PLANCHETTE; OR, THE DESPAIR OF SCIENCE. BEING A FULL ACCOUNT OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM, ITS PHENOMENA, WITH A SURVEY OF FRENCH SPIRITISM. By & Sargent. "Search where thou wilt, and let thy reason go BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1869. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by ROBERTS BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. CAMBRIDGE : PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. A PREFACE IN A LETTER. TO THE REV. W. M. : — MY DEAR FRIEND, - More than twenty years ago, we ventured to cross the border of what Ennemoser calls "the great ill-famed land of the marvellous." Certain manifestations arrested our notice. Repelled and, for a long time, baffled by what seemed merely grotesque or trivial, we did not abandon inquiry. Our interest in the proscribed phenomena has not yet abated. We have lived to see the smile of derision with which the spiritual hypothesis that accompanied them was at first saluted, grow fainter and fainter, until it now rarely appears on the lips of well-informed persons; and the question is put seriously, even by doctors of divinity and veterans of science, "What do these things mean?" I cannot presume to answer dogmatically; but having kept trace of the so-called spiritual movement that began at Hydesville in 1847, and having, long before that period, investigated the kindred phemomena of somnambulism, independent and mesmeric, I have hoped to offer such a survey of iii α the facts and theories as would be acceptable to earnest and uncommitted seekers after truth, always excepting those who, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, decline, "on a priori grounds," to look into the subject. Recently, attention has been directed to it anew by the wooden trifle known as the Planchette; and I have chosen the name of this mysterious toy as the title of my book, rather as a convenient signpost, pointing to one little phase of the complex whole, than as indicating fully the character of the facts here collected; for these are, I am persuaded, of supreme importance, embracing, as they do, in their relations, most of the authentic marvels in the pneumatology of ancient and modern times. Without undervaluing the tributary services of Planchette in certain rare cases, I cannot doubt that its eccentricities are often explicable by unconscious nervous movement or by wanton deception. But, after making allowance for all that is unprofitable, trifling, and tedious in the experiments,—for all that ought to be deducted as giving no conclusive evidence of supersensual knowledge or power, - there is a remainder of well-attested results, which cannot be explained by any theory of imposture, hallucination, or unexplored nervous action; and these results belong to the class here considered. I regret that the circumstances under which the present work was written did not permit me to shape |