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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |Spiritualism and Theosophy|10-567}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |Spiritualism and Theosophy|10-567}} | ||
around the medium, and by doing away with test-conditions, invite to the perpetration of gross frauds. Mediums actually caught red-handed in trickery, with their paraphernalia of traps, false panels, wigs and puppets about them, have been able to make their dupes regard them as martyrs to the rage of sceptics, and the damning proofs of their guilt as having been secretly supplied by the unbelievers themselves to strike a blow at their holy cause! The voracious credulity of a large body of Spiritualists has begotten nine-tenths of the dishonest tricks of mediums. As Mr. Crookes truly observed in his preliminary article in the ''Quarterly Journal of Science''.– “In the countless number of recorded observations I have read, there appear to be few instances of meetings held for the express purpose of getting the phenomena under test conditions.” | {{Style P-No indent|around the medium, and by doing away with test-conditions, invite to the perpetration of gross frauds. Mediums actually caught red-handed in trickery, with their paraphernalia of traps, false panels, wigs and puppets about them, have been able to make their dupes regard them as martyrs to the rage of sceptics, and the damning proofs of their guilt as having been secretly supplied by the unbelievers themselves to strike a blow at their holy cause! The voracious credulity of a large body of Spiritualists has begotten nine-tenths of the dishonest tricks of mediums. As Mr. Crookes truly observed in his preliminary article in the ''Quarterly Journal of Science''.– “In the countless number of recorded observations I have read, there appear to be few instances of meetings held for the express purpose of getting the phenomena under test conditions.”}} | ||
Though this is true, it is also most certain that within the past thirty-two years, enquirers into the phenomena have been vouchsafed thousands upon thousands of proofs, that they occur under conditions quite independent of the physical agency of the persons present, and that intelligence, sometimes of a striking character, is displayed in the control of the occult force or forces producing the phenomena. It is this great reserve of test facts upon which rests, like a rock upon its base, the invincible faith of the millions of Spiritualists. This body of individual experiences is the rampart behind which they entrench themselves whenever the outside world of sceptics looks to see the whole ‘delusion’ crumbling under the assault of some new ''buna'' critic, or the shame of the latest exposure of false mediumship or tricking mediums. It ought by this time to have been discovered that it is worse than useless to try to ridicule away the actual evidence of one’s senses; or to make a man who has seen a heavy weight self-lifted and suspended in the air, or writing done without contact, or a human form melt before his eyes, believe any theory that all mediumistic phenomena are due to ‘muscular contraction,’ ‘expectant attention,’ or ‘unconscious cerebration.’ It is because of their attempts to do this that men of science, as a body, are regarded with such compassionate scorn by the experienced psychologist. Mr. Wallace tells us that after making careful inquiry he has never found one man who, after having acquired a good personal knowledge of the chief phases of the phenomena, has afterwards come to disbelieve in their reality. And this is my own experience also. Some have ceased to be “Spiritualists” and turned Catholics, but they have never doubted the phenomena being real. It will be a happy day, one to be hailed with joy by every lover of true science, when our modern professors shall rid themselves of the conceited idea that knowledge was born in our days, and question in an humble spirit the records of archaic science. | Though this is true, it is also most certain that within the past thirty-two years, enquirers into the phenomena have been vouchsafed thousands upon thousands of proofs, that they occur under conditions quite independent of the physical agency of the persons present, and that intelligence, sometimes of a striking character, is displayed in the control of the occult force or forces producing the phenomena. It is this great reserve of test facts upon which rests, like a rock upon its base, the invincible faith of the millions of Spiritualists. This body of individual experiences is the rampart behind which they entrench themselves whenever the outside world of sceptics looks to see the whole ‘delusion’ crumbling under the assault of some new ''buna'' critic, or the shame of the latest exposure of false mediumship or tricking mediums. It ought by this time to have been discovered that it is worse than useless to try to ridicule away the actual evidence of one’s senses; or to make a man who has seen a heavy weight self-lifted and suspended in the air, or writing done without contact, or a human form melt before his eyes, believe any theory that all mediumistic phenomena are due to ‘muscular contraction,’ ‘expectant attention,’ or ‘unconscious cerebration.’ It is because of their attempts to do this that men of science, as a body, are regarded with such compassionate scorn by the experienced psychologist. Mr. Wallace tells us that after making careful inquiry he has never found one man who, after having acquired a good personal knowledge of the chief phases of the phenomena, has afterwards come to disbelieve in their reality. And this is my own experience also. Some have ceased to be “Spiritualists” and turned Catholics, but they have never doubted the phenomena being real. It will be a happy day, one to be hailed with joy by every lover of true science, when our modern professors shall rid themselves of the conceited idea that knowledge was born in our days, and question in an humble spirit the records of archaic science. | ||