Legend
<Untitled>
...
The History of the Movement Known As Modern Spiritualism and the Facts and Theories Connected With it.*
I am this evening about to attempt a by no means easy task—to give you a short and clear sketch of one of the strangest and, allow me to call it, one of the mightiest movements of modern times—a movement the effects of which have been felt everywhere, so that literature, theology, even physical science itself, have during some short thirty years all been influenced by it, for the progress of it has been so rapid, and its developments so extraordinary, that to trace them in anything like their natural order would require the patient labour of years, and the results of such labour would fill volumes, whereas the fear of overtaxing your patience limits me to a brief paper, and, my desire of serving the society, to a concise one. I shall therefore say but little regarding the origin of so-called Spiritualism or Psychology, and the progress of it in America; the latter term, which our own society prefers to use—has, as we shall see presently, arisen only quite recently when thoughtful men have began to question not the phenomenal facts, but the construction that insufficient knowledge had put upon the facts, proceeding as rapidly as possible. To take in order — (1) The facts as they are stated to have occurred by credible witnesses in England, most of whom are still living; (2) The philosophy that has arisen side by side with those facts, this necessarily somewhat broadly, to allow for the varying thought of individuals; (3) The theories of those who are now influencing the movement; (4) My own personal thought concerning our present work.
“From small beginnings are great results” is a true proverb indeed, if a trite one. The grain of mustard seed, the despicable, almost invisible thing, to-day the great tree, providing lodging for the fowls of the air, and alas, too, for the brute harpies, to-morrow. Thirty years ago the age had become scientific, so much here on earth, that belief in or speculation concerning things invisible, supernatural/as the vulgar called them, had faded gradually, and was now almost extinct: men either professed to believe that the age of miracles had ceased, or that such an age had never been; and the daimon of Socrates and the disturbances in the house of Wesley were classed with the fables of Æsop and temptation of St. Dunstan, as amiable, and probably unintentional, falsehoods. In America especially, an independent country, with every man’s thought bent upon the Chicago railroad, and his voice occupied in shouting “Yankee Doodle,” the idyll of the free, there was small chance of inspiration, and hardly a house old enough or aristocratic enough for a family ghost to disturb, and if he did, why Brother Jonathan guessed there were few things that could not be explained by rats, or if not, by electricity; yet one fine morning the cars to the west are crowded, and the strains of freedom are hushed, for the news has come from Hydesville, down in Connecticut, of a genuine, unexplainable native ghost, noisily inclined too, and rendering sleep impossible to a matter-of-fact and truly pious family of citizens who have settled there, knocks gigantic and knocks scarcely audible succeeding each other night after night, and day after day. Farmer Fox only wishes the deuce it would stop, whatever it is, and leave a quiet family alone— he and his wife, and Katie and Margaret. Rats or goblins, or what not, why should it keep on at them?
Not so thinks Katie, round whom the mysterious knockings are ever loudest, and who can now sleep quite quietly through them. She is a difficult little girl, with quite an extraordinary habit, even in America, of asking the reason <... continues on page 8-186 >
* A paper read before the Cambridge University Society for Psychological Investigation.
Editor's notes
Sources
-
London Spiritualist, No. 346, April 11, 1879, pp. 169-72