SPIRITUALISM AND GHOST-CRAFT. Glendower-I can call spirits from the vasty deep. But will they come when you do call for them? WITH respect to the affairs of the other life, a large class of curious-minded persons have been, from time immemorial, like children before a show, longing to peep behind the curtains, and innocently creating in their teeming imaginations visions of splendor and grace, with which the realities forthcoming will compete at a great disadvantage. It At last the curtains rise, and the performance commences. is thus with all the treasures of our ideal world, with all the glory and all the terrors evoked from the hours of our most passionate experience: those who have speculated seriously on the after-life of souls, have dramatized it like a romance, carefully excluding those chromatic shades that form the common-place of our present existence, and compose the background, on which a few strong passions and great events plough their rare furrows of glowing light. But because the humdrum materialism of a very crude state of society outrages in souls of a finer mould the sentiment of art and harmony; because their views of another life, left free to fancy's plastic finger, exhibit an intense reaction from the present into all that is most opposite-from fever into calm, from drudgery into rest, from material interests into sentiment, from barren intellection and coarse sensuality into an incorporeal refinement, -does it follow that the truth must lie at this other extreme, any more than in the false material life of the present?—and, whatever be the allotted destiny of man, is it certain that he is to find it in the other life, before he shall have fulfilled it here in the sphere of material ultimation? Why may there not be already a greater difference in the spiritual development and advantages of two individuals, both in this our present place of existence, than between either of them, as compared with himself, in the two states, before and after death? - and if common sense, analogy and revelation unite in approving this view relatively to individuals, why may not the same considerations apply in the com parison of SOCIAL PERIODS? May we not pass to some, as superior to our best civilization in their organization, and their influence upon the children born in them, as this summit of civilized experience is to the rudest savageism. These remarks may serve as a caution to those who are accustomed to condemn bitterly and a priori, from the heights of their ideal, the trivial and often vulgar pretensions of modern Spiritualism. How would the facts of our existing society stand the same tests, of conformity with reason and with beneficent purpose, to which they subject the asserted communications from the other life? In entering upon this investigation, it may be well to review the range of powers with which we are already familiar, and to consider whether all—or, if not all, how many of the newlyasserted facts, may be grouped under the old principles. 1st. Mechanical Imposture and Jugglery.—This reaches a certain number of the lowest class of facts in rappings and tablemovings. Its range is very limited, and so incommensurate with the asserted phenomena, that only a man who is great enough, like Faraday, to be able to afford to make an ass of himself, or else one who is already an ass without taking this trouble, will seriously pause at such an explanation. 2d. Subjectivity- Under which head fall dream-creations, reverie and vision, somnambulism, clairvoyance sympathetic and independent, second-sight, prevision or prophecy, and in general those higher operations of the soul, which are performed like the pulsation of the heart and the functions of digestion and secretion, without either the consciousness or volition of our ordinary life, and which, like the ganglionic or organic nervous system and its functions, reveal, as it were, a second individuality bound up in the same skin with the one that we wot of. The higher phenomena of this sphere do professedly embrace, in many cases, sight of spirits and converse with them; and the memoir published by a poor French artisan (Cahagnet) just before the rappings broke out, contains more interesting and worthier-seeming narratives of converse with the great departed, than any we have seen pretended to since. Those whose experience and mental constitution give them faith in the higher phenomena of clairvoyance, will regard these as no longer purely subjective, or "as powers within our tether, no new spirit power conferring," but as forming the step of transition by which we mortals advance half way to meet the armies of the dead on neutral ground. 3d. Electro-Genetic Faculties.-These, exhibited in a very striking manner by the electric eel, torpedo, and a few other aquatic animals, exist in quiescence, yet often visible, among terrestrial animals, especially in the feline genus, and in certain human organisms. They differ from the magnetic or magnetizing faculty, and the two either may or may not be observed in the same person. Thus are exhibited a regular series of phenomena, bridging over the gulf between the commonest experiments with a stick of sealing wax, and the loftiest of sleep-waking and clairvoyance. Man, as somnambulist poet and seer, has evidently made all the advances which courtesy could require of him in view of establishing a cordial intercourse with other spheres or states of existence. Modern Spiritualism pretends that the ultramundane spirits have on their part done as much, and that amicable relations and intramundane hospitality, with all the etiquette thereto appertaining, is in the very crisis of fulfilment. Let us now examine the objections urged by reason and good taste against the alleged style of proceeding, leaving out of view in the present article all sifting of evidence and special repetitions of what every one is already familiar with, whether they believe or not in what they see and hear. Objection 1.-The trivial character of most of these pretended communications, whether by rappings or writing mediums. The chief force of this objection is derived from our preconceived ideal of the dignity and solemnity of all that has passed the portals of the grave. The bat and the owl, emblems of superstition and of clerical imposture, and which greatly affect the scenery of tombs and catacombs, may furnish some useful lessons on this score. They are, when all is known, as silly birds or nondescripts as any other. For the rest, an a priori conclusion on this subject is invalid in logic, and if we condescend to accept strictly human analogies of conduct, we shall find the ghost addresses well enough in keeping with our own "How d'ye do," "Fine weather," and other insipidities of stereotyped greetings between either friends or strangers. If our own high converse is very rare, why quarrel with the ghosts for being as chary of their good things? The obstacles of mediumship are strongly analogous to those of interpretation between interlocutors ignorant of each others' language. We know how much every discourse loses in fire and pith by this form of transmission, and how little of fluent spontaneity can exist Even without the direct exchange of personal aromas or influences. after we have ourselves begun to speak a new language, and have acquired familiarity with its grammatical structure, we long keep fearfully to the shore, in the shallow waters of common-place politeness, nor dare to trust ourselves in the deeps of thought and sentiment. Let us next take into account the phenomena of passional katalysis, a term borrowed from chemistry, or that mysterious influence by which one person emancipates all our powers by his presence, and another paralyzes them, while between these two antipodal impressions lies every intermediate shade. If we, well stuffed with grosser flesh and blood, are still so sensitive that a look can go through us like a dagger, a tone move us to wrath or to tears, and even a silent presence overmaster us; if suspicion mantles the cheek of innocence with shame, and hangs lead upon the lips of the just; if so few of us can act or speak without the encouragement of sympathy, or at least the courtesy of its seeming - should we feel surprise that those more delicate-bodied spirits, subtler than the quick nerve, should evince caprice as to their company, or hesitation in their answers? What must it be then, when the nearest and dearest ones doubt the identity of those who address them? Under such circumstances, it is the absence of embarrassment that would be matter of wonder. If there is any general fact or law which impresses itself upon the mind, after listening patiently to all the stammering utterances of this babe new-born into our world of facts, it is that the social and spiritual affections, and not intellection or industry, chiefly preöccupy those whom death has emancipated from their servitude to things. They do not seem to know much, but perhaps they love the better on that account; and if their additions to literature have not risen above the average of the silliest sophomore college themes, perhaps this gives just the hint of what they are, and that the new gospels now pouring upon us, like dirty water from the slop-tubs of the ghostfolk, are just the rudimental exercises in composition made by poor, ignorant working-people, who never got any chance of an education while with us, and who now take a comical revenge upon their literary superiors by enforcing on public attention, through the prestige of a mystery, and the assumption of renowned names, productions which would otherwise have dropped into oblivion without causing even a ripple. It is a common remark with us, that the conversation of lovers appears but silly talk to those who are not in love. Now, though I shrewdly suspect such lovers used to say silly things before they fell in love, let us admit the same excuse in behalf of the ghostfolk, that we extend to the rest of society. It is certain that those who glow most warmly in their social affections, care less about intellectual brilliance, than others who polish with infinite zeal this outside of their cup of life. The faculties which we now cultivate in action, sleep, perhaps, beyond the grave, while others, here deprived of action, wake and develop in their kind. What the ghost-folk can impart, being what they still have in common with ourselves, will only be their dreams, fragmentary and confused impressions of their waking hours. Finally, let us remark, that in transition movements, generally, the inferior characters take the lead. Thus, to the ignoble bat and the ornithorhyncus are assigned the conspicuous posts of ascending and descending transitions between the world of beasts and the world of birds; and to grey twilight, shom of the double glory of the day and night, it is given to announce the Sun or to reveal the stars. Little as our civilization may have to show of wisdom or goodness, for an experience of some four thousand years or more, we should still consider it quite unfair to be judged by the manners of those frontier swarms which society throws off like its chaff or scum, and which constitute, as at Botany Bay, or about the doggeries of the far Southwest, the transition between the civilizee and the savage. Perhaps we might be equally unjust if we judged the population of the ghost-world by such communications as they have first extended to us. This is their transition; and what is ours? Are not the greater number of our sleep-wakers and persons endowed with ultramundane faculties, invalids, and very inferior types of our ordinary life? Throughout this article it may be observed that we have avoided using the word spirits in speaking of the ghost-folk. It is because we consider ourself to be just as much a spirit as any of them; and we will not call them disembodied spirits, because we believe they have got bodies as well as the rest of us, although we can not always see them. That death does not affect a man's muscular strength seems to be sufficiently evidenced by feats in lifting tables and pianos. To conclude, we are far from being satisfied that spirits or ghosts of any other sphere than ours are the causes of such effects; but we are willing to adopt the hypothesis, and use it like an algebraical x or y, in computing the bearings of a problem hitherto unsolved. M. E. L. |