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vol. title: vol. period: 1881 pages in vol.: 439 |
< The “Occult World,” by A.P. Sinnett* (continued from page 11-246) >
cles. The sneer, the simper, and the wagging bead—every possible exemplification of quiet insult and of arrogance, of patronizing and of putting-down—have been expended on it. How many of the wooden-heads have been mastered against it? What is this “Occult World” of Mr. A. P. Sinnett’s? It deals with such strange, but with such overpoweringly important subjects, that in these considerations it assuredly becomes а great book, if it be a book at all. If this book be true, and if the statements contained in it be true, and that they really occurred then the impudent assertion, the dogmatism and conceit of the men of the time, who in the flabby undecided state of public opinion, and in the fear which arises from the making of admissions, have it all their own way, must give way and shrink into nothing. We shall see what comes from the circulation of this book. It that fixed postulatum of science, and that outcome of the modern education, that assertion which lies at the foundation of all modern disputation that there is, nor that there ever was, apart from man’s conceit of the thing, such n thing as miracle, or in other words a supernatural arrest of the course of natural law, then the “Occult World” is impossible. and the statements made in it, whether of one, whether of many, however honestly credited by the witnesses, are delusion. This is the real trial of the whole matter. But if this book really rests on fact, and as far as evidence can be made to substantiate, it does rest on fact, then the assertion of the realists that there never was miracle, is cut through as with the sharpest axe, and tails asunder like a severed log—a disgraced and destroyed idol which the spiritual iconoclast has stricken into annihilation—-into two contemptible shivers or halves, only fit, and scarcely fit or worthy, even for the fire.
The very foundation of the book and raison d’etre is the truth of magic in this very instant day. Some of the statements, all of which are supported by proof in the little circumstances, which are always the best, as being the little incidentals to prove, speak for themselves in finding familiar access to conviction. For as to evidence as generally accepted, very often in courts of law and otherwise, we do not believe it. There are a few minds judicially constructed. There are vast multitudes that are not. The reviewer in the “Athenæum” complains that the “Occult World” is a “disappointing book” because he cannot find in it any Tom and Jerry—Maskelyne and Cooke— Dr. Lynn—or Dr. or Mr. Anybody’s explanation, upon strictly natural although outwardly unexplainable principles, of the ancient Indian Jugglers, that he cannot be made to see with his eyes, and feel with his hands. Sensible helps to conviction of course the doubter has been accustomed to rely-upon. It is a pity that he did not first begin by doubting himself. How can the poor man credit?—how hopelessly ho is lost—when ho is asked to see with his toes, and hear with his mouth instead of his ears—preternaturally extended perhaps, in his case, to moot his case. Who can doubt nature—in nature? Who sees objects flitting and fleeing in Fleet Street? Who can suppose that an object—a letter lorinstance, a real natural rose and no shadowy one, the glance of a light without glamour for the presentation of a light, a hand and the fingers of a hand and no one near, musical chimes, voices and so on—who can suppose that those strange proofs of an intelligent something otherwise than as visible with us, or as conversing with us, or otherwise bodily present with us—who can imagine nil this real? It is impossible to imagine that the partition walls between this world and the next world, or the other world, are so thin as that you can hear the movers in the other through. If this sort of thing goes on, we shall next have oar dreams encountering us “in the middle of the day!” But these matters are no: the less curious because we cannot dismiss thorn in this off-hand ridiculous way. These questions are by no means settled by this persiflage. They are rather intensified—except in the minds of fools—by such a process. Ridicule will never kill this difficulty of super naturalism. It only makes us melancholy. “Why cannot you bring us face to face with this thing?” demand the realists. If such contact were ever effected, the doubter would never he convinced Because a miracle to stay is impossible. The reason is that everything preternatural must, in the nature of things, be only interjectionary. It comes and it goes.
It refers to something outside of us. and in another work than this, thus certainly demonstrable to common-sense, if any. thing can be submitted to common-sense; all which possibility and the examination of which possibility, the persent reviewers of the “Occult World” demonstrated as fully and completely as the subject was capable of cool and of unprepossessed examination, (in the common-sense and philosophical sense and not in the enthusiastic or spiritualistic sense), in some of the books which are named as having been produced at their various periods as above.
The Buddhist revival in Ceylon
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The Spiritualist
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Editor's notes
Sources
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Harbinger of Light, No. 134, October 1, p. 2070
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Light, v. 1, No. 39, October 1, 1881, p. 310