CATALOGUE OF CEREBRAL ORGANS.
1. Intellectual.
Understanding.—Intuition, Consciousness, Foresight, Sagacity, Judgment, Wit, Reason, Ingenuity, Scheming, Imagination, Invention, Composition, Calculation, Somnolence.
Recollection.—Memory (recent and remote), Time, System.
Perception.—Clairvoyance, Phenomena, Form, Size, Distance, Weight, Color, Light, Shade, Order, Tune, Language, Sense of Force, Sensibility.
Semi-Intellectual.—Liberality, Sympathy, Expression, Sincerity, Humor, Pliability, Imitation, Admiration, Spirituality, Marvelousness, Ideality.
2. Ethical or Moral Organs.
Benevolence, Devotion, Faith, Politeness, Friendship, Love, Hope, Kindness or Philanthropy, Religion, Patience or Serenity, Integrity or Conscientiousness, Patriotism or Love of Country, Cheerfulness, Energy, Fortitude, Heroism, Health, Sanity, Caution, Sublimity, Reverence, Modesty.
3. Social Energy.
Self-respect or Dignity, Self-confidence, Love of Power, Ostentation, Ambition, Business Energy, Adhesiveness, Self-sufficiency, Playfulness, Approbativeness, Oratory, Honor, Magnanimity, Repose, Chastity, Coolness.
4. Selfish Forces.
Arrogance, Familiarity, Fascination, Command, Dogmatism, Combativeness, Aggressiveness, Secretiveness, Avarice, Stolidity, Force, Rivalry, Profligacy, or Lawless Impulse, Irritability, Baseness, Destructiveness, Hatred, Disgust, Animalism, Turbulence, Virility.
5. Sensitive and Enfeebling Elements.
Interior Sensibility or Disease, Appetite, Relaxation, Melancholy or Sullenness, Insanity, Idiocy, Rashness and Carelessness, Expression.
The reader should be careful not to attach too much importance to classification or nomenclature. The special descriptions of organs are necessary to a correct understanding.
CONTRASTS OF DEVELOPMENT
The contrast of intellectual development is seen in comparing the world-renowned philosopher Humboldt and the idiot figured by Spurzheim. The contrast of coronal and basilar development is seen in comparing the benevolent negro Eustace, who received the Monthyon prize for virtue in France with the skull of the cannibal Carib, as figured by Lawrence. As to the coronal or upward development of the brain, there is always a great contrast between untamable wild animals, such as the lion and the eagle, and those of gentle and lovely nature, such as the gazelle and the dove.
Superficial Criticism.
A RESPONSE TO MISS ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
The publication in the Chicago Inter-Ocean of two columns of sharp criticism on the spiritual movement by Miss Phelps, which were widely republished, induced the editor to send the following reply to the Inter-Ocean, which was duly published.
Boston, Mass., Jan. 23.
The rhetorically eloquent essay of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps on spiritualism has been read by the undersigned with that peculiar pleasure with which we witness an intellectual or psychic tour de force which produces singular results. It is quite an able production, for the ability of an advocate is measured by his capacity to make that which is obviously absurd appear quite rational, and to give to that which is intrinsically small or mean an air of refined dignity. Divested of its dignified and delusive rhetoric, what does the lady say or mean in plain, homely English?
She says that “cultivated thought” has a “slippery surface” on which spiritualism has made “a clutch,” and that it has lately made an “encroachment upon scientific attention,” so that psychical societies of distinguished men are “busying themselves;” also that spiritualism must be “made subject to the laws of common sense” and controlled by “common integrity,” and if this truth “is at last materializing before the consciousness of the believers in spiritualistic phenomena some good may come of it.”
That a certain style of “cultivated thought” familiar in Boston has a “slippery surface” on which neither religion nor philosophy makes much impression, cannot be denied, and that it is only lately (as she says) that psychical societies of more or less distinguished men have allowed spiritual science to encroach on their attention, is very true. It has always been so. Societies of distinguished men have always been behind the progress of undistinguished men. Neither Harvey nor Galvani was honored by societies of distinguished men until the “slippery surface” of their “cultivated thought” was clutched and crushed by the power of a widely diffused truth. As a general rule, the last place in which to find the foremost thought of the age is in the societies of distinguished men, whether they be politicians, theologians, or scientists. Hence it is that phenomena as old as history itself and of late as thoroughly investigated as any branch of positive science have just begun to encroach upon the attention of the societies to which the lady desires us to surrender our judgment. No doubt they have resisted such encroachments as long as decency would permit, and some very able writers think a great deal longer.
As to the insinuation that “believers in spiritualistic phenomena have only of late begun to appreciate common sense and common honesty,” when these believers count by millions, and include many more eminent men than her infallible psychic societies, the lady has permission to withdraw the charge, for it is obviously only the lapsus linguæ of a too fluent tongue.
Again she says: “Which of us would not lay down life itself to know that he had spoken yesterday with the darling of our souls dead years ago?” Not one of you! The expression is rather hysterical in its intensity. The majority of your ultra-sceptical class would not even spend a day or an hour in the pursuit, for you have neglected the opportunities which have been open to all the world. You might have held a pair of slates in your own hands, secured in any manner, with no pencil between them; might have heard the writing in progress, then opened them and recognized the message of your own darling—perhaps the handwriting also. Thousands of modest, honest seekers of truth have done these things. But the Pharisees who talk of heaven and then fly from its approach have “religiously shunned” them; that is the way they express it, and you are their apologist. But what is your apology?
You give a graphic description of a cheap style of dishonest mediumship with vulgar surroundings, in which, nevertheless, there are wonderful revelations, “the golden thread of a truth that is worth having,” and you suggest that the truth must now be “garnered” by a psychical research society, intimating that if they do not garner it, it will cease to be recognized as truth, and that the mediums must bring it all to them for sanction, or cease to be respected by honorable people. Was ever a more unfair and delusive statement made by a hired attorney? The grandeur of the theme has not inspired a spirit of fairness or justice. The question lies between the eternal and holy verities of spiritual science or religious science and the conscience of the inquirer. The poor, illiterate, and obscure people who exhibit for a living whatever capacity they may have, have nothing to do with it. Would our lady critic select a cheap sign painter to represent the beauty and glory of art, or the exhibitors of laughing gas to illustrate the science of Sir Humphrey Davy, or the performances of an illiterate quack to illustrate the dignity of the medical profession? Is our critic so profoundly ignorant of the progress of psychic science as to think such representations fair or allowable?
A science is represented by its leaders, its authors, its teachers, not its camp followers. Examine the writings of Alfred Russell Wallace, Professor Crookes of London, Epes Sargent, William Howitt, Professor Hare—of Swedenborg, Kerner, Ennemoser, Du Prel, Hellenbach, Fichte, Varley, Ashburner, Flammarion, Aksakoff, and a score of others of the highest rank, and criticize if you can the magnificent philosophy of these and of many an ancient writer. Consider the well attested facts and sublime religion that you will find in them, and observe that the facts are a hundred times better attested and a thousand times more critically observed than any of those upon which the world’s great religions rest, before which our critic reverently bows.
[Note.—Rev. Henry Ward Beecher is reported to have said in 1860: “The physiology, the anthropology of the Bible, is highly odic, and must be studied as such. As such it will be found to harmonize with the general principles of human experience in such matters in all ages. If a theory be adopted everywhere else but in the Bible, excluding spiritual intervention in toto, and accounting for everything physically, then will the covers of the Bible prove but pasteboard barriers. Such a theory will sweep its way through the Bible and its authority, and its inspirations will be annihilated. On the other hand, if the theory of spiritual intervention be accepted in the Bible, it cannot be shut up there, but must sweep its way through the wide domain of ‘popular superstitions,’ as they are called, separating the element of truth on which they are based, and asserting its own authoritative supremacy.”]
Then if you must for a partisan purpose ignore all this, and select obscure people to represent the other side of the question, it would be very easy to find mediumship of a pure and honorable character—mediums whom no one visits without carrying away a sweet, refining influence, a stronger faith, and a brighter realization of heavenly truths. And there are mediums, too, from whose lips distil a lofty eloquence and a remarkable wisdom upon any or all subjects proposed, with a flow of extemporaneous poetry or of heavenly music which has never been equaled under such circumstances by uninspired mortals.
But, forsooth, they must come to a psychic society that the world may learn from their papal infallibility if anything exists at all worthy of notice. This is indeed seriously proposed! Well, if a group of clergymen in synod assembled should summon all geologists and astronomers to come before them and show if there was anything in their scientific teachings, their heretical, astronomical, and geological doctrines, would any one have responded to the presumptuous demand? Would Airy, Lyell, Miller, Darwin, or the poorest country school master have taken any notice of such a demand?
The majority of the American Psychical Research Society know vastly less of psychic science than clergymen know of geology and astronomy. They have been not inquirers, but obstructionists, assailing those who dare to inquire, and the subject, as their friend says, has only lately encroached on their attention. The admirable scientific experiments of Professor Hare and Professor Crookes have long since settled the questions which they now propose to take up, and when, over forty years ago, I published in my Journal of Man the incontestable facts then established, and gave their rationale, the psychic researchers of to-day were as ignorant as sucking babes of the whole subject. This ignorance is the very raison d’etre of the society. They don’t know if there is anything to be discovered, and they propose to look out. Their failure so far is considered by Colonel Higginson a proof of their superior wisdom, which means that they are looking for a mare’s nest, and have shown their wisdom by not finding it!
Let those who are seeking to enter the freshman class in psychic science assume a little appearance of modesty, and not attempt to set themselves above the old graduates and professors of the university, at which they have heretofore been throwing stones like an unrestrained mob. This is plain speech, but it is just. Let them begin their operations by an act of justice—by building a monument to Professor Hare, the noblest of American scientists, and the object of their persecution.
“The time has come,” says our lady critic, “for mystery to work hand in hand with scientific study or to lay aside its claims to scientific respect.” Very true, very true, indeed, except your chronology; the time has long since gone by. Science has grappled with mystery long since. I can point out, if you wish to see it, the very anatomical structures, the special fibres in connection with which the spiritual phenomena are developed. The modus operandi is understood, and the facts have been known some thirty, some a hundred, some several thousand years. Among advanced thinkers psychic science is no more a debatable question than the rotundity of the earth or the principles of astronomy.
Finally, dear, eloquent lady, your exhortations in behalf of honesty are very admirable, indeed, and would be much more admirable if the exhortation itself were more fair and honest—if you did not seem to sprinkle the reproach of dishonesty over multitudes of honest people more gifted than yourself, with the power to find and clasp the holiest truths. If the inferior and less honorable class of mediums are now before the public, why is it? It is due solely, dear lady, to such people as yourself and your psychic society men, and “fellows of a baser sort,” who follow your lead—to those whose censorious and sometimes scurrilous hostility against spiritual phenomena has driven into retirement or kept in concealment the most beautiful and holy phenomena that were ever known on earth. Angels do not confront the hissing mob. But their visits to-day are neither few nor far between. In every bower of perfect spiritual purity they come. Let but this brutal opposition of men and fluent scorn of women cease, and the universal air will be fragrant as the spiritual beauty now hidden shall become a part of our social life, and even the fastidious Miss Phelps will be satisfied and delighted.
[Note.—Miss Phelps, if she had due respect for her grandfather, the Rev. Dr. Phelps of Stratford, Conn., ought to be an earnest champion of spiritualism, for it was at his house that the most wonderful phenomena were realized, when invisible spirits carried on their pranks with the furniture like human beings. Dr. Phelps was a thorough spiritualist, and introduced the spiritual doctrine into his sermons, though exercising the worldly wisdom of not using the word spiritualism.]