Legend
< Spiritualism, and Some of Its Recent Critics (continued from page 4-123) >
statement will carry with it the assenting affirmation of a great number of persons, who have a very good reason to give for the faith that is in them.
It is manifestly impossible, with any due regard to space, to enter here into any exhaustive review of the evidence which leads me and those who think with me, to arrive at this conclusion. It is the less necessary because those who, as is the case with our present critics, carry their experience so far back, must at least have read, if they have not personally seen, many cases, which their theories will not cover. I shall content myself with a brief reference to well known cases.
And let it be premised, as is very necessary in the case of any theorist, that an argument is never answered till it is answered at its best. A theory which pretends to explain facts must explain all the facts, or it is worthless. If it reaches only to a certain extent, and stops short of explaining the most marked phenomena—-valeat quantum. But it fails of its purpose.
Dr. Wyld’s theory that the liberated spirit of the medium is responsible for all the varied phenomena has been already ventilated by Serjeant Cox, and before him by other theorists. I am ready to admit, and am glad that investigators should recognise the potency of the human spirit. It is a great fact in psychical phenomena. I have experimentally proved its power, and have no doubt that to ignore its effects is to pass by in our observations an element which we cannot afford to despise.
But, this admitted, it must be stated further that to say that the liberated spirit of a medium does all, is responsible for all the varied phenomena recorded week by week in this Journal is to rush into the other extreme. Dr. Wild predicates of the human spirit while yet incarnated something very like omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Such a startling theory must be supported by some very widely extended observations before we can be asked to accept it. As a matter of fact no evidence whatever is brought forward for so sweeping an assumption. Even the facts of mesmerism, though they tell us more about the potency of the human spirit than any other source of information, fall far short of establishing any such claim.
Moreover, these phenomena occur in the presence of a passive medium, and we are asked to believe that his spirit causes the various results which we observe. We are referred by way of corroborative testimony to such facts as those recorded by Madam Blavatsky and to such experience as my own. But mark the difference! I speak from experience. Nothing short of the severest exercise of Will, so severe as to paralyse the mental powers for a long subsequent time, can avail to produce any objective effect. Yet the medium, passive ex hypothesi, and in many cases not entranced, produces them without (so to say) “turning a hair.” To any one who has tried it the hypothesis carries on its face its own plain refutation.
Once more, the spirit of the medium, a fairly honest and respectable person in normal condition, as soon as it becomes free from the controlling influence of the flesh, must be supposed to lose all sense of veracity, and to become a miserable and mendacious impostor. Are we, then, kept in check by the physical body? And when we “shuffle off this mortal coil,” are we io come out in our true light? Or are we to suppose that we are all psychologised, stage-struck, gone mad with a desire to masquerade? Surely, such cases as (for instance) that of Abraham Florentine, recorded in this journal, are not explicable on any such theory. Certainly, no one who has seen the method of communication, who has observed the definite and distinct individuality of each Intelligence, to say nothing of their moral consciousness and direct honesty of purpose, will be persuaded to entertain any such idea.
T. J.’s hypothesis covers very little ground indeed, and is important only as showing some of the methods of deception which are open to spirits who are not scrupulous in their treatment of us, and who are not governed by any moral consciousness. Such there are, no doubt, and, unfortunately such there will continue to be, for spirits disembodied have no monopoly of deception, and we, on our side, “do our level best” to keep up the supply. The plain remedy is to purify our circles. Into an atmosphere of sincerity fraud does not readily enter. If we ourselves attend to the conditions which will, we know, facilitate the approach of the higher Intelligences, we shall have steadily decreasing reason to lament such exposures of frauds as are now only too frequent. So long as we have our promiscuous circles, held under the conditions under which they are now held, accessible, as Col. Olcott says, “to any chance moral leper who has a sovereign to spend,” so long we shall have fraud; fraud too often charged on the unconscious medium, when the moral responsibility rests with those who have made it possible, probable, aye almost certain.
When these conditions, for which we are responsible are removed, and when the phenomena are not made a rare show of to anybody who wants to gape and gibe at them, T. J.’s hypothetical spirit will find it necessary to exercise his abilities elsewhere.
The Theosophist platform, so far as it concerns the subject now under notice, is far more worthy of consideration. There is much in it that must commend itself to one whose prepossessions are dormant, and whose perceptions are wide awake. So far as it goes, it seems to me to embody a true rationale of the fact; so far as I can comprehend it, I believe it to be worthy of all attention. I wish it had been in the mind of my friend to state more clearly his belief in, or acceptance of, what I may be allowed to call the pure Spiritualist as contradistinguished from the Occultist theory. Though I accept, so far as concerns my present subject, what the Theosophist believes respecting the care that should be exercised in encouraging mediumship; the dangers that beset promiscuous circles; the power of the incarnate human spirit; the rich field of research in the cultivation by development of the Will; of our own inherent capacities; and of the key that the study of mesmerism furnishes to many problems; I could wish that he had given a more prominent place in his review to the “action of pure disembodied spirits,” of which he makes so little. It is there that I find myself constrained to avow myself a Spiritualist pur sang. While I know that the human spirit can act, and does act under certain conditions, and those (by the way) not such as readily obtain; while I believe that deceptive agencies, frequently evoked by ourselves, are at work; while I do not refuse to recognise indications of the presence of infra-human intelligence in some cases; admitting all this I should be false to my strongest convictions were I to burke for one moment my belief in something far higher and nobler than all this. I believe—it will not add to the weight of my statement if I say I know—that man can choose his own company more easily among the unembodied than among his own fellows. In the future, we are taught to believe, man will gravitate of necessity to the place which he has prepared for himself. And so I believe that here by his moral rectitude and integrity of purpose, by the pure aspirations of its spirit, by the atmosphere which surrounds him, and by the craving which is in him, he can avail to draw around him influences and intelligences which are higher and nobler than anything contemplated by our critics.
Those who return to us are animated some of them by enduring affection. I cannot put aside the evidence which so many sincere and capable observers produce for the return to them of those whose identity they are best able to judge, Others come as instructors, and of these I have had large experience. I should as soon suspect them of playing a part, of acting a lie, of palming off on me a pious fraud, as I should impugn the honour and veracity of my best friend. Is that strong language? I mean it to be such. If there be not moral consciousness in those of whom I speak, then I have no standard. I am reduced to a mighty incredulity as to any such thing as truth, and should not even trouble to ask Pilate’s question in despair of getting an answer. Thank God! I have not come to that.
One word as to magic. What is there in the cultivation of one’s innate powers to their highest possible to frighten a man? I, for one wish that every Spiritualist would cultivate his own spiritual faculties to their utmost. I wish every Spiritualist would face the criticisms that can be made, and do his best to vindicate for his faith the plane of moral grandeur that it should occupy. Nine-tenths of our diffi- <... continues on page 4-127 >