He might have known when he wrote, he ought to have known then, that Dr. Robert Hare, of Philadelphia, who was eminent, distinctly and broadly eminent, as a scientist, had in 1855 published to the world a rigidly scientific demonstration that some unseen agent, intelligent enough to understand and comply with verbal requests, repeatedly moved the arms of scale-beams contrary to the normal action of gravitation. Science, there and then, revealed the existence of some natural law or laws which permit unseen and impalpable intelligences, under some conditions, to put forth action upon matter, with force and to extent, which man can measure in pounds avoirdupois. That single achievement of modern science teaches the wisdom of exempting seemingly diabolized and mischievous children from charge of being devils incarnate, until we have determined whether some beings of greater powers and different dispositions may not have usurped control of youthful and pliant human forms, and through them manifested schemes and pranks that originated in supernal brains, and were enacted by use of such forces as can be manipulated by none below disembodied intelligences.
Obviously he who was cognizant that science had made recent discoveries, suffered himself to remain in ignorance of what to him, as witchcraft historian, were the most pertinent and important parts of the knowledge recently gained; ignorant of those parts which were most closely connected with philosophical solution of the mysteries which pervaded the history he was elaborating. His blindness to what science—yes, to what exact physical science—by her rigid processes of weighing and measuring had positively demonstrated, bespeaks his short-comings, and would bespeak the unphilosophical stand-point of any historian of, or critic upon, the world’s marvels, who, since the day of Hare, ignores the light radiating from his demonstration, and continues to grope on in darkness which use of that light would dispel. Take into the catalogue of natural agents and forces all those whose existence and action, science, as applied by Dr. Hare twenty years ago, and again by Mr. Crookes and others in England more recently, backed, too, by the observations and tests of thousands less erudite, has demonstrated, and then all occasion to look upon our fathers as numskulls, and their daughters as proficient devils, at once disappears. New England soil, two centuries ago, was not populated mainly by jack-asses; and even had it been, their offspring would have been neither monkeys nor hyenas.
Since the work by Dr. Hare, entitled “Spiritualism Scientifically Demonstrated,” may not be readily accessible by many readers, his description of one demonstrative process is quoted from page 49, as follows:—
“A board, being about four feet in length, is supported by a rod, as a fulcrum, at about one foot from one end, and, of course, three feet from the other, which is suspended on a spring balance. A glass vase, about nine inches in diameter and five inches in hight, having a knob to hold it by, when inverted had this knob inserted in a hole made in the board six inches, nearly, from the fulcrum. Thus the vase rested on the board mouth upward. A wire-gauze cage, such as is used to keep flies from sugar, was so arranged by a well-known means as to slide up or down on two iron rods, one on each side of the trestle supporting the fulcrum. By these arrangements it was so adjusted as to descend into the vase until within an inch and a half of the bottom, while the inferiority of its dimensions prevented it from coming elsewhere within an inch of the parietes of the vase. Water was poured into the vase so as to rise into the cage till within about an inch and an half of the brim. A well-known medium (Gordon) was induced to plunge his hands, clasped together, to the bottom of the cage, holding them perfectly still. As soon as those conditions were attained, the apparatus being untouched by any one excepting the medium as described, I invoked the aid of my spirit friends. A downward force was repeatedly exerted upon the end of the board appended to the balance, equal to three pounds’ weight nearly;... the distance of the hook of the balance from the fulcrum on which the board turned was six times as great as the cage in which the hands were situated. Consequently a force of 3×6=18 pounds must have been exerted.”
The above experiment was performed in Dr. Hare’s own laboratory, in the presence and under the watchful scrutiny of John M. Kennedy, Esq., and was made with extraordinary care, because Professor Henry had just treated a similar result formerly obtained as incredible. Plate III. in the book furnishes a diagram illustrating Dr. Hare’s apparatus. This experimenter, whom Alfred R. Wallace calls America’s foremost chemist, had spent very many years in both constructing and in using, as a scientist, varied kinds of apparatus for testing the presence and action of subtile forces in nature, and he was competent to know, and did know as well as any other man whatsoever in the world’s great body of scientists, when results were obtained to positive certainty. He proved that some invisible and intelligent power moved his scale-beam contrary to the action of gravitation. The above demonstration, accompanied by many other evidences of spirit-action upon matter through mediums, had been published twelve years when Upham put forth his work. Therefore he was either ignorant of or he ignored late discoveries of science which had revolutionizing applicability to the very theories which he was putting forth.
After having eloquently depicted the sad results of witchcraft, that author says (vol. ii. p. 427), “Let those results for ever stand conspicuous, beacon-monuments, warning us and coming generations against superstition in every form, and all credulous and vain attempts to penetrate beyond the legitimate boundaries of human knowledge.” If there ever was “a credulous and vain attempt to penetrate beyond the legitimate boundaries of human knowledge,” one was made by him who sought to find that the keen-eyed, energetic, common-sense, virtuous, religious men of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century lacked common sagacity, and that their little girls rivaled Satan himself in malignity. Most seriously we ask whether forces which can be and have been measured by palpable scales, are “beyond the legitimate boundaries of human knowledge?” We ask whether, anywhere in the universe, there exist boundaries beyond which it is, or can be, illegitimate for man to go in search after agents and forces which either habitually or occasionally act legitimately upon him in this mortal life?
Another question is suggested by the foregoing quotation. Would not positive knowledge that there are unseen agents and forces within the realms of nature that can legitimately exhibit the phenomena once deemed witchcrafts, transfer such phenomena from the domain of either superstition or crime into that of science or that of beneficence? Surely it would. And, therefore, how can one possibly work more efficiently for depopulating the domain of superstition, than by bringing its inhabitants forth and colonizing them on the lands of knowledge and science? Shall we comply with the historian’s advice, and still continue to leave what ignorance denominates hobgoblins and ghosts to remain shrouded in appalling mists, and thus aid them to continue to be to coming generations the same awful beings they were to the generations past? Or shall we, on the other hand, now, while experience and science are showing that such work is practicable, push discovery onward till we both find laws and learn conditions which permit closer access of disembodied beings to us, and which also permit most beneficent reciprocal action between them and us, just as soon as familiarity, confidence, calmness, and mutual trust make their access easy? Which shall we do? Which is most scientific? Which is most dutiful to God and friendly to man? Which? Is ignorance of, or is knowledge of, nature’s forces and inhabitants the greater blessing? Which? Away with ignorance where knowledge is attainable.
We choose to learn as much concerning the universe and its inhabitants as God gives us power and opportunities to acquire; not fearing his censure, but trusting to win his approbation, by so doing. When one learns that issuers from the vailed realms of spirit-land are only earth’s emancipated children revisiting their former homes, the cry that devils are coming lacks any startling power. Faith, and even knowledge, sometimes says, “It is my friends and loved ones and those who love me, who are in the circumambient hosts, and I will do what I may to facilitate their more sensible approach; will extend toward them a friendly and helping hand.”
Only superstition and ignorance quail and skulk before visitants that come from unseen realms; knowledge stands fast and meets them with welcome and joy.
The “legitimate boundaries of knowledge”! Where are they? Surely not within any domain where knowledge can supersede ignorance and its consequent superstitions.