Note 997 — Chapter II · THE ROMAN EMPIRE UNDER ANASTASIUS: THE INHERITANCE OF JUSTINIAN (continued 2)

Previous to the overthrow of Biblical and other ancient cosmogonies by the extension of natural knowledge the historic inquiry as to the truth of supernatural religion was paramount. As recently as the fifties of the last century a sceptic, if asked to give reasons for his disbelief, might have answered that it was due to the absence of witnesses of known position and integrity to attest the occurrences; and that if such evidence were forthcoming he should certainly consider that Christianity rested on foundations which could never be shaken. Let us see whether it is in our power to prove that if a religion based on miracles could pass such an ordeal it would not necessarily even then hold an impregnable position. In 1848 certain phenomena, termed the “Rochester knockings,” occurring at a place in New England, impelled a wave of credulity as to spiritual manifestations throughout Christendom, which has not wholly subsided up to the present date. Prof. Robt. Hare, an eminent chemist and electrician, was attracted to investigate the matter with the firm intention of exposing the folly. But he became convinced instead, and by the aid of a lady who could produce “raps,” apparently unconnected with her person, he devised a code of signals from which resulted a couple of bulky volumes devoted by the professor to explicit details of the doings in, and the beauties of, the spirit-land, the whole recounted by deceased relations of his own; Spiritualism Scientifically Demonstrated, New York, 1855. But the spirits did not for long restrict themselves to merely audible signs; they responded generously to the attention paid to them and soon began to reveal their hands, faces, and even their whole persons for physical observation, often pelting the audience with flowers, presenting them with bouquets, and showing themselves to be accomplished musicians in the negro mode by performances on unseen instruments. Although their deeds were never dark, yet they always insisted on darkness as indispensable for the perpetration of them. In 1852, after the craze reached England, many men of academical and scientific repute observed and attested incredible phenomena, of which Prof. Challis of Cambridge said that, if the statements had to be rejected, “the possibility of ascertaining facts by human testimony must be given up.” Mr. A. R. Wallace, the congener of Darwin, became a convert, and bore witness to the miracles of Mrs. Guppy, her floral materializations, etc.; Modern Miracles and Spiritualism, 1874, etc. (I cannot omit to mention that this author, at one time at least, was an anti-vaccinationist). Sir W. Crookes, the celebrated scientist, had séances in his own house, where he walked and talked with a young lady from the Orient, dead a century before, subjected her to a quasi-medical examination, and possessed himself of a lock of her hair; Researches on the Phenomena of Spiritualism, 1870. The professors of Leipzig University received the celebrated medium, Dr. Slade, in their private study on several occasions, when he satisfied them of his ability to perform the impossible by producing untieable knots, passing matter through matter, and causing writing to appear on slates from invisible correspondents; Transcendental Physics, by Prof. Zöllner, Lond., 1883. Other observers who upheld the reality of spiritual achievements are Sir R. Burton, Mr. Cromwell Varley, F.R.S., Dr. Lockhart Robinson, Lord Lindsay, etc. The list of veracious witnesses is, in fact, a long one and a weighty. Yet all these eminent men have been deceived by cunning impostors. See the Reports of the Societies for Psychical Research, English and American, which have been issued regularly for nearly twenty years. Hallucinations, ghost-stories, and hypnosis have been exhaustively investigated, but no spirits have ventured to materialize themselves whenever conclusive tests were insisted on. At the most it has been demonstrated that telepathy, a kind of wireless telegraphy between brain and brain, may occur under favourable but rare conditions. Whenever trickery was excluded the pretended mediums were invariably unsuccessful. The redoubtable Dr. Slade, when he found that dupes failed him, retired from the profession, and shortly after, on meeting a friend who challenged him, replied, “you never believed in the old spirits, did you?” The absurdities which were effective among the credulous when their superstitions were appealed to were often a ludicrous feature. A stone picked up by the wayside and ejected adroitly from the medium’s pocket during a dance is looked upon as a supernatural occurrence. See Truesdell’s ridiculous exposure of Slade and other charlatans of that class; Bottom Facts of Spiritualism, N.Y., 1883. The career of an English impostor has been unveiled throughout by a confederate in Confessions of a Medium, Lond., 1882. The literature on both sides is very large and is still accumulating. Several spiritual journals are published with the support of thousands of believers in Europe and America, etc. This modern illustration teaches us very conclusively: (1) That had the Gospels come down to us as the acknowledged writings of some of the best known and trustworthy men of antiquity, their contents would still have to be discredited as originating in fraud or illusion: (2) That devotion to a branch of science, or even to science generally, is not essentially productive of any critical insight into matters theological or professedly supernatural: (3) That phenomena of cerebration, normal, aberrant, and perhaps supranormal (exalted sensitiveness), may easily be utilized for purposes of imposture; and are a proper subject for methodized psychical study. Since a contemporary religion, supported by a mass of direct and definite evidence thus collapses before a strict scrutiny, we must ask what truth could reside in those generated in the womb of Oriental mysticism, for which no solid foundations can be perceived? When we see that even scientists do not always succeed in persuading themselves that nothing is credible but fact, quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus demonstrabile sit, how little reliance can be placed on popular reports and unauthentic tracts. Even if we had not spiritualism to hand, a practically similar lesson might be taught from a consideration of Shakerism, Mormonism, Harris’s Brotherhood of the New Life, the Zion Restoration Host, with its reincarnated Elijah, etc. See Oxley’s Modern Messiahs, 1889, for many interesting details as to popular illusionists who have assumed the prophet’s mantle.