Finally, M. de Gasparin denies that his researches are ‘superstitious’. Will can move my limbs, if it also moves my table, what is there superstitious in that? It is a new fact, that is all. ‘Tout est si matériel, si physique dans les experiences des tables.’ It was not so at Toulouse!
Meanwhile M. de Gasparin, firm in his ‘Trewth,’—the need of a chaîne of persons, the physical origin of the phenomena, the entire absence of spirits,—was so unlucky, when he dealt with ‘spirits,’ as to drop into the very line of argument which he had been denouncing. ‘Spirits’ are ‘superstitious,’—well, his adversaries had found superstition in his own experiments and beliefs. To believe that spirits are engaged, is ‘to reduce our relations with the invisible world to the grossest definition’. But why not, as we know nothing about our relations with the invisible world? The theology of the spirits is ‘contrary to Scripture’; very well, your tales of tables moved without contact are contrary to science. ‘No spiritualistic story has ever been told which is not to be classed among the phenomena of animal magnetism. . . . ’ This, of course, is a mere example of a statement made without examination, a sin alleged by M. de Gasparin against his opponents. Vast numbers of such stories, not explicable by the now rejected theory of ‘animal magnetism,’ have certainly been told.
In another volume M. de Gasparin demolished the tales, but he was only at the beginning of his subject. The historical and anthropological evidence for the movement of objects without contact, not under his conditions, is very vast in bulk. The modern experiments are sometimes more scientific than his own, and the evidence for the most startling events of all kinds is quite as good as that on which he relies for his prodigies, themselves sufficiently startling. His hypothesis, at all events, of will directing a force or fluid, by no means explains phenomena quite as well provided with evidence as his own. So M. de Gasparin disposes of the rival miracles as the result of chance, imposture, or hallucination, the very weapons of his scientific adversaries. His own prodigies he has seen, and is satisfied. His opponents say: ‘You cannot register your force sur l’inclinaison d’une aiguille’. He could not, but Home could do so to the satisfaction of a scientific expert, and probably M. de Gasparin would have believed it, if he had seen it. M. de Gasparin is horrified at the idea of ‘trespassing on the territory of acts beyond our power’. But, if it were possible to do the miracles of Home, it would be possible because it is not beyond our power. ‘The spiritualistic opinion is opposed to the doctrine of the resurrection: it merely announces the immortality of the soul.’ But that has nothing to do with the matter in hand.
The theology of spirits, of course, is neither here nor there. A ‘spirit’ will say anything or everything. But Mr. C. C. Massey when he saw a chair move at a word (and even without one), in the presence of such a double-dyed impostor as Slade, had as much right to believe his own eyes as M. de Gasparin, and what he saw does not square with M. de Gasparin’s private ‘Trewth’. The chair in Mr. Massey’s experience, was ‘unattached’ to a piece of string; it fell, and, at request, jumped up again, and approached Mr. Massey, ‘just as if some one had picked it up in order to take a seat beside me’. [{319a}]
Such were the idola specus, the private personal prepossessions of M. de Gasparin, undeniably an honourable man. Now, in 1877, his old adversary, Dr. Carpenter, C.B., M.D., LL.D, F.R.S., F.G.S., V.P.L.S., corresponding member of the Institute of France, tout ce qu’il y a de plus officiel, de plus décoré, returned to the charge. He published a work on Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc. [{319b}] Perhaps the unscientific reader supposes that Dr. Carpenter replied to the arguments of M. de Gasparin? This would have been sportsmanlike, but no, Dr. Carpenter firmly ignored them! He devoted three pages to table-turning (pp. 96, 97, 98). He exhibited Mr. Faraday’s little machine for detecting muscular pressure, a machine which would also detect pressure which is not muscular. He explained answers given by tilts, answers not consciously known to the operators, as the results of unconscious cerebration. People may thus get answers which they do expect, or answers which they do not expect, as may happen. But not one word did Dr. Carpenter say to a popular audience at the London Institution about M. de Gasparin’s assertion, and the assertion of M. de Gasparin’s witnesses, that motion had been observed without any contact at all. He might, if he pleased, have alleged that M. de Gasparin and the others fabled; or that they were self-hypnotised, or were cheated, but he absolutely ignored the evidence altogether. Now this behaviour, if scientific, was hardly quite sportsmanlike, to use a simple British phrase which does credit to our language and national character. Mr. Alfred Wallace stated a similar conclusion as to Dr. Carpenter’s method of argument, in language of some strength. ‘Dr. Carpenter,’ he said, ‘habitually gives only one side of the question, and completely ignores all facts which tell against his theory.’ [{320}] Without going so far as Mr. Wallace, and alleging that what Dr. Carpenter did in the case of M. de Gasparin, he did ‘habitually,’ we may briefly examine some portions of his book which, perhaps, leave something to be desired. It is written with much acuteness, with considerable fairness, and is certainly calculated to convince any reader who has not been perplexed by circumstances on which Dr. Carpenter throws little light.
Our own chief perplexity is the continuity and uniformity of the historical and anthropological evidence for certain marvels. We have already shown the difficulty of attributing this harmony of evidence, first to savage modes of thought, and then to their survival and revival. The evidence, in full civilisation, ancient and modern, of educated and even sceptical witnesses to phenomena, which are usually grotesque, but are always the same everywhere, in every age and land, and the constant attendance of these phenomena on persons of a peculiar temperament, are our stumbling-blocks on the path to absolute negation. Epilepsy, convulsions, hysterical diseases are startling affairs, we admit. It was natural that savages and the ignorant should attribute them to diabolical possession, and then look out for, and invent, manifestations of the diabolical energy outside the body of the patient, say in movements of objects, knocks, and so forth. As in these maladies the patient may be subject to hallucinations, it was natural that savages or ignorant men, or polytheists, or ardent Catholics, or excitable Covenanters, should regard these hallucinations as ‘lucid’ or ‘clairvoyant’. A few lucky coincidences would establish this opinion among such observers as we have indicated, while failures of lucidity would not be counted. The professional epileptic medicine-man, moreover, would strengthen his case by ‘prophesying on velvet,’ like Norna of the Fitful Head, on private and early information. Imposture would imitate the ‘spiritual’ feats of ‘raps,’ ‘physical movements of objects,’ and ‘luminous forms’. All this would continue after savagery, after paganism, after ‘Popery’ among the peasants who were for so long, and in superstition are even now, a conservative class.
All that ‘expectancy,’ hysterics, ‘the dominant idea’ and rude hypnotism, ‘the sleep of the shadow,’ could do, would be done, as witch trials show. All these elements in folklore, magic and belief would endure, in the peasant class, under the veneer of civilisation. Now and again these elements of superstition would break through the veneer, would come to the surface among the educated classes, and would ‘carry silly women captive,’ and silly men. They, too, though born in the educated class, would attest impossible occurrences.
In all this, we might only see survival, wonderfully vivacious, and revival astonishingly close to the ancient savage lines.
We are unable to state the case for survival and revival more strenuously, and the hypothesis is most attractive. This hypothesis appears to be Dr. Carpenter’s, though he does not, in the limits of popular lectures, unfold it at any length. After stating (p. 1) that a continuous belief in ‘occult agencies’ has existed, he adds:—
‘While this very continuity is maintained by some to be an evidence of the real existence of such [occult] agencies, it will be my purpose to show you that it proves nothing more than the wide-spread diffusion, alike amongst minds of the highest and lowest culture, of certain tendencies to thought, which have either created ideal marvels possessing no foundation whatever in fact, or have, by exaggeration and distortion, invested with a preternatural character occurrences which are perfectly capable of a natural explanation’.