Page images
PDF
EPUB

chair on to the exact centre of a large pillar-table, as well as the great surplus of force required to do it almost instantaneously and noiselessly, in the dark, and without pressure on the side of the table which would have tilted it up. Will any of the known laws of nature account for this? "Yours very faithfully,

"ALFRED R. WALLACE."

Of course I did not expect Professor Tyndall to accept such a fact on my testimony; on the contrary, I described it for the very purpose of arguing that, if he himself had been present, he would probably not have been satisfied that it was not a trick, unless he could have it repeated under varied conditions. Yet he was so illogical as to think that a test phenomenon occurring once only under his or Mr. G. H. Lewes's conditions would settle the whole question-that is, would satisfy the scientific world and the general public that the spiritualistic phenomena were genuine, and that what used to be called "miracles" did happen in our midst to-day. Sir William Crookes's experience, a few years later, proves how totally wrong Tyndall was in this opinion, since his careful experiments, continued for several years, are to this day ignored or rejected by the bulk of scientific and public opinion as if they had never been made!

In order to show Mr. Varley's liberal spirit towards opponents, and also for suggestions of great value, I give here some extracts from a letter I received from him in January, 1869

"We spiritualists should remember that the way in which science has reached its present brilliant position has been through our philosophers doubting, disbelieving, and testing everything until further disbelief was impossible.

"We privileged ones owe it to the world to present spiritualism to them in a manner so clearly defined and demonstrated, that those who follow us shall be able to make themselves as much masters of the subject as we

are.

"What is wanted is to bring together a large number

of harmonious mediums, to form of these several circles of different characters, and to secure the assistance of several clairvoyants.

"Each circle should be under the management of a clever man and each should carry on a continuous and exhaustive examination of the groundwork of the subject. Once establish a clue to the relations existing between the physical forces known to us and those forces by which the spirits are sometimes able to call into play the power by which they produce physical phenomena-once establish this clue there will be no lack of investigators, and the whole subject will assume a rational and intelligible shape to the outside world."

This was written thirty-five years ago, but, though the Society for Psychical Research has done a good deal, the first step has not been taken in the direction here indicated. Now, however, that a research fund is being formed there are better prospects. Much will depend, however, on choosing investigators who will be content for some time to observe the phenomena as they occur under those conditions which have been found most successful by other inquirers. Above all things, it is essential to make friends of the mediums employed, to treat them with the greatest consideration, and strictly to follow the advice of the intelligence that works through them. It was in this way that Sir William Crookes and other successful observers have obtained such striking results, under the most stringent conditions and subject to the most varied tests; whereas those who begin by treating the mediums as if they were on their trial, and insist upon applying their own conditions at the very outset, usually obtain nothing but the conviction that all spiritualists are fools and all mediums impostors.

In 1872 I reviewed Robert Dale Owen's work, "The Debatable Land between this World and the Next," a sequel to his "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World," the two forming the best-reasoned and the most logically arranged body of evidence for psychical phenomena in existence. Every

example is quoted from the original authority wherever possible, confirmatory testimony has been collected with the greatest care, and the bearing of each upon the general argument is discussed or clearly pointed out. This review brought me a very interesting letter from the author, and later on a communication from Dr. Eugene Crowell, M.D. of New York, with a copy of his exceedingly valuable work, "Primitive Christianity and Modern Spiritualism" (2 vols.), in which almost every miraculous occurrence narrated in the Old or New Testaments is paralleled by well-authenticated phenomena from the records of modern spiritualism, many of them having been witnessed and carefully examined by Dr. Crowell himself.

During the years 1870-80 I had many opportunities of witnessing interesting phenomena in the houses of various friends, some of which I have not made public. Early in 1874 I was invited by John Morley, then editor of the Fortnightly Review, to write an article on "Spiritualism" for that periodical. Much public interest had been excited by the publication of the Report of the Committee of the Dialectical Society, and especially by Mr. Crookes's experiments with Mr. Home, and the refusal of the Royal Society to see these experiments repeated. I therefore accepted the task, and my article appeared in May and June under the title "A Defence of Modern Spiritualism." At the end of the same year I included this article, together with my former small book, "The Scientific Aspects of the Supernatural," and a paper I had read before the Dialectical Society in 1871 answering the arguments of Hume, Lecky, and other writers against miracles, in a volume which has had a very considerable sale, and has led many persons to investigate the subject and to become convinced of the reality of the phenomena. In the preface I showed the inaccuracy of Anton Dohrn's supposition that religious prejudices had led me to believe in spiritualism. A third edition of the book, in 1895, contained two new chapters on the nature and purport of apparitions, and also, in a new preface, a brief outline of the remarkable progress of the subject; so that at

the present day a large number of its phenomena, at first denied, and afterwards sneered at or ignored, have now become recognized and included among the undoubted facts of physiological or psychical science.

Among the friends with whom I investigated the subject was Mr. Marshman, at that time Agent-General for New Zealand, and Miss Buckley. Both were friends of Samuel Butler, the author of those remarkable works, "Erewhon" and "Life and Habit." Mr. Marshman invited him to a séance at his house, with myself and several other friends; but he thought it all trickery. I sent him a copy of my book, and he wrote me three letters in a week, chiefly to explain that the whole subject bored him. In his first letter he says that Mr. Marshman and Miss Buckley are two of the clearestheaded people he knows, and therefore he cannot help believing there must be something in it. "But," he says, "what I saw at the Marshmans' was impudent humbug." In the second he gives a curious revelation of the state of his mind in a personal anecdote. He writes: "Granted that wonderful spirit-forms have been seen and touched and then disappeared, and that there has been no delusion, no trickery. Well; I don't care. I get along quite nicely as I am. I don't want them to meddle with me. I had a very dear friend once, whom I believed to be dying, and so did she. We discussed the question whether she could communicate with me after death. 'Promise,' I said, and very solemnly, 'that if you find there are means of visiting me here on earth -that if you can send a message to me-you will never avail yourself of the means, nor let me hear from you when you are once departed. Unfortunately she recovered, and never forgave me. If she had died, she would have come back if she could; of that I am certai by her subsequent behaviour to me. I believe my instinct was perfectly right; and I will go farther if ever a spirit-form takes to coming near me, I shall not be content with trying to grasp it, but, in the interest of science, I will shoot it."

The third is a very nice letter, and is a kind of apology for what he thought I might consider rather unreasonable in

the others, and I will therefore give it, in order that my readers may not, through me, get a wrong idea of this remarkably gifted though eccentric writer.

"DEAR SIR,

"15, Clifford's Inn, E.C., May 27, 1859.

"Pray forgive me. I am sure I must have said rather more than I ought. A friend was with me when your letter came; I read it to him, and he said, 'If you grant Mr. Wallace's facts-and you do not deny them-he is perfectly right, and your answer does not meet him at all. He tells you that you are engaged on certain investigations in which your opinions must be entirely altered if you accept his facts. You admit this yourself—you do not deny his facts—and say that you do not care,-that is childish.'

"I admitted the truth of what he said; and I feel therefore that an apology is due to you, which pray understand me as making without reserve. I have read the greater part of the book you so kindly gave me, and shall read every word of it. I admire the force and clearness with which it is written, every word of it impressing me that it is written by one who understands his own meaning, and wishes others to understand it; but I cannot pretend that it has kindled in me that inward motion to see and hear more, without which you and I both know no good can come of any investigation.

"If there is that spiritual world independent of matter, which you believe in, a day may come when something will happen to me which will kindle in a moment the right spirit of inquiry; no one will follow it up more promptly or persistently when it is aroused. If that time never comes, it must be taken as a sign that I am not one of those from whom that cause would gain.

Hoping you will forgive me for any rudeness that I fear I have been guilty of,

"Believe me,

"Yours very truly,

"S. BUTLER."

« EelmineJätka »