Planchette: Or, The Despair of ScienceRoberts Brothers, 1869 - 404 pages |
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accordion admit agency animal animal magnetism apparitions appeared asked believe Billot body brain C. F. Varley called clairvoyance communications dark Davenport Davenport Brothers death Deleuze divine doctrine door earth electricity eternal evidence evil examined existence experience eyes faculty floor give hand heard Home human Hydesville idea immortality intelligence intuition investigation invisible Ira Davenport Irenæus Kate Fox knowledge known laws light magnetism manifestations material materialist matter medium mediumship ment mesmerism metempsychosis mind modern Spiritualism moral mysterious nature never nomena objects odic force operator organism persons phenomenon philosophy physical Planchette pre-existence present principle produced Professor prove psychometry question raps reason regard remarkable reply revealed ropes says scientific séance seen sense somnambulism somnambulists soul spirit spirit-world spiritual hypothesis spiritual phenomena Spiritualists substance supposed Swedenborgians testimony theory things thought tion truth whole witchcraft witnessed writes
Popular passages
Page 166 - Is lightened ; that serene and blessed mood In which the affections gently lead us on, Until the breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul; While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things.
Page 278 - Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play! Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever lord of Death And Love can never lose its own...
Page 373 - Our childhood sits, Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne That hath more power than all the elements. I guess not what this tells of Being past, Nor what it augurs of the life to come...
Page 96 - And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king's counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.
Page 216 - Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered round our MK: wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh.
Page 334 - glad tidings" that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that "the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving" does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may.
Page 198 - Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings...
Page 334 - I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do : he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures ; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.
Page 214 - ... we have set it down as a law to ourselves, to examine things to the bottom ; and not to receive upon credit, or reject upon improbabilities, until there hath passed a due examination.
Page 156 - Dr. Hooker, in his address to the British Association, spoke thus of the author: "Of Mr. Wallace and his many contributions to philosophical biology it is not easy to speak without enthusiasm; for, putting aside their great merits, he, throughout his writings, with a modesty as rare as I believe it to be unconscious, forgets his own unquestioned claim to the honour of having originated independently of Mr. Darwin, the theories which he so ably defends.