Legend
< Excitement in Russia (continued from page 3-226) >
pense will be spared to make it thorough. M. Aksakoff anounces in the London papers that he is authorized to receive applications from mediums who desire to visit Russia, and display their psychological gifts before the professors.
Colonel Olcott and Madame H. P. Blavatsky have been requested to designate the American mediums who should be invited by the Commission, and they have accepted the honorable and responsible trust. The official documents are now being translated, and will be laid before our readers next week.
Spiritualism has thus received a powerful impulse from the quarter whence it would have been least expected. It is not at all unlikely that the St. Petersburg movement, inaugurated by that most devoted and admirable Spiritualist and gentleman, M. Aksakoff, will prove one of the most important epochs in the whole history of the subject.
Sound Ideas
Mrs. Elizabeth M. F. Denton, wife of Prof. Denton writing in the New Age, and signing herself as “awaiting the evidence," says :—
When it is claimed that certain phenomena are due to certain causes, that the existence of these causes is proven by certain experiments which it is claimed will render the fact apparent “to all who are capable of comprehending the evidence," it seems to me only just and proper, that, the individual investigating require that the experiment be conducted in such manner as to leave him free from any reasonable doubt in regard to its genuineness ; that until it is accorded, he should continue to hold it unproven. Especially when the claims in regard to the phenomena and their causes apparently involve the violation of known natural laws, should the methods of investigation be rigorously exact. Is this asking too much? Is not the investigator mocking his own intelligence, and that of others as well, if he demands less than this ?
When the investigator of the so-called Spiritual phenomena, as, for example, in the case of the paraffine molds, requests but the one privilege of protecting the paraffine from the possibility of human contact without his knowledge, and is met with a peremptory refusal, and by charges of “captiousness,” and of “being so peculiarly organized as to be incapacitated from receiving either ideas or facts,” &c., what, is the legitimate inference ?
There are probably tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in our country, who would be but too glad to know that the claims in regard to spirit-existence are immutable truths. But when those who are honestly desirous of knowing the truth, yet cannot be satisfied without knowing the evidence to be genuine, are scoffed at for their skepticism, it only tends to weaken the testimony in regard to the claims.
Mrs. Denton, in her opinion, as expressed above, is a representative of a very large class of thinkers. It is composed of investigators who wish to determine if the manifestations are not wholly the result of trickery, and of advanced Spiritualists who would experiment to discover more of the powers and possibilities of the manifesting forcas.
21 to 24.)[2]
“And I found that every desire became an aspiration, and every aspiration became a prayer, and every prayer became a fulfillment, and every fulfillment represented the possible of man."
Proffessor J.R. Buchanan
This eminent American philosopher, whose first appearance before our readers occurred through the friendly intervention of Col. Olcott, now enters in his proper person, and enrolls himself on the list of writers for our young journal. That he is most heartily welcome, goes without saying, for he is one of the ripest minds of the age, and his pen one of the most facile and powerful. He is the founder of Anthropology, embodying in detail a new and, as it seems, the only correct system of Phrenology, based upon actual demonstration of organic functions, Sarcognomy, Psychometry, Cerebral Physiology, and Psychology. His life has been one constant labor in behalf of Science, and to it he will devote the remainder of his days, The progress of psychological discovery, only serves to bring into bolder relief his deserts as a pioneer and discoverer, and his real merits will probably not be understood until the sod is green over his grave. His accession to the ranks of our already brilliant staff of writers, conveys the promise of much profit and pleasure to the readers of the Scientist. The Louisville Courier Journal says of Prof, Buchanan’s article on “Moral Education” (which we notice copied in the London Human Nature for May), that it
“should be read by every teacher and friend of education in our midst ; for we believe that it contains the elements of the ideas that must yet raise our schools out of their present unsatisfactory condition of routine and formality. It is a notable essay, powerfully written.”
No better definition of his own. style could be given, than is contained in the following paragraph, which opens his article on the “Evolution of Genius,” in the June number of Home and School.
“When a man of superior organization, finer temperament, and more intense vitality addresses us, there is a vividness in his ideas, with a freshness in his language, and a force in his expressions, which arouses and interests us. Even when he tells us what we already know, he makes it interesting. Now and then he brings out some interesting remark which had not been expressed before, and, feeling that he is expressing our own thoughts better than we could have done it ourselves, we are charmed with him.”
Watching and Waiting
From my upper window, at the close of day, |
Editor's notes