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consideration. No care has been taken to prevent her from having access to food; and there is little doubt that if such access were prevented, we should have a repetition of the case of the Welsh fasting girl, who was killed, as Dr. C. Blake well puts it, “to demonstrate the fact that all living beings receive nutriment.”
The stigmatisation remains, however, on a different basis. She bleeds every Friday, and a careful testing in one detailed case proved that the stigmata occur u spontaneously, and without the intervention of external violence.” I do not know whether any of the experimenters had an adequate acquaintance with the phenomena of Psychology. If not, their attention might usefully be directed to the potency of that unknown factor in all such matters, the human will. I may say, also, that I know at least one case in which the stigmata have repeatedly occurred, and always (I believe) as the result of an ecstatic condition following on a state of rapt and earnest prayer.
At the time of the discussion on this paper I mentioned also a case in which the appearance of a spirit, who had met his death by accident, was accompanied by the production on the brow of the medium of the stigma of the wound received at the time of death. This occurred on two separate occasions, and the stigma remained visible as a dark purple mark, gradually fading out, during a period of more than fifty hours on the first occasion, and of about twenty-six on the next. There was no abrasion of the skin, and no loss of blood.
On the 25th of March, Dr. Kenneth Mackenzie read a curious paper on that curious subject, Crystallomaney, or crystal-seeing. He had made some experiments at home, of which he had preserved some very copious and exact records, as I know from having been permitted to see them, and from these he was kind enough to give us some extracts, He gave us a curious glimpse of that “new and peculiar world,” as he called it, opened to the crystallomancer. He hinted that this world is peopled by beings of a different order to ourselves—possibly the sub-human spirits of which the Occultists tell us—and he correlated his own results with those arrived at by Dr. Dee (preserved in eight MS. volumes in the British Museum), and the unknown crystallomancer of the time of William III.
The curious must be referred to Dr. Mackenzie’s able and elaborate paper (Spiritualist, March 29th) for further information. And while they see how much curious information he gives about mirror-spirits, they will be able to note at the same time that his experience in the wide range of Spiritualism proper has not been such as to enable him to grasp its significance.
The subject of psychography in one of its branches has received the attention it deserves in a paper read on March 1st by Miss Kislingbury. The discussion has a direct bearing on the question of identity, several instances of which are given, as well as some remarkable experiments as to the nature of the communicating intelligence made by Mr. Hornung from 1853 downwards. He submitted identical questions to mediums of various ages, conditions of life, and religious beliefs, and the results he tabulates very carefully, concluding that the chief factor in the manifestations is “the echo of our own soul, our higher spirituality, the divine unknown, the hidden prophet, the universal spirit.” With this my experience, at any rate, does not coincide. I believe in the identity of spirits in very many demonstrable cases, though I subscribe heartily to the wisdom of the words with which Miss Kislingbury closes her paper: u Is it not more ennobling to judge of these communications by their intrinsic merit, according to their tone and influence, than to be perpetually seeking for tests of the personal identity of our friends; to accept the teacher for the sake of his teaching, no matter what his name or insignia?” as I do to the platform which she erects in her opening sentences.
“For myself I consider it of such supreme importance that we should arrive at right conclusions in these matters that I shall not allow myself to be driven back or frightened away from due examination of every theory, new and old. ... I intend to go on exercising full freedom of inquiry, looking carefully all round both facts and theories, turning them over and handling them familiarly, until I get right into the heart of things, and learn something of their true nature, instead of being satisfied with that which appears only.”
These seem to me to be noble sentiments, worthy of utterance from this platform of free and unrestricted inquiry, and fit to be the motto of every searcher after truth.
Mr. Gray, C.E., gave us on May 6 some extremely striking cases of clairvoyant description of spirits under circumstances which go far to prove identity of the communicating spirit, and which work in and square with so many other similar experiences. His arguments on this head, directed chiefly against those who would deny the existence of any communication with the spirits of departed human beings, are very cogent and complete. He separates between fact and speculation in a way that should commend itself to the heart of Mr. Newton, who, on the evening of April 8, gave us a much needed exhortation on the necessity of distinguishing between faith and knowledge: as well as to the scientific mind of Mr. Desmond Fitz-Gerald, who showed, on the 20th of May, that some speculative views that have been advanced were, in his opinion, and as they presented themselves to his comprehension, inconsistent with the proven and universally accepted fact of the conservatism of energy.
Mr. Gray’s recorded cases are very parallel to one which I mentioned as within my own experience in a paper on Some Difficulties of an Enquirer, which I read at a late soiree here, and which is published in The Spiritualist of May 3. Very many of the same nature are within my personal knowledge. Indeed, for some two-and-a-half years I lived in the midst of evidence that those who have gone before can and do return to us under certain carefully-guarded conditions. And I believe further that it is the lack of those conditions, the difficulty of securing them, and our own state of nervous anxiety when the affections are strongly excited that puts the most frequent barrier to the realisation of our wishes in this respect. As it is I am familiar with cases of proven identity of communicating spirits which no destructive theory in the least disposes of, and which are as clearly demonstrated to me as any fact within my knowledge.
There remain three papers contributed to our discussions which deal not so much with facts as with explanations, speculations, and theories. These are Mr. Green’s dissertation on The Evolution Theory in its relation to Psychology (Spiritualist, March 15); Dr. Wyld’s vindication of the potency of the human spirit (Spiritualist, December 14, 1877); and Mr. C. C. Massey’s most able attempt to illustrate some of our difficulties by expounding metaphysical conceptions of space, and by showing us that our views of what is called matter are not such as can be justly maintained—since matter is, in effect, only “a manifestation of powers and agencies that lie behind it and, consequently, that what so mystifies and perplexes us in the phenomena which show us the power of spirit over matter “is simply the power of spirit over itself” exemplified in action.
The attempt of all these gentlemen to elucidate the difficulties which grow upon the thoughtful mind are valuable, and will, I think, be of increasing value, in proportion as the number of those who dive below the surface increases amongst us. That this will be the case I entertain no doubt. There are signs all round us that men are spending time and pains on investigation who will not be content with mere surface explanations. And though the time will not come soon when astonishment at the marvellous will be so far diminished by recurrent experience as to eliminate the element of wonder-hunting, there is no doubt that intelligent Spiritualists will require, with increasing severity, that recitals and records should be independent of exaggeration due to that cause. And though, moreover, the number of those whose antecedent training qualifies them to follow such a close analysis as Mr. Massey’s is small as yet, I hope that the number will steadily increase; for if the metaphysicians are in any degree right, their domain of inquiry is closely connected with our own, and we may borrow from them some needed light.
“We have facts,” said Mr. Massey in a passage of singular beauty with which he closed his paper, “which, not ignorance, however dense; not prejudice, however illiberal; not contempt, however arrogant, can in the least disturb. But this is not enough. Reason must descend upon these facts, and philosophy must embrace experience. Then shall truth triumph in the world be whose will the honour, and whose must the shame.”
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