A scientific demonstration of immortality is declared to be an impossibility. But why go to science for such a demonstration? The question belongs to the domain of philosophy and religion. Science deals with physical forces and their relations; collects and inventories facts. Its mission is not to establish a universal metaphysic of things; that is philosophy’s prerogative. All occult thinkers declare that life is from within, out. In other words life, or a spiritual principle, precedes organization. Science proceeds to investigate the phenomena of the universe in the opposite way from without, in; and pronounces life to be “a fortuitous collocation of atoms.” Still, science has been the torch-bearer of the ages and has stripped the fungi of superstition from the tree of life. It has revealed to us the great laws of nature, though it has not explained them. We know that light, heat, and electricity are modes of motion; more than that we know not. Science is largely responsible for the materialistic philosophy in vogue to-day—a philosophy that sees no reason in the universe. A powerful wave of spiritual thought has set in, as if to counteract the ultra rationalism of the age. In the vanguard of the new order of things are Spiritualism and Theosophy.
Spiritualism enters the list, and declares that the immortality of the soul is a demonstrable fact. It throws down the gauntlet of defiance to skepticism, saying: “Come, I will show you that there is an existence beyond the grave. Death is not a wall, but a door through which we pass into eternal life.” Theosophy, too, has its occult phenomena to prove the indestructibility of soul-force. Both Spiritualism and Theosophy contain germs of truth, but both are tinctured with superstition. I purpose, if possible, to sift the wheat from the chaff. In investigating the phenomena of Spiritualism and Theosophy I will use the scientific as well as the philosophic method. Each will act, I hope, as corrective of the other.
PART FIRST.
SPIRITUALISM.
I. DIVISIONS OF THE SUBJECT.
Belief in the evocation of the spirits of the dead is as old as Humanity. At one period of the world’s history it was called Thaumaturgy, at another Necromancy and Witchcraft, in these latter years, Spiritualism. It is new wine in old bottles. On March 31, 1847, at Hydeville, Wayne County, New York, occurred the celebrated “knockings,” the beginning of modern Spiritualism. The mediums were two little girls, Kate and Margaretta Fox, whose fame spread over three continents. It is claimed by impartial investigators that the rappings produced in the presence of the Fox sisters were occasioned by natural means. Voluntary disjointings of the muscles of the knee, or to use a medical term “the repeated displacement of the tendon of the peroneus longus muscle in the sheath in which it slides behind the outer malleolus” will produce certain extraordinary sounds, particularly when the knee is brought in contact with a table or chair. Snapping the toes in rapid succession will cause similar noises. The above was the explanation given of the “Hydeville and Rochester Knockings”, by Professors Flint, Lee and Coventry, of Buffalo, who subjected the Fox sisters to numerous examinations, and this explanation was confirmed many years after (in 1888) by the published confession of Mrs. Kane, nee Margaretta Fox. Spiritualism became the rage and professional mediums went about giving séances to large and interested audiences. This particular creed is still professed by a recognized semi-religious body in America and in Europe. The American mediums reaped a rich harvest in the Old World. The pioneer was Mrs. Hayden, a Boston medium, who went to England in 1852, and the table-turning mania spread like wild fire within a few months.
Broadly speaking, the phenomena of modern Spiritualism may be divided into two classes: (1) Physical, (2) Subjective. Of the first, the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”, in its brief but able review of the subject, says: “Those which, if correctly observed and due neither to conscious or unconscious trickery nor to hallucination on the part of the observers, exhibit a force hitherto unknown to science, acting in the physical world otherwise than through the brain or muscles of the medium.” The earliest of these phenomena were the mysterious rappings and movements of furniture without apparent physical cause. Following these came the ringing of bells, playing on musical instruments, strange lights seen hovering about the séance-room, materializations of hands, faces and forms, “direct writing and drawing” declared to be done without human intervention, spirit photography, levitation, unfastening of ropes and bandages, elongation of the medium’s body, handling fire with impunity, etc.
Of the second class, or Subjective Phenomena, we have “table-tilting and turning with contact; writing, drawing, etc., by means of the medium’s hand; entrancement, trance-speaking, and impersonation by the medium of deceased persons, seeing spirits and visions and hearing phantom voices.”
From a general scientific point of view there are three ways of accounting for the physical phenomena of spiritualism: (1) Hallucination on the part of the observers; (2) Conjuring; (3) A force latent in the human personality capable of moving heavy objects without muscular contact, and of causing “Percussive Sounds” on table-tops, and raps upon walls and floors.
Hallucination has unquestionably played a part in the séance-room, but here again the statement of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” is worthy of consideration: “Sensory hallucination of several persons together who are not in a hypnotic state is a rare phenomenon, and therefore not a probable explanation.” In my opinion, conjuring will account for seven-eighths of the so-called phenomena of professional mediums. For the balance of one-eighth, neither hallucination nor legerdemain are satisfactory explanation. Hundreds of credible witnesses have borne testimony to the fact of table-turning and tilting and the movements of heavy objects without muscular contact. That such a force exists is now beyond cavil, call it what you will, magnetic, nervous, or psychic. Count Agenor de Gasparin, in 1854, conducted a series of elaborate experiments in table-turning and tilting, in the presence of his family and a number of skeptical witnesses, and was highly successful. The experiments were made in the full light of day. The members of the circle joined hands and concentrated their minds upon the object to be moved. The Count published a work on the subject “Des Tables Tournantes,” in which he stated that the movements of the table were due to a mental or nervous force emanating from the human personality. This psychic energy has been investigated by Professor Crookes and Professor Lodge, of London, and by Doctor Elliott Coues, of Washington, D. C., who calls it “Telekinesis.” The existence of this force sufficiently explains such phenomena of the séance-room as are not attributable to hallucination and conjuring, thus removing the necessity for the hypothesis of spirit intervention. In explanation of table-turning by “contact,” I quote what J. N. Maskelyne says in “The Supernatural”:
“Faraday proved to a demonstration that table-turning was simply the result of an unconscious muscular action on the part of the sitters. He constructed a little apparatus to be placed beneath the hands of those pressing upon the table, which had a pointer to indicate any pressure to one side or the other. After a time, of course, the arms of the sitters become tired and they unconsciously press more or less to the right or left. In Faraday’s experiments, it always proved that this pressure was exerted in the direction in which the table was expected to move, and the tell-tale pointer showed it at once. There, then, we have the explanation: expectancy and unconscious muscular action.”
II. SUBJECTIVE PHENOMENA.