sofa till he called out ' Hold, enough.' " From Matter to Spirit, p. 26. J. W. EDMONDS, commonly called Judge EDMONDS, was a man of considerable eminence. He was elected a member of both branches of the State Legislature of New York, and was for some time President of the Senate. He was at one time Inspector of Prisons, and made great improve- ments in the penitentiary system. After passing through various lower offices, he was made a Judge of the Supreme Court of New York. This is the highest judicial office in the State ; he held it for six years, and then resigned, solely on account of the outcry raised against him on its being known that he had become convinced on the subject of Spiritualism. He then resumed his practice at the bar, and was elected to the important office of Kecorder of New York, which, however, he declined to accept. The Judge was first induced by some friends to visit a 88 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL medium, and being astonished at what he saw, determined to investigate the matter, and discover and expose what he then believed to be a great imposture. The following are some of his experiences given in his work on Spirit Manifestations : " " On the 23rd April 1851, I was one of a party of nine who sat round a centre table, on which a lamp was burn- ing, and another lamp was burning on the mantelpiece. And then, in plain sight of us all, that table was lifted at least a foot from the floor, and shaken backwards and for- wards as easily as I could shake a goblet in my hand. Some of the party tried to stop it by the exercise of their strength, but in vain ; so we all drew back from the table, and by the light of those two burning lamps we saw the heavy mahogany table suspended in the air." At the next stance a variety of extraordinary phenomena occurred to him. " As I stood in a corner where no one could reach my pocket, I felt a hand thrust into it, and found afterwards that six knots had been tried in my handkerchief. A bass viol was put into my hand, and rested on my foot, and then played upon. My person was repeatedly touched, and a chair pulled from under me. I felt on one of my arms what seemed to be the grip of an iron hand. I felt distinctly the thumb and fingers, the palm of the hand, and the ball of the thumb, and it held me fast by a power which I struggled to escape from in vain. With my other hand I felt all round where the pressure was, and satisfied myself that it was no earthly hand that was thus holding me fast, nor indeed could it be, for I was as powerless in that grip as a fly would be in the grasp of my hand. It continued with me till I thoroughly felt how powerless I was, and had tried every means to get rid of it." Again, as instances of the intelli- gence and knowledge of the unseen power, he says that SPIRITUALISM : EVIDENCE OF MEN OF SCIENCE 89 during his journey to Central America, his friends in New York were almost daily informed of his condition. On returning, he compared his own journal with their notes, and found that they had accurately known the day he landed, days on which he was unwell or well ; and on one occasion it was said he had a headache, and at the very hour he was confined to his bed by a sick headache 2000 miles away. As another example he says, " My daughter had gone with her little son to visit some relatives 400 miles from New York. During her absence, about four o'clock in the morning, I was told through this spiritual intercourse that the little fellow was very sick. I went after him, and found that at the very hour I received that intelligence he was very sick ; his mother and aunt were sitting up with him, and were alarmed for the result." . . . "This will give a general idea of what I was wit- nessing two or three times a week for more than a year. I was not a believer seeking confirmation of my own notions. I was struggling against conviction. I have not stopped to detail the precautions which I took to guard against deception, self or otherwise. Suffice it to say that in that respect I omitted nothing which my ingenuity could devise. There was no cavil too captious for me to resort to, no scrutiny too rigid or impertinent for me to institute, no inquiry too intrusive for me to make." In a letter published in the New York Herald, August 6, 1853, after giving an abstract of his investigations, he says : "I went into the investigation originally thinking it a deception, and intending to make public my exposure of it. Having, from my researches, come to a different conclusion, I feel that the obligation to make known the result is just as strong. Therefore it is, mainly, that I give the result to the world. I say mainly, because there is another consideration which influences me, and that is, 90 SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE SUPERNATURAL the desire to extend to others a knowledge which I am conscious cannot but make them happier and better." I would now ask whether it is possible that Judge Edmonds can have been deceived as to these facts, and not be insane. Yet he practised at the bar, and was in the highest repute as a lawyer till his death, about twenty years ago. ROBERT HARE, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania, was one of the most eminent scientific men of America. He distinguished him- self by a number of important discoveries (among which may be mentioned the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe), and was the author of more than 150 papers on scientific subjects, besides others on political and moral questions. In 1853 his attention was first directed to table-turning a~