HPB-SB-8-138: Difference between revisions

An aged German professor of natural science, renowned as an author and for certain scientific discoveries at his time, with whom I am on terms of friendship, also did not abstain from trying the old trick of overawing me by the solemn declaration that only scientifically trained persons were able to observe and judge about physical facts, when I had communicated some of my experience in spirit phenomena to him. At last he cut my unwelcome report off with the following remarkable words:—“If what you and others tell me were true, and founded upon fact, I should have to burn all the books I have written within the last twenty years.” Overpowered by the tragical force of that argument for the moment, I only ventured to express the consolatory remark that the books need not all be burnt, but that a thorough revision might save them from the fire. When Professor Zollner and his learned scientific friends had taken to the investigation of spiritual phenomena with Mr. Slade, in Leipzig, and publicly acknowledged the reality of the various phenomena they had witnessed under strict test conditions in the light, I was anxious to hear what my friend the professor would say. On being asked, before he knew what had happened in Leipzig, {{Style S-HPB SB. Restored|his opinion about the capacity of Professor Zollner, he instantly replied with emphasis, “Zollner is an eminent man of science.” Afterwards, when told that Professor Zollner had investigated the spirit phenomena with Slade, and become convinced that they were facts, my professor would hardly believe it. Recovering his composure, however, he coolly declared that Professor Zollner and friends must have been sadly mistaken or gone mad. Such is the logic of scientific men when their preconceived ideas are at stake. They turn against their highly-esteemed colleagues, whom they had before declared to be the only competent investigators and judges of physical phenomena and facts. It is the “mania of infallibility,” which to all appearance has beset the minds of scientists more than that of the Pope. Some German disciples of Darwin talk as haughtily as if they were quite sure that “''the limits O nature were identical with the limits of their mental horizon.''”'' ''And I dare say there are a good many scientific pigmies of the same sort on the other side of the Channel as well as on this. I don't mean to put the learned doctor, who has given rise to this letter in reply to his absurd statement, on the same list with the above-mentioned specimen of his scientific colleagues, still I cannot deny there is a certain resemblance. I cannot help, moreover, observing that I consider his expressions “horror” and “elusive wild beasts” quite out of place and uncalled for, as to my knowledge no such offensive term has been used by any writer in ''The Spiritualist ''against Roman Catholics. It would have been much wiser if he had stuck to his declaration of being in accord with Mr. E. Jones on the point of avoiding all sectional religious surmisings; instead of which he actually sinned against that declaration immediately after he had made it. More such distinct slips of logical consequence in his words and deeds, which no amount of Latin phrases and sophistic reasoning can cover up, are to be found among the doctor's letters. I finish for the present with a solemn protest for myself and friends against the absurd opinion of that gentleman, that Spiritualism offers nothing but a number of physical facts in which he can see no moral bearing whatever.}}

{{Style P-Signature in capitals| G. Wiese.}}

Wiesbaden, Jan. 27th, 1879.

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