k^sS* 7 oosg sa^fc ^«*r<3^ ^w iili^*- mmt mm iMi ■ v ,v ."• • a , \/i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. PRESENTED BY UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. RfflQjii l^^ €iffpi 'f; *V ■:..,*»* Wfi^N ^ m?>w? $mi«ifl » «Wv* ..M'li ^MSa y « ^y.SB.vr'nyy'S »»V» V / 'tfi/H l»»#lfi SPIRITUALISM TESTED FACTS OF ITS HISTORY CLASSIFIED, AND THEIR CAUSE IN NATURE VERIFIED ghuutti oft gtairtni %ntivmtis. GEOKGE W. SAMSON, D. D. PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIAN COLLEGE, TASniNGTOS, D.C. BOSTON: aOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 Washington Street, NEW TOKK: SHELDON AND COMPANY. CISCES'SATI : GEORGE S. BLANCHARD. 1860. "If I am ignorant how anything is done, what is done I know. 'What ! can we doubt the force of lightning? So I argue about all kinds of divination."— Cicero. " The effects produced . . . are independent of all participation of the imagi- nation." "It appears clear that these effects are due to some communication which is established between their nervous systems." — Cuviee. " It seems not to have identity with electricity, nor with magnetism proper, nor is it the influence of imagination. It seems a new force."— Akago. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. THE AUTHOR TO HIS READERS. The subject of which these letters treat has lost none of its freshness of interest, although the special phenomena which lately excited so much curiosity may no longer he viewed as strikingly novel. "Were it not that these phenomena are but a species under a genus, had not two or three differing forms of the same class of facts rapidly succeeded each other in our country, foretokening other forms yet to be developed, the in- quiry as to their possible source, might seem to come too late. It is only in the lull after the storm that men are calm enough to look facts steadily in the face, and rationally to search for their cause. The admission of the reality of the facts of the phenomena called "Spiritual Manifestations" may awaken a prejudice in the minds of one class of readers ; while the apparent sugges- tion of a natural cause for them, may disaffect inquirers of an opposite caste. But, have we not all learned that it is the imperfection of our nature which leads us all to idolize our preconceived opinions, and which makes us deny to ourselves a fair hearing of what seems counter to, or in advance of, our already formed judgments? Will not the reader, of whatever class, grant the credit of sincerity and impartiality professed IV THE AUTHOE TO HIS EEADEES. in the title " Spiritualism Tested;" and allow himself to he, for the time, the friend addressed in these familiar letters? It may he proper here to remark, that the main part of the present work was prepared, and a small edition issued, several years since, under the title " To Daimonion, by Traverse Old- field." Hence some may ask the reason for this change of title, and the unveiling of the author. The name "To Daimonion" has proved both a blinding and a deceiving guide to readers of these letters ; those who know the history of the word, doubt- ing whether the author uses it in the old Greek sense or not; while to most, it has had no meaning. What has no meaning, is useless ; and what may mislead, is sometimes worse than use- less. The period that has elapsed since its first publication, has given growing confirmations to the conclusions, and added accumulations to the facts embodied in the first twelve letters ; and has suggested the " supplementary letter," under the new title. Meanwhile, the disguise of the author having proved ineffectual, is thrown off ; because a mask savors of hypocrisy when it no longer conceals. The results reached in these pages, have been to the author an exceeding great re- ward for all the toil they have demanded, in the confirmation of his own faith, and the assurance of his own hope. It is be- cause they have aided other minds also, that they are now a second time given to the public. G. W. S. Columbian College, Washington, D. C, March 1, 1860. CONTENTS. LETTER I. Sympathy for the Inquirer. — Repulsive Replies of some. — Hint in College Days. — Future Study of the Ancients. — No Fact Explained. — Science only Classifies. — Spiritual Knowledge most Limited. — Three Developments in "Spiritual Rappings." — The "Tapping, Writing and Speaking" Media. — Object, to find a General Law 9 LETTER II. The Intermediate Agent between Matter and Spirit. — Allusions of the Ancients to it. — From Franklin's Day to HerschePs sup- posed to be Electricity. — The Nervous Principle as now under- stood. — Akin to Electricity. — Mode of its Action. — Exces- sive, Deficient, and Equable Development 16 LETTER III. Possible Principles an Illustration. — The Nervous Principle pos- sibly has the Laws of Electricity and Magnetism. — Electricity affects the Senses; so the Nervous Principle. — Impression varies with Constitution. — Three Classes seen in Joan of Arc. — The Natural of one Supernatural to another. — Electricity attracts Objects, and passes over Connected Conductors; and so may the Nervous Principle. — Report of the Royal Academy on Mesmerism. — " A Special Agent." — This the Nervous Princi- ple. — Statement of Cuvier. — The Clairvoyant the Magnetic Telegraph of the Inquirer. — Agreement of Prof. Gregory and other Mesmerists 26 1* VI CONTENTS. LETTER IV. Possible Truth, guides Practice. — As in a Thunder-storm. — Tables moved. — The Nervous Energy a Sufficient Power. — " Rappings " not new. — Media, Persons of Nervous Organism. — Communications accord with Temperament. — Arm Con- vulsed, as the Orator's. — Seraphic Eloquence, as the Excited Writer. — Communications of Things Forgotten. — All seen in Excited Speaker 36 LETTER V. The Inquiry may be practical soon. — Puritans Men of Strong Sense. — Their Precedents. — History of Witchcraft. — Sir Matthew Hale. — Three Opinions. — The Facts. — Convulsions. — Other Bodily Affections. — Metals attracted. — Objects moved. — Rappings. — Wonderful Eloquence. — Mysterious Knowledge, or Clairvoyance. — Developments the same as in our Day. — Excitements and Impressions of the Age. — Causes, as in Royal Academy's Report. — Mather and Brattle agreeing in Princi- ple. — The Nervous Principle harmonizes all. ...... 45 LETTER VI. No new Suggestion. — Link in the Middle Ages to Ancient Times. — Thorough Treatise of that Day. — Magic an Exalted Study. — "Soul of the World." — All Spirits Linked. — A Superior Spirit can control the Body of a Weaker. — As a Magnet the Spirit may attract Material Objects. — Disease Cured. — Power of Numbers. — Power of Song. — The Daemon, or Spiritual Princi- ple communicating Knowledge. — Aristotle's View. — Excited like Magnetism Electricity. — Sword of iEneas. — The Daemon nothing but Nervous Excitement. — Virgil's Testimony. — In- cense and Drugs excite. — Transformations of Circe and Fasci- nations in the Middle Ages. — Wonders we are yet to see. . 59 CONTENTS. VII LETTER VLL •* Ancient Authors " referred to. — Roman View practical. — Modes of seeking Knowledge. — Three Views of Source. — Juvenal's Satire, and Horace's Wit. — Virgil's Allegory, and Interpretation of it. — Plutarch. — His Matter of Fact. — Why Poetic Oracles ceased. — Why Delphi is silent. — The Nervous Exciter failed. — Reason and Religion agreed. — Pliny the Naturalist. — "Magical Vanities." — Hold three-fold, meeting Bodily, Intellectual, and Moral Want. — Some Shades of Truth. — Homer's Spirit called up. — The Naturalist's Conclusion. — Galen, the Physician. — Medical View of Indian, Greek, and Roman Physicians. — Power of Amulets. — Electric Illustra- tions. — The Physician's Conclusion 70 LETTER Vm. Who are "the Ancients." — The Greek Reflective. — Cicero a Roman-Greek. — Divination believed in by all the Greek Schools. — Facts and Reasonings as in our day. — Source, three- fold : Illusion, Corporeal Causes, the Spiritual Medium. — Dreams. — Homer, his Spirits. — Nervous Visions. — Hesiod, his Chain. — Pythagoras, "Music of the Spheres." — Plato, Inter- mediate Principle. — Conclusion as in Later Ages 84 LETTER IX. Champollion's Clues. — Wonders of India. — Serpents charmed — Nervous Swoons. — Detecting Thieves. — Man buried a Month. — Religious Trances. — Nervous Contest. — Stone raised. — Brazen Vessel moved. — Uniform Explanation. — Trial by Rice. — " Special Agent." — Fearful Initiation. — Magic an Art. — Hindoo Philosophy of Magic. — Serpent Charmers in Egypt. — Serpent drawn from Wall. — Goat Charmer. — His- tory of Charais. — Magnetizing Magician. — Clairvoyance in Egypt. — " Special Agent " universal. — A Law. — Ancient History uniform. — Blindfold Somnambule. — Healing by Mag- netism. — Phenomena ever the same 93 VIII CONTENTS LETTER X. Old Testament "antiquated." — Science reveres Scripture. — Sci- ence behind Scripture. — Moses learned. — Eight Forms of Egyptian Mystery. — Not behind our Mysteries. — Scripture View of these. — Accredit Science. — Daniel among Magi. — Abuse of Science condemned. — The True Supernatural. — Ma- gician's Testimony. — Magi's Testimony. — Picture of an An- cient Medium. — Why Men seek them. — Contrast of Natural and Supernatural. — Penalty of Curiosity. — Ancients appre- ciated these Things. — Christian Scholar in Egypt. — " Our Rock not as theirs." 110 LETTER XL Christian School in Egypt. — Greek Youth won. — Supernatural Revelation needed. — Greek and Roman View. — " Desire of all Nations." — Revelation not from Reason. — Not from the Spiritual Medium. — Jewish Art in Christ's Day. — Jewish Views of Christ's Miracles. — Mysterious Arts of Paul's Day. — Compared with Christ's Miracles. — Compared with Paul's Mira- cles. — Evil Spirits. — Possessions only in Christ's Day. — Good Angels. — No Revelation from them. — Miracles prove Inspira- tion. — The Ancients convinced. — All Ages convinced. . 126 LETTER XII. What Use. — Experience shows. — Dangerous Experimenting.— Physical and Moral Danger. — Nervous Epidemics. — Excite- ment on Spiritual Themes. — Cool Men cannot control it. — Avoid Exciting Causes. — Why Observers disagree. — Both Right, though differing. — Science a Growth of Ages. — Trained Men for the Risk. — Religious Experimenting. — Warning from the Past. — " Sure word of Prophecy." — No "Broken Cistern." 145 %tiiti /ioh THE NATURE OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM NOT TO BE EXPLAINED. " Hoc sum contentus, quod, etiam si quomodo quidque fiat ignorem, quid fiat intelligo. Pro omni divinatione idem * * respondebo. * * Quid ! de fulgurum vi, dubitare num possunt ? nonne cum muka alia mirabilia, tunc illud in primis ? * * Causarum enim ignoratio in re nova mira- tionem facit : eadem ignoratio, si in rebus usitatis est, non miraniur." — Cicero de Divinatione, i.,9, 10, & n., 22. [With this I am content, that even if I am ignorant in what way any- thing happens, what does happen I know. In reference to every kind of divination I will reply the same. What ! can we doubt as to power of lightniugs ? Is it not so that while there are many other things wonderful, this is among the first ? * * For ignorance of causes in a new occurrence produces wonder : the same ignorance, if it exists in common occurrences, we do not wonder at. ] Sympathy for the Inquirer. — Repulsive Replies of some. — Hint in College Days. — Future Study of the Ancients. — No Fact Explained. — Science only Classifies. — Spiritual Knowledge most Limited. — Three Developments in "Spiritual Rappings." — The "Tapping, Writing and Speaking " Media. — Object, to find a General Law. My Dear Charles : I am glad you have written so freely of your obser- vations and inquiries, of your doubts and difficulties, in reference to the " Spiritual Rappings." Be assured you have one that knows how to sympathize with you ; a friend whose own mind has been struggling for years through the mist, seeking a rock to stand upon ; and 10 SYMPATHY FOR THE INQUIRER. who, with a shipwrecked comrade's eagerness, delights to reach a hand or to fling a rope to the aid of a brother yet tossed on the billows of an unsettled faith, and if possible to help hirn to a foot-hold. What a pity it is that youth too often doubt the sin- cerity or the ability of their elder, and, therefore, more experienced, comrades in the voyage of life ! Too often the aged and experienced, and even the intelligent and learned, do not enter into the mental trials of inquiring youth ; they do not give themselves time to come back to their own early years, and to recall to mind their own days of doubt and uncertainty. Absorbed in their own particular pursuits, they listen with but half an ear to half the story ; and they have not time nor patience to give the reasons of their own instinctive decision, — that, though mysterious, there is for these wonders of our day a natural though unexplained cause. Some- times, also, the man of matured views on these subjects replies too abruptly when questioned ; responding with one or the other of these two curt declarations, accord- ing as his temperament is secular or religious, — " It is all humbug" — or, " It is all from the devil." But, Charles, do not distrust therefore the heart or the head, the feeling or the conviction, of your experienced and intelligent friends. They may be hasty in assigning the ultimate cause of these phenomena which perplex you ; and yet they may be right in the main conviction, that there is nothing supernatural in them. Nearly twenty years since, the first experiments in " Mesmerism " were agitating our community. In the STUDY OF THE ANCIENTS. 11 city near by our university, lecturers were performing nightly ; and one of my own classmates was a successful operator. Our scientific professor visited and witnessed these exhibitions. Eagerly one morning, when on the subject that called it up, did we watch for the views of our acute Professor of Physiology. From that morn- ing" the conviction rested on some of our minds, that in all the phenomena relating to spiritual media there is the working of a wondrous power in our nature, myste- rious, indeed, and unexplained, yet not supernatural. It is not delusion nor the devil ; not, on the one hand, all deception, nor, on the other hand, a supernatural influence wrought by an evil agent. As, in interested survey, histories of the past and thrilling scenes in other lands have since added their clustering confirma- tions, a lengthening chain of past testimonials, and a widening web of now witnessed facts, has seemed to invest as with the robe and insignia of truth the chance thought of the college lecture-room. In every land and every age, by men most renowned in science and letters, by Franklin and Hale, by G-alen, Pliny and Cicero, by Plato, Socrates and Zoroaster, as well as by Luke and Paul and Moses, mysterious manifestations of the spir- itual medium were beheld, wondered at and commented on ; and, with an accordance of idea greater than their language at first indicates, a cause in the nature of things has been suggested. You ask, Charles, that the phenomena of the " spir- itual rappings " be explained. Will you let me remind you of two things, before we begin our examination ? 12 SCIENCE ONLY CLASSIFIES. No phenomenon in nature, either in the material or spiritual world, ever has been or ever will be explained to us while we are in this life. Science itself even explains nothing ; it only classifies phenomena, draw- ing out the law or order of sequence, according to which events occur, but not accounting for the law. In the material world facts in many a field of inquiry have been grouped and generalized ; but no one fact has really been accounted for. Every plant now growing is every hour taking up from the soil through its roots, and in from the air through its leaves, chemical ingre- dients, with which it is building itself up ; actually creating, every moment, particles of matter into root, stalk, leaf and flower. Everybody sees it ; science classifies the phenomena ; but who ever thinks of explaining the process ? In the fields of spiritual investigation, in mental science, how much less has been accomplished ! While every year some new prin- ciple of material things is discovered, or some new appli- cation of natural law is made to the arts of human life, philosophers in their examination of our spiritual being seem to have noted no more facts, to have fixed no more settled conclusions, to have demonstrated no more positive laws, than were known and recorded by the ancient wise men of Greece and Rome, and even of India and Egypt. Expect not, then, my young friend, that the "spiritual rappings" will be explained to you. There are limits to human knowledge. A very Newton has to stop on the shore even of material inves- tigation, and he must be content to be but a boy picking SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE LIMITED. 13 up a few pebbles, while the whole ocean of truth lies unexplored beyond. And as to researches in the spir- itucd world, that is plunging beneath the surface, into the ocean, where we have no eye to see with. God has hidden all these dark depths from us, now creatures of sense, meaning that the study shall in another life have a freshness of interest ; when his own Son's promise will be realized, " What thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter." Bear in mind, then, if we can but trace in human nature, in other ages and nations, developments similar to these of the spiritual rappings, if we can see enough in them to satisfy ourselves that they are not sw^er-natural, but natural, that they are not communications from disembodied spirits, but mysterious yet universal workings of our own spiritual and nervous organism, we shall have arrived at all which even science can hope to attain. It is the " spiritual rappings " in which you are interested, and which you wish explained. You are aware, however, that this term was applied to the first development of the mysterious agency, whose working is now so extensively observed and wondered at. It has now come to be synonymous with the wider expres- sion, spiritual communications. There are now thought to be three distinct modes of communication with disem- bodied spirits. There is the tapping (or rapping) me- dium ; through which communications are supposed to be given by taps on a table ; two or three successive indicating assent, or the presence of a spirit ; particular messages being received by the inquirer's touching suc- 2 14 A GENERAL LAW TO BE SOUGHT. cessively the letters of the alphabet printed on a card, noting those when touched which are responded to by the tappings, and writing down such letters in order, until words and sentences are thus obtained. There is, again, " the writing medium," the man or woman influenced seeming to lose control of the right arm, when the pen or pencil is taken ; and the hand being driven up and down and over the paper in confused scrawls, or in irregular letters and lines, making out intelligible or unintelligible words and sentences. There is, finally, " the speaking medium," the person influenced being lost in a swoon or trance, and then uttering strange and unaccountable sentiments and expressions. Moreover, it is now asserted as the teaching of these media, that the scenes of the Salem witchcraft, so called, were the attempts of the spirits in another world to make their presence known, and to convey communications to the living. It is also intimated that they may be found to have a connection with other mysterious phenomena of a similar nature, which have occurred in the history of our race. You will perceive, therefore, that an investigation of one branch of this subject requires a notice of all its branches, as now they appear; and, moreover, a judgment formed as to the developments of our day must have reference to those of other days also. It will be a thrilling, if not a pleasing adventure, to travel over the past, tracing back sometimes through the obscure by-paths of ancient history the footprints marked by the feet of men long gone from earth. It will be instructive to seek out some general law, deep- IF A LAW NOT SUPERNATURAL. 15 seated and universal in human nature, which may make these mysterious and now appalling developments to appear the familiar though unexplained occurrences of other lands and ages ; developments which need not be either dreaded or trusted, as the communications of evil or of good spirits, unseen around us ; but which may be admired as God's wondrous gift to us whom he has fear- fully and wondrously made ; a gift to be studied with humility, and to be experimented upon with caution. ttihx InnitL E EXISTENCE OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM, AND ITS EXCESSIVE, DEFICIENT, OK, EQUABLE DEVELOPMENT. " Quae omnia, si a nobis non videantur, non creduntur ; sed tentata cer- tificant. Quorum enim actio ex proprietate est, rationibus unde sit, com- prehendi non potest. Rationibus autem tantum comprehenduntur, quae sensibus subministrantur. Aliquand' ergo quaedam substantiae habent proprietatem ratione incomprehensibilem propter sui subtilitatem, sensibus non submininistratum propter magnam sui altitudinem." — Galen on the Power of Incantation in Healing. [All which things, unless they are seen by us, they are not believed. For the action of these influences is from a property the principles of whose origin we cannot comprehend. In their principles, indeed, only those thing3 are comprehended which affect the senses. Sometimes, therefore, certain substances have a property in its principle incomprehensible, on account of its subtilty, not affecting the senses because it is so deep seated.] " Of the nature of the nervous principle we are as ignorant as of the nature of light and of electricity •, but with its properties we are nearly as well acquainted as with those of light, or other imponderable agents." — Mailer's Physiology. The Intermediate Agent between Matter and Spirit. — Allusions of the Ancients to it. — From Franklin's Day to HerschePs sup- posed to be Electricity. — The Nervous Principle as now under- stood. — Akin to Electricity. — Mode of its Action. — Excessive, Deficient, and Equable Development. My Dear Charles: Let me, at this stage of our inquiry, recall to you some acknowledged principles of physiology and of men- tal science, as to the medium by which our spirits are united to our bodies, and as to the excessive, deficient or equable action of the one upon the other. There is, so say physiologists, a medium by which THE INTERMEDIATE AGENT. 17 soul and body are united and act on each other ; an intermediate agent, neither spirit nor matter, through which the mind controls the various members of the body, and by which the bodily senses convey their impressions to the secret soul. When I will to grasp an object with my hand, some mysterious agent runs from the mind's laboratory in the brain, and coursing along the nerves, like the electric fluid along the telegraph wires, contracts muscle after muscle, just at the instant of time, and up to the precise extent, demanded for the successful movement. How obedient and dutiful a ser- vant that mysterious messenger, thus prompt to do my bidding ! How mighty the power which can cause a cord of muscular fibres so to shrink as to draw up a hundred pounds weight ! I ought to be prepared to see wondrous movements and wondrous powers exhibited, when a peculiar excitement wakes it to action. As to the nature and properties of this mysterious agent even the ancients wrote ; and men in the old and eastern climes have known more of its secret powers than we have learned. As early as the time of the first great Greek physi- cian, Hippocrates, who lived 430 years before Christ, the intermediate agent was virtually recognized under the name (pucrts, from which our word physical is derived. To this all the movements of the body were ascribed ; a sort of intelligence even being attributed to it. 1 Pure 1 See " An Elementary System of Physiology, by John Bos- took, M.D., F.R.S., Ac. Boston, 1825." Vol. i., Introd. pp. 2—4; also chap, it., § 2, p. 201. 2^ 1 8 HIPPOCRATES DESCARTES. spint was distinguished from this under the name yv%ij ; l showing that even the early Greek mind recognized an agent intermediate between spirit and matter ; to which, as we shall see, the mysteries of the "spiritual medium" were referred. 2 Aristotle three hundred and eighty- four years before Christ, and Galen, one hundred and thirty-one years after Christ, followed up the suggestion of their earlier leader. The Romans made a similar distinction between the words anima and animus, when used in contrast. 3 The former was with them an inter- mediate principle between matter and spirit ; and to it, as we shall see, they referred, to a certain extent at least, the phenomena which even now are mysterious. 4 Descartes revived this theory ; and from his day the doctrine of " the animal spirits " was regarded a feature of the philosophy called " Cartesian" As Bostock remarks, "About two centuries ago everything that could not be otherwise explained was referred to the agency of some kind of refined spirit." 5 Yet, before his day, so universal in the east was the belief in an inter- mediate agent through spirit which acted on matter, that it formed the very basis of the famed Jewish system called the " Cabbala ; " the Hebrew name " Sephiroth" being used to express those intermediate principles which 1 See Leverett's Latin Lexicon, under anima. 2 See Letter vin., pp. 87, 92. 3 Leverett's Lexicon, on these words, with his quotations from Pliny, Juvenal, Seneca, Cicero, &c. ; also Bostock's Physiol., vol. I., p. 4. 4 See Letter vi., pp. 62, 66; vn., pp. 77, 83. 5 Bostock's 3 aysiol., vol. i., chap, iv, § 2, p. 201. ELECTRICITY THE AGENT. 19 ran through, the universe, having their masculine and feminine, or active and passive ; by which man's soul is united to his body, by which God operates on matter, and by which man gains a knowledge of God. 1 Since Franklin discovered the laws of electric phe- nomena, and Galvani observed how the magnetic fluid contracts the muscles, physiologists have made the medium by which the mind acts on the body a special study. The results of the investigations made up to about twenty years ago Herschel thus stated : "Among the remarkable effects of electricity dis- closed by the researches of Galvani and Volta, perhaps the most so consisted in its influence on the nervous system of animals. The origin of muscular motion is one of those profound mysteries of nature which we can scarcely venture to hope will ever be fully explained. Physiologists, however, had long entertained a general conception of the conveyance of some subtle fluid, or spirit, from the brain to the muscles of animals, along the nerves ; and the discovery of the rapid transmission of electricity along conductors, with the violent effects produced by shocks, transmitted through the body, on the nervous system, would very naturally lead to the idea that this nervous fluid, if it had any real existence, might be no other than the electrical. But, until the discoveries of Galvani and Volta, this could be only looked upon as a vague conjecture. The character of a vera causa was wanting, to give it any degree of rational 1 See Bibliotheca Sacra, July s 1852, art. yii. 20 THE TORPEDO. plausibility, since no reason could be imagined for the disturbance of the electrical equilibrium in the animal frame, composed as it is entirely of conductors ; or, rather, it seemed contrary to the then known laws of electrical communication to suppose any such. Yet one strange and surprising phenomenon might be adduced indicative of the possibility of such disturbance, namely, the pow- erful shock given by the torpedo, and other fishes of the same kind, which presented so many analogies with those arising from electricity, that they could hardly be referred to a different source, though, besides the shock, neither spark nor any other indication of electrical ten- sion could be detected in them. " The benumbing effect of the torpedo had been ascer- tained to depend on certain singularly constructed organs, composed of membranous columns, filled from end to end with laminae, separated from each other by a fluid ; but of its mode of action no satisfactory account could be given, nor was there anything in its construction, and still less in the nature of its materials, to give the least ground for supposing it an electrical apparatus. But the pile of Volta supplied at once the analogies both of structure and effect, so as to leave little doubt of the electrical nature of the apparatus, or of the power, — a most wonderful one, certainly, — of the animal, to deter- mine, by an effort of its will, that concurrence of condi- tions on which its activity depends. " This remained, as it probably ever will remain, mys- terious and inexplicable ; but, the principle once estab- lished that there exists in the animal economy a power of THE NERVOUS PRINCIPLE. 21 determining the development of electric excitement, capa- ble of being transmitted along the nerves, and it being ascertained, by numerous and decisive experiments, that the transmission of Voltaic electricity along the nerves of even a dead animal is sufficient to produce the most vio- lent muscular action, it became an easy step to refer the origin of muscular motion in the living frame to a simi- lar cause ; and to look to the brain, a wonderfully con- structed organ, for which no mode of action possessing the least plausibility had ever been devised, as the source of the required electrical power." * The views thus expressed by Herschel have been slightly modified since he wrote ; not, however, so as to alter at all their practical bearing on our inquiry. Dr. M tiller, the great German physiologist, distinguishes between animal electricity, which is developed on the surface of the body (as in a cat), and the nervous energy which is generated in the brain ; his experiments having led to a satisfactory conclusion, that the two differ in their nature, though not in the general laws of their action. Of animal electricity, developed on the surface of the human body, he mentions, among others, these facts : that in men, who are healthy, it is generally positive ; that in women, it is negative oftener than it is in men, though no general rule exists ; that it is more easily excited in persons of a sanguine temperament, and less in those of a phlegmatic disposition ; and that it is 1 " A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, by John P. W. Herschel, Esq., A.M., &c. Philadelphia, 1835." Part ii., chap, vi., pp. 255, 6 & 7. 22 THREE CLASHES OF MIND. developed in a greater degree in the evening than dur- ing the day. 1 The substance of his investigation, as to the agent by which the mind acts on the body, is con- densed in these sentences at the close of his lengthy discussion : " The laws of the action of the nervous principle are different from electricity. Of the nature of the nervous principle we are as ignorant as of the nature of light and of electricity ; but with its proper- ties we are nearly as well acquainted as with those of light, and of other imponderable agents." 2 Of the manner in which the nervous principle acts he says : " The primitive fibres of all the voluntary nerves being at their central extremity, all spread out in the brain to receive the influence of the will, we may compare them, as they lie side by side in the organ of the mind, to the keys of a piano, on which our thoughts play or strike, and thus give rise to currents or vibrations of the ner- vous principle in a certain number of primitive nervous fibres, and consequently to motions." 3 By this mysterious union, our minds are thus linked to our bodies. Through this medium the mind acts upon the body, employing, to a greater or less extent, the organs of sense to gain spiritual apprehensions. And according as the development of this agent has been excessive, deficient or equable, in men, so have their views of the sources of human knowledge ever varied. 1 Elements of Physiology, by J. Muller, M.D.; translated from the German, by Wm. Baly, M.D. London, 1838. See Introduction. 2 Miiller's Physiol., B. in., § 1, chap. 3. Ibid, B. in., § 3, chap. 1. THE REFLECTIVE CLASS, OR OVER-NERVOUS. 23 How far the mind is dependent on the body has always been a question among thinking men. On this question mental philosophers have in all ages been ranged under three great classes ; according as they have regarded the bodily senses alone, or the spirits i?itui- tions only, or the union of both these, as the ultimate source of our knowledge. 1 In each of these classes, as professed adherents to these several views, have been ranked in every age and nation the prominent and noblest minds. To one or the other of these classes have really and practically belonged the mass of men in every community and generation, though they never have read a book on mental science, nor even have imagined that there is any law on which their own minds act. To the first class generally belong the reflective men among the educated ; men who love to live within them- selves, communing with their own thoughts, or with one of kindred spirit; shrinking from society, where they meet so much that is harsh and uncongenial ; and hav- ing little to do with the material world, except to admire the beauty of its varied scenes and myriad objects, while they love not to bend their sinews to draw profit from it. To this class belong a numerous band among our merchants, artisans and laborers, whose hands only are 1 For an exhibition of these three classes among the ancients, Hindoos, Greeks, &c, see " Epitome of the History of Philosophy," translated from the French by C. S. Henry, D.D. New York, 1842;" especially pp. 61 and 185. In confirmation of the general statement, see Cousin's History of Modern Philosophy, translated by H. 0. Wight; 2d series, 2d vol., § 12. 24 THE DEFICIENT AND EQUABLE. employed in their necessary pursuits, while their minds are dwelling on principles and laws beyond and above their pursuits. It is truth unappreciated by the senses such love to contemplate; the mysterious properties, the hidden laws which govern nature, the moving causes acting in the world of both matter and mind. In searching for and deciding upon spiritual truth, there- fore, in seeking for knowledge of God and of the spirit- world, such minds naturally turn to and rely upon those same sources of investigation which they most love to employ. They employ and trust their own spiritual intuitions. To the second class are to be referred the dogmatical among the educated, and the merely mechanical among business men ; minds which are interested only in their own particular pursuits; intellects which demand a mathematical demonstration for everything they receive ; men who can hardly believe anything, except what they themselves or some other credible witness has seen, and who, when they think of God and religious things, admit nothing but what their parents have taught, or their church has maintained, or they themselves have scanned on the surface of the word of God. In the third class move the mighty phalanx of men who both think and act, who both observe and reflect, and whose religion is both of the heart and the head. Remark, now, Charles, the conclusions to which we are brought bearing on the subject of our investigation. There is a spiritual medium. There is an intermediate agent by which mind acts on matter, and which is itself LAWS OP ELECTRICITY MYSTERIOUS. 25 neither mind nor matter. This agent, the nervous principle, is in this respect to be ranked with the other attracting and repelling forces of nature, as the capil- lary, gravitating, magnetic, and electrical forces. In many of the modes of its operation, it is similar to the magnetic and electrical principles ; having probably its negative and its positive, an attracting and a repelling power, which may either balance each other, or over- balance and control one the other. The nervous principle is moreover developed together with animal electricity; the two being together abundant in persons of strongly nervous temperament, and the two being developed so as to overcharge the system of the person who is under great excitement of body or mind. Know- ing, then, Charles, the mysterious powers of electricity so long regarded as supernatural, — powers which even now are exciting new amazement when seen in the*electric telegraph, locomotive, &c, — what wonders ought we not to be prepared to see in the working of that more subtle agent, " the nervous principle " ? 3 ttlitx €§1x1 POSSIBLE LAWS OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM, ILLUSTRATED IN "ANIMAL MAGNETISM." " In Gallia Druidae sunt 5 e quibus ipse Diviaticum Aeduum, hospitem tuum laudatoremque cognovi : qui et naturae rationeni, quam physiologiana appellant, notam esse sibi profitebatur ; and partim auguriis, partim con- jectura quae essent futura dicebat." — Cicero de Divinatione. [In Gaul are the Druids ; one of whom, Diviaticus the Aeduan, thy guest and eulogizer, I myself knew : who professed that a principle of nature which the Greeks call physiology was known to himself, and partly by auguries, partly by conjecture, he told things which would come to pass.] " Of the nature of the nervous principle we are as ignorant as of the nature of electricity; but with its properties we are nearly as well acquainted as with those of light, and of other imponderables." — Miiller. Possible Principles an Illustration. — The Nervous Principle pos- sibly has the Laws of Electricity and Magnetism. — Electricity affects the Senses ; so the Nervous Principle. — Impression varies with Constitution. — Three Classes seen in Joan of Arc. — The Natural of one Supernatural to another. — Electricity attracts Objects, and passes over Connected Conductors ; and so may the Nervous Principle. — Report of the Royal Academy on Mesmerism. — "A Special Agent." — This the Nervous Princi- ple. — Statement of Cuvier. — The Clairvoyant the Magnetic Telegraph of the Inquirer. — Agreement of Prof. Gregory and other Mesmerists. My Dear Charles: It would be presumptuous to attempt to theorize about an agent whose nature and whose laws the ablest physiologists have been able but partially to compre- hend. Yet, avoiding that folly, we may with propriety POSSIBLE ANALOGY IN AGENTS. 27 glance at some possible principles which comparison suggests, and which experience and history seem to attest. They will be but unpretending suggestions; hinted as illustrations, not as explanations, which, if un- sound, will harm no one, but which, if only plausible, may give us the calm confidence that the mysterious spiritual manifestations often beheld are not supernat- ural ; they are the natural working of a known though uncomprehended intermediate agent. If the nervous principle belong to the class of agents intermediate between spirit and matter, to which elec- tricity and magnetism are referred, why should not the one have properties similar to the other, and produce like effects ? Certainly it is a probable suggestion ; and a long array of facts, extending through the world's his- tory, may tend to confirm the supposition to be at least plausible. The possibility of such a similarity is enough for our purpose. Electricity and magnetism, when developed so as to surcharge a substance, become appreciable to the bodily senses. The sense of sight, of hearing, of taste, of smell, and of feeling, and the muscular sense, are all affected by their action. Why should it not be thus with the nervous principle when over-excited ? The eye of the person thus affected may see real visions, and his ear hear real sounds ; he may have the actual taste of sweet or bitter, and the actual smell of pleasant or un- pleasant odors; and his touch may suffer a positive pang, and his muscles feel a positive pressure. The impression produced on the senses by the action of the 28 SENSATION FROM NERVOUS AGENT. nervous principle may be precisely that which the cor- responding material substance would produce. In con- firmation of these hints, the following statement of Muller may suffice : — " The sensation produced by the electric shock is not peculiar to that agent ; it may be produced by any strong excitement of the nerves, whether mechanical or mental. Kastner relates that in writing he frequently sustains slight shocks in the fin- gers. Some years ago, when I was laboring under a state of nervous excitability, I had this sensation very frequently on using the fingers much." l The mental impression which this over-action of the nervous principle produces on any individual will vary according to his intellectual constitution. If he be of acute mental organism, belonging to the first of the three classes already mentioned, he will regard them as supernatural, — actual spiritual manifestations. If he be of the grosser, more physical make, his blunt nervous susceptibilities may not be affected even in the slightest degree like those of his fellow of finer mould ; and he will regard the impression of the other as a mere delu- sion. The mind of more even balance may appreciate both the earthly and the spiritual element ; and will refer them to a real but natural influence, produced by the intermediate agency of the nervous principle. As a clear and striking example of this truth, the interesting instance seen in Joan of Arc may be cited. 2 She lived 1 Miiller's Physiol., translated by Baly, B. in., sect, i., chap. m. 5 p. 640. 2 See Histoire de France, par M. Miehelet, Paris, 1841; Tome V. chap. in. MENTAL IMPRESSION VARIES. 29 in the midst of war and of political agitation ; ■ and, as the whole history of mankind shows, any season of excitement, especially such excitement as war produces, creates a general over-development of the nervous prin- ciple ; hence an excess of spiritual manifestations im- pressing the senses ; and hence a more than ordinary belief in supernatural influences. Joan herself, a person of most estimable character, a heroine, whose name is on every child's lip in France, as that of Washington is in America, the first in patriotism and piety, and the first in the hearts of her countrymen, 2 — Joan herself, and a class of minds like hers, believed that the visions she saw and the voices she heard came from celestial beings. 3 The dull, unimpressible brain of her hard- working father, and that of others like him, could see nothing and feel nothing of those refined influences; and he verily thought it all delusion. 4 Minds that could appreciate most thoroughly both these elements regarded it as a natural though real nower, acting upon and through the inspired heroine ; a power to be admired in certain circumstances, because it accomplishes what 1 Michelet's Histoire de France, Tom. V.,pp. 46, 47. The phil- osophic Shakspeare pictures only the strongly excited as seeing and hearing ghosts ; the nervous excitement gradually being aroused in mind after mind, till many see the same. — See Macbeth and Hamlet. 2 In the Protestant Sabbath-schools of France, when the chil- dren are called on to give an example of patriotism, the name of " Jeanne d'Arc " will break from every lip. 3 Michelet's Histoire de France, Tom. V., pp. 50 — 55. 4 Do., p. 58. 3* tf(J NERVOUS AGENT PASSING OVER. well-balanced reason cannot ; a power to be deprecated always, since the person who possesses it is powerless in all points but one, and if such an affection were preva- lent in a body of men, as in the crusading host follow- ing Peter the Hermit, only one of the elements of suc- cess would be theirs. Electricity and the magnetic influence, also, when so developed as to surcharge a substance, pass off that sub- stance to another placed near them, attracting or repel- ling external objects, and imparting to them their mag- netic or electrical condition. The magnet attracts iron only, and imparts to it its own power, thus controlling its magnetic influence. An electrified, body attracts other substances than iron, as pieces of paper, of wood, &c, and imparts to them its power; thus controlling their electrical influence. Why, then, may not the ner- vous principle pass over, from a person over-charged with it, to other bodies and to other persons, so as to attract or repel inanimate objects, and to control the nervous energies of other iliimals and persons? Surely, Charles, the suggestion is not a merely fanciful one, since the animal electricity, developed with the nervous prin- ciple, might be expected to exhibit these phenom- ena. As now we seek to apply these two suggestions of a possible analogy between the action of the nervous prin- ciple and that of electricity and magnetism, bear always in mind, Charles, it is not at all a scientific explanation which is attempted. If, however, only a possible illus- tration he adduced, it will be enough to show that all MESMER AND FRENCH ACADEMY. 31 the facts of " spiritual manifestations " may some day be traced to a natural law of the action of the nervous principle. When Mesraer, having come in 1778 from Vienna to Paris, had for five or six years kept all Paris in an ex- citement by his experiments, the king at length appointed a commission consisting of five members of the Royal Academy l (one of whom, Franklin, was at the same day investigating the laws of electricity), and four mem- bers of the faculty of Medicine, to visit, witness, and report upon his exhibitions. The experiments of Mes- mer in their presence seem not to have been as success- ful as ordinary ; for there is a natural disturbing influ- ence which every new discoverer and inventor experi- ences, when first meeting so trying an ordeal. Dr. Franklin thought lightly of Mesmer's experiments before he viewed them ; and of their practical value his opinion remained unchanged afterwards. 2 Yet the commission, in their elaborate report, allow that in what they witnessed there was something that seemed the working of a mysterious agent. They reduced Mesmer's exhibitions to four classes : — First, those which could be explained on physiological grounds; second, those which were contrary to the laws of magnetism ; third, those where the imagination of the mesmerized person was the source of the phenomena; and fourth, facts which led them to admit a special agent (" un agent 1 The five members were Le Roy, Bailly, De Bery, Lavoisier, and our countryman, Benjamin Franklin. 2 See Works of Franklin, Sparks' edition, vol. x., pp. 75, 76. 32 NERVOUS AGENT THE SOURCE. particulier "). 1 One of the Medical Commission became a convert to Mesmer's views. The intelligent observers of that day testified to cases of a magnetic control and of clairvoyance, similar to those witnessed in our times. 2 About the year 1825, the medical faculty at Paris began to institute new inquiries, continuing their inves- tigations till 1831. As an indication of the present interest of men of science, Reichenbach, in Germany, and Gregory, professor of chemistry in Edinburgh, have written extended and labored volumes. Since, then, it is universally admitted, and has been from Franklin's day, that a special mysterious agent, like to electricity, yet different from it, is seen acting in the familiarly known experiments in " animal magnet- ism," why should it seem visionary in this day, when so much is known of the action both of animal electric- ity and of the nervous principle, to refer these phenom- ena to the sufficient though unexplained natural cause already considered ? 3 Miss Harriet Martineau (whose reading on this subject certainly will not be called in question) cites Cuvier as saying of animal magnetism : " However the effects produced upon persons yet without cognizance before the operation commences, those which 1 See the French " Encyclopedie Methodique ;" dept. "Phy- sique," art. "Magnetisme." 2 See London Family Library, vol. lxiii., p. 362, et seq. 3 This is virtually the view of scientific writers on this subject. See "Letters to a Candid Inquirer, on Animal Magnetism, by Wm. Gregory, M.D., F.R.S.E., Prof, of Chemistry in the Univer- sity of Edinburgh, 1851." Also the same author's translation of Reichenbach. cuvier's testimony. 33 take place after the same operation has caused them to lose cognizance, and those which animals display, leave little doubt that the proximity of two animate bodies in certain positions, and with a certain movement, has a real effect independent of all participation of the imagina- tion of one of the two. It appears equally clearly, also, that the effects are due to some communication which is established between their nervous systems." l With such authority as this to sanction it, it is not presumptuous to hint the following illustration of a pos- sible law. Since one class of persons (healthy males) are known to be positively electric, and another class (delicate females) are known to be negatively electric, and since in their nervous energies there may be the same difference, when by the naturally exciting manipu- lations each is charged like a Leyden jar, why should there not be between the two a mutual attraction, in which the stronger will control the movements of the weaker ? Moreover, since my nervous fluid, like an electric 1 Miss Martineau's Letters on Mesmerism, No. v., p. 19. ("Cependant les effets obtenus stir des personnes deja sa.ns connais- sance avant que Poperation comment at, ceux que ont lieu sur les autres personnes apres que Poperation rnerne leur a fait perdre connaissance, et ceux que presentent les anitnaux, ne permettent gueres de douter que la proximite de deux corps animes dans cer- taines positions et avec certain mouvements n'ait un effet real, independant de toute participation de Pimagination d'une des deux. II parait assez clairement aussi que les effets sont dus a une communication quelconque qui s'etablit entre leurs systemeg nerveux." (Anatomie Comparee, Tome n., p. 117. Dm system nerveux consider e en action.") 34 inquirer's thought telegraphed. current, courses along the nerves leading from the brain, enters and controls the muscles of my mouth, and causes my lips to utter my thought, why may it not be, when I am put in communication with a mesmerized person, whose personal control over her nervous energy has been overpowered by another, and that nervous energy is left to be subject to the control of any one put in nervous connection with her, — why may it not occur that my nervous energy shall pass over, as electricity on con- nected telegraphic wires, to her frame, so as to control her lips ; and thus, when I am expecting the reply from her mouth, and unconsciously directing my nervous energy to her lips, through them I may speak out my own thought by an operation as purely mechanical as when I send my thought over the telegraph wires to be spoken out from a distant machine ? I think, Charles, that no instance of clairvoyance can be found in which the thought uttered by the clairvoyant may not be traced directly over to the mind of the person put in communication with her. Thoughts of which I am con- scious, facts that I once knew but did not recall at the moment (though in the mind, and capable of being recalled under mental excitement), imaginations I have conceived, and perhaps mental impressions of mine of which I am unconscious, — all these do thus speak out of the lips of the clairvoyant ; but nothing else, I think we have good authority for saying. In the long list of cases cited by Prof. Gregory of Edinburgh, (perhaps the ablest man of science who has written in the English language on this subject) there is scarcely one MESMERISTS ALLOW THIS. 35 that cannot readily be explained on this principle. 1 In the instance of the Bolton clairvoyant, 2 who described in England what a certain person in California was 'en- gaged in on a certain day, the distance and the lapse of time before the verification is too great to give any assurance. The reading of the clairvoyant with ban- daged eyes may seem an exception ; but it is not, if any person in the company is overlooking what is read, or is even familiar with it. Let a well-attested case be pre- sented, one which could any day be furnished, if such an one could be given, and it should be received. Yet so generally admitted is the fact that in clairvoyance nothing but the thought of persons in communication with the clairvoyant is reported, that Miss Martineau herself has remarked, " It is almost an established opinion, among some of the wisest students of Mesmerism, that the mind of the somnambule mirrors that of the Mesmerist." 3 1 See Gregory's Letters, Nos. vi., vn., vm., especially. 2 See Gregory, Letter xvi., p. 408. 3 See Miss Martineau's Letters, No. in., p. 11 ttiitx /utrrtjj- POSSIBLE LAWS OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM ILLUSTRATED IN THE " SPIRITUAL RAPPINGS." u Haec autem ego non tentavi ; sed nee etiam neganda sunt mihi ; quia si non viderimus magnetem sibi ferrum trahentem, Don certificartmr, nee crederemus. Similiter quod * * piscis quidam marinus se capientis sensum aufert." — Galen on the Employ of Incantation in Healing. [These things, indeed, I have not tested ; but neither, indeed, are they denied by me ; because, if we have not seen the magnet attracting iron, we are not certain of it, neither should we believe it. In like manner that a certain fish should take away the feeling of him seizing it.] Possible Truth guides Practice. — As in a Thunder-storm. — Tables moved. — The Nervous Energy a Sufficient Power. — "Rappings" not new. — Media, Persons of Nervous Organism. — Communications accord with Temperament. — Arm Con- vulsed, as the Orator's. — Seraphic Eloquence, as the Excited Writer. — Communications of Things Forgotten. — All seen in Excited Speaker. My Dear Charles : Shall we hazard an application of these principles to the phenomena called the " spiritual rappings " ? Bear in mind, Charles, the suggestion is not hinted at all as a scientific explanation ; to such presumption it would be folly to pretend. But, in the known and acknowl- edged mysterious phenomena produced in us by the nervous influence, may we not see enough to assure us it is that influence, not the communications of spirits POSSIBLE LAW RULES PRACTICE. 37 disembodied, which we see working. Less than a cen- tury ago, Franklin was first making his noble experi- ments in electricity, which proved satisfactorily to all thinking men that the bolts of heaven were no super- natural uncontrollable power, but a natural agent, which could be guided with an iron rod away from our ex- posed heads. Certainly it would have been presump- tion in a mere novice in that study to have attempted to theorize on any phenomena witnessed. Yet, bear wit- ness, it would not have been presumption, it would have been sound discretion and commendable boldness, if even a common observer had stepped forward in the cir- cle of his friends, awed by the terrible peals of a thunder- storm, and had said, " Friends, be we trustful and fear- less ; we may not explain the terrific agent rending the heavens and earth around us, but we may be sure it is a natural agent, which we should not dread." So, too, may not the spiritual phenomena, so mysterious and even awing, seen around us now, be surely referred to the action of our own nervous organism, though no scientific explanation be attempted ? Tables are moved by a mysterious power, when a cir- cle of interested spectators, with a medium, are seated around it. But remark this, Charles. Stretch forth your arm, and grasp a heavy weight and raise it. How mighty that power put forth ! Trace it back to its origin, and how wonderful ! You willed to perform that act. Instantly in your brain, as in a Leyden jar, a nervous influence was generated, which, coursing along your nerves as on metallic wires, entered your muscles ' 4 38 MOVINGS AND RAPPINGS. and there the mere shrinking of the fibres of a little muscle, the shortening of a small cord, drew up the large weight in your hand. How immeasurable, how unac- countable, such a power ! And now think of that cirele around the table. When they first sit calmly down, no movement is seen ; none can be produced. But when for a few moments in intense mental action, a nervous energy has been generated in the frame of each, until, like a circle of Leyden jars, a whole battery is sur- charged, and there are negatives as well as positives in the circle, who can wonder if currents of nervous influ- ence should leap over from one to the other, and if tables, chairs, or anything else intervening, should be moved ? We should not wonder at any phenomena which might show themselves under such circumstances. We should only fear that, like inexperienced experi- menters in electricity, we should thoughtlessly inflict upon ourselves an incurable injury. Our kind Creator has given me this mighty and wondrous nervous agency to be carefully used as the steady mover of my body's machinery. If I overcharge myself with it, if I strain the vital organs which generate it, I may weaken my own energies for life. Mysterious Tappings give response to our thoughts, uttered or merely conceived, as we sit around the table. This, however, is not a new exhibition of what we must regard an over-excitement of our own nervous energy. These raps are in nature not unlike those electric crack- ings heard amid the whizzing bands of factory wheels, and the electric snapping heard in cold weather from the MEDIA AND RESPONSES. 39 skin of animals when stroked, and from our person in drawing off a woollen under-garment. Physiologists and ordinary historians have recorded numberless instances of these electric-like shocks and reports experienced by persons of an excitable nervous temperament. 1 Moreover, Charles, reflect a moment on the character of the ?nedia, and on the nature of the communica- tions given, and see if you can believe that spirits in another world are the communicators ; see if all does not confirm the fact that these responsive rappings are the working of our own nervous organism, echoing to our own thoughts. We should not disparage at all, we wish not to do so, the character of those who are generally the media. We allude not to the fact that they are generally young, and inexperienced, and females. But observe simply this fact : they are just that class whom we ordinarily speak of as persons of a high nervous temperament, of an acute mental organism. It is the very class of persons in whom the nervous principle is active, from whom we seem to see the nerv- ous energy thus flowing off. The communications received, also, seem to correspond to the character of the inquirer ; indeed, to be the echo of his or her thought. Is the company lively, cheerful, if not humor- ous ? Little Willie, familiarly called, responds, and he asks for his favorite song or waltz ; and " the Colo- nel," laughingly asked for, echoes his presence by drum- ming a loud march on the shaking table. Is the com- 1 See Miiller, as quoted Let. Third, p. 28 ; Let. Fifth, pp. 49 —51. 40 ARM CONVULSED. pany grave, spiritually if not religiously inclined ? The responses are in keeping ; and the inquirer's own favor- ite, be he Swedenborg, Channing or Wesley, is endorsed and canonized. Now, not at all because these differing religious views are responded to, can we object to these communications. But, where the sentiment expressed is ever, in its moral tone, in keeping with that of the inquirer, seems it not to indicate that the response is the echoing of our own mental organism, the telegraphic rapping out of our own electric-borne thought ? The arm, again, is convulsed and unmanned ; and, with spasmodic, rapid and uncontrollable force, it writes disjointed or connected sentences. The mere spasmodic action of the muscles here seen is not new, or at all pecu- liar. Who has not felt it when under intense excite- ment, either of fear or anxiety, or in deep thought? when, instinctively we rise and walk the room, that the overcharged nervous influence may have work to expend itself upon, a channel over which to pass off. The true orator is always more or less under its power ; the movement of his quivering fingers and arm, and of his whole agitated frame, and even the grand and almost seraphic roll of his periods and movement of his thought, showing that he is, beyond himself, moved by a power self-excited, indeed, but now, in a measure, beyond his control. Schiller and Shelley, and such minds as theirs, always have written under such an influence. Witness what, as we have already noted, the physiologist Mul- ler says of himself. Yet, after all, who knows not that only his own train of thought, though at the time he THE TEST EASY. 41 be unconscious of it, and now, when the excitement has passed off and he sees it in manuscript, he can hardly believe it his, yet only his own thought has come from his pen or his tongue. The most unlettered man or woman, excited by stimulated appetite or passion, by intoxicating drink, or by fear, anger or love, talks like Gabriel ; and religion is the chief theme. Charles, if you are a writing medium, try it, and see if it be not so in these new phenomena. Bring a man to your table, a part of whose name you know ; and when that part is written, ask the spirit whom you may imagine guides your pen to write the other part. Most assuredly you will find that only your own knowledge will be responded to. Prepared, then, to watch more closely your own mind's working, go on and observe the other responses you receive. You may not at first be able to trace all you write to your own positive knowl- edge, your once known and forgotten, but in that mo- ment of intense mental action remembered thought and realized imaginings. But, if you do not, be assured you have, in the orator and the writer, carried by their own mental action, — you have in them those who can sym- pathize. No man, under such circumstances, utters or writes anything but his own thought; but, how that expressed or written thought came into his mind, and became his, no great speaker or writer can explain. It is to him as real a wonder as can be the pencillings of the spiritual medium. Once, again, the reporting medium mentions facts and thoughts, or imaginings, which are not in her own 4# 42 EXCEPTIONS ONLY APPARENT. mind, but in that of the inquirer. She receives by the rappings, or she writes with the pen, or she utters with the voice, not her knowledge, or surmise, or impression, but that which belongs to the mind of him put in com- munication with her. He asks the name of a friend of his own, the date of his birth, &c. ; and facts known only to himself, and perhaps not recalled even by his own mind at the moment, are accurately given. He asks about the present state of a sick friend's health^ or the locality of a lost or stolen piece of property ; and his surmise — sometimes, of course, right, but oftener wrong — is expressed by the medium. If any other com- munication than these, Charles, has ever come from a clairvoyant or a spiritual medium, candidly should we acknowledge it ; and, as lovers of truth, we should not only cheerfully, but with pleasure, receive the testimony of it. Cases, indeed, are reported, in which inquirers have been informed, by the medium, of circumstances in the lives of relatives of theirs, and of other facts, of which they suppose themselves never before to have had knowl- edge. But three things are here to be borne in mind. Even if our supposition as to the source of these responses be correct, it is not to be expected that all the facts can at once be classified. Every right theory in science, after being first started, though sound in the main, must go stumbling on for years, now modified here, and now revised there, as new facts, slightly different, come to be ranged under it. Yet again ; who can say certainly that any fact which REPORT OUR OWN THOUGHT. 43 is thus reported from the medium never was known to him ? We remember the famous case of the servant- girl in England, who, during a sickness which affected the brain, repeated accurately passages of the Bible in Hebrew ; and when the secret of this apparent miracle was traced out, it was found that in early life she had lived in the family of a clergyman, whom she had often heard repeating Hebrew ; and, although never a word had been comprehended, or even remembered, so as to be uttered by her, it was all lodged in her mind, and it was her own knowledge, which, under nervous excite- ment, came echoing from her lips, all unconsciously to herself. Who knows what facts, casually mentioned in his hearing in childhood, entirely uncomprehended and not noted in memory, are yet fast adhering in his men- tal organism ; and who can say, positively, that the mysterious communications of the spiritual " medium ' are not those deep-hidden impressions brought out under a strong nervous excitement ? Such responses cannot be test cases ; for in them there is, at least, uncertainty. But, what is more to the point, if anything else than what is already in the mind of the inquirer can come from the medium's tongue or pen, why may not a test case be given ? Easily, indeed, could such an undisputed case be tried ; a case where no doubt could enter. For instance, let a clairvoyant be called on to describe any scene pass- ing at the present moment in a distant place, knowledge of which could not be in the mind of either party ; and let some person at the same time, in that distant place, keep an accurate record, to be compared afterwards with the 44 MYSTERIOUS TELEGRAPH. report of the medium. But never has it been my fortune to hear of such an instance. The communications of the clairvoyant and of the spiritual medium, as to facts that can be tested, have been only the knowledge, remem- bered or forgotten, and the surmise, right or wrong, of the person consulting. That, by a united current of two persons' nervous influ- ence, the thought of one should pass over, and be rapped, written or spoken, out by another, is mysterious; but it is no more mysterious than that, by a connection of elec- tric conductors, and by an excitement of the electric prin- ciple, I can control the electric influence of a series of electric conductors, reaching from New Orleans to Bos- ton, and have my thought rapped or written out a thou- sand miles from the point where I exert the energy. It is not supernatural ; and more, it is neither unnatural nor unaccountable. Moreover, that the unremembered thought of the inquirer should be thus expressed, has its counterpart in the experience of every excited speaker and writer. Finally, that these communications should be almost entirely of a religious character is natural ; for we know that in all mental excitements the religious sensibilities are most exercised. tiitit /iftjr. LAWS OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM ; ILLUSTRATED IN " WITCHCRAFT." " He denied absolutely that there was, or could be, such a thing as witch- craft, in the current sense." — Burroughs, quoted by Bancroft. " Witchcraft seems to be the skill of applying the plastic spirit of the world unto some unlawful purposes.'' — Cotton Mather. " The Salem justices are so well instructed in the Cartesian Philosophy, that they undertake to give a demonstration how this touch does cure the afflicted persons." * * * "These afflicted persons do say, and often have declared, that they can see spectres when their eyes are shut, as well as when they are opened. This one thing I evermore accounted as very observable, and that which might serve as a good key to unlock the nature of these mysterious troubles, if duly improved by us." — Brattle. The Inquiry may be practical soon. — Puritans Men of Strong Sense. — Their Precedents. — History of Witchcraft. — Sir Matthew Hale. — Three Opinions. — The Pacts. — Convulsions. — Other Bodily Affections. — Metals attracted. — Objects moved. — Rappings. — Wonderful Eloquence. — Mysterious Knowledge, or Clairvoyance. — Developments the same as in our Day. — Ex- citements and Impressions of the Age. — Causes, as in Royal Academy's Report. — Mather and Brattle agreeing in Princi- ple. — The Nervous Principle harmonizes all. My Dear Charles: Our inquiries thus far may seem to have related to matters of mere curiosity; a decision in reference to which, either way, will be of no practical value. May it prove so. There are scenes of by-gone days, however, that speak their warning. When noble young Brattle, 46 puritans' strong sense. distinguished by university honors in Old England, a youth of ingenuous spirit, and sympathizing heart, and of strong native sense, sat writing in the very midst of the terrible Salem excitement and executions, and penned the sentence read above, happy would he have been if " the key " had already been found to " unlock the nature of these mysterious troubles." They were men of strong sense who lived in those times. As Palfrey has remarked, " To hold an opinion entertained by Sir Edward Coke and Sir Matthew Hale, while enjoying no better opportunities for correcting it, is not to incur the reproach of any extraordinary dulness of intellect." 1 Mather, in illustration, records that " the Justices and Judges " " consulted the Precedents of former times, and Precepts laid down by learned writers about witchcraft ; as Keeble on the Common Law, chap. Conjuration (an Author approved by the Twelve Judges of our Nation) ; also, Sir Matthew Hale's Trials of Witches, printed An. 1682 ; Glanvil's Collec- tion of Sundry Trials in England and Ireland, in the years 1658, 61, 64 & 81 ; Bernard's Guide to Jurymen ; Baxter's & R. B., their Histories about Witches, and their Discoveries ; C. Mather's Memorable Providences relating to Witchcrafts, printed 1685." 2 Surely the opinions of such men must have been based on some- thing worthy of investigation ; while the terrible results 1 Mass. Hist. Collections, vol. xxix. ; Semi-centennial Discourse, by John G. Palfrey, delivered Oct. 31, 1844. 2 Mather's Magnalia, Book vi., Sadduc. debel., § 5; London Edit., 1702, p. 80. THREE OPINIONS. 47 flowing from the application of their opinions makes such an investigation a demand of humanity. A fearful and long history has " Witchcraft " had. Noticed in yet earlier times, the first mention of penal statutes in reference to it is that of Pope Innocent VIII., in 1484. Terrible was the havoc afterwards made. At Geneva, during three months of the year 1515, over five hundred persons were burned, charged with being witches. In the diocese of Oomo, in Italy, one thousand persons were, during one year, put to death on this charge. In England, especially under the reigns of Elizabeth and James, long and painful is the story of its victims. The able and excellent Sir Matthew Hale himself, after a protracted and candid examination, carried away by the spirit of the age, gave the authority of the highest tri- bunal, and of the most exalted powers on the seat of that tribunal, to these condemnations. 1 Surely there must have been facts unmistakable and indisputable which swayed such a mind, and so large a class of minds. The three classes of opinions already alluded to as universally prevalent among men of all ages and nations, in reference to mysteries of the Spiritual Medium, 2 are seen illustrated in New England during the reign of the " Witchcraft " excitement. Rev. George Burroughs, a burly, muscular, portly Englishman, a man all physical, when arrested and tried for witchcraft, boldly and abso- 1 " American Criminal Trials," by Peleg "W. Chandler. Boston, 1841, vol. i., pp. 67—69. 2 See Letter Second, p. 23. 48 MATHER'S FACTS. lutely denied that there could be any such thing. 1 The slender and delicate Mather, a close student and fall of learning, nervous and thoughtful, reflective and im- pulsive, the man all spiritual, deemed the mysterious manifestations which his senses perceived (though his imagination gave them coloring) to be supernatural. Calef, 2 the merchant, a man of strong practical sense, and Brattle, 3 a cultured scholar and finished lawyer, a man of even balance, acknowledged the facts, referring some to known causes, and leaving others for future investigation to explain or classify. Observe we, then, the attested facts, as given by eye- witnesses. In collecting these, let us do the justice, even to such a man as Mather, as to allow his truth and sin- cerity in his own parenthetical declaration : — " Reader, I write what hath fallen within my own personal obser- vation." 4 Visionary as he might be in theorizing upon his observations, as a chronicler of observed facts proba- bly no one will call in question his authority, especially where his statements are in keeping with those of other observers. Perhaps, after a collation and comparison of them, we may be surprised at the uniform history of the mysterious manifestations of the spiritual medium. 1 Bancroft's Hist, of U. States, vol. m., p. 92. 2 « More Wonders of the Invisible World," by Robert Calef, merchant of Boston, in New England. Printed at London, 1700, and at Salem, 1796. 3 Letter of Thomas Brattle, F.R.S., written at Boston, Oct. 8, 1692. Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. v. 4 Mather's Magnalia, Book vi., p. 77. BODILY CONVULSIONS. 49 Violent convulsions of the bodies of those afflicted were the first and chief witnessed facts. Every muscle would be seen twitching; sharp pangs would dart through the limbs, as if the very bones were agonized : and the person affected would roll upon the ground, start up and leap with unnatural vehemence, and would jump and oscillate and bound upward and forward, as if furiously riding. 1 The evidence derived from these con- vulsions was especially relied upon in trials for witch- craft. The afflicted being perfectly free from convul- sions, as soon as the person accused with bewitching them was brought into the court-room severe spasms would come on. The professed witch was often identi- fied in this manner. The afflicted person was blind- folded, and several persons were caused to touch her in succession. At the touch of the accused, the convul- sions would instantly cease. Sometimes this failed, the convulsions subsiding at the touch of another than the accused; a case which gave Sir Matthew Hale a check in his confidence, although it did not alter his eventual decision. 2 Other bodily affections were witnessed. Surprising, apparently superhuman muscular strength was exhibited by persons affected. A strong man could lift a bed- stead, bed and man lying on it. 3 On this ground, the gigantic Burroughs, though cool and unaffected, was 1 See Brattle's Letter, and Mather often : especially Magnalia, B. vi., p. 74. 2 American Criminal Trials, vol. I., p. 70. 3 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., p. 72. 5 50 SUBSTANCES MOVED. condemned, though his natural power of muscle suffi- ciently spoke in its own defence. 1 Pricking sensations were often experienced in the flesh, the marks of which, as of pinches with the nails, were seen. 2 Sometimes a rigidity came over the frame, every joint becoming so stiff that it was impossible to bend it. 3 An attraction of other substances to the flesh of the affected, especially of metallic articles, such as pins, iron rods, &c, was noted by many witnesses ; and these attractions were accompanied with pricking sensations, as if the pins pierced the flesh ; 4 although, on examination it was found no wound had been inflicted. Violent motions in objects around, as if attracted and impelled by some mysterious force, were witnessed. A staff, an iron hook, shoes, keys, and even a chest, were seen to move, as if tossed by an invisible hand. A bed on which a sufferer lay shook most violently, even when several persons were seated on it. 5 Stones were hurled against houses and persons ; articles of iron, pewter and brass, were tossed about, a candlestick being thrown down, a spit flying up chimney, and a pressing-iron, a stirrup, 1 Bancroft, vol. in., p. 91. 2 Mather and Calef often ; also, Narrative of Rev. Mr. Turrell, of Medford, Mass., in Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. xx., p. 9. 3 Mather's Mag., p. 72. 4 Mather's Mag., B. vr., pp. 68, 70, 72 & 79. Cases of this kind are common. One occurred about three years since at Washington, D. C, and was reported upon by Prof. Page, of the Patent Office, in the National Intelligencer. 5 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., pp. 68, 69, 70. RAPPINGS AND CLAIRVOYANCE. 51 and even a small anchor, being moved ; of which facts many persons were eye-witnesses. 1 Mysterious rappings were also heard. Audible scratchings on the bedstead of a person affected were made. A drumming on the boards was heard ; when a voice seemed to say, " We knock no more ! we knock no more ! " A frying-pan rang so loud that the people at a hundred yards distance heard it. Sounds as of steps on the chamber-floor were heard. Divers noises as of the clattering of chairs and stools were heard in an adjoining room. 2 Very varied are these instances. Wonderful powers of thought and grace of expression were exhibited by the most ignorant and uneducated, and by persons of ordinary, and even of small mental capacity. Of one person it is recorded, " He had a speech incessant and voluble, and (as was judged) in various languages." Of a little girl it is mentioned, " She argued concerning death, with paraphrases on the thirty-first Psalm, in strains that quite amazed us." 3 Cases of mysterious knowledge, like those now called clairvoyance, are reported, even by the coolest witnesses. Brattle mentions that " several persons were accused by the afflicted whom the afflicted never had known." 4 Little girls thus affected (as we learn in the early Salem troubles, of which Brattle is here speaking) described 1 " The Stone-throwing Devil," by Richard Chamberline. (See copyCambr. Coil. Library.) London, 1698. 2 Mather's Magnalia, B. yi., pp. 69, 70. 3 Do., B. vi., pp. 70, 73. 4 Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. v., p. 73. 52 GREEK AND HEBREW READ persons they had never seen as their tormentors, and by these descriptions their parents or friends sought out the accused even in remote places. 1 In mentioning this fact, Brattle says that some persons thought that God, and others that good angels, communicated with the affected. 2 Brattle states no personal opinion, although he accredits the fact. 2 Brattle also records, " These afflicted per- sons do say, and often have declared,, that they can see spectres when their eyes are shut as well as when they are open. This one thing I evermore accounted as very observable, and that which might serve as a good key to unlock the nature of these mysterious troubles, if duly improved by us." 3 Mather also states a fact, and it would seem impossible that he could have been deceived, on which he relied much, and which has oft been referred to as most mysterious. Of one of the little daughters of John Goodwin, of Boston, he says, "Perceiving that her troublers understood Latin, some trials were there- upon made whether they understood Greek and Hebrew, which, it seems, they also did ; but the Indian languages they did not seem so well to understand." 4 Of Ann Cole, Mather says, " Her tongue was improved by the Daemon, to express things unknown to herself;" and of Elizabeth Knap he writes, "Though she was in one of her fits, and had her eyes wholly shut, yet when 1 Mather's Magnalia, often. 2 Mass. Hist. Collect., vol v., p. 73. 3 Ibid, pp. 73, 74. 4 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., p. 75; Bancroft's IL States Hist., vol. in., p. 76. EXCITING CAUSES. 53 this innocent woman (the accused) was coming, she discovered herself wonderfully sensible of it, and was in grievous agonies at her approaches." l No one can compare the series of facts thus recorded without being struck with their almost entire similarity to those of the developments witnessed in our day. Even in the lesser details this entire analogy may be seen ; as in the rigidity or stiffness of the affected per- son's frame, 2 the reported case of one person drawn with force up to the ceiling, 3 the bringing of the sick to consult these clairvoyant advisers ; 4 and the fact that the person in a swoon remembered nothing of the com- munications given when in it, her own mind not being the actor. 5 Having glanced thus at the facts of witchcraft, notice we the sources to which different classes of minds referred them; and draw we then our own natural inferences. There was something peculiar in the age and circum- stances of the early New England colonists, to create a more than usual general nervous excitement. They lived in a wilderness ; and the terrors of their dreary 1 Ibid, B. vi., p. 67. This same fact, that by a nervous shock an excited person actually perceives the approach of another, Shak- speare alludes to, Macbeth, Act iv., Scene i. ; the witch saying, " By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comeS." 2 Mather's Magnalia, p. 72. 3 Calef, Letter I., § 8. 4 Brattle's Letter, Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. v., p. 71. 5 Hale, quoted by Bancroft, Hist, of U. S., vol. m., p. 91. 5* 54 THUNDER SUPERNATURAL. abode were heightened, to those delicately brought up in Old England, by the popular religious belief, that " evil spirits " had been sent, even by Christ himself, to take up their abode in " desert places." l They dwelt among savage and heathen tribes, whose powahs, like their East India fellows, 2 recovered persons afflicted with cer- tain diseases by their incantations; and, as Mather confi- dently asserts of one, he " could precisely inform such who desire his assistance from whence goods taken from them were stolen, and whither carried." Seeing in- stances of this kind, which, as Mather says, those " who have conversed much among them have had no reason to question," and referring them to "diabolical agen cy," 3 there was, as in the days of Joan of Arc, a natu- ral reason not only for a strong belief in the supernat- ural, but there was also a natural cause exciting such an undue manifestation of the nervous energy as would produce the facts leading to that belief. Yet, again, living in a forest region, where storms, with a before unknown degree of electrical terror, burst in thunder and lightning over them, it is worthy of notice, that the same class of minds which referred the mysteries of the nervous principle seen in witchcraft to supernatural causes, — that same class regarded this associate inter- mediate age7icy as supernatural, and under the control of evil spirits ; not only Cotton Mather, but other minds in that day, being satisfied that Damons con- 1 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., chap, vn., p. 66. 2 Ibid, B. vi., chap v., § 1, p. 52 ; also, Postscript, p. 59. 3 Ibid, p. 52. PHYSIOLOGICAL SOURCE. 55 trolled the lightnings, because so many meeting-houses were struck by the electric fluid. 1 A candid examination and comparison would seem to indicate the same classification made by Franklin and the members of the French academy of the manifesta- tions in Mesmer's experiments. There are those for which known physiological facts may account. All the affections of " the afflicted " were evidently of a nervous kind. The subjects were nearly all children, or young females of the most ignorant and uncultured class ; 2 the natural subjects of nervous excitement. The con- vulsions were ordinary nervous spasms. Moreover, the derangement of the nervous system was plainly seen, and described as an attendant of the afflicted person's fit ; Brattle remarking that " even the judges saw that the brain of the confessors was affected ;" 3 Mather also, again and again, alluding to the manifest insanity of many of the afflicted ; mentioning of Mrs. Whetford, that after being bewitched ten years, she became crazy ; 4 relating of the Irish woman, Grlover, that five or six physicians were appointed by the court to examine if " she were in no way crazed in her intellectuals;" 5 and recording of Mr. Philip Smith, that he was conscious beforehand that mental derangement was coming on, and requested 1 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., chap, in., pp. 14, 20. 2 Brattle, Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. v., pp. 75, 77 ; and Mather everywhere. 3 Ibid, vol. v., p. 65. 4 Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 58. 5 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., p. 72. 56 "SPECIAL AGENTS." his friends to " have a care " of him. 1 There were, again, a large class of reported facts for which known psychological causes are an explanation. To the influ- ence of excited imagination many of the sights, sounds and physical impressions felt, must be referred ; the impressions on the organs of sense of the persons affected being as real as if made by an external object. Thus spectres were seen when none appeared to unex- cited eyes f stones of great size were seen and felt to strike persons, when no stone was found and no mark of a blow left ; 3 and sometimes one portion of a company would smell the odor of brimstone, and when others around denied that they smelt the same, the affected ones would become satisfied that they had been mistaken in their impression. 4 Yet a third class of witnessed facts, allowed by all classes, must be referred to that special unknown agent which the French savans recognized in Animal Mag- netism. And it is worth noting, that among the personal observers of all classes there was virtually a surprising unanimity on this point. Even blunt George Burroughs only denied that there could be any such thing as witchcraft "in the current sense" 5 Mather, on the other extreme, explained it, as he did the light- ning, to be " a skill of applying the plastic spirit of the 1 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi , p. 70. 2 Brattle and Mather, often. 3 Mather's Magnalia, B. vi., p. 69. 4 Calef 's Letters, p. 47. s Bancroft's U. S., vol. m., p. 92. OPINIONS OF THAT DAY. 57 world ; " x this intermediate agent being simply supposed by him to be, in common with the lightning, allowed by the Creator to come under the control of dcemons. Mather remarks, in reference to the opinions of his day, that " many good men " thought there ought not to be any condemnations for witchcraft ; and that " they had also some philosophical schemes of witchcraft, and of the method and manner wherein magical poisons operate, which further supported them in their opinion." 2 Brat- tle, too, early in the troubles, says that there were at- tempts to explain these affections "on the Cartesian philosophy ;" 3 and it is interesting to observe this, since Descartes is the very one to whom the modern theory of " the animal spirits," the " nervous principle," or the spiritual medium, is referred. 4 Surely, then, Charles, after such a survey as this, who shall say the suggestion is visionary, that possible laws of the nervous principle, analogous to known laws of electricity (an associate intermediate agency), may be the source of these mysterious phenomena ? Glance, then, over the list of facts ; and, not at all as a scien- tific explanation, but as a just illustration, suppose an application of laws of the nervous principle similar to the established laws of electricity. Surprising strength, rigidness of muscle, and pricking sensations like those of a current from the galvanic battery, certainly need 1 Mather's "Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 56. 2 Mass. Hist. Collect., by Barber, p. 223. 3 Brattle's Letter, Mass. Hist. Collect., vol. v., pp. 62, 63. 4 Bostock's Physiology, vol. I., chap, vi., § 2, p. 201. <■ ' 58 NERVOUS PRINCIPLE ACCORDS. no comment. Metallic substances may be attracted as by a magnet, and adhere to the flesh, and various arti- cles may be drawn about as by electric currents. Mys- terious " rappings," like electric snappings, may be heard as about a surcharged receiver. Wonderful power of thought and utterance, like to that shown by every per- son under strong nervous excitement, may be displayed. Moreover, if it be so that the mind of the clairvoyant is perfectly inactive, and that the thought "of another per- son present is uttered through her lips, certainly the cases related by Brattle and others, both as to the com- munications of the Indian powahs, and of " the afflicted," were but the uttering of the thought of others present, by a connected nervous energy. Surely, when the afflicted girl read to Cotton Mather Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and Indian " not so well," it was the precise echo of his own learning coming from her lips. At least, Charles, there is a coincidence here worthy of further examination and comparison. ttittt lixtji* THE MYSTERIOUS DEVELOPMENTS OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM AS SEEN AND COMMENTED UPON IN THE MIDDLE AGES." " Perturbationes item sive passiones malae, quae phantasiam sequuntur, vehementer nedum proprium, seel alienuum corpus possunt transcendere, ac illud immutare adeo ut mirabilis possint produci impressiones in elemen- tis, item rebus extrinsecis ; sicque sanabiles quosdam morbos esse citra medicihae adminiculum. Inest certe hominum animis virtus quaedam deli tescens immutandi, attrahendi, ligandi, potissimum si maximo imaginationis, mentis, voluntatisque excessu, in id quod vel attrahere, vel immutare, vel ligare vel impedire cupit." — Scholiast of the Middle Ages. [Excitements, also, or diseased affections, which follow a fantasy, can strongly overpower not only one's own, but a foreign body, and so change it that wonderful impressions may be produced in the elements, also in objects without us ; and thus certain diseases may be curable without the adminis- tering of medicine. There is certainly in the souls of men a certain myste- rious power of attracting, of changing, of binding (especially where there is the greatest excess of imagination, of mental energy, of will), over that which it desires either to attract, or change, or bind, or impede.] No new Suggestion. — Link in the Middle Ages to Ancient Times — Thorough Treatise of that Day. — Magic an Exalted Study.- • "Soul of the World." — All Spirits Linked. — A Superior Spirit can control the Body of a Weaker. — As a Magnet the Spirit may attract Material Objects. — Disease Cured. — Power of Numbers. — Power of Song. — The Daemon, or Spiritual Princi pie communicating Knowledge. — Aristotle's View. — Excited like Magnetism Electricity. — Sword of iEneas. — The Daemon nothing but Nervous Excitement. — Virgil's Testimony. — In- cense and Drugs excite. — Transformations of Circe and Fasci- nations in the Middle Ages. — Wonders we are yet to see. My Dear Charles : Does it seem to you empirical, unfounded and hasty theorizing, and a suggestion of personal vanity in your 60 LINK TO ANCIENT TIMES. friend, when thus it is hinted that these apparent spir itual influences may be referred to the action of natu ral causes, to the operation of our own nervous organ- ism ? Judge not your friend too hastily ; for he has ardently, if not sincerely, been seeking after truth. If he errs in referring these phenomena neither to a good nor an evil supernatural influence, but to natural causes, he has a large experience of great and good men, in many an ancient land and clime, erring with him ; for even Cicero and Socrates and Moses may be found suggestors of the same hint. We have already alluded to the fact that the first philosophic examination of the experiments of Mesmer led scientific men to trace back the history of similar developments far into the middle ages. We have just seen that the mysterious developments of witchcraft have a history equally hid in the twilight of the dark ages. Now, Charles, let me lead you back over the fields of history, until we tread the soil of old Greece and Rome, and mingle among the cultured men who trod the earth some eighteen, and some even twenty-two centuries ago. I forewarn you that we shall find the philosophic Cicero, Pliny and Plutarch, the physicians Luke and Gralen, and even old Socrates and Plato, wit- nessing phenomena similar to those we now are wonder- ing at ; while, moreover, they ascribed them to similar causes. We will let a profound scholar, of the middle ages 1 1 See an extended a*id learned Note on the first and second chapters of the Thirtieth Book of Pliny's Natural History, first SOUL OP THE WORLD. 81 introduce us into that alcove of the library of the an- cients where are stored their voluminous and deep- studied treatises on Spiritual Media ; and his researches will reveal to us scenes in ancient days such as we now behold, and many that we are probably yet to see in suc- cession revived among us. The scholiast says 1 "that, although often abused by bad men, magic is the science of supernatural influences, and has in all ages been regarded the highest of studies. Plato and Pythagoras, and the ablest and best Greeks, believed in it, and studied and practised it, in common with the x\ssyrians, Egyptians, Persians, and, indeed, all ancient nations. It is, properly speaking, the active por- tion of natural philosophy. Of its proper employ Plato said that " the magic of Zoroaster seemed to him nothing else than the knowledge and worship of divine beings. " The source whence originate the spiritual communi- cations received through magic, the ancient philosophers found in their idea of ' the soul of the world.' One great universal spirit, so the eastern sages long before Plato believed, pervades immensity ; whose influence is the moving principle in all material things, and from whom all human souls and various ranks of superior spirits are emanations. Every human soul is part of the universal spirit ; and capable, under favorable cir- cumstances, of partaking of the knowledge of all other spiritual beings. There is in natural existences a kin- published at Lyons, A. D. 1531 ; found in the Paris edition of 1778. 1 It is a brief abstract, not a translation, which is attempted. 6 62 CONTROL OP FOREIGN BODIES. dred principle, either of repulsion or attraction, seated in their hidden powers. This attracting power the Egyptians called natural magic, the Greeks sympathy. The spiritual principle in man is not united to the body, except by the living principle ; nor the intellect with the living principle, except by the spiritual principle. 1 When nature would form a human body, she draws the living principle from the universe. This link reaches celestial existences. Thus demons and departed spirits can be called up. Thus, too, as the ancients say, there is something divine 2 in natural things. So, too, we read in Galen, Hippocrates and the Platonists, that many human souls excel to such an extent, that they can so raise themselves above everything material, as to be restored to themselves and to their vigor when the body has been laid off ; 3 as to agitate, to impel, and at will to employ any members of the world, and to control as their own any human body in which the spiritual principle is subjected. 4 Behold here, Charles, in the germ, at least, an illustration of the controlling and moving of material objects, and of the employing 1 When contrasted, intellectus and animus seem to represent the intellect, the soul, that is, pure spirit J anima, the spiritual princi- ple, the nervous principle, the spiritual medium ; and spiritus, the living principle. When not in contrast, spiritus mundi and anima mundi seem to be synonymous. In the former case, the words are rendered as indicated ; in the latter, the expression is rendered simply spirit or soul of the world. 2 The history of a philosophy now popular may be traced here. 3 See the case cited in Letter Ninth, p. 96. 4 Histoire de Plme. Paris edit., 1778. Tom. X., pp. 139—142. DISEASES CURED. 63 of the body of another, seen in our day. Let us i dIIow up the theory. " There are four fluids which the spiritual principle employs at will. As the magnet has a wondrous and peculiar power of attracting iron, so, through the soul of the world, man has a wondrous power. The soul of one existence goes out and enters into another, and excites, impels, or impedes its operations ; as the dia- mond impedes the magnetic stone in attracting iron. The medium of existing things is the spirit of the world. Through this spirit every hidden property of things in- animate, as metals and stones, and of things animate, as plants, is propagated ; and this reaches up through man to celestial existences. This is the chain of Homer ; these are the circles of Plato. To excite this influence the perturbations or passions of the mind greatly con- duce. These perturbations or passions can pass over to a foreign body, and change it so that wonderful impres- sions can be produced on the elements, even on external objects ; and thus diseases can be cured without the aid of medicine. There surely is in the souls of men a cer- tain power of changing, of attracting, of binding (espec- ially where there is the greatest outgoing of imagination, of mind and of will), whatever it desires to attract, to change, or to bind. For thus, as the Magi hold, through affections of the soul, as well as through direct aid of certain celestial influences, fortunately in apposi- tion, wonders can be performed. The Arabian philoso- phers gave rules for training the soul to this power." 1 1 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 142—150, Note. 64 POWER OE NUMBERS. How plainly, Charles, the learned ancient accounts for the healing of the sick, the power of the magnetizer over another, and the moving of tables, &c, seen in our day, on the principle of nervous excitement. " The Magi assert, too, that numbers enter in a cer- tain manner into the composition of substances ; and, having a certain connection in the divine mind, a won- derful property is originated. Thus, the Pythagoreans employed the number three in purifications, to which Virgil several times symbolically refers. The Magians, by this effect of a number, do, indeed, bind, remove, and cure diseases." 1 This form of the mysterious development of the spiritual medium, Charles, is not yet introduced into our circles ; but it lives still in the East, 2 and will cross the water, doubtless, in due time. " By the power of song, too, enchantresses, like Circe, excited and controlled men through this influence. Of this Lucan, Virgil and Tibullus, speak." 3 Another art of the East, which has begun to be employed in con- nection with the development of our day. " We come now to another class of magic, that exer- cised through inspiration from spiritual beings. There are three grades of nature ; gods and men being the ex- tremes, and the middle grade being called demons, from their superior knowledge. In his book on ' Sleep and 1 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 151—153, Note. 2 See Let. Ninth., p. 105. Shakspeare mentions this magic charm of the number three, Macbeth, Act. i., Scene 3. 3 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 157, 158. ARISTOTLE'S VIEW. 65 Vigils,' Aristotle says, ' The blood descending in great abundance to the sensitive principle, at the same time there descend forms conceived in the imagination ; by which means demons can move the fluids, both of the interior and exterior senses, and thus present to the organs certain forms, just as they would outwardly meet us, not only in sleep, but when awake.' Thus demons do really affect us and communicate knowledge." l Here, again, is a further attempt, Charles, on the part of the ancients, even to explain the physiological law by which the " sensitive principle " is thus affected, so that impressions like real sensations are produced on the bodily senses, and thus real knowledge of distant and of future events communicated to the mind. And now we come to the concluding part of the scholiast's treatise, and meet a thought yet more in point. The spiritual medium, the spirit of the world, which is the medium of existences, appears to be noth- ing else than the electrical and nervous fluids, of which physiologists now speak ; being excited by the same means, and manifesting the same phenomena when excited. Remember, the soul of the world spoken of by the ancients was nothing more nor less than what we call " the laws of nature ; " and which we regard not spirit, but, like electricity, intermediate between mat- ter and spirit ; 2 and remembering this, observe how 1 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 168—170. 2 It is just this neglect to distinguish between pure spirit and the intermediate principles which characterizes Mr. Emerson's ex- pression, " I look for the new teacher * * that shall see the 6* 66 THE DEMON THE NERVOUS ENERGY. the excitement here spoken, the source of it, and its passing over from one person to another, is just that we have before hinted. " The demon " (or spiritual princi- ple), says the scholiast, " dreads iron." On this account, those who would drive away the demon (or spiritual principle) hold before them swords, iron, javelins ; which also the Mantuan Homer (Virgil) seems to notice in the sixth iEneid : — " Procul, proeul este profani Conclamat Vates, totoque absistite luco. Tuque invade viam, vaginaque eripe ferrum." On this account, iEneas also had a consecrated sword. 1 One can hardly avoid, Charles, comparing this with Mesmer's use of the iron-rod, and the bits of metal now employed by magnetizers. And now remark a statement even more important, showing that the Platonists meant by demons nothing else than the spiritual or nervous principle. " Saint Thomas (Aquinas) writes, that ' fear, grief and joy, cannot exist in demons, as they are perturbations ; since they are these sensitive appetites ; and an appetite properly is a property in an organ of the body. Virgil seems to allude to this same view when he says : — * Diine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, Euriale 1 an sua cuique Deus fit dira cupido.* A good desire of the soul, then, is called God, by identity of gravitation with purity of heart." Address at Cam- bridge, July 15, 1838. 1 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., p. 172. DRUGS AND SONG. 67 him. Jamblicus writes, that a demon proper is nothing else than the intellect." l The further we pursue this subject, Charles, the more shall we feel that there were men of strong common sense, in ancient times, as well as now ; and that, if we can but work under the shell and get at the kernel of their thought, we shall find that human minds and human opinions are as truly the same as nuts are, in all lands and in all ages. " The cultivators of magic," he proceeds, " employed the burning of incense in calling forth the spiritual influence ; " a method not yet introduced into our coun- try ; though now, 2 and from the most ancient times, em- ployed in the East. " The smoke had two virtues ; in it, especially if made from burning the heart, head or wind-pipe, of a chameleon, they thought they had a power of inducing an electrical influence (tonitrua) ; and in it they made the images of the spirits to appear. The influence of stimulating drugs and of song also was employed, as Virgil, Tibullus and Cato describe ; by which an influence so great, over the imagination, and really over the souls of men, was exerted by Circe and other sorceresses, that they not only seemed to them- selves to be, but actually were, turned into swine, or anything else the enchantress pleased." 3 Surely, Charles, this belief in enchantment could not have had such a hold on intelligent men, as in many an age, and espec- ially in the middle ages, it gained, unless there does i Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 172—173. 2 See Let. Ninth, p. 105. 3 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 173—175. 68 NOVELTIES FOR LECTURERS. exist some mysterious power, which, under nervous ex- citement, one person can exert on another. The concluding portion of the scholiast's note describes the various methods by which this spiritual communica- tion is gained. The experimenters of our day may wonder at the list, on which they have as yet only entered. " There is Hippomantia, divining by the poi- sonous excrescence of the colt, of which Yirgil speaks. There is the use of the sword of the executioner im- mersed in wine ; there is Axiomantia, the employ of axes ; and there is Lecanomantia, which the Assyrians employed, filling a skin with water, and placing in it silver, amber, and certain precious stones ; " all of which seem to indicate that the excitement of the spiritual influence by the ancient Magi was through an agency similar to what was afterwards called the discovery of Galvani. Then " there was Aeromantia, and Botano- mantia, and Cleromantia, and Gastromantia, 1 and Geo- mantia, and Pyromantia, and Capnomantia, and Necro- mantia, and Scyomantia, and Literomantia, and Um- bilicomantia, and Chiromantia;" 2 a list most discourag- ing to him who thinks of investigating this whole sub- ject, most interesting to him who can see the germ of these old systems yet living in the different parts of the 1 This form of magic deserves special note, as it is one often alluded to among the Romans, Greeks, Hebrews, and the Orientals generally. The scholiast's description of it is, " One class is per- formed with a large-bellied jar, into which it was the practice for a boy to gaze." The descriptions of the other classes we omit. 2 Histoire de Pline, Tom. X., pp. 175—177. THE UNIVERSAL HAS A LAW. 69 world, most exhilarating to itinerant lecturers who anx- iously are looking for something to supply the last novelty, and most instructive to him who can assure him- self that through them all runs one great principle, and in them all is seen the same intermediate agent working, the " nervous principle," which is the spiritual medium. The learned scholiast who has given so grand and wide an introduction to the ancient theory of the spirit- ual medium now takes his leave of us, with this con- cluding remark, " Thus much concerning the kinds of magic. These are facts which we have culled from cer- tain authors and monuments, and their teachings, them- selves most ancient, and by name and title unknown." The remark will prepare us for our next conference. tttltx iJBjutjr, THE MORBID ACTION Of THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM, A3 OBSERVED AND THEORIZED UPON BY THE PRACTICAL ROMANS. " Proinde ita persuasum sit, intestabilem, irrltam, inanem esse, haben- tem tamen quasdam veritatis umbras." — Pliny on Magic. [Thus, therefore, he was persuaded that it is dishonest, useless and frivolous, but has nevertheless some shades of truth.] " No superstition can ever be prevalent., and widely diffused through ages and nations, without having a foundation in human nature." — Schlegel on the Witches of Shakspeare. Ancient Authors " referred to. — Roman View practical. - Modes of seeking Knowledge. — Three Views of Source. — Juvenal's Satire, and Horace's Wit. — Virgil's Allegory, and Interpretation of it. — Plutarch. — His Matter of Fact. — Why- Poetic Oracles ceased. — Why Delphi is silent. — The Nervous Exciter failed. — Reason and Eeligion agreed. — Pliny the Naturalist. — "Magical Vanities." — Hold three-fold, meeting Bodily, Intellectual, and Moral Want. — Some Shades of Truth. — Homer's Spirit called up. — The Naturalist's Conclusion. — Galen, the Physician. — Medical View of Indian, Greek,, and Roman Physicians . — Power of Amulets. — Electric Hlustra- tions. — The Physician's Conclusion. My Dear Charles : The scholiast of the middle ages, over whose pages we have just been poring, mentioned in his conclusion that he had gleaned his facts and reasonings from the " teachings " of "ancient authors." Among the old Ro- mans, and older Greeks, types of two classes of minds, ROMAN VIEW PRACTICAL. 71 we naturally look for his authorities. We may find them agreeing in their facts, and, perhaps, only appar- ently differing in their conclusions drawn from those facts. . Although among every nation of men all classes of mind are met, yet in his natural bent the pure Roman was a practical man. The Romans, at no period, had a national oracle; 1 although caves whence issued me- phitic gases, like those which excited the raving Pytho- ness at Delphi, abounded in volcanic Italy. More- over, although a few minds of a certain cast were drawn to visit the old Grecian shrines, yet, in the ad- vance of Roman intelligence, the Pythoness there ceased, firs4 to chant in poesy, and then to give even in prose her responses. 2 In the Roman writers, therefore, a practical view of the manifestation of the spiritual medium may be expected. While in various modes, through the spiritual medium, men sought knowledge otherwise unattainable, the common mind regarded the witnessed mysteries as supernatural ; the artful practiser on popular belief, half-deceived and half-de- ceiving, knew part to be deceptive, and part real and mysterious ; and the philosophic mind of the poet, the orator, the physician, and the scholar, is seen ever con- demning the artifice, yet respecting the facts, and seeking a law for them. The two prominent modes of seeking such knowledge were through dreams, and through persons under nerv- 1 Eschenberg's Manual of Classical Literature, Part rv., § 226. 2 Juvenal and Plutarch; see pp. 74 76. 72 MODES OF SEEKING KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE. ous excitement, or inspiration. By the philosophic, however, trust in such communications was regarded a thing of the past, a reliance of their revered Trojan and Latian ancestors ; ! and for all the knowledge thus really communicated they found a philosophic explanation. 2 They especially marked that the supposed inspired persons were females of nervous temperament ; as the Pythoness of Delphi, the Sibyl who brought the famed books to Tarquin, and the Cumaean Sibyls. The vari- ous other methods by which superhuman knowledge was sought among the Romans have been thus clas- sified. 3 First, Sacrifices. In solemn pomp the bullock was brought to the altar and slain, and his entrails and liver were laid bare, when the solemn aruspice inspected their appearance, and from it divined the future. Second, Birds and other animals. The auspice watched how the raven, crow, owl and cock, sounded their shrill notes, how the eagle and vulture flew, how the sacred chickens picked up their food, and how vari- ous quadrupeds crossed his path ; and thence augured. Third, Electrical phenomena. Early in the morn, or when a storm-cloud gathered, the augurs gazed and listened ; and, if lightning flashed or thunder rolled on the left, good was promised. Fourth, The heavenly bodies. At dead of night, or at early twilight, the inquirer went to the astrologer's tower, usually a Chal- 1 See Virgil, p. 75. 2 See Cicero, Let. Eighth, p. 87. 3 See the invaluable " Koman Antiquities " of Alex. Adam, L.L.D., New York, 1830, pp. 252, 274; with his scholar-like refer- ences. Also, "Eschenberg," part iv., § 75. THREE VIEWS. 73 dean from old Babylon. Taking his book of recorded conjunctions, of risings and settings of the stars and planets, by the aspect of the heavens the Magian di- vined good or ill. Especially from calculating what star was rising at the moment of one's birth, he fore- told the fortunate or adverse destiny of the consulter. Fifth, Lots. Thrown like dice, and their fall observed, or, placed in a vase, sometimes filled with water, and drawn out thence by a boy, or by the consulter at the oracle, the priest interpreted the meaning of their pe- culiar appearance. Sixth, Magic art. Among these, what the Greeks called gastromantia, and the Latins ventriloquism, or speaking from the abdomen, is prom- inent. The student of Roman literature gathers this picture of it. A boy sits watching the appearance of water in the belly (or bulging portion, yaoTgi]) of a tall glass vase, while the artful ventriloquist, near by, utters guttural and mysterious responses. Seventh, Omens. At important crises, the slightest accident or incident was interpreted favorably, or otherwise; as sneezing, stumbling, spilling salt at table, &c. In ref- erence to all these, it is worthy here to note the three classes of views in every age entertained. The impuls- ive and ignorant, as well as the cultivated man of nervous temperament, saw in them supernatural manifestations ; a rough, fear-naught soldier, like Plautus, could in scorn throw the sacred chickens overboard, if they did not eat to suit him ; while a man of even balance, of thorough wisdom and address, like Caesar, when he stumbled and fell on his face in stepping on the shore 7 74 juvenal's satire. / of Africa, could turn the bad omen into a good one, by grasping the sand, and kissing it, as he fell, saying, " Teneo te, Africa" — I seize thee, Africa. 1 Among the able writers of Rome this same difference of view is seen. Juvenal, who flourished A. D. 190, satirizes all trust in such communications. He pictures the man of weak mind and conscience trembling for his imagined faults, going to seek pardon, imagining that he sees the silver serpent of the diviner move his head, and that the gods speak to his spirit at night. Dis- trustful of his own supposed revelations, he seeks the crafty fortune-teller of Judea, the pretended interpreter of the laws of Solyma, and for a paltry copper the Jew sells any dreams he wishes. He hies, then, to the Armenian augur ; and, as a last resort, seeks the Chal- dean astrologer, the oracle of Delphi having now ceased to respond. The shrewd poet thus presents the two sources of mysterious communications, through one's own agitated dreams, and through the excited and myste- rious working of another's fancy ; and he seems to hint that, through the nervous principle (anima), the myste- rious knowledge comes to the mind (mens), both when in dreams the excited sleeper seizes sometimes the truth, and when the practised fortune-teller by his understood art gains a knowledge of his consulter's secret thought. 2 In the same strain oft writes the pleasure-loving Horace; rallying his friend, Leuconoe, for trying Babylonian numbers, and being too credulous ; and declaring that 1 Adam's Koman Antiquities, pp. 254, 256; with his copious references. 2 Juvenal, Satire yi., 410—450. virgil's allegory. 75 intelligent and brave men must be diseased in mind, and fanatical, when they give way to superstitious belief in spiritual manifestations. 1 On the other hand, the sickly, melancholy Virgil, the very type of the reflect- ive man, gives the opposite picture ; dating the view he expresses, however, in a distant age, and throwing in many a reference to philosophic solutions of his own time. The Trojan iEneas goes in confident devotion to the cave of the Cumsean Sibyl. Wondrous is the knowledge of his family she displays ; as wondrous as that coming from a similar medium in our day ; but she speaks in a nervous frenzy, in which her own mind is lost. With a golden bough and a consecrated sword, with metallic exciters of the nervous influence, his way to gain spiritual communications is prepared. From spirits called up by a triple invocation, not from the Sibyl herself, he is to learn. From the shade of his father, Anchises, he receives communications ; and his responses first present the theory by which spirits are supposed to communicate with the living, through the nervous prin- ciple (spiritus), and the intelligent principle (mens), which pervade the universe. And finally the secret is revealed, that not at all an actual descent of iEneas to the spirit-world has the philosophic poet recorded; any more than Bunyan, in his Pilgrim, writes anything but allegory. It is in magnetic trance, in sleeping vis- ion, iEneas and the Sibyl have gained their communica- tions ; for from the ivory gate of " sleep " Anchises at last releases them. In another picture, free from allegory, 1 Horace's Odes, B. i., No. 11; Satire m., verses 80, 278. 76 plutarch's matter op fact. Virgil expressly calls the maiden having the prophetic furor one " deranged in intellect;" he describes as per- fectly as our Salem ancestors saw it the wild-fire spread of the uncontrollable excitement among her companions of like temperament, and paints to life the magic art. 1 There is philosophy worthy of modern study here. We have seen thus in Rome's poets the two extreme views of spiritual manifestations. In her practical writers we shall meet the middle view ; which admits the facts, and refers them to a natural and sufficient cause, that of the nervous principle, or spiritual medium. The story-telling Plutarch, who wrote in the later Roman age, and in the Greek language, was so interested in these subjects as to pen two books ; the one on the question, " Why Pythia does not now give Oracles in Metre ; " and the other, " Concerning the Cessation of Oracular Responses." Discussing the first question, he presents the theory that " the body of the dead passes into plants, and thence into animals ; and so in the entrails of the animal the spirit of the dead may appear. God uses the prophetic maiden as the sun does the moon, to reflect from her his thought. The enthusiasm called the divine instinct, seen in her, is from two sources, from a bodily affection, and from the mind's nature. She speaks in poetry on the same principle that astrologers and philosophers, and even men full of wine, and minds under any strong excitement, break out in song. No grave questions now are presented ; 1 Virgil's ^neid, Book vr. s vers. 46—50, 100—102, 137, 260, 506, 893—8; and vn., 376—396. Also Eclog. vm. WHY DELPHI IS SILENT. 77 no excitement of war, sedition, of tyranny, and fearful calamity, calls forth the frenzy. The trifling inquir- ies of servants and young women, to itinerant fortune- tellers, about marriage, their health, &c, are unworthy an answer in verse. Finally, as it is puerile to admire the rainbow, and rings about the sun and moon, and comets, more than the sun and moon, so the fondnes? for enigmas and allegories in obscure poetry is not becoming those who employ reason to gain a knowledge of God." l On the second theme, Plutarch gives a brief history of oracles, from Egypt and its priests to Britain and its Druids. " In Greece the oracle had ceased, chiefly on account of the insignificant inquiries made at the shrine. Divination, however, remained. Through the demons or genii (of which Homer spoke in general terms, but the later Greeks more philosophically' , knowl- edge from the spirit world is gained. There is a uni- versal medium ; for, since there are very many worlds, and to each one its own medium, and at the same time its own peculiar motion, in some to the medium, in some from it, and in some around it, all gravitating ((5«£?/, gravia) substances must on all sides be drawn together towards one medium. 2 The knowledge gained by this medium some regarded as supernatural. It is in reality natural ; a faculty of our minds. Memory in us is as the hearing of deaf persons, and the seeing of the blind ; 1 Plutarchi Opera, Lipsiae, 1777; vol. vn. } pp. 5G6, 592 — 594, 604, 607, C08, and 611. 2 The germ, it would almost seem, of Newton's law of gravita- tion. 7# 78 KEASON AND RELIGION AGREED. therefore it is not wonderful if, apprehending, as it does, many things which have ceased to be, it also gains knowledge of many which do not yet exist. Since, therefore, souls have this power of mind innate, yet hidden, some suddenly manifest it in dreams or at sac- rifices, and employ it. Probably it is as when wine, its vapors being borne to the brain, produces great move- ment in the mind ; for the chief power of divining is in the raving and furor. Moreover, it is not equable, but subject to changes. It is extinguished in great rains, is dissipated in places where lightning is prevalent, and especially subsides in an earthquake. A certain tempering of the air and the wind affects it. It vehe- mently excites the frame." " I wish not to call into doubt anything which is regarded divine. I will free myself from the charge, Plato being called out as my witness and defender. For he blamed Anaxagoras the ancient, because, too much immersed in natural causes, and always seeking after and tracing out the necessity of those affections which occur in natural bodies, he omit- ted the final and efficient cause, the more exalted in the order of causes, and the more potent principles. In the mean time, Plato himself was the first or most promi- nent of all philosophers in uniting these two; so that, indeed, he ascribed to God the origin of those things which are performed through a general principle,, We do not make divination to occur without God, or without a general principle, when we regard the human soul (animum) as its subject, and the spirit (spiritum) or " MAGICAL VANITIES." 79 vapors of enthusiasm as its instrument." l Read thought- fully, Charles, these statements ; and bear witness that our supposition was no novelty ; it was not baseless in reason, nor repugnant to religion. Another work of this same age will naturally attract our notice. Here are ranged twelve large quarto vol- umes, the works of Pliny, the naturalist, 2 who closed his long life's investigations, when, in pressing on to behold nearer the belching flames of Vesuvius, the smoke suffocated him, and, wrapping his mantle about his head, he fell amid the ashes that were burying Pompeii. Draw we out the tenth volume, and turn we to his thirtieth book. We have already read the long Latin commentary here introduced at the bottom of the pages ; and now we will glance at Pliny's own text. " Magical vanities," — these are the first words that strike our eyes. Surely here is a cool practical man, of the observing cast, not likely to be carried away by deceptive appearances, but leaning rather to the oppo- site extreme, to which a mind given to observation of material facts is sure to tend. We will hear him, and then we shall have the other side. " By fraudulent arts often the science of the Magi has gained wide hold on the belief of all ages and nations. 3 Its relation to medicine gave it its first grasp on human belief ; and its connection with religion on the one hand, and mathematical science 1 Plutarchi Opera, vol. vn., pp. 613, 621, 627, 631—633, C39, 658, 659, 665, 698, 699, 702, 708, 712, 715, 718. 2 See the Paris edition of 1778, already referred to. 3 Pp. 138, 110. 80 SOME SHADES OF TRUTH, on the other, has confirmed its controlling power over the intellect and the heart." 1 Taking possession thus of the senses of man by its triple appeal to the bodily, intellectual and moral wants of men, Pliny traces its history from Zoroaster to his day. Everywhere the medicinal virtue attributed to it seems to be its intro- duction ; reminding us of the chief promise of kindred developments in our day. At the head of the Jewish Magi he mentions Moses ; 2 no unimportant testimonial, coming from one of Pliny's age, nation and personal character. The Druids of old Gaul and Britain he refers to "this class of prophets and medical men." 3 Of the methods by which knowledge of spiritual things is gained, he mentions, that it is sought " by water, and spheres, and air, and stars, and lamps, and basins, and axes, and by conversations with disembodied spirits, and with inferior deities." 4 He gives an account, then, of the famed magician, Tiridates, from whom Nero in vain sought to draw his art ; and states his conclusion, that though the art is in general injurious and useless, "yet it has some shades of truth." 5 He closes by mentioning that the •' celebrated gram- marian, Apion, whom he had seen when a young man, had published that there was an herb named cynoceph- alia (in Egypt called osyrites), which enabled a man to divine, and secured him against all poisons ; and Apion declared that he himself had called up departed spirits, in order to inquire of Homer of what country i Pp. 142—148. 2 p. 164. s p. 1G6. < Pp. 168, 170. o p. 178. GALEN, THE PHYSICIAN. 81 and w'mt ancestors he was born ; while, nevertheless, he did not dare to publish what he had replied." 1 Surely Pliny gives us enough to show that the scenes of our day were familiar to Apion and himself, and that the same views as to their supernatural or natural origin then prevailed among thinking men. He decides that the influence certainly was connected with physical causes, arising from an excitement of the nervous organ- ism by means of an intoxicating plant, or some other stimulant acting on the nervous system. Are you weary of these old Latin authors ? Be patient till we can look at one more, a Roman medical writer of the second century. Here, staring on the back of four tall folios, is the gilded title, " Galeni Opera," the works of Galen. Out we lift the cumbrous one marked Tom. III., and, turning to page 1497, read the article headed, "de Incantatione, Adjuratione et Suspensione," concerning incantation, adjuration and suspension (or the wearing of amulets). In a familiar letter, like ours, that early and most able, as well as voluminous medical writer, commences thus : " You have asked, my dearest son, concerning incantation, adjuration and suspension, if they can do any good; and if I have found them in the books of the Greeks, as they are found in the books of India." From his pro- longed reply we copy these sentences. " Plato says, ' When the human mind loves anything, although it is not beneficial, it assures itself that the thing does it good ; and, simply from the bias of mind, that thing i P. 180. 82 THE AMULET S POWER. does benefit the body. For example, if any one is con- fident that incantation will do him good, whatever may be his character, him, indeed, it does benefit.' " Galen adds to this statement of Plato, " I have seen this, indeed, that there are causes of daily-recurring disorders of the health, especially of those disorders which spring from nervous affections. In healthy per- sons, indeed, the causes of infirmity have been these same ones. Whence Socrates says, 'Incantations are words leading astray rational minds, according to the inception of hope or the incitement of fear.' The Indi- an medical men only believe that the incantation and adjuration is an aid ; while the ancient Grecian physi- cians thought by these to recall into the wandering soul its own perfection ; which, being recovered, it was neces- sary that the body be recovered by it." Galen himself seems to adopt this explanation ; "as the fluids cf the body, being changed, change the action of the mind, so the action of the mind, being changed, changes the fluids." He speaks then of the reputed efficacy of amulets ; saying of it, " which I do not deny can be done, on account cf the conformation of the mind of which I have spoken." After a long enumeration of medicinal specifics of this kind, he thus concludes. "These things I have culled from the books of the ancients. # # I have not tried them ; but yet they are not to be denied by me ; because, if we had not seen the magnet attracting iron to itself, wc should not be assured of it, we should not believe it. So also that lead breaks adamant, which iron does not do ; that a physician's conclusion. 83 stone which is called nitrum is burned in the fire ; and that a certain fish takes away the feeling of one seizing it. All which things, unless they are seen by us, are not believed ; but, being tried, they are certain. And perhaps the sayings of the ancients have the same mean- ing. * ^ Sometimes certain substances have a prop- erty incomprehensible in its character, on account of its own subtilty ; not appreciable to the senses, on account of its own inscrutableness." Thus this last and one of the greatest of the Roman philosophers decides that the mysteries of the spiritual medium are not to be denied ; but that they have a general and natural, though incom- prehensible, cause ; and that the books of both the Greeks and Hindoos, from whom he gathered his facts, explained these phenomena virtually on the same prin- ciple. Moreover, in illustration of the natural agency, or property, by which spiritual communications are thus made, he adduces the very examples to which physiolo- gists now refer ; the mysterious properties of the magnet, and the electric power of the torpedo. ttittt #igjrtjj THE FASCINATING MANIFESTATION OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM, AS SEEN AND STUDIED BY THE IMAGINATIVE GREEKS. — te -&i)a)V ts yao (parsQog fjv 7io2.Zuy.ig fttv oiy.ot s jcoZXuy.ig Se Itil tcov y.oiVMv rijg nuXewg (Sej/twr, y.al iiavxivTi xQwuerog ovx acpav^g i{V dttT£$QvX2.r]T0 yun, 'cog (pairj 2ny.QuTijc, To daii.iuviov savrco otjualvsiv." — Xenophon's Memorabilia. [For that he offered sacrifices was manifest, often at home, and often on the common altars of the city, and that he employed divination was not unapparent ; for it was commonly reported that Socrates said the demon made communications to him.] Who are "the Ancients." — The Greek Reflective. — Cicero a Roman-Greek. — Divination believed in by all the Greek Schools. — Facts and Reasonings as in our day. — Source, three- fold: Illusion, Corporeal Causes, the Spiritual Medium. — Homer > his Spirits, Nervous Visions. — Hesiod, his Chain. — Pythagoras, "Music of the Spheres." — Plato, Intermediate Principle. — Conclusion as in Later Ages. My Dear Charles : When did " the ancients " liv£ ? Really, to reach them seems like reaching " the "West," which ever re- treats as we advance. The scholiast of the middle ages spoke of the ancients as his authorities ; and when we had gone back to the old Roman writers, we might have thought we had reached our limit. But now Plutarch and Pliny and Galen are found still pointing DIVINATION UNIVERSALLY REVERENCED. 85 us back. " Alps on Alps arise ; " and if we would gain the topmost peak for a look-out, many a distant summit is yet to be climbed. Courage, Charles, and we shall breathe a higher air yet. As the Roman was practical, so the Greek was re- flective. Dreams of the imagination filled his mind, and in art he embodied them. To him the excitement of the nervous principle gave a pleasing thrill, and its undue manifestations were to him most fascinating. This was the Greek characteristic ; though all classes of minds met and clashed with each other in Athens. Cicero was a true Greek, though not born on Grecian soil. He defended the use of the Greek language by his countrymen, he loved Grecian studies, and drank deeply into the spirit of Greece. So thoroughly Gre- cian is his discussion of the subject we are tracing, that we must read him among the Greeks as their inter- preter. Shall we steal up and look over the shoulder of the masterly Cicero, as in the maturity of his years he pens down, in two lengthy books on "divination," the thoughts of his ripening age on the spiritual medium ? With the fervor of a sincere heart, he eloquently argues the certainty that there is a medium by which we gain knowledge of the spirit world, and of events which only by spiritual intuition can be known; showing that among all nations, and by the ablest philosophers of all nations, divination has been believed and practised; among the Greeks, for example, Pythagoras and Soc- rates, the Academy, the Peripatetics, and the Stoics, ■ '86 KNOWLEDGE DERIVED FROM IT. all" but the .Epicurean, cherishing faith in it; the ideal- ist and materialist extremes, and the mediating ration- alist, all "agreeing that mysterious knowledge is derived from the spiritual medium, while the sceptic alone doubted. 1 As to the mode of its manifestation and its concomi- tants, he gives scattered hints. It shows itself when the mind of the diviner is dormant, either in sleep or in prophetic furor; and an intelligence from without utters its thought through the passive organs of the speaker; reminding us of the quiescence of the clair- voyant, and of the medium of our times. 2 It manifests itself, as Aristotle remarks, in unhealthy persons, espec- ially those subject to melancholy ; 3 it has the aspect of ordinary, strong mental . excitement ; 4 and Pythagoras thought that some kinds of diet, as beans, were unfavor- able, to its development; 5 all of which points to the nervous principle as the source. The Stoic hints that wonders of healing, and strange powers of reading and writing, accompanied the influence; 6 which seem the counterpart of the mysteries of our day. Of its nature scattered hints from many a source are presented ; through which, however, a chain of union seems to run. The Stoics thought there was much of it deception, and that all could be explained on natural principles. Cato said that lie wondered that the sooth- 1 Cicero rle Divin., Lib. I., § 1, 39, &c. 2 Ibid, i., 50. 3 Ibid, i., 38. 4 ibid, i., 50. s Ibid, ii., 58. 6 ibid, n., 59. SOURCE IMAGINARY, CORPOREAL, OR SPIRITUAL. ,87 sayer did not laugh when he saw his fellow-soothsayer. 1 He queried why it was that an insane man should know more of futurity than a sane one; and that the crazy girl, Cassandra, should be. inspired, when the venerable and wise king, Priam, was not; 2 questions about the character of the medium, similar to those now heard. The Stoic compared the right responses of the diviner to the mysterious mental acumen sometimes shown by intoxicated persons; 3 and Democritus compared the eloquent language of the Pythoness to that of the poet under high artistic excitement ;. 4 a suggestion similar to an illustration already adduced for our times. Cicero says that an eminent Druid, an acquaintance of his, pro- fessed that a natural principle, which the Greeks called physiology, was known to himself; and that partly by auguries, partly by conjecture, he foretold the future. 5 Cicero himself, in an elaborate argument, refers the source to the sympathy by which human souls are linked to the soul of the world, through which, the spirit set free from the body (as some easily are), either when we are asleep or awake, really gains the knowledge of other spirits, and of the universal soul. 6 In what way this influence from without so mysterious is communicated cannot be explained, any more than can the myste- ries of nature's simplest operations, as the growth of plants, and the healing action of medicines ; 7 and forci- 1 Cicero de Divin., Lib. n., 24. 2 Ibid, i., 39 ; n., 54. s Ibid, n., 59. 4 Ibid, i., 37. 5 Ibid, i., 41. 6 Ibid, i. 3 49, 51, 52, and I.,e0. 7 Ibid, i., 7,9, 51. 05 DREAMS FULFILLED. bly he remarks, " Ignorance of causes in a new thing produces wonder ; but if there is the same ignorance in things familiar, we do not wonder." l Of dreams Cicero speaks at length ; and with their frequent remarkable agreement with fact, he, as well as many others, in both ancient and modern times, was specially impressed. Of these striking cases there seem 'to be two classes : dreams of future events, which after- wards become real ; and dreams of events passing at the instant in some distant place, which are found to agree with facts which were at the moment occurring. As to the first class there may be various explanations. As dreams are but a continuance of our waking thoughts, it may be that in one case of thousands, our imagination, or dreaming conjecture, may be correct, accordant with fact ; and this accidental agreement seems striking only because the thousand wrong conjec- tures are overlooked, and the single right conjecture is remembered. It may be, further, that a dream — for instance, of success or failure in any enterprise — may so affect the mind and through it the bodily powers, that this itself will insure the fulfilment of the dream. As to the second class, the same may be true : the one right conjecture may be reported, while a thousand wrong ones may be unreported; or the kindred impression resting on two minds at a distance from each other, — for instance, the conviction of both the sick man and of his absent friend that he will not survive long, — this 1 Cicero de Divin., Lib. n., 22. cicero's explanation. 89 impression may induce the dream of. the latter and the death of the former ; and that at points of time so near that the dream will seem to be a revelation of the death. There are cases, however, where apparently the knowl- edge or thought of a person at a distance seems reported to the mind of the dreamer ; as also apparently (though probably not really) the thought of absent persons seems reported through the medium, in the manifestations of our day. Suffice it to say, that Cicero, and men further back than he, referred all those cases to the action of the " Soul of the World " of Plato and the Indian phi- losophers, to the " animal spirits " of Descartes, to the " plastic spirit of the world " of Mather and Brattle's time, to the " nervous principle" of the modern physi- ologist. What has such a universal and uniform history must have a law. We may confidently trust there is a science here; though what it is, man' may never know. 1 Is it not now apparent, Charles, when we remember that the " Soul of the World" of the Platonist, and the "nature" of the Stoics, as seen in, men excited by any natural cause, and the " nervous principle" now spoken of by the physiologist, are the same, — is it not apparent, as Cicero seems to conclude,- that' different minds, after all, must reach about the same conclusion ? The super- natural of the one is the natural of the other. The Platonic Cicero has his representatives now ; and so 1 Ibid, i., 20 et seq. As a modem instance, see ""Watchman & Reflector," Boston, Oct. 14, 1832, vol. xxxm., p. 1C8. See, also, Let. Fourth, p. 35, and Let. Tenth, p. 119. 2 Ibid, ii., 72. ■ - * • • 8* 00 homer's shades spiritually seen. have the Druid and Stoic, as well as the Aristote- lian. Galen makes special mention of the books of the Greeks. It is but a glance at what the great writers of that cultured land have said of the spiritual medium we can take. Homer, writing in the infancy of his nation, speaks in the language of childhood of the spirit-world ; like our own Shakspeare, representing spiritual manifestations as simple objects of sense. The spirits all bear the simple title " god ; " and have an ethereal body in which they appear to men. As always, however, the unphiloso- phizing poet shows the belief that it was not the bodily eye which saw the spirits ; but, the mind in dreamy rev- ery, or in excited fancy, by the spiritual medium appre- hended the vision. Achilles was first thoroughly con- vinced of the reality of the future life, and the spirit- world, when the shade of Patroclus, his slaughtered friend, appeared to him in a dream of the night; 1 and it was the still active nervous excitement, such as we often in broken slumbers experience, which painted the image before his mind's eye. In the intense ardor of hot debate, again, Achilles felt the hand and saw the glistening eye of the goddess Minerva, checking him ; while no one under less nervous excitement beheld her. 2 With Hesiod commenced the philosophic theories of the Greeks as to the world of disembodied spirits, and the 1 Homer's Iliad, B. xxur., verses 62, 105. 2 Ibid, B. i., verses 197, 198. SPIRITUAL CHAIN. 91 connection we have with it. Hesiod, we are told, was the first of the Greeks to suggest that sublime concep- tion, that all spiritual beings and material existences are united by a chain (asi^a), so that a positive influ- ence and movement can be exerted by one spirit on other spirits and bodies. In his writings the word " demons " is first fixed, as signifying these intermediate agents and influences. 1 Pythagoras followed ; and by him and his pupils was built up that majestic theory which is described in the " Soul of the World," by Tima3us ; that almost Newton-like theory of mutual attractions, which holds worlds in their places, and makes them give forth, as they move in their orbits, the "music of the spheres." 2 Socrates, the popular and practical philosopher of Athens, as Xenophon records, performed the accustomed sacrifices which made up the external religion of his countrymen ; and he employed divination as a means of gaining knowledge not attain- able in the natural methods. Yet his countrymen doubted his hearty belief in these. Socrates' real belief was this : "The people who sought knowledge of the future through sacrifices, birds and fortuitous events, did not suppose that the birds knew the future ; but that the gods communicated through them. Thus he believes. He thought men should use their own judgment in de- ciding about their affairs. Through the demon (to daijioviov), the spiritual medium, the gods (df-ol) did, 1 See Eschenberg, and various authorities. 2 History of Philosophy: transl. from the French, by Henry, 107—110, and various authorities. 92 HARMONIOUS GRECIAN VIEW. in divination, communicate with men ; but it was wrong to inquire from them about trifling matters ; for though they know all things, yet they made revelations only of human duty/' 1 Plato perfected that system which resolved all immaterial principles (the chemical and capillary attractions between particles of matter, the magnetic attraction drawing material bodies to each other, and the wider attraction holding worlds in their places) into one " circle," or ring, of influences. These, as we have seen, he distinguished from pure spirit, the ultimate cause of existences, the Divinity ; and through this intermediate system of agency, excited by the desire of the inquirer, he accounted fur the won- derful knowledge and wonderful influences gained from divination and incantation. 2 We part with the reflective Greek as from the prac- tical Roman, having gathered from him the same views. From Hippocrates to Aristotle, as we have seen, the practical Greek reasoned as did the French Academy about animal magnetism. Even the pure rationalist, who was the leading type of the Greek mind, we now behold receiving the facts, and referring them to three classes of causes still bearing Grecian names, " physiological, psychological, demoniacal." The latter is their name for the spiritual medium. 1 Xenophon's Memorabilia, Lib. I., cap. i., §§ 2, 9, and 19 ; also, Let. Seventh, p. 77. 2 See Cicero, Plutarch and Galen, as already quoted, pp. 78,81, 85. ttltti Jfintlj. THE MAGICAL DISPLAY OP THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM A3 UNDERSTOOD AND PRACTISED IN ANCIENT AND MODERN INDIA AND EGYPT. " Quaesisti, fili carissime, de incantatione, adjuratione et suspensione; si qua possunt prodesse, et si invenerim in libris Graecorum hoc, qualiter in libiis Indorura est invenire." — Galen. [You have asked, dearest son, concerning incantation, adjuration, and the wearing of amulets ; whether they can serve any curative purpose ; and whether I have found this in the books of the Greeks, as it is found in the books of the Hiudoos.] " The art of divination, as practised in our temples, is derived from Egypt. * * * These ceremonies in Greece are but of modern date; whereas in Egypt they have been in use from the remotest antiquity." — Herodotus. Chanipollion's Clues. — Wonders of India. — Serpents charmed. — Nervous Swoons. — Detecting Thieves. — Man buried a Month. — Religious Trances. — Nervous Contest — Stone raised. — Brazen Vessel moved. — Uniform Explanation. — Trial by Rice. — " Special Agent." — Fearful Initiation. — Magic an Art. — Hindoo Philosophy of Magic. — Serpent Charmers in Egypt. — Serpent drawn from Wall. — Goat Charmer. — His- tory of Charms. — Magnetizing Magician. — Clairvoyance in Egypt. — "Special Agent" universal. — A Law. — Ancient History uniform. — Blindfold Somnambule. — Healing by Mag- netism. — Phenomena ever the same. My Dear Charles: "While Champollion was during twenty long years bending his acute mind to the search for a key to deci- pher Egyptian hieroglyphic records, he had three clues to guide him in the labyrinth. He had the modern 94 WONDERS OF INDIA. Coptic language and the ancient Egyptian monuments as the extremes. He had also stumbled on an obscure passage in that old Christian Father, Clement of Alex- andria, describing the principle of hieroglyphic writing as in his day still practised ; and this, together with the Greek tablet of the Rosetta stone, formed the means for his comparison. We too, Charles, have modern scenes in India and Egypt, and ancient Hindoo books and Egyptian monuments, for our extremes. We have also stumbled on an old Christian scholiast who describes to us the principle of the magical display of the spiritual medium, which he tells us he gained from " most ancient monuments ; " and this, with the Greek and Roman authorities intervening, is our means for comparison. Enter we, then, old India, the land whose name from the days of Alexander, and even Solomon, has been but a synonym for boundless wealth, but whose reputation as the fountain-head of science, philosophy and myste- rious arts, dates back to an even earlier day. We can trace in her history, in unbroken series, magical displays of the power of the spiritual medium, such as throw into the shade all we of this New World have yet seen. So wondrous are they that intelligent English officers, physicians, clergymen and general scholars, who have gone thither sceptical and prejudiced, have reported in numberless authenticated narratives the story of their convincing eye-sight, and have declared that the half was not told them in their land. Serpents and birds are drawn and held as by a charm. An eminent physician, sceptical on this point, SERPENTS CHARMED NERVOUS SWOON. 95 in company with other English gentlemen, thus tested the fact. Taking a serpent charmer alone, they brought him to a distant heap of rubbish ; and, causing him to lay off all' his raiment, that there might be no deception practised upon them, they watched his movements. Approaching the pile with a serpent-like hiss, and a nervous working of the features and limbs, which be- came more and more excited and violent, presently serpent after serpent of the most' venomous kind showed their heads, and gradually moved towards the charmer ; until, reaching out his hand, he took them as so many lifeless withes, and deposited them in his basket. 1 Numberless attested instances of a similar kind might be given ; the operator winding the serpent about his neck, pressing it fold after fold into his mouth, and rendering it rigid as a stick or pliant as a cord, at his pleasure. Back to the most ancient days this power can be traced. Aelian, a Greek writer of the fourth century, describes the same power as exhibited at his day, and says that it is a fac- ulty handed down in certain families, from father to son, uninterruptedly. 2 By throwing themselves into a nervous swoon, females, as well as men trained to the art, do succeed in relieving certain bodily diseases, and in discovering the place where stolen property is hid, and the persons who have taken it. 3 The following instance gives a description of 1 « Modern India, by Henry H. Spry, M.D., F.R.S.,M.R,A.S., Bengal Medical Staff, ■London, 1837;" vol. I., pp. 209 et seq. 2 Aelian, Lib. ii.'i cap. 57. 3 " Description of the Character, Manners and Customs, of the 96 MAN BURIED A MONTH. the process. A crowd gathered near the house of an English resident, an author, near Benares. Some per- sons wished to gain information of stolen goods ; and an old woman, a practiser of the art of divining, had been brought from the city. The crowd sat down in a circle around in the open field, and the woman was placed in the centre. Soon she began to rock and roll as if in spasms, her agitation becoming more and more violent, until, in a paroxysm of frenzy, she threw herself on the ground, and rolled convulsed. The interrogators listened to her mutterings, and from them learned where their property was to be found. 1 Of this power of throwing one's self into a voluntary swoon cases almost incredible are reported. The same English writer just quoted reports an instance which " some European officers, whose evidence seemed unimpeachable, asserted in writ- ing that they saw." A devotee, on a wager, submitted to the following test. After giving directions what should be done to him, he threw himself into a swoon. He was then sewed in a bag, placed in a box, and buried in a tomb built of solid brick-work. The door was then bricked up and sealed, and sentries placed before it for a whole month. The tomb was then opened, and his body taken out. His mouth, as he directed beforehand, was pried open, and a little milk poured into it; and, though he had been without food, drink and air, for thirty days, he revived and sat up. The next day he was able People of India, by the Abbe J. A. Dubois, transl. from a French manuscript, Philadelphia, 1818;" vol. ir., part n., chap. 36. 1 " Recollections of Northern India, by Rey. Wm. Buyers, Lon- don, 1848," p. 374. NERVOUS CONTEST STONE RAISED. 97 to mount a camel and start off on a journey, expressing himself in very indignant terms that the parties who had put him to the test did not remunerate him more liberally for his trouble. The writer adds, " I read a few weeks ago, in an Indian paper, that the same devotee had repeated the same feat at some other place, with equal success." * No one accustomed to witness the swooning of persons under strong religious excitement, especially of the colored race, in certain sections of our country, can help believing in the reality of these nerv- ous trances. What mysterious influences may be seen working during them, facts alone can decide. A wondrous power over the nervous influence of other s, and over material objects, is seen in the Indian devotee. The French writer before quoted 2 records the following instance. Two rivals wish to attest their superior powers. A stone or piece of money is placed on the ground, and the trial is to see which will first raise it without touching it. They advance towards the object, opposite each other, flinging " enchanted cin- ders" and reciting "mantras; " when both, by " an in- visible but irresistible force," are repelled and driven back. They again approach, with new effort and excite- ment, the sweat pouring from them and blood gushing from their mouths, until one of them gets possession of the stone or piece of money. Sometimes one of the combatants is thrown violently on the ground by the nervous power of his antagonist ; and, taken up breath- i Buyer's Northern India, pp, 369, 370. 2 Dubois' People of India, vol. ir., chap. 36. 9 98 BRAZEN YESSEL MOVED. less, he lies for days as if weakened by sickness. The writer thinks that there is some collusion and deception in these strange phenomena ; but he remarks, " It must be owned that effects are occasionally produced by them of which it would not be easy to divine the cause." The reader familiar with Mather's records of witch- craft will remember that he has recorded instances of a similar unaccountable nervous repulsion ; the hand of a person striking at an imaginary image flying back, as if repelled by an irresistible force. 1 Instances of the moving of material objects, particularly metallic, " without touching " them, far more palpable than that just mentioned, may be cited. An English writer 2 just cited records the following. A friend of his, after reading in his Bible one day, laid down his gold spectacles ; and, having gone out a short time, when he returned he found his spectacles were gone. He knew that no person, except his servants, of whom he had fifteen or sixteen, could have entered the room. Calling them, he charged the theft upon them. To clear themselves, the servants all declared the Brahmin should be brought, to find out which was the thief. The Brahmin, having come, ranged all the servants in a row on one side of the room, while the gentleman himself stood by, watching the proceedings. Stationing himself in the centre of the room, which was a large hall, the Brahmin placed a small brazen vessel before him, and muttered some incantations. Then, leaving the vessel, he i Mather's Magnalia, Book vi., p. 75. 2 Buyer's Northern India, p. 375. UNIFORM EXPLANATION. 99 declared that, if the thief were in the room, it would, of itself, move to him. To the great astonishment of all, the vessel began to move, with no visible hand near it, and, sliding apparently of its own accord along the floor, it went straight to one of the servants. The man con- fessed the theft, and produced the missing spectacles. The writer concludes, " My old friend was no believer in the supernatural powers claimed by these men ; but he was quite confounded at the result, and could never venture an explanation of the curious affair." A glance now at the views of the source of these phenomena entertained in all ages in India is most instructive. The popular belief at the present day is that these manifestations are supernatural} The intel- ligent observer finds a resort to physiological law, which in part explains them ; the serpent charmer using from childhood a drug, whose properties become infused through his system ; 2 and the Brahmins using incense in their incantations, to produce a similar influence on themselves and others. 3 To a psychological cause, the influence of fear on both mind and body, the learned student has referred a part of the phenomena ; such a reporter giving the following general practice as an illustration. 4 When a theft has been committed in a house, the Brahmin is called and the whole family assembled. Sitting in the centre of the circle, the 1 Spry's Modern India, vol. ir., p. 125. 2 Dubois' People of India, vol. n., chap. 36. 3 Ibid. 4 Spry's Modern India, p. 31. 100 FEARFUL INITIATION. Brahmin produces a little brass balanee, and, putting a mysterious old rupee into one scale, lie deals out a por- tion of rice equal to its weight to each one of the circle. Calling then on each to eat his portion, he declares that the rice in the culprit's mouth will remain dry and unmasticated. Fear so acts on the guilty person's nervous system that he cannot eat. 1 The Brahmin knows this ; and his trial is generally successful. Yet back of these causes, or superadded to them, is another, unexplained, the " special agent " of the French Academy. The facts are the same, the cause manifestly is the same, and the reasoning of intelligent men in all ages as to that cause has been the same, with what we have beheld in many another land and age. One writer refers it to the power called mesmeric. 2 He pictures also the appalling scene of initiation 3 to which the practisers of these arts subject every one who would enter their fraternity. In the dense jungle, far from human habitation, over a charcoal fire a small brass kettle filled with mysterious ingredients is placed, and around it in a circle skulls and bones are strewn. By this kettle, in this hideous circle, with tigers and hyenas prowling around, the candidate is all night long to remain seated, gazing at and stirring its contents. 4 If, unmoved, never for a moment diverted, he persists all night, that is a man who has any imaginable command 1 As the agitated speaker has a dry voice; the calm, a clear, mel- low one. 2 Buyer's Northern India, p. 369. 3 Do., p. 372. 4 The admirer of Shakspeare -will remember the counterpart of this scene in Macbeth, Act iv., Scene 1st HINDOO PHILOSOPHY OF MAGIC. 101 over his nervous system. The whole appearance and the entire proceedings of these devotees indicate that it is the nervous principle which they employ in working the wonders which every intelligent observer is convinced are real. Going back to the ancients, we find their view agree- ing in that we have already considered. Back to India, as the mother of the art, they all refer the facts, and the philosophy of those facts. Pliny ascribes the origin of magic to Zoroaster ; and the renowned magician from whom Nero sought to learn his art was a Chaldean. 1 Id the earliest times it was an art, a secret knowledge of natural principles ; one, however, which a Nero could not buy. Galen mentions the " Indian physicians " as healing by incantation, through knowledge of a hidden principle of our nature, similar to the attractive power of the magnet. Most of all, to the books of the Indians Galen especially refers. 2 Through the laborious studies of Colebroke 3 European scholars have regained the knowledge, familiar to the Greeks and Romans, that India is the fountain-head of that philosophy which Plato and Cicero, and the idealist of every age since, has agreed in ; either adopting it from others, or having it suggested by his own peculiar bent of mind. In India, in the earliest days, prevailed the theory 4 that ! See Let. Seventh, p. 80. 2 Ibid, p. 81. 3 Essays by Colebroke, in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of London, from 1824 to 1829. 4 See Epitome of History of Philosophy, translated from tho French by Dr. Henry, pp. 24, 25, 35, 36. 9* 102 SERPENT CHARMER IN CAIRO. all qualities, all attracting influences in nature (which, we know to be intermediate between spirit and matter), make up the soul of the world, of which human spirits are a part ; through which, since in it there is an active and a passive, a negative and a positive force, one man's soul can control another's soul and body, and move material objects, as teaches the scholiast of the middle ages. 1 Cousin, the great historian of ancient and mod- ern philosophy, echoes this statement, when, in speaking of Indian mysticism, he quotes and adopts Colebroke's exposition of the nature of magic. " This power consists in being able to take all forms ; * ' * it consists in changing the course of nature, and in acting upon inani- mate as well as upon animate things." 2 Turn we now to Egypt. Make with me, Charles, a day's tour of examination about Cairo, the present capi- tal of that country, and observe we the wonders now exhibited there. Mounted on our little donkeys, we pat- ter along the narrow crowded alleys, to the bazaar. As we approach this covered mart, towards which the crowd all day throng, among the innumerable novel scenes around see seated yonder the serpent charmer. Forth from his covered basket he draws a fearful, poisonous snake. He coils him about his neck like a ribbon ; he puts his head into his mouth, and presses in fold after fold of his body, till even the tail is shut in and con- cealed, and then draws him slowly forth again. Again, 1 See Letter Sixth, p. 63. 2 " Cours de Phitosophie," translated by H. 0. Wight, second series, yol. ii., Sect. 6. GOAT CHARMED. 103 he stretches him straight like a rod, and lays him on the ground, while so like a stick he seems, so stiff and motionless, you might readily pick him up for a cane. His power over the serpent is not the extracting of his deadly fangs, for you see them glistening in his mouth. Nor is it that the serpent has been domesticated ; for, as you pass on, you may see another of these serpent charmers, who has been called to draw forth and cap- ture a serpent hid under a house, or within its walls, seated for an hour before the hole which the serpent has entered, and looking intently at it with a flushed and nervous aspect, hissing the mean while, until you behold the untamed and deadly intruder drawn slowly forth from his lurking-place towards the charmer, who takes him like a coil of cord harmless in his hand, and places him in his basket. Moreover, a little further on you may see a goat perched on the slender point of a rod, and slowly raised higher and higher, while his master sings with more and more of frenzy ; till suddenly the song and nervous influence cease, the charm is broken, and the little animal falls like a dead weight from his pointed perch. No beholder can doubt that by the power of the nervous principle the charmer has control over the vital nervous energy of the animate creation. From time immemorial, now, this same power has been seen in Egypt, and described. The ablest English resi- dent writers have pictured it. 1 The French savans, under i Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyp- tians, by E. W. Lane, London, 1836; vol. n., chap. vn.,pp. 103, 104. 104 MAGNETIZING MAGICIAN. Napoleon, fifty years ago, extensively investigated it, 1 learning that it was a secret art, handed down like the ancient mysteries of Egypt. The ancient Greeks and Romans found the practisers of this art in Egypt ; the Greeks calling them by the expressive name " Psylli," or spiders. Strabo, among many allusions to it, espec- ially describes this power over the serpent, as seen in Egypt. Aelian further relates, " They are said to be enabled, by a magical art, to bring down birds from heaven, and to charm serpents so as to make them come forth from their lurking-places at command." 2 The student of the past, who has learned to give a high place among authentic historic records to the books of Moses, will have no hesitation in recognizing the same art at an earlier date of Egyptian history. 3 Ride we now to behold a similar power exercised on the human frame, and a control more mysterious exer- cised on rational minds. The famed magician, Sheikh Abd-el Kader, seated on a mat in his little room, orders a brasier of burning coals to be brought and placed at his side, while he sits writing on slips of paper invo- cations to the spirits. A boy is called, on the palm of whose hand the magician draws a rude square, with inner lines parallel to each side. In the eight outer 1 See Description de l'Egypt, Etat Mcderne, Tome S ccond, II. e Partie, pp. 5, 22, 23 ; also Egypt and the Books of Moses, by Hengstenberg, trans, by Bobbins, Andover, 1843, pp. 100 — 105, and his references to Quatremere. 2 Aelian, Lib. i., cap. 57 ; and Strabo, Book xiii., p 588 ; and Book xvii., p. 814. 3 Exod. 7 : 11, 12. CLAIRVOYANCE IN EGYPT. 105 compartments thus formed are inscribed in Indian (or Hindoo, showing the origin of the art) eight of the nine numerals, the figure five being placed in one corner of the central compartment. 1 In the centre a drop of ink from the magician's horn is deposited. Placing now his brasier between the boy and himself, and telling him to look intently at the ink-drop, the magician takes in his hand his slips of paper on which he has written his invocations. These slips of paper, each with a handful of incense, he throws, one after another, into the fire ; muttering, meantime, the same invocations, till the smoke and perfume is almost overpowering and bewil- dering to the senses. All these preliminaries, the magical numbers, the burning incense, the invocations, are but impressive accompaniments of ' his real art, as we have already learned from the ancients. Then is seen his real power. Now, partly in leading questions, but soon without them, he causes the boy to see and describe whatever his own imagination chooses. Then, when sufficiently under his influence, the boy goes on to de- scribe scenes known only to the spectators ; persons and places in England and America, of which no one but the inquirer himself has knowledge. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, only once beholding this performance, and in that one trial having sent for the magician to come to a foreigner's house and to appear before a dignified circle, naturally might not make due allowance for the disturbing nervous influence thus exerted on the per- 1 Lane's Modern "Hlgypt, vol. i., chap, xii., pp. 347 — 357. 106 ANCIENT HISTORY UNIFORM. former ; l just as Franklin and the first French com- mission beheld Mesmer's experiments under such a disturbing influence, and, therefore, at first, underrated them. But the able Mr. Lane, 2 long a resident in the East, and hundreds of ordinary observers, have witnessed a real unmistakable agent at work, similar to that admitted even by that first French commission. The power thus seen in different lands, and among different classes of men, must be a natural agent, placed by the Creator in all men ; mysterious indeed, unexplained and perhaps inexplicable, yet real. Moreover, this influence is not modern, but ancient ; in the East, as we have seen in Europe, 3 capable of being traced back indefinitely in the history of human nature. In the earliest times a distinction was made between the science and the art, between the use and abuse of this mysteri- ous power ; and all persons convicted of witchcraft were debarred from initiation into the sacred mysteries of Egypt. 4 The modes of 'practising sacred divination were the same ; Clement of Alexandria describing " the prophet" in the Egyptian festival " carrying in his bosom a water jar," 5 the gastromantia, so common in later 1 Hand-book for Egypt, by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, F.R.S., «fcc. (Murray) London, 1847, pp. 151—154. 2 Lane's Modern Egypt, vol. I., chaps, xi. and xii. s See Let. Fifth, p 47. 4 Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egrptians, by J. G. Wilkinson, F.R.S., M.R.S.L., &c. London, 18c 7. Second Series, vol. ii., p. 324. 5 Clem. Alex. Stromata, B. vi., p. 196 ; quoted by Wilkinson in his Second Series, vol. u., p. 279. HEALING BY MAGNETISM. 107 eges, being an art of ancient Egypt. The ends aimed at were the same ; the Egyptian oracles being consulted in cases of theft, and large rewards being paid by princes for successful information obtained. 1 The influence seen to be exerted was the same ; Macrobius describing the priests bearing the images of the Heliopolitan deity as " borne on by a divine spirit, not at their own will, but whither the god impelled them ;" and Herodotus men- tioning that at the festival of Sais one of the priests was led " blindfold " to a spot, where, being left, he went (really alone, though, as the people believed, led by two wolves) a distance of twenty stadia (about two and three-fourths miles), to the temple of Ceres, and back ; 2 which certainly resembles the blindfold guiding of the somnambule now seen. What is more inter- esting, the process of healing by Egyptian art seems the same as that now practised. Pliny describes the serpent charmers as having this healing power. " By contact " with the persons affected, " they are accus- tomed to alleviate the bite of serpents ; and by laying on their hand, to extract poisons from the body." 3 Strabo more fully describes the process thus : " The males among these people, they say, heal those who are bitten by a viper, by repeatedly touching upon (oweyjjt ItyitTtTOf.tki'Gvs) the person, as the magicians are accustomed to do ; and thus they transfer to them- 1 Wilkinson, Second Series, vol. t., p. 153. 2 Maerob. Saturn., i., 30 ; Herodt. n., 122 ; quoted by Wilkin- son, Second Series, vol. n., pp. 298 and 310. 3 Pliny, Lib. lx., cap. 2. 108 ANCIENT ANIMAL MAGNETISM. selves, first the livid hue, then the inflammation, and quiet the pain." l Here, then, we learn that in the most ancient times in Egypt, the " magicians " were ac- customed to practise an art the very counterpart of the magnetizing of our day ; while the " Psylli," or the ser- pent charmers, by the same process, actually wrought cures. Diodorus mentions that through dreams the o Egyptian physicians sought a knowledge of the remedies proper to be prescribed for disease ;' 2 while, however, they closely examined the case itself, using their own judgment ; thus showing that it was by an art, not by supernatural but by natural methods, they gained this knowledge. In referring to this, Wilkinson alludes to the fact that " the advocates of animal magnetism may see it in this passage." In immediate connection he thus alludes to the monuments of the ancient Egyptians : " Though their physicians are often mentioned by Hero- dotus and other writers, the only indication of medical attendance occurs in the paintings of Beni Hassan, where a doctor and patient are twice represented." 3 In both these representations the patient is on his knees, with one hand taking hold of the upper part of his other arm, and with the other hand grasping the calf of the physician's leg. In both the physician holds one hand on the head of the patient, while with the other 1 Strabo, Lib. xin., p. 588. See word Psylli in the Index for otter references. 2 Diodorus Sieulus, Book I., § 25. 3 Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, Eirst Series, vol. in., p. 393 ; also, see Note on the same page. PHENOMENA MOST ANCIENT. 109 hand, in one case, he administers a dose of medicine, and, in the other case, uses a surgical instrument. In a representation of a lady in the bath, two attendants seem to be making the mesmeric passes upon her; while a third holds to her nose a lotus-flower, appar- ently as an exhilarating drug. 1 We have followed up our clue far back into the dark past, to find the fast end of this historic chain. And now, to fix our last deep impression of the uniform mys- teries of the spiritual medium, listen we to a single sentence or two from the very oldest of the Grecian historians. As to the uniform existence of these phe- nomena in all ages, the same writer says : " The art of divination, as now practised in our temples, is derived from Egypt. ^ * These ceremonies in Greece are but of modern date ; whereas in Egypt they have been in use from the remotest antiquity." As to the uni- form likeness of these manifestations, that earliest of travelled writers describes as seen in his day cases of witchcraft, and trials and executions for it as demo- niacal even in barbarous Scythia, which are the very counterpart of those lately seen in Salem. 2 1 Wilkinson's Man. and Cust. of Anct. Egyptians, First Series, vol. in., p. 389; also Let. Eleventh, p. 133. 2 Herodotus, Book iv., § 68 ; Book n., §§ 54, 56, 58. tttttx €*ntjr THE MYSTERIES OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ASSYRIA CONTRASTED WITH AND MADE TO ESTABLISH THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. "And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." " Now the magicians of Egypt, they also did the same with their enchantments ; for they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents. But Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods." "Then the magicians said unto Pharaoh, This is the finger of God." — Acts 7 : 22 ; Exod. 7: 11, 12; 8: 19. And Daniel was taught " the learning and tongue of the Chaldeans." " Then the king made Daniel chief over the wise men of Babylon," " master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers." " The Chal- deans said, There is none other that can show it before the king, except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh." But " Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, The secret which the king hath demanded cannot the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, show unto the king. But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets." — 1 : 4 ; 2 : 11, 48 ; 5 : 11 j 2 : 27. Old Testament "antiquated." — Science reveres Scripture. — Sci- ence behind Scripture. — Moses learned. — Eight Forms of Egyptian Mystery. — Not behind our Mysteries. — Scripture View of these. — Accredit Science. — Daniel among Magi. — Abuse of Science condemned. — The True Supernatural. — Ma- gician's Testimony. — Magi's Testimony. — Picture of an An- cient Medium. — Why Men seek them. — Contrast of Natural and Supernatural. — Penalty of Curiosity. — Ancients appre- ciated these Things. — Christian Scholar in Egypt. — " Our Rock not as theirs." My Dear Charles: Why should the impression have been so widely dis- seminated, within a few years past, in our Christian land, SCIENCE REVERES SCRIPTURE, 111 that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are antiquated books ; not to be regarded, in this age of ad- vanced science, as " written by holy men of old, who wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit " ? Surely, only superficial thinkers could ever come to such a con- clusion. When Grotius, that master mind yet referred to by jurists of all nations as the founder of the science of international law, had spent his laborious life in com- paring the fundamental principles of right, as taught in all nations and in all professedly sacred books, in- stead of arriving at the conclusion that the Old and New Testaments were antiquated books, he devoted some of his maturest years to the work of pointing out the imperfection and failure of all other religious sys- tems, and of confirming the perfection and divine origin of the Christian Scriptures. 1 When Newton, following up and surpassing Copernicus and Galileo and Kepler, had reached and demonstrated the great laws of astron- omy, instead of finding them in conflict with the Bible allusions, from being in youth a sceptic, he became in mature age one of the most enthusiastic believers in the revealed word of God. 2 When Champollion, taught to respect the early Christians by the aid one of them had given him, was traversing, after nearly twenty years' study of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the land of his eager research, and when, one evening, his boat's prow touched, 1 The Truth of the Christian Religion, by Hugo G-rotius, trans- lated from the Latin by John Clarke, D.D. London, 1827. 2 Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse. London, 1733. 112 SCIENCE BEHIND SCRIPTURE. about sunset, the shore of old Thebes, and he leaped ashore, and ran, like a curious child, up to the great temple of Karnac, his enthusiasm was prompted by the desire to confirm what he had long contended for against his sceptical fellow-savans, that one of the sculptures on that temple represented Pharaoh Shishak leading cap- tive Rehoboam, King of Judah ; a fact which, that evening, with reverential joy, he was permitted to estab- lish, and thus to lay down this incident as an undisputed landmark, from which all comparative chronology of historical events may be surely reckoned. 1 The ablest geologists of our day are the warmest opponents of the idea that the Sacred Scriptures, as respects their science, are antiquated records. No man of science has ever studied the Old Testament without revering it. Why, then, in the infant development of these spir- itual phenomena, newly seen among us, — why should we suppose them to be in advance of the book we rever- ence as our only sure spiritual guide ? A very brief reflection, Charles, will impress the mind with the fact that the writers of these Scriptures, entirely aside from their divine inspiration, were far in advance of us in their knowledge of the spiritual medium, and its manifestations. The mere recollection in what age and among what men they lived, were educated and wrote, is enough to establish this. An added glance, ^Ancient Egypt, by Geo. E. Gliddon. New York, 1843. Chap, i., p. 9; and Egypt's Place in Universal History, by Ch. C. J Bunsen, D.Ph., and D. C.L., translated by C. H. Cottrell, Esq. London, 1848. Book i., sect, iii., pp. 164, 165. EIGHT FORMS OF EGYPTIAN MYSTERY. 113 however cursory, at their frequent allusions to the phe- nomena witnessed in our day, will satisfy any sincere mind that the spiritual difficulties which the reflective of our day encounter are here all anticipated ; both the difficulty and the mode of meeting it being taught. Happy, thrice happy, the inquiring anxious spirit, that shall also here find an attested guide sent from heaven, to lead our doubtful, erring steps through this dark spir- itual pilgrimage of earth ! Moses, living in Egypt in the palmy days of her antiquity, and "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," wrote the earliest, and, of course, the most difficult, of these volumes. Familiar with the power over spiritual influences, known to the initiated in his day, he specially mentions, in one connection, 1 eight different species of the practice of this control over the nervous influence. There was, first, "the user of divination ; " a mode of gaining knowledge of future events employed among the rude tribes, on the south of ancient Palestine ; 2 three kinds of which, by arrows, or rods, by sculptured images, and by the entrails of an- imals, are mentioned by Ezekiel ; 3 and the sin of which is characterized as rebellion against God. 4 There is, second, " the observer of times," or of dreams; 5 a reli- ance on dreams as revelations from the spirit world having been common in Egypt and Assyria, in Philistia 1 Deut. 18 : 10. 2 Josh. 13 : 22; 1 Sam. 6 : 2. 3 Ezek. 21 : 21. * 1 Sam. 15 : 23. 5 See Vulgate. 10* 114 EIGHT FORMS OF EGYPTIAN MYSTERY. and among the Israelites, 1 as it was afterwards among the Greeks and Romans. There was, third, the " en- chanter," or serpent charmer;* this practice seeming to have been accompanied with the same mutterings and charms now employed ; 3 the possessors of this art in the earliest times, and among various Eastern nations, being supposed able to reveal secrets of the spiritual world. 4 There was, fourth, the " witch," or sorceress ; men and women who divined by administering to themselves, or to others, exhilarating and poisonous drugs, which acted like the mephitic gas of Delphi on the Pythoness, and like the modern magician's incense ; a class most dan- gerous in Egypt, Assyria, Canaan, and elsewhere. 5 There was, fifth, the " charmer " by the power of song ; a mode of exerting a soothing or stupefying influence on the nervous system, both of beasts and men, now used in the East, mentioned by Xenophon as common in Greece, 6 and employed successfully, both on man and beast, among the ancient Israelites. 1 There was, sixth, "the consulter of familiar spirits," the vetir triloquist, or the diviner by " basins " or vases, 8 alluded 1 Gen. 40 : 8 et seq. Dan. 2 : 4 et seq. 2 Kings 21 : 6; 2 Chron. 33 : 6; Isa. 2:6; Micah 5 : 12. 2 See Septuagint. 3 p sal . 5 8 . ^ 5. 4 Gen. 44 : 5: Lev. 19 : 26; Numb. 23 : 3, 15, 23 ; 24 : 1; 2 Kings 17 : 17; 21 : 6. 5 Exod. 7 : 11; 22 : 17; 2 Kings 9 : 22; 2 Chron. 33 : 6; Isa. 47 : 12; Jer. 27 : 9; Mic. 5 : 12; Nah. 3 : 4. 6 Xen. Mem., II., v. 10, 11. i See Sept. on 1 Sam. 16 : 23, and Ps. 58 : 6. 8 Compare the Hebrew and Greek. NOT BEHIND OUR MYSTERIES. 115 to by Pliny and the Latin scholiast; a class of per- sons who excited a nervous influence in boys employed for their purposes, by causing them to gaze intently into the vases; from which they seemed to call up spirits of the dead, and to cause them to speak, while, really, they spoke from their own abdomens ; 1 a class of diviners common in remote antiquity. 2 There was, seventh, the "wizard," the Magian, or wise one ; men, probably, who, from their own mental power, without added arts, had gained the reputation of su- pernatural knowledge. 3 There was, eighth, the " nec- romancer," or consulter of departed spirits. 4 Besides these varied classes of persons, believed to have super- natural power, there were yet other classes ; such as " the astrologers, star-gazers, and monthly prognostica- tors," mentioned by Isaiah. 5 Sufficient, certainly, are these, to show that the writers of the Old Testament were not behind our age, but far before it, in their ac- quaintance with the wonders of the spiritual medium. Most important is it now to observe what view of the character of these manifestations is presented by the inspired writers of the Old Testament. Three points here are instructive. In the first place, the facts are admitted. A real influence, mysterious in its charac- i Compare 1 Sam. 28 : 8, with Isa. 8 : 19 and 29 : 4. 2 Lev. 19 : 31; 20 : 6, 17; Isa. 19 : 3; 2 Kings 21 : 6; 2 Chron. 33 : 6. 3 Mentioned Lev. 19 : 31; 20 : 6, 27. 4 Found only Deut. 18 : 11; though other classes of diviners used this art, 1 Sam. 28 : 11. 5 Isa. 47 : 13. 116 SCIENCE IN THESE MYSTERIES. ter, is stated to be put forth. The Egyptian magicians do change their serpents into rods. Young David by the power of music does alleviate the nervous malady and suffering of Saul ; and a genuine prophet like Elisha sometimes sees fit to employ the minstrel as an exciter of the spirit of prophecy. 1 Again, the source of this influence is treated as natu- ral. Moses nowhere ascribes the power of the magicians to evil spirits. On the contrary, the two names 2 which he gives them are these : " sacred writers," the original word having come down through various intermediate tongues to our language, always in a good sense, and as a word of science; 3 and " learned men," a name dignified in the corresponding Greek, and a title of high respect still given by the modern Arab to those only among foreign travellers whom he thinks specially skilled in science and art. 4 Thoroughly acquainted with all the wisdom of the Egyptians, Moses recorded the facts he witnessed as exhibitions of the science and art of " learned men" and " sacred writers." As late as the days of Nebuchadnezzar of Assyria, the Hebrew Daniel calls the Chaldean Magi by the same honorable names ; he spends years in the study of their learning ; and he accepts office among them as a scientific fraternity? i Exod. 7: 12; 1 Sam. 16 : 23; 2 Kings 3: 15. 2 Gen. 41 : 8 et seq.; Ex. 7: 11 et seq. 3 See the word " character," in Webster; also the Hebrew. 4 The title hakim. Compare Hengstenberg's Egypt and the Books of Moses, chap, i., p. 29. 5 Dan. 1: 4, 20; 2 : 2, 48; 5 : 11; also, Jer. 50: 35; Esther 1: 13. ABUSE OF SCIENCE CONDEMNED. 117 The latter is a name also expressly applied to Solomon and Daniel. 1 In the third place, a resort to such excitements of the nervous system for the purpose of gaining knowledge of the future, and of spiritual truth, is condemned; and upon two grounds. There is an intellectual reason, founded in the very nature of our mental organism. Living men do not and should not expect to receive communications from the dead. 2 To seek them is to waste time and energies that might be husbanded for a better purpose ; and if responses be received, they are just like the excited fan- cies, the brilliant but deceptive imaginings and utter- ances, of a man inebriated. 3 Yet more, there is a moral and religious reason. To resort to such means for gaining any knowledge, is to slight the noble and ample powers of arriving at all needful truth, which our Creator has given us as sufficient for their purpose ; and thus it is to dishonor him. 4 To trust to such means of spiritual knowledge, is to discard the established revelations which God has given to guide our souls to truth and duty here, and to heaven hereafter. 5 It is, in fine, to induce within ourselves such a derangement of the natural functions of both body and mind, such a disturbance of reason and sound judgment, and such error of feeling, thought and 1 1 Kings 2: 9; Ezek. 28 : 3. Josephus, who is authority on questions of Jewish history, mentions in accordance with the Scrip- ture allusions Solomon's knowledge of magic; Ant. 8 : 2 : 5. 2 Isa. 8 : 19. s Deut. 18 : 12, 14; 1 Sam. 28 : 16; Hos. 4 : 11, 12. 4 1 Sam. 15 : 23; Lev. 19 : 23. 5 Deut. 18 : 15; 1 Sam. 28 : 6; Isa. 8 : 20 118 MAGICIANS TESTIFY OF MOSES. action, as will fulfil the heathen maxim, " Whom the gods would destroy they first render insane ;" for death tem- poral and spiritual is the lot of him who thus trusts. 1 For these reasons the statute is given, " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live; 1 ' 2 the " witch" thus condemned being one who claims that the secret natural power she possesses is supernatural, and thus gains by false pre- tences an authority among men which only the laws of society and the laws of God can justly exert ; while our fathers, in strange oversight of the very spirit of the Mosaic statute, made it applicable to one who denied all supernatural power, and never sought any such au- thority. Most admirable and most satisfactory to a sincere mind, looking for truth, is the manner in which all these sources of unjustifiable knowledge are brought into con- trast with the really supernatural in the Old Testament, and are made to establish its claims as a revelation from God. Skilled in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, Moses, empowered with real supernatural power, seems directed first to perform those exhibitions which he knew the wise men of Egypt could copy. 3 Thus leading them on to perform all the wonders which they by their wisdom could accomplish, Moses showed the limit of natural power ; and he compelled them, thus committed, to ac- knowledge that limit, and to testify that the power with which he was gifted was supernatural.^ Thus, moreover, 1 1 Chron. 10 : 13. 2 See Josephus Ant., n., xiii., § 3. 3 Ex. 22 : 18. * E xoo\ 8 : 19. MAGI TESTIFY OF DANIEL. 119 Moses' miracles were proved to Pharaoh to be the work- ing, not of one among many gods, not the power of a " God of the Hebrews " who had no control in Egypt ; but they were shown to be the working of the " one* living and true God," who made and ruled all the world, and controlled the elements, and ruled the souls of men, in Egypt as well as in Canaan. 1 Moreover, as this peculiar testimony was given by the first, so was it by the last in the line of divinely empowered men, through whom the Old Testament re- cords were given as an established revelation from God. Daniel, educated from childhood in Babylon, as Moses was in Egypt, being one of the learned class, known to be one of them, and eminent in all their wisdom, ■ — Daniel is gifted with a new and unheard-of power. 2 By study of the workings of the human mind, by knowledge of the fact that dreams are but continuations of our waking thoughts, purposes and wishes, presented to the mind often during sleep in distorted images, and by observing that what a man thus is thinking of night and day he will realize, — by natural wisdom the Assyrian Magi might so interpret a dream that its result should accurately follow, and thus the event seem to be foretold, when it really followed as a natural consequence from the dreamer's state of mind. 3 But, Daniel, with added supernatural power, receives knowl- 1 Hengstenberg's Egypt and the Books of Moses, transl. by Bobbins, chap, n., pp. 96 — 100. 2 Dan., 1 : 4, 20; 2 : 48; 5 : 11, 12; compare 2 : 28, 47. 3 See Let. Eighth, pp. 88, 89. 120 PICTURE OF AN ANCIENT MEDIUM. edge of the forgotten dream, 1 as well as of the inter- pretation. And thus even the Magi themselves acknowl- edge that Daniel has a power belonging " unto the gods only whose dwelling is not in the flesh;" a power no one of their order ever possessed. What is thus seen to be established in reference to the first and the last of the Old Testament writers (that they had fully mastered all natural powers, and then received an added supernatural endowment), may be equally attested of all the sacred penmen interven- ing. In a living, speaking picture, one of a thousand like occurrences of that day, a writer 2 in the Old Testa- ment has been directed to embody the facts, and the lessons from those facts, which in all ages should give Heaven-sent instruction to men as to the mysteries of the spiritual medium. At dead of night, a man of tall, gigantic form, muffled in his robe and evidently seeking disguise, is seen entering the little village of Endor, and approaching the door of a " medium." The law of God, given by Moses, strictly forbade the practice of her art ; and the statute, often a dead letter, had been rigidly enforced by Saul, the then King of Israel. He " had put away those that had familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land." It was not the civil law, however, that made that muffled man seek disguise. There is something always in the heart of man which makes him feel, when resorting to such sources of secret knowledge, that he is engaged in a business justly re- garded by intelligent men as a mark of superstitious 1 Compare Dan. 1: 20; 2 : 4, with Dan. 2 : 11, 28, 47. 2 1 Sam. 28 : 3—20. WHY MEN SEEK THESE ARTS. 121 weakness, if it be not criminal. There was a conscious shame which made the disguised man wish to hide his weakness from man, and a troubled conscience which took away his peace with God. A great crisis, a des- perate battle on the morrow, was pending ; and his agitated mind cherished the unhallowed longing to fore- know the event. There were then three divine modes of giving revelations to men ; three authorized methods given by God for gaining knowledge from the other world ; and it was by copying these that unholy art gained its power. These were through dreams, and through prophets, and through Urim, the emblem of revelation. But all these the anxious man had sought, and had received no response. It was as manifest that it was not the divine will to gratify his curiosity, as it is when now neither in nature, nor in our own con- sciousness, nor in the revealed word of God, can we find all we crave to know. Agitated in spirit, cherishing in heart "rebellion like the sin of witchcraft " because he could learn no more, the proud yet pusillanimous war- rior was stealing now at dead of night, like many another, to consult the medium of the village. A knock is heard at her low door ; and, as it turns on its hinges in the dim light, a female form is seen suspiciously approach- ing. " I pray thee," breaks on her ear from the muffled warrior, "divine unto me by the. familiar spirit, and bring me him up whom I shall name unto thee." She hesitates, and expresses her fears. " Behold," says she, " thou knowest what Saul hath done ; how he hath cut off them that have familiar spirits out of the land." 11 122 CONTRAST of natural and supernatural. Assured, however, of safety, she begins her incantations. She was mistress of the art gastro?nantia, 1 a ventrilo- quist ; one ofa " learned " class, 2 who really foretold at times accurately future events. 3 Like her fellows of the same art, we may imagine her bringing forth her water-vase, and burning her incense ; thus, through nervous excitement, really expecting to see reported the thought, the secret wish, of her inquirer ; as now, through the nervous principle or spiritual medium, it seems to be. But, suddenly, — since it is Saul, the King of Israel himself, that is there as inquirer, and since the occasion justifies such an interposition, — to the terror of the diviner herself, not an image of the excited fancy, but a real form arises ; an "old man covered with a man- tle " comes up ! God has seen fit to send Samuel him- self in bodily form, with a real mantle that can be seized hold upon, to rebuke the impiety, the irreverent curiosity, of him who thus sought knowledge through the undue excitement of the nervous principle, through the diseased manifestation of the spiritual medium. 4 Forth goes that 1 See the Hebrew, and the Greek of the Septuagint version ; also, Josephus and others. 2 Josephus' Antiquities, Book ti., chap, xiv., § 4. 3 Rabbi Salomo, on Deut. 18 : 11, says, " This person, like the ventriloquist, so called at Athens, prophesied true things through a demon having possession of him." Quoted by Wetstein, on Matt. 17 : 15. 4 This was the view of the ancient Jews ; see in the Apocrypha Ecnlesiasticus 46: 20. It is also the view of Sir Walter Scott, wb ose thorough study of the history of this entire subject certainly en titles his opinion to have weight. See Letters on Denionology CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR IN EGYPT. 123 mighty monarch as we should expect such an one to go ; as must all those who daily and nightly allow themselves to suffer such a deranging excitement. Reason is be- dimmed, and judgment wavers in its enthroned seat ; his nerves are unstrung, and there is no steadiness in his purpose, and no firmness in his action. He is, like hundreds who are following him, a lost man ; and speed- ily he rushes upon his self-prepared ruin, and falls by his own suicidal hand. In this distant age, in this remote land, it is impossi- ble, Charles, that we should fully enter into the spirit of this divinely drawn picture. Could we carry our minds back to ancient times, could we transport ourselves, for instance, to the land of Egypt, and live there, as it were, with Clement of Alexandria, and the men of his time, far more deeply should we feel the contrast between ail these varied wonders of the spiritual meaium alluded to in the Old Testament, and the truly super- natural, by which God confirmed his ancient revelation as divine. Turn to the pages of that strong-minded, clear-headed father, who opened to Champollion's mind the system of hieroglyphic writing. 1 Follow him through his description of the mysteries of Egypt, and the won- drous science of India and Egypt, which lay at the basis of those mysteries. 2 Mark how, living as he did in the and Witchcraft. New York, 1830; Harper's Fam. Lib., vol. xi., Letter m., pp. 58 — 62. 1 Clementini Alexandrini Opera, Graece et Latine, Lugduni Ba- tavorum. 1616. Stromatum, Lib. v., p. 405. 2 Ibid, Admonitio ad Gentes, pp. 7, 8; and Stromatum, Lib. vi., pp. 456, 457. 124 MEN OF THAT AGE CONVINCED. day when the simple facts of the gospel of Christ were fast throwing into shade all the venerable forms of Egyptian as well as Grecian science and philosophy, and were winning away the most gifted youth from the religion of their fathers, the Christian scholar boldly appeals to the nations to confess that entirely unlike to all human wisdom are the established facts of the Scriptures of revelation ; and that the inspiration which gave the Old and New Testaments is not to be com- pared with that of the Egyptian prophet, and of the Greek Pythoness. 1 Such a man, and such men, Charles, could appreciate what we are so indistinctly impressed with. In the very age when, in the same land where knowledge of the powers in human nature had reached a degree of culture such as it never since has surpassed, the writers of these Sacred Scriptures were proved, before the learned as well as the ignorant, to be gifted with an entirely distinct, a peculiar, a supernatural power. Surely, then, our faith rests on a rock " higher than we," on " the Eock of Ages ; " for the men of all on earth most able and most anxious to assert the contrary were forced to confess, " Their rock is not as our rock." When the wise men of ancient Egypt and Assyria, who witnessed them, testify to the supernatural power of Moses, Daniel, and the other prophets, it would be doing the greatest violence to my mental nature to force it into disbelief. I will not do it ; but I will try to cher- ish such a spirit of love for the truth, whatever it may 1 Clementini Alexandrini Opera, Admonitio ad Gentes, pp. 7, 8; and Stromatum, Lib. i., p. 245. " THEIR ROCK NOT AS OURS." 125 be, that when I read the Old Testament, attested through century after century to be a revelation from God, I shall not rashly adjudge as human that which the greatest minds of earth have known to be divine. 11* Ttiltt flmntji THE WONDERS OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS, COMPARED WITH AND CON- FIRMING THE MIRACLES AND INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. " If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out ? " " The evil spirit said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye ? " " And many that believed came and confessed, and showed their deeds. Many of them also that used curious arts brought their books together and burned them." — Luke 11 : 19 ; Acts 19 : 15, 18, 19. " If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not ; but if I do, believe the works." " No man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal him." " What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him ? Even so knoweth no man the things of God but the Spirit of God. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." —John 10: 37, 38 ; Matt. 11 : 27 ; 1 Cor. 2 : 10, 11. Christian School in Egypt. — Greek Youth won. — Supernatural Revelation needed. — Greek and Eoman View. — " Desire of all Nations." — Revelation not from Reason. — Not from the Spiritual Medium. — Jewish Art in Christ's Day. — Jewish Views of Christ's Miracles. — Mysterious Arts of Paul's Day. — Compared with Christ's Miracles. — Compared with Paul's Mira- cles. — Evil Spirits. — Possessions only in Christ's Day. — Good Angels. — No Revelation from them. — Miracles prove Inspira- tion. — The Ancients convinced. — All Ages convinced. My Dear Charles: One day about one hundred years after the birth of Jesus Christ, a young man was walking alone, in deep thought, along the sandy beach near Alexandria, in GREEK YOUTH WON. 127 Egypt. Deeply read in the philosophy of his time, he had passed through the various Grecian schools of the Stoics, of Aristotle and of Plato. In none of them all had he found anything to satisfy a soul seeking truth. In a distant land he had heard of the famed Christian school of Alexandria, which was taking pre- cedence of all the time-honored colleges of Egypt, and drawing the best youth from all the attractions of the Museum and the Libraries of the Ptolemies. Voyaging thither, and landing in the literary emporium of that day, the young man for a time kept aloof from the school he had sought, not making himself known, but forming an outside judgment ere he should commit him- sel£ It was at this juncture he was rambling, lonely, unknown and pensive, on the sea-shore. An old man, also walking there, passed him, drew near and saluted him. Soon they were in close and earnest converse ; and, as they went over together the grand features of the philosophies of their day, one could see that they were of kindred spirit and of like experience, and that souls made for communion were met. These themes exhausted, and their mutual difficulties and dissatisfac- tion fully exchanged, the old man, with a kindling eye and in glowing eloquence, began to speak of another theme, — of the " truth as it is in Jesus." The new doc- trine chained the young man's ear, won his heart, and made him a disciple ; and, after a life of masterly liter- ary toil, and of devoted Christian labor, he penned one of the most manly appeals which ever reached the eye of a Roman emperor or of the world, proving the supe- 128 SUPERNATURAL REVELATION NEEDED. riority of the Christian to every other religious system, and Justin the Martyr sealed his testimony with his life. Charles, we live in an age when men reason for themselves, and everything is questioned and discussed. But nothing can exceed the folly of supposing that we have got beyond generations before us ; that we have examined more thoroughly, reasoned more profoundly, or can find eternal sure truth anywhere else than the Grecian and Roman world found and embraced it. The New Testament Scriptures are alone the eternal truth of God, revealed for our guidance. Turning, then, to the records of the New Testament, let us seek what it was that convinced Grecian and Roman scholars, familiar with the Egyptian mysteries. And, while we trace out its allusions to the wondrous manifestations of the spiritual medium, remember we that they were penned in the Ciceronian age of Grecian wisdom and of Roman learning, and that they were published to the world in the day when the largest expe- rience of those mysteries had been gathered from the gleanings of every age and land, and when the matured philosophy of their development had been most carefully sought out. We may then be prepared to appreciate, in the contrast, the really supernatural in the miraculous facts here recorded, and in the divine inspiration by which the spiritual truths here embodied were revealed. Nothing is more manifest than this, that all positive knowledge of the spiritual world, of God and of our future existence, of the preparation we need for that existence and of the means of securing that preparation, GREEK AND EOMAN VIEW. 129 — all this knowledge must be gained, if gained at all, from sources outside of ourselves, from supernatural revelations. All our personal sources of knowledge are the observation of material things by the senses, and the intuitions or deductions of our reason as to spiritual truth ; and while our observation cannot reach beyond our present existence, our reason can only suggest prin- ciples ; it can apprehend no positive fact as to our future spiritual condition. Of this men without the Bible, such as Cicero and Plato, 1 have been as thoroughly con- vinced as we can be. Moreover, such a revelation we need ; it is not to us a matter of no importance whether we have it or not. Our spirits are bound to another world ; and for that world they are not prepared. For, just as truly as our bodily frames are disordered, and no human art or power can restore them so that this disorder shall not increase and end in utter decay, so our spirits are disordered, unfitted to mingle happily even with our own fellow-men, and much less with pure angels and a holy God. Of this, too, the poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome 2 spoke as clearly as did Paul the apostle of Christ ; feel- ing it as really, if not as deeply, as does he who believes in the Bible picture. They looked, therefore, for a supernatural revelation from the Creator and Father of our spirits. 3 1 See Lectures on Christian Theology, by G-. C. Knapp, D.D., translated from the. German by Leonard Woods, Jun., D.D. Art i., sect. 9 ; citations from ancients. 8 Knapp's Theology, Art. ix., sect. 74 ; citations. 3 Virgil's Pollio, Eclog. iv.; Knapp's Theology, Art.x., sect. 89. 130 " DESIRE OF ALL NATIONS." How men have longed for, and how they have in all ages sought such revelations, we have seen. As Plato said, the magic of Zoroaster, of Socrates, and of other seekers of truth, was nothing else than a means of knowing God. 1 But the oracles at length ceased to be trusted, and ceased to respond ; and it was as Plutarch said, because they were abused for trifling purposes, and perverted from their higher end. As Milton, in his rare study of the ancients, truthfully has pictured in his sublime " Christmas Hymn," on the night when Christ was born the Lybian oracle of Ammon, the Egyptian prophet, the Syrian deities, the shrines of Greece and the genius of Rome, had all alike ceased to give responses : *' The oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Poms through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priests from the prophetic cell." But now one from the other world was sent to give to men sure knowledge of God and of the spirit world. The necessity of human nature, perceived and spoken of by a Hebrew writer as early as the days of Zoroaster, 2 i See Let. Sixth, p. 61. 2 Haggai 2:7. The age of Zoroaster is generally fixed between 589 and 519 B. C. Haggai prophesied in the reign of Darius Hystaspis, which began 521 B. C. The two men lived in the same land, as well as in the same age. REVELATION NOT FROM REASON. 131 whom Pliny called the originator of magic, was now to be met. " The Desire of all Nations " came ; and as Columbus, on his return from a New World, could alone give sure knowledge as to what before had been conjec- tured, so He who alone "came down from heaven" could " bear witness to the truth." He lived and taught ; he died, arose, and ascended to heaven, leaving behind men empowered to write out his revelation for the world. Opening these their records, thus divinely given, we see confirmed what before had been impressed on the conviction of men. Observation and consciousness never can give positive knowledge of spiritual truth. He who made the world was in the world ; but the world knew him not. No man hath seen God at any time ; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and he hath declared him. 1 By observation, the Greek, from the creation, from the things made, perceived God's eternal power and personal deity ; and reason, con- science, taught him in principle the law of God, his dis- obedience to it, and his just condemnation. 2 But, the world by wisdom, in fact, knew not God, in his real character, which was seen in Christ crucified; they knew not the means he had provided for the spirit's ransom and renovation, through the mediation of his Son ; a fact that could not be made known, except by i John 1 : 1—18. 2 Rom. 1 : 20, 32, and 2 : 14, 15. 132 NOT FROM THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM. the hearing of the ear, through the voice or pen of a herald. 1 Moreover, not through any mysterious development of the spiritual medium were revelations to be obtained. The plain, practical New Testament writers fail not to allude to the wonderful manifestations seen in their day, and to the popular impression in reference to them, not shunning to bring them into comparison with the miracles of Christ and their own inspiration. Jesus one day alluded to the mysterious arts by which Jewish exorcists cast out devils. Josephus 2 thus describes a scene of that day, of which he was a per- sonal eye-witness. Speaking of Solomon, he says, " God also enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to man. He composed such incantations, also, by which distem- pers are alleviated. And he left behind him the man- ner of using such exorcisms, by which they drive away demons, so that they never return ; and this method of cure is of great force unto this day, for I have seen a certain man of my own country, whose name was Ele- azar, releasing people that were demoniacal, in presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was this : he put a ring that had a root of the sort spoken of by Solomon to the nostrils of the demo- niac, after which he drew out the demon through his i 1 Cor. 1 : 21, 24; 2 : 8, 10; and Rom. 10 : 14. 2 Josephus' Antiquities, Book viii., chap, n., sect. 5. Jewish art ix Christ's day. 133 nostrils ; and when the man fell down immediately, he adjured him to return into him no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations he composed. And when Eleafcar would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know that he had left the man ; and when this was done the skill and wisdom of Solomon was shown very manifestly." Here the facts, the relief of the sufferer, and the moving of the metallic basin, are the same as seen in all ages, and in all lands from India to our shores. 1 The artificial means, the use of the metallic ring, of the exhilarating or stupefying drug, and of the mesmeric passes to bring the disease from the head, are the same with those seen in the Koman and Grecian writers, on the ancient monuments of Egypt, and in the practice of modern India. 2 The reference of the cure to an art dig- nified with the authority of Solomon shows that there was a science behind ; and the reference of the disease to demoniacal agency shows the popular belief, behind which there was also a scientific truth. Now, with such scenes, Matthew, a resident in Palestine, and Luke, an intelligent physician, inquiring as tc the facts in Christ's history, knew their readers were familiar ; and they allude to them to confirm by the contrast the really supernatural in Christ's miracles. With an 1 See Let. Tenth, p. 98. 2 ibid, pp. 107—109. 12 134 MYSTERIOUS ARTS OF PAUL'S DAY. equal fraukness and confidence, the different opinions entertained by those who witnessed them, as to Christ's wonderful works, are stated. When he casts out de- mons, some say " he does it by Beelzebub ;" and when the voice from heaven addresses him, the men of im- pressible nervous organism say, " An angel spake to him ! " while the phlegmatic hearers sneeringly respond, " It only thundered." l In the slightly later times of the apostles of Christ, the same intelligent notice of the mysterious manifesta- tions of that day is taken. The educated and candid Luke, as a physician specially qualified to judge, always mentions incidents of this kind. Simon, the sorcerer, for a long time had perfectly fascinated the people of Samaria by his arts ; and they truly believed him to be the " great power of God." 2 The damsel of Philippi truly possessed the spirit of a Delphic " Pythoness," and could " divine." With respectful mention the " curious arts," and the " books " 3 treating on those arts, are alluded to. Without fear that it shall detract from Paul's real inspiration, Luke records the remark of the Pharisees, indicating their opinion about the apostle, "If a spirit or an angel has spoken to him, let us not fight against God." 4 Thus noticing these sources through which super- natural knQwledge was sought, the New Testament writers show the total unlikeness, the entire superiority, i Matt. 12 : 24; John 12 : 29. 2 Acts 8 : 9, 10. 3 Acts 19 : 19. * Acts 23 : 9. COMPARED WITH CHRIST'S MIRACLES. 135 of the testimonials they brought. The Jewish exorcist, like the ancient and modern practitioners of like art in every land and age, to our time, may relieve certain affections of the body, by a peculiar power exerted over the nervous system of the sufferer. But Christ, by a touch, and often by a word at a distance, healed a hemorrhage of twelve ■ years' continuance, a palsy of thirty-eight years' duration, and leprosy, the incurable disease ; while he also gave speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, and " a right mind " to the lunatic. 1 The Hindoo devotee may throw himself into a trance, 2 from which, after many days, he may be revived. But Christ, casually entering after a clay's journey a little village, met the corpse of a young man whom his friends were carrying to the grave ; and,, touching the bier, he restored him. 3 When in a distant region beyond the Jordan, he heard of the severe illness of a poor man living near Jerusalem ; and, waiting until he had expired and had lain in the grave till cor- ruption began, at a distance he first foretold that the dead should be raised, and then, coming and standing at the tomb amid a cavilling multitude, said " Come forth," and the dead came forth. 4 Finally, Jesus him- self, after hanging nailed to the cross three hours, after a soldier had thrust his spear into his vitals, so that not 1 Matt. 9 : 20; John 5:5; Luke 5 : 12; compare 2 Kings 5 : 7; Luke 7 : 22, and 8 : 35. 2 See Let. Ninth, p. 96. 3 L u k e 7 : 11—15. 4 John 11 : 1—44. 136 COMPARED WITH CHRIST'S MIRACLES. only blood, but also the fluids of the vital organs, poured forth, and after lying in the grave until the third day, — Jesus himself, without another's aid, arose from the tomb. 1 Equally striking is the truly supernatural in the apostles' miracles ; into contrast with which all, and more than, the arts we wonder at were brought, and were acknowledged to be but vain artifice. When Simon, the Magian, first saw the miracles of the apos- tles, he was overwhelmed with astonishment; while, moreover, his cupidity yet remaining, he sought to pur- chase the power as a new art. 2 From the divining damsel the simple word of Paul expelled the spirit which actuated her, and made her Christ's meek fol- lower. 3 Luke, looking on with a physician's practised eye, saw handkerchiefs and aprons brought from Paul effect the cure of diseases; and when the vagabond Jewish exorcists attempted to copy these healings, and the possessed man leaped madly upon the pretenders, such fear and conviction seized on the minds of the prac- tises of those arts, that " many confessed, and showed their deeds, and brought their books on the curious arts and burned them ; " magnifying thus the name of the Lord Jesus. 4 Thus setting forth the deceptive, the mere art based on natural principles, and teaching that a resort to these was not to be trusted, but to be shunned, the New Tes- 1 Matt. 27 : 45; John 19 : 34, 35, and John 10 : 18. 2 Acts 8 : 13, 19. 3 Acts 16 : 18. * Acta 19 : 11—19. EVIL SPIRITS. 137 tament writers go yet further. They reveal most clearly and consistently the nature of evil and good spirits, the connection they have with us, and the source whence we should look for a revelation from God. As to evil spirits, we are assured of their existence ; what had been impressed on the belief of all mankind, and clearly taught in the Old Testament from the fall of Adam, being clearly exemplified. As an anomaly in the whole world's past and future history, just as much a feature of that age and of that little land as was the life of the Son of God himself, in Christ's day and in the country where he moved, actual bodily pos- sessions with demons occurred. They did not exist, apparently, in ages before. The Old Testament men- tions no instance ; the case of Saul being entirely dif- ferent from the New Testament possessions. 1 Josephus mentions them in no age but that immediately pre- ceding his own, except in the case of Saul, and in allu- sion to Solomon ; where, evidently, the peculiarity of his own day is transferred to former periods, or the Greek and Roman view of demons already considered is given. 2 They existed not after Christ's day. Origen, in his commentary on Matt. 17th, writing less than two hun- dred years after Christ, remarks that the physicians of 1 1 Sam. 16 : 14 — 23 ^ 18 : 10—12. 2 Josephus* Antiq., Book yi., chap, xi., sects. 2, 3, and Book Tin., chap, ii., sect. 5. Also, "Wars, Book vn., chap, vi., sect. 3j where the nature of demoniacal possession, and the plant used bj the. exorcist in removing it, are described. 12*= 138 POSSESSIONS ONLY IN CHRIST'S DAY. his day did not believe there were such possessions. 1 Moreover, though the gospels of Jesus are full of plain instances, and the word " demon " in Christ's life refers to evil spirits, yet mention of demoniacal possessions, even in the Acts of the Apostles, begins to fade away and to be lost, and the word is there applied oftener, in the Grecian sense, to demigods, and supposed revelations derived through them ; while, in the epistles, the only influence evil spirits are intimated to have over men, the only power which we are to regard them as pos- sessing, and against which we are to guard, is a spir- itual influence. 2 For a few years permitted to pos- sess the bodies of men, during the same years and in the same land where the Son of God was passing his human existence, permitted thus at that juncture to appear, that the power of man's Saviour might be manifest in overcoming the power of man's spiritual destroyer, the occasion for such possessions having passed by, they too, with other influences of a miraculous nature, passed away. The claim to the possession of such a power, sought for in themselves and others by crafty men, who would employ a diseased natural agency for gain, as seen in Simon and the damsel at Philippi, is always condemned by the apostles, and abandoned by those who beeame Christians. 3 James seems to classify, and that as mental philosophers in all ages have, the sources whence knowledge of the spir- 1 Quoted in Knapp's Theology, § 65. 2 See the references in Eobinson's New Test. Greek Lexicon. Acts 8 i 20; IB; 19, and 19 : 18, 19. GOOD ANGELS. 139 itual world is sougat ; mentioning that derived through the physical senses, that through the mental powers, and, lastly, that sought through the intermediate agency of the Grecian demon, or the spiritual medium ; and all these he condemns. 1 No one can read attentively the New Testament view of evil spirits, without being satis- fied that, while they plainly warn us against an evil influence on our moral and religious nature from such beings, they discard the idea of any power over man's physical and mental nature permanently exerted by them. Equally clearly are the existence and office of good angels set forth. Since our little world is thickly peo- pled, why should not other larger worlds be ? If our spirits live separate from the flesh in another world, why should not other spirits be there also ? Christ taught, in opposition to the Sadducees, that there are angels and spirits; and that in the resurrection hu- man souls are like the angels. 2 He taught that angels are cognizant of and interested in man and his affairs on earth ; joy spreading throughout their hosts over one sinner that repents. 3 The angels, moreover, Christ and his apostles taught, exert an influence on man, and on his behalf. The angels of one who serves God always behold the face of our Father in heaven ; they are min- istering spirits, sent forth to minister to them that are the heirs of salvation ; they come as welcoming messengers to meet the spirit parting from its abode on earth, and i James 3 : 15. 2 Luke 20 : 36—38. 3 Luke 16 : 1—10. 140 ANGELS REVEAL NOTHING. they bear it to the company of others gathered from among men. 1 Here, however, ceases their influence over us ; it is purely a spiritual influence wrought on our spirits. Before Christ's coming angels did bring messages to man ; appearing to the patriarchs, mediating between God and man when the Law was given, and announcing Christ's birth before his minis- try. But, since Christ has come to teach men, and his perfected revelation has been given, angels are no more thus employed ; no revelation since Christ's coming have they brought. 2 Moreover, no spirit of man that has left this earth, however much that spirit may sympathize with the living, and by indirect influences aid them, — no soul will be allowed to return with a message from the spiritual world to his friends on earth. 3 Finally, most clearly and satisfactorily to a sincere mind is the mode and the testimony of God's giving this his revelation presented. It seems to be this. As we have seen, we need a revelation to teach us the truth as to God, our future state, and the preparation meet for it. Such a revelation must come from a supernatural source, and only by supernatural testimonials can we know that it is from God. Of two kinds of power only, now, have we any knowledge ; power over matter, which 1 Matt. 18 : 10; Heb. 1 : 14; Luke 16 : 22. 2 Gen. 19 : 1, &c. ; Mat, 1 : 20; 2 : 13 ; Luke 2 : 10; Acts 7 : 53 ; Gal 3 : 19; Heb 2 : 2. Also Heb. 2 : 3—5, where tbe "Christian dispensation " is said to be committed, after Christ, not to angels, but to men. See Stuart, on the passage. 3 Luke 16 : 31. INSPIRATION PECULIAR IN NATURE. 141 we can see and know, and power over spirit, which we cannot see, and of which we cannot directly be assured. Only by showing supernatural power over things seen, can any man convince another that he has supernatural power in reference to things unseen. Hence Christ wrought miracles. To prove his divine power, he did what no man can perform ; while, at the same time, to show his divine love to man, he made all his mighty works testify of that love. He healed incurable disease, "going about doing good," but not overturning moun- tains and casting them into the sea ; and this he did, not to excite wonder, not even primarily to relieve bodily suffering, but to prove that he had power to for- give sins and save the soul. 1 To his disciples he gave the same supernatural power in things seen, that they might be believed when they claimed supernatural knowledge of things unseen. 2 They wrote histories of their own and of Christ's miracles, whose truth no one m their age disputed, although their narratives were published when knowledge of the mysteries of spiritual power was most extensive, and the philosophy of that power was best understood. In those records they declare that they received directly from Christ and from God a supernatural knowledge of spiritual truth to communicate to man ; their seen power in healing the bodies of men being given simply to prove this correspondent and only really important power to guide i Matt. 9 : 6. 2 John 14 : 12, 26; 15 : 24—27; Acts 3 : 12. 142 INSPIRATION FROM GOD'S SPIRIT. and bless the spirits of men. 1 In describing Sie nature of this power, they speak of it as entirely unlike any possessed by men through the soul's own mysterious energies. It may be a fact that when one person has allowed her nervous energy to be controlled by another of stronger nerve, and when a second allows his thought to be echoed through that other, the secret knowledge of that second person may be reported. But this is noth- ing more nor less than my thought uttered by my own volition, through another to another. There is no power on earth by which another can become possessed of my secret thought, unless I willingly reveal it through my lips, or my pen ; or through the telegraphic rapping, writing or speaking, of the spiritual medium ; or through some other natural power, of which I am now uncon- scious. Hence, says an apostle, a man of large learning and wide experience in mysteries like those of our time, "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him ?" No earthly human power can reach a single thought in another's spirit, unless he himself reveal it. " Even so," — must it not be thus ? — "the things of God knoweth no man, but the spirit of God." And thus, as Jesus said, " no man knoweth the Father, save the Son," who alone has been in heaven, and "has come down from heaven; and he to whom the Son shall reveal him." So Paul argues, " If any man ever knows the deep things of God, God must i Gal. 1 : 11, 12; 1 Cor. 14 : 37; 2 Cor. 2 : 17; 1 Thess. 2 : 13; 4: 8; 2 Pet. 1 : 21; 1 John 4 : 6. tertullian's argument. 143 by his Spirit reveal them unto us;" communicating with us in words, as one man communicates his knowledge to another. * And now, Charles, I would *that we could see and feel the foree of these conclusions, as whole nations and men of the ablest minds have felt them. Forth went these testimonials of the apostles' power in their day, and the intellect of all Greece and Rome was enchained by them. The schools of the Ptolemies at Alexandria, where was gathered all the accumulated learning of Egypt, India, Greece and Rome combined, were de- serted by the young men, who thronged to the Chris- tian school there established in the century immediately after Christ. 2 The noblest genius of that age embraced the Christian faith, beholding the heaven-wide difference between it and all that philosophy had before taught ; so that in three centuries the Roman world bowed to and acknowledged the Sacred Scriptures as the only divinely given revelation. Thus the able Tertullian, thoroughly acquainted with what he attempted, draws the contrast, in his heroic appeal to the Roman emperor ; referring to the Grecian notion of the demon, " one of whom Soc- rates said that he had from childhood attending him, and which he always consulted before he undertook any- thing of moment;" declaring that by this demon (or spir- i 1 Cor. 2 : 10—13 2 Neander's Planting and Training of the Christian Church, Book ii., and Book in., chap, vi.; also, Neander's History of the Chureh in the First Three Centuries, sect. 1st (A) ; especially his allusions to the Goetae. 144 GROTIUS' THOROUGH STUDY. itual agent) "magicians perform all their amazing feats, calling up ghosts and departed spirits from the shades," by it " they are able to make stools and tables proph- esy," and by it they gain such mysterious knowledge that " Castor and Pollux at Rome announced the victory of Perseus, King of Macedon, the same day it was fought ;■" and yet, allowing all this, he appeals, in that age when the facts were not forgotten but inscribed in public records now unknown, — he appeals to the truly super- natural in Christ's miracles, by the side of which all this was jugglery and artifice. 1 Ah, Charles, this sub- ject has been thoroughly canvassed, ages ago ; and men of larger minds than we have been convinced. Time would fail to picture single instances, in each succeeding age, of minds like that of Grotius ; who, after studying the philosophy and moral precepts of every age and land, sat down, after the work was finished, to compare the Sacred Scriptures with the Shasters and the Koran of the East, with the oracles of Greece, and with the mysteries of spiritual power everywhere seen ; and then pointed out, for minds that should come after, the celes- tial superiority of the established word of God. Let us, Charles, bring our minds into contact with such leading spirits of our race, and we may catch, too, something of their intelligent faith. 1 Tertullian's Apology, sects. 31—34, 47, 56. tttitt Gmilftjr. THE PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL DANGERS AND PENALTIES OF THE ABUSE OF THE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM. "Mysticism despairs of the regular processes of science." — Cousin. " Tune quaesieres, scire nefas, quem mini, quem tibi Finem Dl dederint, Leuconoe ; nee Babylonios Tentaris numeros. Ut melius, quidquid erit, pati ! " — Horace. [You should not seek to know, for it is wrong to inquire, what destiny- forme, what for thee, the gods have appointed, Leuconoe ; nor should you try to learn your fortune from Babylonian astrology. How much better, whatever may be our lot, to endure it !] " Young people would do wisely now to lay aside all their foolish books, their trifling ballads, and all romantic accounts of dreams and trances, senseless palmistry and groundless astrology. A little spark will kindle a great fire." — Turrell in Witchcraft Times. "Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." — Paul on erring Religious Teachers. What Use. — Experience shows. — ■ Just Views prevailing. — Dan- gerous Experimenting. — Physical and Moral Danger. — Nerv- ous Epidemics. — Excitement on Spiritual Themes. — Cool Men cannot control it. — Avoid Exciting Causes. — Why Observers disagree. — Both Right, though differing. — Science a Growth of Ages. — Trained Men for the Risk. — Religious Experiment- ing. — Warning from the Past. — " Sure word of Prophecy." — No " Broken Cistern." My Dear Charles : Do you ask now, "Of what practical use is it for us to be brought thus to the conclusion that all these manifestations, supposed to be spiritual, are really nat- ural, the working of an agent intermediate between mind and matter ? " Look out for the next breeze that 13 146 JUST VIEWS PKEVAILING. blows ; beware of the clouds gathering ! The trembling of Brattle, and the terrors that invested old Salem, may be near. We may see that experience will teach us the results are of great moment. It is dangerous to experiment with our own vital organism ; especially with our nervous energy. The whole history of similar developments in distant ages and nations seems to indicate that these manifestations are the working of our nervous organism. The whole process of their excitement, the character of the persons affected, the mode of inducing the influence by forming a circle of positives and negatives, the sitting in fixed abstraction, during which the generated nervous influence must accumulate in the system, as in an isolated Ley- den jar, the correspondence of the character of the re- sponses given to the inquiries made, the whole pro- cess of the excitement, confirms the conviction that the agent is the nervous principle. Most of all, the effect of this influence on the persons practising it is precisely that of other modes of nervous excitement. The poet, the orator, writing and speaking under a strong self-aroused enthusiasm, the raving Sibyl, the mesmerizer, the practiser of the spiritual rappings, all alike find a nervous exhaustion to be the result. Even since these letters to you were commenced, Charles, other minds, studying the mysteries which are now beginning to produce an alarming and Salem-like excitement in our community, have been tending to the same track of thought which we have been pursuing. There has just come from the press, for instance, a work DANGEROUS EXPERIMENTING. 147 on the " Philosophy of Mysterious Agents." ! Though differing in many vital points from this author, we may, with Cicero, rejoice when extreme theories meet in their practical conclusions. The justness of our main posi- tion, that a possible cause, shown by history to be con- formed to universal facts, is a practical proof that these manifestations are natural, — this position is confirmed from Herschel, who says that " the detection of a pos- sible cause must lead " either to " a real cause " or to " an abstract law of nature." 2 That these mysterious manifestations are " facts," that the experience of them depends in part on one's nervous " organism," and that the agent through which they are produced is " not electricity," but like it in some of its modes of action, are all intimated. 3 The cases cited, though all of the present day, are selected from those examined in France, G-ermany and elsewhere, by scientific men ; and they are all in harmony with the extended history which it has been our chief aim to trace. They are manifestly the undue, the dangerous excitement of our " nervous principle." Now, Charles, it is dangerous to experiment thus with our nervous principle. It was placed within us by the Creator to be the steady, constant, and mighty, but 1 Philosophy of Mysterious Agents, Human and Mundane ; or, the Dynamic Laws and Relations of Man, embracing the Natural Philosophy of Phenomena styled " Spiritual Manifestations." By E. C. Rogers. In five parts. No. I. Boston, 1852. 2 Ibid, § 11. See Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, by Sir J. F. W. Herschel, § 162. See also Letter Third. 3 Bid, §§ 54, 57, 63—65. 148 DANGEROUS EXPERIMENTING. perfectly controllable mover of the body, which is now the mind's machinery. If I use it carefully, never overcharging the delicate organs in which it is generated, and by which it is conducted through my frame, all will last and keep time like clock-work. Let me allow myself to excite this influence till it overflows and escapes from my fingers, or other organs, in snaps, like electric- ity from the bands of a factory- wheel, or till it sets my arm to quivering in ungovernable spasms, and I shall find that I might as safely try the experiment of over- heating and over-straining a steam-boiler. Mark the invariable result of any undue mental excitement ; and especially of a persevering attendance on the circles now so common in our community. On first entering no impression is made upon us. Soon, however, our nerv- ous organism begins to feel the general impulse. There is a magnetic crawling and creeping sensation in the larger muscles, as of the arm ; till it increases as we become more impressed. As we daily come in to join the circle, the influence is not felt till we have waited for its generation ; and then, every time, more readily and more powerfully is it excited ; till raps echo for us, and the table moves at our will. And now the confirmed " medium" cannot rid himself of the influence when away from the circle. He is nervous. All his senses being unnaturally acute, he naturally and necessarily, hears strange sounds, sees strange sights, and feels strange sensations. His mind being disturbed in its calm work- ing, he cannot fix his thoughts on his business, and he is all unsettled. His moral affections soon feel the influ- NERVOUS EPIDEMICS. 149 ence. In the circle intent on spiritual manifestations, religion was all his theme ; but at home he speaks hast- ily, often harshly ; he feels conscious that the ties of his attachment to those who should be most dear to him are weakening ; and he finds his impressions of duty to his family and friends and neighbors growing blunted and dimmed. Finally, his religious nature feels the searing blight ; his faith is all afloat, rocking and tossing ; the anchor of his hope is broken off at the flukes ; and, driven starless and havenless by every wind of doctrine, even the white wings of his Christian charity, which once bore him to every chamber of suffering, are now riven as by a pestilential gale. Ere he is aware, he is lost. You would be surprised, Charles, to see how the most accurate students of the human mind, even the Arabian philosophers, have described the dangerous influ- ence arising from these causes ; ranking it as a diseased mental bias, as much to be guarded against as a tendency to. pulmonary consumption. 1 I would sooner experi- ment with my digestive organs, or my blood-vessels, than with my nervous principle ; for, the body's derangement is less fearful than that of the mind. I beg of you, Charles, think of this, if you have yielded to craving curiosity in following up these experiments. Be wise before it is too late. But, what is far more important, as much so as society is more important than an individual, remem- ber, Charles, that all these excitements are epidemics. 1 See " Akhlak-i-Jalaly," transl. from the Persian of the Fakir Jany Muhammad Asaad, by W. F. Thompson. London. 13* 150 EXCITEMENT ON SPIRITUAL THEMES. Wide-spread excitements of a nervous nature go and come in waves, ebbing and flowing like the tide, swell- ing with every breeze, and rolling on till they dash and break in terrific ruin. Using the fearful figure of the pes- tilence, such men as Virgil and Tertullian describe the sweep of deranging excitements in their day. Mental dis- ease, like any contagious disease, prevails when the whole atmosphere and the general condition of the individual system is prepared for it. A whole community, like that of Paris in the days of Robespierre, may be infected with over mental excitement bordering on mental derange- ment. Especially is this true of that species of nervous excitement which leads to an oversight of the link uniting matter and spirit, and to a conviction that the natural is supernatural. As in the case of the Salem •witchcraft, and a thousand similar scenes in other lands and ages, there is a reality in some of these mani- festations which startles observing and intelligent men, and awes the less experienced. Though thinking and learned men may themselves rest calm in the assurance that the mystery is the working of the God of nature, yet the difficulty they have in explaining their own im- pressions only excites the more those never accustomed to trace effects to their causes. Go read, Charles, Brat- tle's letter in the very midst of the rising tide of the Salem witchcraft excitement ; and see how a strong, clear mind may itself rise above and personally breast the rushing, careering sweep of popular excitement, while, nevertheless, the blood is chilled with trembling anxiety for those tossed at its mercy ; with whom reason and AVOID EXCITING CAUSES. 151 persuasion have utterly lost their influence. Head again that letter, Charles ; for we may see its reenact- ment. Every breath may add to the tempest brewing ; every drop will add to the dashing billow. As noble Brattle, with a burning pen, quoted, " Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth ! " It is a fearful responsibility to gratify one's own curiosity in following up these manifestations, at the hazard of awakening a general tendency of the popular mind which soon can- not be reasoned with or persuaded. Glance again, then, Charles, over the historic glean- ings we have gathered. Ever the same in their mys- terious character have the manifestations of the spiritual medium been ; tables moving, metals attracted, animals fascinated, nervous power controlling nervous power, secret thoughts wondrously telegraphed, sublime elo- quence pouring from the lip and pen ; all these mysteries are ever the same. Be sure there is a law where there is uniformity ; there is a science where facts may be clas- sified, though not explained. Mark, then, the danger. Observe the exciting causes, and avoid them. Beware of the advice of those absorbed in these manifestations, that you sit in mental abstraction reading books on these themes to arouse the excitement. Take the exhortation rather of good Mr. Turrell, in the Witchcraft times : " Young people now would do wisely to lay aside all their foolish books, their trifling ballads, and all romantic accounts of dreams and trances, senseless pal- mistry and groundless astrology." 1 If affected, Charles, 1 Mass. Hist. Collections, vol. xx., p. 19. 152 WHY OBSERVERS DISAGREE. by these influences, keep away from the circles, from the books, from everything that will excite it. But there is a more important view we ought to take. It is sinful, as well as perilous, to experiment with the established sources of knowledge granted us by our Creator. What injustice to ourselves, and wrong to others, we may be guilty of, by forgetting what are the sources of our knowledge ! They are of two kinds ; and he who has the one class predominating should not distrust or condemn him in whom the other sways the balance. We know what we see and others have seen, what the testimony of our senses and of the senses of others bears or has borne witness to. We know, also, what the uni- versal intellectual and moral intuitions of men have agreed in as true. Two men of not unequal mental power may have a different mental organism ; the one being more moved by things seen by the eye, the other by things pondered in the mind. Two men, equally shrewd in detecting deception, may go to the same exhibi- tion of " mesmerism," or of the " spiritual manifesta- tions." One may have such a nervous organism as to be easily affected ; and he feels, and sees, and knows, that there is a reality in them ; and no reasoning can con- vince him that what he knows to be true is false. The other is unsu ceptible himself of that nervous excite- ment; or he visits " the medium," perhaps, when nerv- ous exhaustion, or derangement, prevents the nervous development, or breaks its circle, as rain, thunder and earthquakes, dissipated it in Plutarch's day ; and he SCIENCE A GROWTH OF AGES. 153 goes away thoroughly convinced that it is all delu- sion in the believer, if it be not deception in the prac- tiser. Both, from their point of view, are right ; both have truth on their side ; and each should remember what are the sources of knowledge to man, and should have charity for his fellow. We add that both are seen to harmonize when these manifestations are regarded as the working of the " nervous principle." How much knowledge should we not acquire, if we but trusted to the sources of knowledge we possess, and rightly used them ! "We have learned in most matters of life to trust to the established medium of gaining needed information. The man of the strongest and most cultivated mind is not ashamed to acknowledge his de- pendence on his gardener, his watchmaker, his phy- sician. They may be far inferior to him in intellect ; yet in their department they are skilled, and in their particular branches they are worthy to be his teachers. Now, are we qualified, by ourselves, to experiment, to gather and compare facts, and to decide that we have found a celestial science, in a field where the philoso- phers of every age and land have been mining, and col- lecting, and arranging, and seeking to find the vein of truth which underlies and unites all that has been discovered? Surely what Cousin says of mysticism, " It despairs of the regular processes of science," is true of all who think to learn anything new from these novelties. Having for a few days witnessed a few facts, they jump at a conclusion, are sure they are looking on what the world before never saw, and rashly rush to 154 RELIGIOUS EXPERIMENTING. try their skill in this fearful overtasking of their nerv- ous energy, as heedless as a child who sets a factory- wheel in motion, or explodes fire-crackers in a powder- mill. They who learn anything by such a course will be likely to learn too much ; to read too fearful a lesson. Why not leave, then, to men of science, the dangerous and arduous task, the wearing employ of making dis- coveries as to mysterious powers and influences ? Would it be safe for you or me, Charles, to suffer our curiosity to lead us to experimenting in chemistry, in manufac- turing explosive gases, or working a steam-engine ? And yet, the daily practising with these mysterious manifestations of the spiritual medium is more hazard- ous to my delicate frame-work than tampering with retorts and steam-pipes. Ah, leave we this experiment- ing to men of science, trained to the work ! Let a Pliny, an Agassiz, press forward first to view this agitated Vesuvius, ere we trust our young feet on the quiver- ing crust ! It may be that even they will peril them- selves in the attempt ; certainly we shall peril ourselves. Perhaps it may be wise in us if we apply these prin- ciples to our inquiries after religious truth. Suppose that I may witness mysterious spiritual developments, if I will seek them. My body was given to be used care- fully in toil for my own and my family's support ; and I have no right to experiment with and overstrain my muscles ; raising, for instance, to gratify my curiosity or my vanity, a heavy weight, and thus, perhaps, disabling myself for life. My mind was given me for the same and a higher end ; and I dare not experiment with it. WARNING FROM THE PAST. 155 My religious nature was given me for the highest of all ends ; that I may know and serve and adore God forever, and that I may know and do my duty to my fellow-men. How can I, then, experiment with that nature ? Fearful has ever been the penalty of overlooking this responsibility, and violating this trust. When Paul wrote, " Beware, lest any man spoil you through phi- losophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ," he knew more than we know of the mysteries of spiritual manifestations, and of the delusion by which they would lead the mind astray. Bancroft quotes from the diary of Cotton Mather this entry, made after the witchcraft excitement, by which he was so carried away : — " Had temptations to Atheism, and to the abandonment of all religion as a delusion." No wonder ! It is just what an observer of the working of minds led away by any such excitement would expect to see follow ; since it always does follow. Minds that have come to rest on specious error as truth, as Paul says, " wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." By allowing our intellect to get out of the path of knowledge in which our Creator has made us to walk, we may wander we know not whither ; and any form of deception may seem to be true. As I value my own spiritual welfare, and as I tremble at the responsibility of misleading others, I should beware how I tempt God, by experimenting with the means he has graciously given me for gaining reli- gious knowledge ; seeking it from sources he has con- 156 " SURE WORD OF PROPHECY." deinned and forbidden, and neglecting his sure word of prophecy. And now, Charles here is a book claiming to be God's revelation. Its earliest records, far from being penned in a rude age, before science and art and history were known, were written when all these flourished in some respects as they never have since. The man who penned its first five books had a human knowledge such as no philosopher of our day possesses. This surely cannot be an antiquated volume. Its second part, with all its narratives and letters, was written when Roman learning and literature was at the zenith of its perfec- tion. It came into comparison with all the combined wisdom of the world ; acquired a confidence and moral control above all the records of ages past ; and became in three centuries the law of God in the world's esteem. Unlike every other professed revelation, it has not been confined in the hands of interested men ; but all the people have it and study it for themselves. Unlike every other sacred book, the more it is known the more it is revered, and the nation where it is most read is the one most completely impressed with its divine authority. And, finally, (for where should we stop in such an enu- meration ?) the men most eminent in every branch of human knowledge, a Grotius in his, a Newton in his, a Champollion in his, a Silliman in his, a Lyell in his, have ever been most convinced that the Author of their science is the Author of this book : so celestial is the har- mony between them- iuypljmJEturtj tiiitx. Twenty-seven Year's Review. — Three Views of Phenomena. — All Natural. — "Spiritual" View. — "Evil Spirits" Agents. — "Mechanical" View. — "Enthusiasm" of Science. — Its In- consistency. — " Mediate" View. — Progress in Sciences of Electricity and Magnetism. — Nervous Fluid a Kindred Agent. — Humboldt's Letter. — " New Force" of Arago. — The Count de Gasparin. — Facts Cited. — Failures Explained. — Source the Nervous Fluid. — Arago, Cuvier, and Others. — " Supernatural" from this Source. — Animal Magnetism. — Table-rappings. — Notice of Rogers and Others. — His View of "To Daimonion." — His own Theory. — Practical Lesson from Dr. Hare's Experience. Mr Dear Charles : Horace recommends a stern test to a young writer, — that lie lay aside his work till the long process of his own maturing judgment has gone on for not less than eight successive years ; and allows that " in nono anno" he may dare to publish. It was in the twen- tieth year after their first suggestion that your friend's matured thoughts on the " Spiritual Me- dium" were penned for you, and now seven more years of reexamination have succeeded. A triple curb has been added to Horace's tight bit, and you 14 158 progress or opinion. certainly will not think it intrusive forwardness if your old friend comes ambling up again and asks an- other sitting. He wants now, too, to draw the veil from off his escutcheon, and let both its name and its motto be manifest. You will recognize " To Daimo- nion" though under another title, and " Traverse Oldfield" you can't mistake, though his name be changed. Seven years have witnessed some progress of opin- ion on our old topic, as on other things. The three classes of observers, of which we spoke before, 1 have all been multiplying their books on the subject. Among the men devoted to physical science, and prompt, therefore, to see things in a material light, Faraday, 2 of European renown, and Page, 3 the justly honored American inventor of the electro-mo- tor, — not to add other names, — have referred a large portion of the phenomena to the credulity of ignorance and superstition, and have sought to ex- plain all that they allow to be fact on the supposition of the employ of mechanical, or, at least, physical agency, either designedly or unconsciously used by the operator or "medium." A still larger class, i See Letter 2d, p. 23. 2 Prof. Faraday's letters on Table Moving, published in The London Times of June 30th, 1853, and the London Athenasum of July 2d, 1853. 3 Psychomantia, Spirit Eapping, and Table Tipping exposed; by Prof. Charles G. Page, M. D., etc. New York, 1853. BELIEVERS IN FULL. 159 among whom are honored and revered names, such as Tallmadge and Edmunds, Ballou and Pierpont, have received all the phenomena, without qualifica- tion or exception, as real, and have attributed them to the efforts, more or less successful, of disembodied spirits in the spirit-world to reestablish communica- tion with friends yet in the flesh. A somewhat anomalous position, yet one classing him with this latter number, has been taken by Rev. Charles Beecher, — one of that gifted but somewhat erratic family of thinkers, — who has argued that the phe- nomena, which must be allowed as fact, are not only referable to supernatural agency, but that this agency is the power of evil spirits over the physical crea- tion. 1 Most surprising of all, the eminent chemist, Dr. Hare, of Philadelphia, after first maintaining in a published letter dated July 27th, 1853, 2 the me- chanical view taken by Faraday, suddenly became convinced that there were facts which could not be explained on this theory ; and passing to the opposite extreme of unlimited credence and of belief in su- pernatural agency, he lived and died a " Spiritualist." Meanwhile, most able advocates of the mediate the- ory, which maintains the facts, but refers them to a sufficient though yet uninvestigated cause connected 1 A Review of "Spiritual Manifestations;" by Rev. Charles Beecher. New York, 1853. 2 Prof. Hare's Letter on the " Influence of Electricity in Table Tipping." 160 FACTS ADMITTED. with our nervous organism, have been called forth, who, either in private avowals or in published discus- sions, have taken substantially the view maintained in these letters. It seems a fitting supplement, Charles, to our former " Traverse" of " Oldfields," to glance at the published sentiments of these classes of thinkers, and see how the facts in " Spiritualism" as well as their source have been " tested." It is important, at the outset, to observe that each of these classes profess to find what in truth must be styled a natural cause for these phenomena. They maintain that the same facts have been witnessed in all nations and ages ; and, of course, whatever is uni- versal and uniform belongs to nature and is governed by established law. Whether the originating cause be an excited imagination deceived by mechanical trick- ery, or a real spiritual agency above that of our phys- ical life, or, again, the action of our nervous organ- ism, the effects flowing from the cause are uniform, — therefore they are according to a law, and therefore are, strictly speaking, natural. It is a step towards a right and an impartial judgment to have reached to- gether this common ground, — that there are facts in these phenomena, and there is in them a historical uniformity. Standing, then, at this common point of view,.hVis just to give the courtesy of the first presentation, and the advantage of the first impression, to those most interested in these phenomena, because they are DISEMBODIED SPIRITS. 161 referred by them to the higher source. By common consent, this class are styled " Spiritualists." Not that these specially above others are believers in the spiritual as distinct from the material. On the con- trary, the class is generally made up of those who, from their previous habits of thought and feeling, and from their pursuits in life, have been specially forget- ful and ignorant of the spiritual, and who, having suddenly been forced out of their material slumber, and startled into a dreamy conviction of spiritual realities, have become absorbed for a time with their new, half-waking glimpses of the real spiritual, and have confounded them with imaginings that are un- real; and from this temporary fascination and aban- don, have seemed to be more spiritual in their first crude dreams, than sober thinkers who have always believed in, and have thoroughly studied, spiritual truth. These so-called " Spiritualists" have believed that the two classes of acknowledged facts, ■ — the mov- ing of material objects, as tables, etc., and the report- ing of intellectual knowledge, thought, and impression from the mind of one, through the rap, the speech, or the pen of another, — these are the work of spirits not now in the body. This view, of course, takes for granted that disembodied spirits have the power to act upon material things, and to employ for their pur- poses the bodies, which are the habitations and instru- ments made for the spirits of men now in the flesh ; against which supposition there are three classes of 14* 162 NO INVOLUNTARY CONTROL. valid objections, drawn from reason, from experience, and from the inspired word of God. Reason assures us instinctively of the reality of our separate mate- rial and spiritual existence, which constitutes "per- sonal identity;" that every human being has an existence independent of every other being, with a will, intelligence, and affections entirely his own; and with an organized body, made to be controlled by his volition alone, and to be the instrument of his intelligence alone; an axiom of whose truth no amount of either understood reason or explained mystery can force us into a doubt. Experience, again, multiplying to any extent observed confirmations of the truth thus taught by reason, finds everywhere that this is the rule to which no exception is ever met ; for men always are seen to have spiritual control over their own bodies, not over those of other men ; and each man is always held responsible for his indi- vidual acts as emanating from his own will, — every pretext that he is not the controller of his own facul- ties being discarded as a fallacy. The revealed word of God, also, plainly teaches so fully the inde- pendence of each individual mind, that not even the Divine Spirit itself controls a human spirit but in accordance with its personal agency and responsibil- ity ; while in opposition to the idea of any involun- tary control from other created spirits, the Scriptures declare that for " every word" uttered by the lip, and for " all the deeds" done in the body, the individual AGENCY OF EVIL SPIRITS. 163 tenant of that body, the personal actor in it, is alone responsible, and as responsible " must give account to God;" a requirement which could not be thus posi- tive, and without exception, were the lips and hands of any mortal so controlled by another spirit that their movement should cease to be that mortal's act. Certainly, we should be on our guard in allowing an exception, when the manifestations claiming to be supernatural are of such trivial importance, stimulat- ing only an idle curiosity, and promising no material or spiritual benefit to man. A real, yet hardly consistent, coincidence with what is called the " Spiritual " theory, is presented in the reference of these phenomena to the power of "evil spirits." Its author has "To Daimonion" before him; he argues against its conclusion that power over the material creation is not committed to Satan ; and contends that the source of the facts in Spiritualism is not " a-pneumatic," or derived from physical nature, but " pneumatic," — i. e., the action of spiritual agency. Like Cotton Mather, he con- tends that the " Prince of the power of the air" is a literal title of the Evil Spirit, and that he does directly act through physical causes to produce evil ; and he thinks that Josephus, Jambiicus, and the mediaeval writers, accord with this view. Without directly asserting it, he leaves the impression that he attributes to " To Daimonion" the endorsement of the mediaeval view of the spiritual medium, which 164 IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS. supposed an ether pervading the universe, through which waves of spiritual influence are propagated, — as sound through the air, and light, perhaps, through a more subtle fluid, — so that spirits most distant can exert an influence, and produce impressions on each other. The distinction, however, is manifest between a power to interfere with and derange the action of the laws of physical nature supposed to be allowed to the spirit of evil, while the Creator himself exerts no such erratic power, and a power to produce spirit- ual impressions by a moral influence on the mind of man, as God himself exerts such an influence. The latter principle is scriptural, the former is not. Equally distinct is the idea of the action of the ner- vous fluid, like to that of electricity, in accumulating until it becomes an attractive power, and again flow- ing off over connected conductors, and bearing my thought, as on a telegraph wire, to be rapped out at a distant point from the idea of a pervading fluid, through which, from a distance, waves of spiritual influence are propagated. The former idea is philo- sophical ; the latter, to say the least, is speculative. The example of Cotton Mather should be a living monitor, warning us that his position on this question is not only untenable, but dangerous to him who seeks to maintain it. The next class demanding a hearing are those holding the opposite extreme, and taking the lowest view of these phenomena and their causes. They MECHANICAL OR IMAGINARY. 165 are generally men devoted to purely physical science, who ridicule the supposed facts as in part mechanical trickery, and to a great extent the suggestion of an excited imagination in an unscientific mind. Two facts, most palpable to educated men that move much in society, are hidden from the view of scientific students who live in the cloister. Ridicule — as the Epicureans at Athens, and the witchcraft satirizers at Salem found — ridicule deepens conviction when the senses bear witness to a mystery, and the "wise men," instead of interpreting the handwriting on the wall, jest at the fears of ignorance. Again, men of physical science, from the seclusion natural to their pursuits, appreciate less than men of any other class of learning the fact of their unfitness to judge of matters out of their line. They are ready to combat either the psychologist, the metaphysician, the moral- ist, or the theologian, as equals, if not superiors, in his special domain ; while they know that none but a man trained to it can think of forming a judgment, or uttering an opinion, in their department. If, how- ever, there is an esprit du corps among men of sci- ence, there is certainly self-respect among those classed by the man of physical science under the lower ranks as "learned divines," and "other, edu- cated men." The truth and importance of these suggestions is specially illustrated in the work of the truly able Prof. Page, just alluded to. He seems more of an 166 moF. page's theory. enthusiast than the wildest enthusiast whom he con- demns ; declaring, " With all reverence we say it, we feel a sort of inspiration upon the laws of reaction, gravity, and friction, based upon the experience of every moment of remembered life, that compels us to reject peremptorily the testimony of our best friends, of the most distinguished and credible per- sons, or of the most exalted intellects, when they tell us that by the mere superposition of hands, or by the effort of the will, a table moves off by itself from the floor, without visible agency." 1 Science is nothing but a classification of facts observed; and how can any new fact ever be attested, if human testimony is to be set aside in the manner thus indicated ? This over-confidence in the completeness of science as now established, leads to a partial observation and a hasty generalization most opposed to the method of the electro-magnetician's own science. Originating himself the experiment afterward reported as Fara- day's, Prof. Page placed cards under the fingers of the table-movers. Perceiving that when the table moved, the fingers of the operators anticipated its movement, the cards slipping forwards as their hands went faster than the table, he drew the inference that it was by the mechanical pressure alone of their hands that the table was moved. 2 Suppose that some one should place a card between his magnet and the iron bar to be drawn by it, and when the magnet 1 Psychomantia, p. 79. 2 Psychomantia, p. 88, ITS DEFECTS. 167 moved faster than the iron as he drew it, and the card, therefore, slipped forward — suppose the objec- tor should insist that it was only a mechanical 'pressure which drew the iron after the magnet? In this connec- tion, again, Prof. Page says that he has " never seen" the table move but when the operator's hand is in contact with it, and denies the 'possibility of such movement without such contact. Suppose a man who had only seen a few magnets of little power should hear Prof. Page speak of his powerful electro-mag- net, by which an iron bar of a thousand pounds weight is first drawn up into contact, and then hurled down from the magnet ; and that this man who had not seen it should declare that such a pretended power in the magnet is impossible ? A sailor, that has seen the needle dip in the Northern Ocean toward the magnetic pole of the earth, is believed in opposition to a whole Royal Society of savans who should de- clare such a thing impossible because they had not seen it. Passing, again, from the " table movings" to the "rappings," Prof. Page insists that if the Fox girls could make the raps at all without deception, they could make them at some distance from their persons. Suppose some one should demand that the electric snaps be made at a distance from the ma- chine ? He demands that they be made through a thick cushion, on which they are to stand. Would he admit the same test in the transmission of elec- tricity ? His rule for intelligent observers who would 168 ITS DEFECTS. judge " without bias" of these phenomena is : " Divest yourself of all idea of the supernatural, or any new fluid, or new law or property whatever, and, regard- ing the performance as a trick or an illusion, scruti- nize sharply every movement and circumstance in connection." This may be legitimate as a rule for the observer only ; and he could not but ask a similar scrutiny, if not a like incredulity, in observers of his electro-motor. But the very theory as to the " me- dium," or operator, is, that he or she, under intense nervous excitement, is over-charged with the nervous fluid ; and that this over-charge is the source of the phenomena. Of course he would not consent to lec- ture on electricity, unless he were allowed to turn the machine which was to generate the electric fluid. Prof. Page's natural enthusiasm as a man of science, also, blinds him to the fact, that simple-minded peo- ple, accustomed to take the testimony of one man as much as of another in matters of eyesight, are left more in mystery by the final result to which his investigations brought him, than they could be before opening his book. As to the cause of the raps which he heard, Prof. Page says: "It has been affirmed that a relative of these girls has made a public state- ment, under oath, that they produce the raps with their toes, in a peculiar manner acquired by long practice. The public papers tell us that electro-mag- netism has been employed to carry out this fraud. The snapping of the joints has been resorted to by THE NERVOUS FLUID. 169 another. * * * " The Fox girls rapped upon neither of these plans. The sound was machine-like." x Of course, then, it is only necessary for some intimate and trustworthy friend to declare that he or she has examined the persons of the girls when rapping, and that "no machine" is used, and there remains the fact, attested by Prof. Page, that the raps are made, while all the physical causes that can be assigned are disproved. Is it to be supposed that such a result will satisfy public inquiry ? We turn, then, Charles, with an increased convic- tion, that as the cause is not spiritual, or supernat- ural (and as it is not physical, or mechanical), it must be found in the action of the nervous fluid; which in all ages and nations has exhibited its mys- terious influence, has followed its uniform law every- where, and has, by impartial thinkers, been viewed in substantially the same light. The most casual review of the last few years' researches in the departments of electricity and mag- netism, called forth as they have been by the prac- tical applications of these powers in telegraphing and as motors, surprises us with the conviction that much more might have been learned of this kindred power, the nervous fluid, had the French Academy, and other associations of scientific men, pursued its inves- tigation with a similar zest. Not only has the action of electricity and magnetism in telegraphing, daguer- 1 Psychomantia, p. 57. 15 170 ITS REALITY. reotyping, and propelling machinery, been a favorite subject of scientific research and discussion, but its relations to vegetable and animal life and growth have been pursued with interested study. One or two facts subsidiary in these investigations, as reported in the " Compte-Rendu," the organ of the JTrench Academy of Science, have such a bearing on the kindred laws of the nervous fluid, that they demand a place here. As one of the facts established as to the reality of the relation of the nervous energy to its kindred forces, and the law of its action, the fol- lowing is the result of a communication on electro- physiology, addressed to the Academy by M. Ch. Matteuci: "Whatever may be the nature of the nervous force, of which we are ignorant, as of that of the other great agents of nature, it is a fact that this force propagates itself in the nerves, now from the brain to the extremities, now in the contrary direction." 1 As illustrative of a power residing in the nervous fluid, kindred to electricity and magnet- ism, the following is quoted from a letter of Hum- boldt to Arago : " M. du Bois is the skilful experi- menter who, first and alone, has succeeded in making the needle at rest deviate by the will of man ; that 1 " Quelle que soit la nature de la force nerveuse, que nous ignorons, comme celle des autres grandes agents de la nature, c'est un fait que cette force se pi*opage dans les nerfs, tantot du cerveau aux extremities, tantot en sens contraries." — Compte Rendu, 1849, p. 568. ITS PHENOMENA. 171 is to say, by the electric current which produces the muscular effect, the tension of our limbs. This deviation is effected at great distances, and ceases when at will the person does not hold his muscles in tension." 1 Here there is ample testimony that the nervous fluid, called by Humboldt the " electric cur- rent," which produces the tension of the muscles, is, even at great distances, the source of magnetic attrac- tions. New testimony is accumulating, that this same force has, in the unexpressed opinions of scientific men, been recognized as the cause of the phenomena of so-called Spiritualism. When, in 1848, Arago witnessed the attraction and repulsion of heavy bodies at the presence of Angelique Cottin, a ner- vous factory-girl, who having begun suddenly to ex- hibit this wonderful derangement, was carried up to Paris to appear before the Academy, that great philosopher remarked, when asked his opinion about it, "That is yet to be settled. It seems to have no identity with electricity ; and yet, when one touches her in the paroxysms, there is a shock like that given by the discharge of the Ley den jar. It seems to 1 " M. du Bois est l'habile experimentateur, qui, le premier et le seul, a reussi a faire devier une aiguille a statique par la vo- lonte de Thomme; c'est a dire par le courant electrique que produit l'effect musculaire, la tension de nos membres. Cette deviation s' opere a de grandes distances, et cesse des qu'a vo- lonte on ne tend le muscle." — Compte Rendu, 1849, p. 576. 172 ARAGO'S TESTIMONY. have no identity with magnetism proper, for it has no reaction on the needle ; and yet the north pole of a magnet has a most powerful reaction on her, pro- ducing shocks and trembling. This is not effected through the influence of her imagination, as the mag- net has the same influence whether brought secretly near her, or otherwise. It seems a new force. At all events, whatever it be, time and research will deter- mine, with a sufficient number of cases. At present we are left to conjecture. One thing, however, seems to be certain ; the phenomena of this case show very plainly that, whatever the force is which acts so pow- erfully from the organism of this young girl, it does not act alone. It stands in mysterious relation to some mundane force which acts and reacts with it. This is witnessed in the reaction which external things have upon her person, often attracting her with great power. It is a curious inquiry, and may open to us new resources in the nature of man and of the world, of which we have little dreamed." x We shall find further testimony from Arago, quoted by another writer. Numerous able writers, meanwhile, have discussed the phenomena of so-called Spiritualism, and have maintained the view that they are produced by the action of our nervous organism. The work of Rog- 1 Quoted by Sogers' " Philosophy of Mysterious Agents," p. 58. ROGERS' OPINION. 173 ers, just alluded to in our previous communications, 1 has been completed; a work whose philosophy on this point may, in substance, be worthy of adoption, whatever may be thought of the theological system, with which it seems to be harmonized. Among the most voluminous and complete works on the subject, is a recent publication of Count Agenor de Gasparin, 2 the noble, learned, and devotedly pious Editor of the "Archives du Christianisme," the leading Protes- tant organ of Paris. M. de Gasparin is a man of eminent scientific ability and note, as is witnessed by his contributions to different scientific journals of Geneva and Paris, both which cities share his resi- dence. He alludes in his introduction to the tide of oppo- sition even to the investigation of this subject, among the majority of men known as cultivators of science ; but referring to the frankness of the Alcestis of Euri- pides, he decides to act, not as his inclination, but as right demands, even if he lose by it his case. 3 He avows his belief in the reality of the phenomena, and, giving an extended narrative of facts elicited by him- self at a series of sittings extended through the months of September, October, November, and De- i See Letter 12th, p. 147. 2 Des Tables Tournantes, du Sur naturel en General, et Des Esprits. Par Le Cte. Agenor de Gasparin, Paris, 1854. Two volumes, pages 564 and 579. 3 Des Tables Tournantes, etc., vol I., pp. 6, 14. 15* 174 COUNT DE GASPARIN. cember, 1853, he philosophically accounts for the occasional failure, as for the failure of electrical experiments in an unfavorable atmosphere, in ac- cordance with the fact that the over-tasking of the nervous energies which leads to the phenomena, must often produce temporary exhaustion in the gen- eration of the nervous fluid. 1 With mingled wit and skill, he shows the fallacy of Faraday's experi- ments, already alluded to in this letter, and the conflicting opinions, destroying each other, of the French savans, Babinet and Seguin, the former of whom denies, while the latter admits, " the exist- ence of the fluid directed by our will ; " and he asks if it is not after all the pride of confessing their error, the old " Odi profanum vulgus," which is the chief difficulty of men of science in admitting the facts in so-called Spiritualism. 2 Recurring again to the frequent failures in table-moving, he quotes M. Husson's language, addressed to the French Academy of Medicine, on the failure of two successive mag- netic experiments attempted before them : u There is nothing more variable than magnetic effects ;" and, he adds, " What facts are there, we might demand, in the science of medicine, in therapeutics, in physiol- ogy, which are always fixed and immovable ? " He replies at length to the suggested fear that to admit i Des Tables Tournantes, pp. 21-99. 2 Ibid, pp. 99-120; " 1' existence ciu fluide dirige par notre vo- lonte." FACT AND IMAGINATION. 175 the facts will give ground for superstition and cre- dence in false miracles. He shows the marked line between just confidence in undeniable facts and the perversions of imagination, by reference to Ammia- nus Marcellinus, the old Roman historian, who re- fers to " table" revelations the perfect counterpart of those now witnessed among us. The people of Rome were expecting that Theodorns would become the emperor ; and, of course, when the " tables were con- sulted they gave the letters of that name : whereas it proved that Theodosius became the emperor. 1 A more perfect confirmation of the principle that the tables but report the impression of the consulter could hardly be devised. He quotes also Tertullian's mention, referred to in "To Dahnonion" in these words : " Mensas divinare consueverunt," Tables are accusiomed to divine. 2 He closes tins portion of his volume with a series of letters published by him in 1853, in different journals, called forth by the fact that numerous memorials had been addressed to the Academy, asking them to institute an examination of the facts ; to which M. Foucault had given the scorn- ful answer, " The Academy of Science had replied 1 See Rerum Gestarum, Lib. xxix. Valens, warned by the astrologers that one whose name began with Theod was to suc- ceed him, put to death his valet Theodoi*us. Consulting the " Tables," as now they are consulted, his own thought was re- vealed by the raps, as now is true. 2 Tables Tournantes, vol. I., pp. 120-192. 176 SUPERNATURAL IX GENERAL. with a disdainful silence to the communications which had been addressed to them on this subject." 1 After this protracted presentation of the " facts " in Spiritualism, De Gasparin occupies the remainder of his first volume with the consideration of the " supernatural in general." 2 He recites the case of the celebrated "magicians" at Cairo, mentioned in these letters. 3 He quotes a case examined by Cha- millard, doctor of Sorbonne, in the seventeenth cen- tury ; in which the same result was reached as that reported by the French Academy's commission to report on Mesmer's experiments, which result was thus sententiously recorded: " Mulla ficta, pauca vera, a drcmone nulla;" "Many things fictitious, a few true, from a demon none." He well argues in a chapter on the Scripture-teaching that a belief in a physical abode of future torment, and present physi- cal torture inflicted by demons, are alike unscriptural, and both inventions of a hierarchy that assumed to hold the key of heaven and hell. 4 Coming to the consideration of the natural cause of these phenomena, he unhesitatingly ascribes them to the excess of nervous excitability. He unshrink- ingly applies the rule to his Christian brethren in America. Declaring his "respect pour le plupart 1 Des Tables Tournantes, vol. I., pp. 197-222. 2 Ibid. pp. 225-564. 3 See p. 337. 4 Des Tables Tournantes, vol. i. p. 495; also Letter 11th, p. 137. EXCESS OF NERVOUS EXCITABILITY. 177 des pasteurs qui convoquent les camp meetings" he thinks the cases of the swooners who shout " Gloire ! gloire ! " come under the same " category" with the " mediums." He adds, with all sincerity of pious devotion : " I should not love my brethren of the United States, I should not render justice to their magnificent evangelic and missionary labors, to their orthodoxy, to their praiseworthy establishment of their churches, separate from the state, and distinct from the world, if I did not point out the scandal of certain awakenings (reveils) of theirs." He pro- ceeds to quote, as confirmatory of his view of the cause of the phenomena of Spiritualism, the state- ments of Herschel, Franklin, and Cuvier, as cited in " To Daimonion" ; and adds this striking avowal of Arago, as published in the " Annuaire" for 1853. Alluding to the report made by the commission, of which Franklin was one, appointed by the French Academy to examine Mesmer's experiments, and comparing them with the developments of our day, Arago says: "Effects, analogous or inverse, might evidently be occasioned by a fluid, subtle, invisible, imponderable ; by a sort of nervous fluid ; or of magnetic fluid, if this be preferred, which may cir- culate in our organs. Thus the commissioners were guarded against speaking of impossibility. Their the- sis was more modest. They contented themselves with 1 Des Tables Tournantes, vol. i., p. 504. 178 APOCRYPHAL SUPERNATURAL. saying that nothing demonstrated the existence of such a fluid." * The counter report of Jussieu, one of that commission, is also quoted, that " several facts, well verified, independent of imagination, and to him be- yond doubt, sufficed to make him admit the existence, or the possibility of a fluid, or agent, which is borne from man to his fellow . . . sometimes by simple approach from a distance." 2 He quotes, moreover, the passage from Cuvier cited in these letters, and adds a parallel statement of Laplace, in his " Doc- trine of Probabilities," applied to magnetic phenom- ena in his day. 3 De Gasparin commences his second volume with a discussion of the " Apocryphal Supernatural," under four heads : first, " False Miracles ; " second, " False Sorcery ; " third, " Animal Magnetism ; " and fourth, " The Rapping Tables and Spirits." Under the second, he introduces a consideration of the famed " divining-rod ;" which, under one form, has been noted as the means of discovering well-springs. Under the third, he gives an extended history of the investiga- 1 " Des effets analogues ou inverses potivaient evidemment efcre occasioned par un fluide subtil, invisible, imponderable, par une sorte de fluide nerveux, ou de fluide magnetique, si on le pre- fere, qui circulerait dans nos organes. Aussi les commissaires se garderent-ils de parler d' impossibiUte. Leur these etait plus modeste; ils se contentaient de dire que rien ne demontrait V existence d'un semblable fluide." 2 Des Tables Tournantes, vol. I., p. 509. 3 Des Tables Tournantes, vol. I., p. 509. SPEAKING TABLES. 179 tions and reports of the commissioners appointed by the French Academy, when Mesmer was experiment- ing in Paris ; of which number the American Frank- lin was one. He adds, also, the following reference of Arago to the facts, so long denied, that do exist in somnambulism, or clairvoyance. In the " Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes," Arago says: "He who, outside of the pure mathematics, pronounces the word ' impossible,' lacks prudence. . . . Nothing, for exam- ple, in the marvels of somnambulism raises more of doubt, than an assertion very frequently re-produced, touching the faculty which certain persons possess in the state of fit, of deciphering a letter at a distance, with the foot, by the hands, with the stomach." * De Gasparin concludes, in reference to all these cases, that the unexplained cause of all that is real in these phenomena regarded as supernatural, is to be found in an undue and diseased action of the nervous organism. The " Speaking Tables and their Spirits " is the last subject he discusses. At the outset, he expresses the conviction, since the facts reported on both sides the Atlantic are so numerous and so undoubted, that there are but two inquiries which a philosophic mind can entertain : Are they natural ? or, Are they super- natural? The former is of course his view; and before proceeding to present his own theory, he turns for illustration and confirmation to other writers. He i Des Tables Tcmrnantes, vol. I., p. 309. 180 THEORIES EXAMINED. briefly examines the theory of Rogers, in his " Phi- losophy of Mysterious Agents ; " and though agreeing with him in the conviction that there is a cause in nature for the phenomena referred to, he thinks the view of Mr. Rogers leads to materialism, to " a fluid which is God." Quoting from M. Cahagnet, a gen- uine apostle of the materialistic school, he ingeniously admits that Mr. Rogers is far from avowing in form this creed ; yet he thinks that, without intending it, he does in effect endorse it. 1 A fuller notice is then given of a work by a French author, M. Morin, enti- tled " Comment 1' Esprit vient aux Tables," " How the Spirit comes to the Tables." The theory of "M. Oldfield," in "To Daimo- nion," 2 has then an extended notice ; when the author is prepared for his own theory. The author ex- presses his extreme gratification at the return "au 1 " M. Rogers est bien eloigne de signer cette effray ante pro- fession de foi ; cependant il fait, sans le vouloir, acte formel de materialisme." — Des Tables Tournantes, vol. n., p. 364. 2 The author introduces it thus : " Je citerai l'auteur d'un ecrit savant et remarquable qui a paru a Boston sous le titre de To Daimonion, or the Spiritual Medium, by Traverse Oldfield. .... Ceux, qui le liront, apprenderont beaucoup de choses ; ils y trouveront avec joie un retour, au vrai bon sens," etc. See Des Tables Tournantes, vol. u., p. 382. The author of To Daimonion, having learned that his old travelling acquaintance was preparing the work here examined, sent him these Letters. A most courte- ous and friendly autograph letter was soon received, stating his thanks for its reception, and his purpose to avail himself of its history in his forthcoming work. TO DAIMONION. 181 vrai bon sens," which he here finds. He congrat- ulates himself on the fund of historical testimony it embodies, and he avails himself of it frequently in his volumes. His chief criticism relates to the lib- eral view given of the opinions of the ancients on this subject, not only of the classic authors of Greece and Rome, but of the Church Fathers. A European Protestant, constantly called to feel the humiliation, if not the oppression, coming from an overbearing hier- archy under which he must live, De Gasparin cannot fully enter into the truly catholic spirit of a land like ours, where all that is valuable in an ancient ritual, especially all that is true and worthy in the primitive history of the Christian Church, is appreciated ac- cording to its worth. With genuine courtesy, and the most fraternal spirit of charity, however, the noble au- thor closes his criticism, after going over at length the list of Greek and Latin authors cited, and hinting a fear that the liberality of M. Oldfield will make him fraternize in ancient sentiments of dangerous ten- dency, with these remarks : " Have I a claim to learn all this from the author of Daimonion? I should show a bad grace in doing it, for it is he who furnishes me the materials for such a judgment. It is probable that his real thought does not go so far as his words ; he wished to show only that antiquity had had some presentiment of the fluid action ; that under their theories it is always possible to find the fundamental fruits of the spiritual medium ; that, in 16 182 CONCLUSION OF GASPAKIN. fine, in spite of their real superstitions, great think- ers have not ceased to hold a language which we may at this day easily render accordant with reason by changing three or four words in it." 1 The remainder of the volume is devoted to the exposition of his own theory, and the confirmation of his view as philosophic, by citations from history. His conclusion is substantially that of the French Commissioners' report on Mesmerism, that the re- ported phenomena of so-called " Spiritual Manifest- ations" are to be referred partly to errors of testi- mony, arising from the natural spirit of man to exaggerate the character and number of the facts; partly to the hallucination of an excited imagination, which suggests an exaggerated idea of the cause as supernatural ; and chiefly to the real " action of the nervous fluid" by which phenomena analogous to those in electricity and magnetism are wrought. His historical confirmations are mainly those of " To Daimonion." In the resume, or summing up of his 1 " Ai je pretention d'apprendre tout cela de l'auteur du Daimo- nion f J'aurais mauvaise grace a le faire, car c'est lui qui me foumit ces renseignernents. II est probable que sa pensee reelle ne va pas aussi loin que ses paroles ; il a voulu montrer seule- ment que 1' antiquite avait eu quelque presentiment de Taction fluidique ; que sous ses theories il est toujours de retrouver le traits fondanientaux du medium spirituel ; q'uen fin, en depit de leurs superstitions reelles, les grands penseurs n'ont cesser de tenir une langage que Ton rendrait aisemant raisonable aujourd' hui en y cbangeant trois ou quatre mots." — p. 389. CONCLUSION OF GASPARIN. 183 work, he thus writes : x " I regard now niy task as done. It is not for me to trench upon a domain which is not mine. There was a moral work to be undertaken, and I have confined myself scrupulously to it. To reestablish a truth injured and misunder- stood, to follow out its experimental proof by facts (sa constation experimentale), to maintain the com- promised freedom of discussion, to combat supersti- tious tendencies retrograde and anti- Christian, this it is I would endeavor to accomplish. As to re- searches, properly called scientific, I leave them to whom they of right belong (a qui de droit). . . . My conclusions have been of a nature to destroy all super- stitious fables, modern as well as ancient, and to re- affirm, at the same time, the certitude of history, the certitude of science, the certitude of religion. Ar- rived at this point, I lay down the pen." And, Charles, here too we may lay down our pen, and think our task done ; with one already cited fact leaving its last impression on our minds. "When the first twelve letters of " To Daimonion " had been for about a year before the public, one of the most eminent l The Count de Gasparin is of the old French nobility, a Prot- estant Christian in mind and heart, a Christian philanthropist whose personal appeals for American and other missionaries have been felt in the councils of even the Sublime Porte at Constan- tinople, as well as elsewhere in the Levant, and whose scholarship in the varied departments of Science, as well as Literature and the Humanities, is most remarkable. 184 PROF. HARE. chemists of this, or of any land, prejudging, like others of his class, the scientific character of re- ported facts in the phenomena of " Spiritual Man- ifestations," so-called, and regarding them as delusion and trickery, published his opinion without examina- tion. Induced afterwards to examine what he had thus rashly prejudged, he was startled with the evi- dence of the verity of the phenomena. Conscious of his thorough knowledge of the science of mag- netism and electricity, these new phenomena, which were manifestly out of and beyond his department, were more impressive to the philosopher than to a less informed man. The mystery was more appall- ing, and the apparent cause more manifestly above the range of human and earthly agencies. From the most positive disbelief he passed naturally to the most positive and unhesitating belief in the facts of these phenomena. From attributing their reported existence to the lowest human origin, he passed, ac- cording to the natural law of human conviction, to the reference of them to the highest source, to a super- natural agency. "When such a man as Prof. Hare, of Philadelphia, is thus philosophically led from one ex- treme to the other, we may not, Charles, be charged, after all our previous survey, with improper cre- dulity, if we believe the facts of Spiritualism to be attested. When such a mind, too, is forced, before scientific inquiry can be instituted, to take so exalted a view of the source of these attested CAUSE IN NATURE. 185 facts, we cannot be charged with vain empiricism if, after all our survey of the opinions of philosophic men, we believe there is a "cause in nature" for these phenomena which is yet to be "tested." Read again, Charles, leisurely and thoughtfully, if you still doubt, the letters preceding; for while these phe- nomena have a past with which historic truth is con- cerned, and sl future with which scientific truth must concern itself, so they have a present with which religious truth must meet and seek a harmony. 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