A. B. very distinctly said that he knew some of the asserted facts, believed others on testimony, but did not pretend to know whether they were caused by spirits, or had some unknown and unimagined origin. This he said as clearly as I could have said it myself. But a great many persons cannot understand such a frame of mind: their own apparatus is a kind of spirit-level, and their conclusion on any subject is the little bubble, which is always at one end or the other. Many of the reviewers declare that A. B. is a secret believer in the spirit-hypothesis: and one of them wishes that he had "endorsed his opinion more boldly." According to this reviewer, any one who writes "I boldly
say I am unable to choose," contradicts himself. In truth, a person who does say it has a good deal of courage, for each side believes that he secretly favors the other; and both look upon him as a coward. In spite of all this, A. B. boldly repeats that he feels assured of many of the facts of spiritualism, and that he cannot pretend to affirm or deny anything about their cause.
The great bulk of the illogical part of the educated community—whether majority or minority I know not; perhaps six of one and half-a-dozen of the other—have not power to make a distinction, cannot be made to take a distinction, and of course, never attempt to shake a distinction. With them all such things are evasions, subterfuges, come-offs, loopholes, etc. They would hang a man for horse-stealing under a statute against sheep-stealing; and would laugh at you if you quibbled about the distinction between a horse and a sheep. I divide the illogical—I mean people who have not that amount of natural use of sound inference which is really not uncommon—into three classes:—First class, three varieties: the Niddy, the Noddy, and the Noodle. Second class, three varieties: the Niddy-Noddy, the Niddy-Noodle, and the Noddy-Noodle. Third class, undivided: the Niddy-Noddy-Noodle. No person has a right to be angry with me for more than one of these subdivisions.
The want of distinction was illustrated to me, when a boy, about 1820, by the report of a trial which I shall never forget: boys read newspapers more keenly than men. Every now and then a bench of country magistrates rather astonishes the town populations, accustomed to rub their brains[[341]] against one another. Such a story as the following would,
in our day, bring down grave remarks from above: but I write of the olden (or Eldon[[342]]) time, when nothing but conviction in a court of record would displace a magistrate. In that day the third-class amalgamator of distinct things was often on the bench of quarter-sessions.
An attorney was charged with having been out at night poaching. A clear alibi was established; and perjury had certainly been committed. The whole gave reason to suspect that some ill-willers thought the bench disliked the attorney so much that any conviction was certain on any evidence. The bench did dislike the attorney: but not to the extent of thinking he could snare any partridges in the fields while he was asleep in bed, except the dream-partridges which are not always protected by the dream-laws. So the chairman said, "Mr. ——, you are discharged; but you should consider this one of the most fortunate days of your life." The attorney indignantly remonstrated, but the magistrate was right; for he said, "Mr. ——, you have frequently been employed to defend poachers: have you been careful to impress upon them the enormity of their practices?" It appeared in a wrangling conversation that the magistrates saw little moral difference between poaching and being a poacher's professional defender without lecturing him on his wickedness: but they admitted with reluctance, that there was a legal distinction; and the brain of N3 could no further go. This is nearly fifty years ago; and Westernism was not quite extinct. If the present lords of the hills and the valleys want to shine, let them publish a true history of their own order. I am just old enough to remember some of the last of the squires and parsons who protested against teaching the poor to read and write. They now write books for the working classes, give them lectures, and the like. There is now no class, as a class, more highly educated, broadly educated, and deeply educated,
than those who were, in old times, best described as partridge-popping squireens. I have myself, when a boy, heard Old Booby speaking with pride of Young Booby as having too high a spirit to be confined to books: and I suspected that his dislike to teaching the poor arose in fact from a feeling that they would, if taught a little, pass his heir.
A. B. recommended the spirit-theory as an hypothesis on which to ground inquiry; that is, as the means of suggestion for the direction of inquiry. Every person who knows anything of the progress of physics understands what is meant; but not the reviewers I speak of. Many of them consider A. B. as adopting the spirit-hypothesis. The whole book was written, as both the authors point out, to suggest inquiry to those who are curious; C. D. firmly believing, A. B. as above. Neither C. D. nor A. B. make any other pretence. Both dwell upon the absence of authentications and the suppression of names as utterly preventive of anything like proof. And A. B. says that his reader "will give him credit, if not himself a goose, for seeing that the tender of an anonymous cheque would be of equal effect, whether drawn on the Bank of England or on Aldgate Pump." By this test a number of the reviewers are found to be geese: for they take the authors as offering proof, and insist, against the authors, on the very point on which the authors had themselves insisted beforehand.
Leaving aside imperceptions of this kind, I proceed to notice a clerical and medical review. I have lived much in the middle ages, especially since the invention of printing; and from thence I have brought away a high respect for and grateful recollection of—the priest in everything but theology, and the physician in everything but medicine. The professional harness was unfavorable to all progress, except on a beaten road; the professional blinkers prevented all but the beaten road from being seen: the professional reins were pulled at the slightest attempt to quicken pace, even on the permitted path; and the
professional whip was heavily laid on at the slightest attempt to diverge. But when the intelligent man of either class turned his attention out of his ordinary work, he had, in most cases, the freshness and vigor of a boy at play, and like the boy, he felt his freedom all the more from the contrast of school-restraint.