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vol. title: vol. period: 1881 pages in vol.: 439 |
"North American Review" on "Ghost Seeing"
Professor F. H. Hedge’s article on “Ghost Seeing,” in the September number of the North American Review, is well worth some notice in your paper. I was first tempted to call attention to it for the sake of the very suggestive and intelligent remarks it contains, and of the interesting instances it adduces, on the subject of prophetic dreams, warnings, presentiments, &c.; and reading on, was led to copy some other passages illustrative of the sort of reception phenomenal Spiritualism has to expect from educated public opinion, when the force of evidence can no longer be resisted.
The writer of the article is evidently qualified by extensive reading and study of occult literature, and takes for his text several works, ancient and modern, of the best repute. I was especially pleased to find that he attached importance to apparently trivial phenomena, as pointing to a more scientific explanation than that which popular Spiritualism derives from a too exclusive attention to evidence of intelligent purpose. Your readers may perhaps remember that I called attention in your columns some months ago (as formerly in the Spiritualist) to the significance of facts which seemed to me inexplicable upon the hastily adopted theories of “guardianship” assumed to account for them. The following narrative, cited by Mr. Hedge from Schopenhauer, further illustrates this position:—
“Schopenhauer relates an instance from his own experience. He had emptied his inkstand by mistake, instead of the sand box, on a freshly written page. The ink flowed down upon the floor, and the chambermaid was summoned to wipe it up. While doing so, she remarked that she had dreamed the night before of wiping up ink from the floor of that room. When Schopenhauer questioned her statement she referred him to the maid who had slept with her and to whom she had related the dream on awaking. He called the other maid, and before she could communicate with her fellow servant, asked her ‘What did that girl dream of last night t’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Yes, you do, she told you her dream in the morning.’ ‘Oh, I remember, she told me she dreamed of wiping up ink in your library.’”
“Dreams like this," says Mr. Hedge, “too trivial to be recorded, are psychologically valuable, as tending to prove that the soul is essentially clairvoyant." According to Schopenhauer, as interpreted by Mr. Hedge, “the soul, when sleep is perfect, has visions independent of time and place, seeing at present what to the waking subject is future. Whether or not the vision shall be transmitted to the brain and there brought to consciousness, depends on organic conditions which we find in some subjects and not in others.’’ When the impression on the brain is blurred and imperfect, the result is the vague sensation we call presentiment. “A presentiment is an abortive vision.” Instances like the above, which exclude the supposition of friendly purpose and useful design, direct us to seek an explanation in our own transcendent faculties, accidentally revealed, and thus we shall be led to consider how wide is the field of occult phenomena thus covered.
The writer’s remarks on apparitions and Spiritualism generally deserve the most respectful appreciation. Accepting the evidence of apparitions of living persons and of the recently deceased, he goes on to say: “Of a different sort and more difficult of belief are objective apparitions of the long deceased. The improbability increases with the lapse of time. It would be unphilosophical to deny apodictically the possibility of such apparitions; but one may be pardoned for reserving assent to what if true perplexes one’s view of the future state with added insoluble difficulties. The reason for greater slowness of belief in this case than in that of the recently departed is the feeling that souls once thoroughly severed from the flesh, new-bodied and new-sphered, cannot quit their new sphere except by way of new death. Were it not so—if, conscious of a former existence and inspirited by its memories, departed friends and departed worthies could ‘revisit the glimpses of the moon,’ and make themselves manifest in earthly scenes to earthly sense—then assuredly such visitations would be among the unquestioned and common events of life. But what are the hundreds or the thousands of recorded apparitions to the sumless millions of the dead?” How many have cried bitterly with Wordsworth’s “Margaret,” quoted by the writer—
“I look for ghosts, but none will force |
What Mr. Hedge here urges against the apparitions! presence of friends who must be presumed to have entered new spheres of existence, is of course equally applicable to all communications supposed to be made to us by them. “Justinus Kerner, the most scientific and conscientious of modern pneumatologists, . . . agrees with Plato that only the souls of the brutal and depraved revisit the earth, and approach mortals with objective manifestations.”
“Of modem sorcery, misnamed Spiritualism,” says Mr. Hedge, “the number of those who agree in this profession amounts to many thousands; its votaries say, millions. Science has judged their pretensions and pronounced them groundless; and because here and there it detected imposture has rashly concluded that imposture and delusion are the only factors in the business—that all who engage in it are either knaves or fools.” . . . . “As for pretended communications with defunct worthies, there is, in my judgment, no sufficient proof of anything authentic of this kind. The examples which have hitherto been offered confirm this judgment; and when the necromancers (!) plead, as excuse for the platitudes of their utterances, that the communication is qualified by the ‘medium’ through which it passes, they fail to perceive that the admission is fatal to their cause. . . For thirty years and more this sorcery has been in vogue, and not one ray of unquestionable light has it shed on that which it most concerns us to know of the future state.” Can this be denied? Do we know more now, certainly, definitely, from consentient and consistent testimony, on this subject, than we did thirty years ago? But in the following passage the writer greatly misrepresents the later generation of Spiritualists:—“Granting the agency of Spirits in some of the manifestations, the grand mistake of Spiritism is the taking for granted that disembodied Spirits are necessarily wiser or more knowing than Spirits in the flesh.” But this is just what “Spiritism,” now, at all events, does not do. It is, on the contrary, a just and constant complaint that this supposition governs the criticism of opponents, who always discredit the Spirit origin of communications because the latter shew no advance on the intelligence and information possessed by the recipients. “For aught I know,” further Bays Mr. Hedge, “there may be Spirits in the ‘vasty deep,’ grovelling, lost creatures, who aid and abet these fooleries [the physical manifestations of the dark circle]; but for my part I wish to have nothing to do with these clowns of the pit” Naturally not; but can Mr. Hedge not see that these “fooleries” have an indispensable value—when scientifically authenticated—in the utter subversion of speculative materialism?
But if the writer is thus severe on the supposed beliefs and practices of phenomenal Spiritualists, he not less emphatically condemns the shallow arrogance of pseudo-scientific negation.
“The aversion of science to this class of phenomena is due to the prevalent assumption of supernatural origin. Call them supernatural, and you shut them out from the field of scientific inquiry, whose limits are the bounds of nature. Let us at once discard this phrase as impertinent and misleading. With what there may be outside of nature we have nothing to do in this connection. If nature means anything, it means the all of finite being. The question is: are ghosts a part of this all, subject to nature’s method and rule?” Incredulity in such matters is commonly regarded as the mark of a strong understanding. If so, a strong understanding is not the highest type of mind. The fact is, it is oftener the will than the understanding which refuses credit to spiritual marvels.”.
A thoroughly true remark, explaining all the so-called scientific rejection of evidence, which if honestly studied could be resisted by no rational understanding. It is to be hoped that this article is symptomatic of a reaction, in America at least, against materialistic prejudices assuming the airs of “science” and “common sense,” among the educated classes. I must avow my own conviction that Spiritualists, on their side, will do well likewise to appreciate criticisms from a point of view they cannot fail to respect.
<Untitled> (Change for the Better...)
Change for the Better.—It is but a few years since that a French law-court decided that Spiritualists’ testimony could not be received, seeing that they were hallucinated. Here is a good sign of change: A legacy by Bourdier, a Spiritualist, to the Society des Sciences Psychologiques, on condition of its issuing periodically an edition of his book, Les Rudiments Spirites, has been ordered to be handed over to the Society, represented by P. G. Leymarie, its administrator, the man upon whom French law was so hard a few years ago.
Editor's notes
Sources
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Light, v. 1, No. 39, October 1, 1881, p. 307