II
Mental and moral wreckage may be the fate of those who surrender the will in a vain attempt to lift the curtain of unseen realms. It was an ancient belief that evil spirits could not obtain a footing in any house unless the inmate gave them a deliberate invitation to enter. “Reverend father,” says Magdalen in “The Abbot,” “hast thou never heard that there are spirits powerful to rend the walls of a castle asunder when once admitted, which yet cannot enter the house unless they are invited, nay, dragged, over the threshold?” We remember how Coleridge uses the same superstition in the mysterious fragment, “Christabel”:
“The lady sank, belike thro’ pain.
And Christabel with might and main
Lifted her up, a weary weight,
Over the threshold of the gate;
Then the lady rose again,
And moved as she were not in pain.”
“It is prudent,” says Camille Flammarion, “not to give oneself exclusively to occult subjects, for one might soon lose the independence of mind necessary to form an impartial judgment.”