Peace to thy scientific ashes, O credulous Eusebe Salverte! Who knows but before the close of the present century popular wisdom will have invented a new proverb: “As incredibly credulous as a scientist.”
Why should it appear so impossible that when the spirit is once separated from its body, it may have the power to animate some evanescent form, created out of that magical “psychic” or “ectenic” or “ethereal” force, with the help of the elementaries who furnish it with the sublimated matter of their own bodies? The only difficulty is, to realize the fact that surrounding space is not an empty void, but a reservoir filled to repletion with the models of all things that ever were, that are, and that will be; and with beings of countless races, unlike our own. Seemingly supernatural facts — supernatural in that they openly contradict the demonstrated natural laws of gravitation, as in the above-mentioned instance of levitation — are recognized by many scientists. Every one who has dared to investigate with thoroughness has found himself compelled to admit their existence; only in their unsuccessful efforts to account for the phenomena on theories based on the laws of such forces as were already known, some of the highest representatives of science have involved themselves in inextricable difficulties!
In his Resume de Mirville describes the argumentation of these adversaries of spiritualism as consisting of five paradoxes, which he terms distractions.
First distraction: that of Faraday, who explains the table phenomenon, by the table which pushes you “in consequence of the resistance which pushes it back.”
Second distraction: that of Babinet, explaining all the communications (by raps) which are produced, as he says, “in good faith and with perfect conscientiousness, correct in every way and sense — by ventriloquism,” the use of which faculty implies of necessity — bad faith.
Third distraction: that of Dr. Chevreuil, explaining the faculty of moving furniture without contact, by the preliminary acquisition of that faculty.
Fourth distraction: that of the French Institute and its members, who consent to accept the miracles, on condition that the latter will not contradict in any way those natural laws with which they are acquainted.
Fifth distraction: that of M. de Gasparin, introducing as a very simple and perfectly elementary phenomenon that which every one rejects, precisely because no one ever saw the like of it.
While the great, world-known scientists indulge in such fantastic theories, some less known neurologists find an explanation for occult phe-
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nomena of every kind in an abnormal effluvium resulting from epilepsy. Another would treat mediums — and poets, too, we may infer — with assafoetida and ammonia, and declare every one of the believers in spiritual manifestations lunatics and hallucinated mystics.
To the latter lecturer and professed pathologist is commended that sensible bit of advice to be found in the New Testament: “Physician, heal thyself.” Truly, no sane man would so sweepingly charge insanity upon four hundred and forty-six millions of people in various parts of the world, who believe in the intercourse of spirits with ourselves!
Considering all this, it remains to us but to wonder at the preposterous presumption of these men, who claim to be regarded by right of learning as the high priests of science, to classify a phenomenon they know nothing about. Surely, several millions of their countrymen and women, if deluded, deserve at least as much attention as potato-bugs or grasshoppers! But, instead of that, what do we find? The Congress of the United States, at the demand of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, enacts statutes for organization of National Insect Commissions; chemists are busying themselves in boiling frogs and bugs; geologists amuse their leisure by osteological surveys of armor-plated ganoids, and discuss the odontology of the various species of dinichtys; and entomologists suffer their enthusiasm to carry them to the length of supping on grasshoppers boiled, fried, and in soup. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are either losing themselves in the maze of “crazy delusions,” according to the opinion of some of these very learned encyclopaedists, or perishing physically from “nervous disorders,” brought on or brought out by mediumistic diathesis.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
