And do but cast my glove.’
The same intellectual movement led to the decline of both witchcraft and spiritualism, till, early in the last century, men thought that both were dying or all but dead together. Now, however, not only are spiritualists to be counted by tens of thousands in America and England, but there are among them several men of distinguished mental power. I am well aware that the problem of the so-called ‘spirit-manifestations’ is one to be discussed on its merits, in order to arrive at a distinct opinion how far it may be concerned with facts insufficiently appreciated and explained by science, and how far with superstition, delusion, and sheer knavery. Such investigation, pursued by careful observation in a scientific spirit, would seem apt to throw light on some most interesting psychological questions. But though it lies beyond my scope to examine the spiritualistic evidence for itself, the ethnographic view of the matter has, nevertheless, its value. This shows modern spiritualism to be in great measure a direct revival from the regions of savage philosophy and peasant folk-lore. It is not a simple question of the existence of certain phenomena of mind and matter. It is that, in connexion with these phenomena, a great philosophic-religious doctrine, flourishing in the lower culture but dwindling in the higher, has re-established itself in full vigour. The world is again swarming with intelligent and powerful disembodied spiritual beings, whose direct action on thought and matter is again confidently asserted, as in those times and countries where physical science had not as yet so far succeeded in extruding these spirits and their influences from the system of nature.
Apparitions have regained the place and meaning which they held from the level of the lower races to that of mediæval Europe. The regular ghost-stories, in which spirits of the dead walk visibly and have intercourse with corporeal men, are now restored and cited with new examples as ‘glimpses of the night-side of nature,’ nor have these stories changed either their strength to those who are disposed to believe them, or their weakness to those who are not. As of old, men live now in habitual intercourse with the spirits of the dead. Necromancy is a religion, and the Chinese manes-worshipper may see the outer barbarians come back, after a heretical interval of a few centuries, into sympathy with his time-honoured creed. As the sorcerers of barbarous tribes lie in bodily lethargy or sleep while their souls depart on distant journeys, so it is not uncommon in modern spiritualistic narratives for persons to be in an insensible state when their apparitions visit distant places, whence they bring back information, and where they communicate with the living. The spirits of the living as well as of the dead, the souls of Strauss and Carl Vogt as well as of Augustine and Jerome, are summoned by mediums to distant spirit-circles. As Dr. Bastian remarks, if any celebrated man in Europe feels himself at some moment in a melancholy mood, he may console himself with the idea that his soul has been sent for to America, to assist at the ‘rough fixings’ of some backwoodsman. Fifty years ago, Dr. Macculloch, in his ‘Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,’ wrote thus of the famous Highland second-sight: ‘In fact it has undergone the fate of witchcraft; ceasing to be believed, it has ceased to exist.’ Yet a generation later he would have found it reinstated in a far larger range of society, and under far better circumstances of learning and material prosperity. Among the influences which have combined to bring about the spiritualistic renaissance, a prominent place may, I think, be given to the effect produced on the religious mind of Europe and America by the intensely animistic teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, in the 18th century. The position of this remarkable visionary as to some of the particular spiritualistic doctrines may be judged of by the following statements from ‘The True Christian Religion.’ A man’s spirit is his mind, which lives after death in complete human form, and this spirit may be conveyed from place to place while the body remains at rest, as on some occasions happened to Swedenborg himself. ‘I have conversed,’ he says, ‘with all my relations and friends, likewise with kings and princes, and men of learning, after their departure out of this life, and this now for twenty-seven years without interruption.’ And foreseeing that many who read his ‘Memorable Relations’ will believe them to be fictions of imagination, he protests in truth they are not fictions, but were really seen and heard; not seen and heard in any state of mind in sleep, but in a state of complete wakefulness.[[227]]
I shall have to speak elsewhere of some of the doctrines of modern spiritualism, where they seem to fall into their places in the study of Animism. Here, as a means of illustrating the relation of the newer to the older spiritualistic ideas, I propose to glance over the ethnography of two of the most popular means of communicating with the spirit-world by rapping and writing, and two of the prominent spirit-manifestations, the feat of rising in the air, and the trick of the Davenport Brothers.
The elf who goes knocking and routing about the house at night, and whose special German name is the ‘Poltergeist,’ is an old and familiar personage in European folk-lore.[[228]] From of old, such unexplained noises have been ascribed to the agency of personal spirits, who more often than not are considered human souls. The modern Dayaks, Siamese, and Singhalese agree with the Esths as to such routing and rapping being caused by spirits.[[229]] Knockings may be considered mysterious but harmless, like those which in Swabia and Franconia are expected during Advent on the Anklöpferleins-Nächte, or ‘Little Knockers’ Nights.’[[230]] Or they may be useful, as when the Welsh miners think that the ‘knockers’ they hear underground are indicating the rich veins of lead and silver.[[231]] Or they may be simply annoying, as when, in the ninth century, a malignant spirit infested a parish by knocking at the walls as if with a hammer, but being overcome with litanies and holy water, confessed itself to be the familiar of a certain wicked priest, and to have been in hiding under his cloak. Thus, in the seventeenth century, the famous demon-drummer of Tedworth, commemorated by Glanvil in the ‘Saducismus Triumphatus,’ thumped about the doors and the outside of the house, and ‘for an hour together it would beat Roundheads and Cuckolds, the Tat-too, and several other Points of War, as well as any Drummer.’[[232]] But popular philosophy has mostly attached to such mysterious noises a foreboding of death, the knock being held as a signal or summons among spirits as among men. The Romans considered that the genius of death thus announced his coming. Modern folk-lore holds either that a knocking or rumbling in the floor is an omen of a death about to happen, or that dying persons themselves announce their dissolution to their friends in such strange sounds. The English rule takes in both cases: ‘Three loud and distinct knocks at the bed’s head of a sick person, or at the bed’s head or door of any of his relations, is an omen of his death.’ We happen to have a good means of testing the amount of actual correspondence between omen and event necessary to establish these rules: the illogical people who were (and still are) able to discover a connexion between the ticking of the ‘death-watch’ beetle and an ensuing death in the house, no doubt found it equally easy to give a prophetic interpretation to any other mysterious knocks.[[233]] There is a story, dated 1534, of a ghost that answered questions by knocking in the Catholic church of Orleans, and demanded the removal of the provost’s Lutheran wife, who had been buried there; but the affair proved to be a trick of a Franciscan friar.[[234]] The system of working an alphabet by counted raps is a device familiar to prison-cells, where it has long been at once the despair of gaolers and an evidence of the diffusion of education even among the criminal classes. Thus when, in 1847, the celebrated rappings began to trouble the township of Arcadia in the State of New York, the Fox family of Rochester, founders of the modern spiritual movement, had on the one hand only to revive the ancient prevalent belief in spirit-rappings, which had almost fallen into the limbo of discredited superstitions, while, on the other hand, the system of communication with the spirits was ready made to their hand. The system of a rapping-alphabet remains in full use, and numberless specimens of messages thus received are in print, possibly the longest being a novel, of which I can only give the title, ‘Juanita, Nouvelle par une Chaise. À l’Imprimerie du Gouvernement, Basse Terre (Guadeloupe), 1853.’ In the recorded communications, names, dates, &c., are often alleged to have been stated under remarkable circumstances, while the style of thought, language, and spelling fits with the intellectual quality of the medium. A large proportion of the communications being obviously false and silly, even when the ‘spirit’ has announced itself in the name of some great statesman, moralist, or philosopher of the past, the theory has been adopted by spiritualists that foolish or lying spirits are apt to personate those of higher degree, and give messages in their names.
Spirit-writing is of two kinds, according as it is done with or without a material instrument. The first kind is in full practice in China, where, like other rites of divination, it is probably ancient. It is called ‘descending of the pencil,’ and is especially used by the literary classes. When a Chinese wishes to consult a god in this way, he sends for a professional medium. Before the image of the god are set candles and incense, and an offering of tea or mock money. In front of this, on another table, is placed an oblong tray of dry sand. The writing instrument is a V-shaped wooden handle, two or three feet long, with a wooden tooth fixed at its point. Two persons hold this instrument, each grasping one leg of it, and the point resting in the sand. Proper prayers and charms induce the god to manifest his presence by a movement of the point in the sand, and thus the response is written, and there only remains the somewhat difficult and doubtful task of deciphering it. To what state of opinion the rite belongs may be judged from this: when the sacred apricot-tree is to be robbed of a branch to make the spirit-pen an apologetic inscription is scratched upon the trunk.[[235]] Notwithstanding theological differences between China and England, the art of spirit-writing is much the same in the two countries. A kind of ‘planchette’ seems to have been known in Europe in the seventeenth century.[[236]] The instrument, which may now be bought at the toy-shops, is a heart-shaped board some seven inches long, resting on three supports, of which the two at the wide end are castors, and the third at the pointed end is a pencil thrust through a hole in the board. The instrument is placed on a sheet of paper, and worked by two persons laying their fingers lightly on it, waiting till, without conscious effort of the operators, it moves and writes answers to questions. It is not everybody who has the faculty of spirit-writing, but a powerful medium will write alone. Such mediums sometimes consider themselves acted on by some power separate from themselves, in fact, possessed.
Ecclesiastical history commemorates a miracle at the close of the Nicene Council. Two bishops, Chrysanthus and Mysonius, had died during its sitting, and the remaining crowd of Fathers brought the acts, signed by themselves, to the tomb, addressed the deceased bishops as if still alive, and left the document. Next day, returning, they found the two signatures added, to this effect:—‘We, Chrysanthus and Mysonius, consenting with all the Fathers in the holy first and œcumenical Nicene Synod, although translated from the body, have also signed the volume with our own hands.’[[237]] Such spirit-writing without material instrument has lately been renewed by the Baron de Guldenstubbé. This writer confirms by new evidence the truth of the tradition of all peoples as to souls of the dead keeping up their connexion with their mortal remains, and haunting the places where they dwelt ‘during their terrestrial incarnation.’ Thus Francis I. manifests himself principally at Fontainebleau, while Louis XV. and Marie-Antoinette roam about the Trianons. Moreover, if pieces of blank paper be set out in suitable places, the spirits, enveloped in their ethereal bodies, will concentrate by their force of will electric currents on the paper, and so form written characters. The Baron publishes, in his ‘Pneumatologie Positive,’ a mass of facsimiles of spirit-writings thus obtained. Julius and Augustus Cæsar give their names near their statues in the Louvre; Juvenal produces a ludicrous attempt at a copy of verses; Héloise at Père-la-Chaise informs the world, in modern French, that Abelard and she are united and happy; St. Paul writes himself ελζιστος αποστολον (meaning, we may suppose, ελαχιστος αποστολων); and Hippokrates the physician (who spells himself Hippōkratĕs) attended M. de Guldenstubbé at his lodgings in Paris, and gave him a signature which of itself cured a sharp attack of rheumatism in a few minutes.[[238]]
The miracle of rising and floating in the air is one fully recognized in the literature of ancient India. The Buddhist saint of high ascetic rank attains the power called ‘perfection’ (irdhi), whereby he is able to rise in the air, as also to overturn the earth and stop the sun. Having this power, the saint exercises it by the mere determination of his will, his body becoming imponderous, as when a man in the common human state determines to leap, and leaps. Buddhist annals relate the performance of the miraculous suspension by Gautama himself, as well as by other saints, as, for example, his ancestor Maha Sammata, who could thus seat himself in the air without visible support. Even without this exalted faculty, it is considered possible to rise and move in the air by an effort of ecstatic joy (udwega prîti). A remarkable mention of this feat, as said to be performed by the Indian Brahmans, occurs in the third-century biography of Apollonius of Tyana; these Brahmans are described as going about in the air some two cubits from the ground, not for the sake of miracle (such ambition they despised), but for its being more suitable to solar rites.[[239]] Foreign conjurers were professing to exhibit this miracle among the Greeks in the second century, as witness Lucian’s jocular account of the Hyperborean conjurer:—‘Thou art joking, said Kleodemos, but I was once more incredulous than thou about such things, for I thought nothing could have persuaded me to believe them; but when I first saw that foreign barbarian flying—he was of the Hyperboreans, he said—I believed, and was overcome in spite of my resistance. For what was I to do, when I saw him carried through the air in daylight, and walking on the water, and passing leisurely and slowly through the fire? What? (said his interlocutor), you saw the Hyperborean man flying, and walking on the water? To be sure, said he, and he had on undressed leather brogues as they generally wear them; but what’s the use of talking of such trifles, considering what other manifestations he showed us,—sending loves, calling up demons, raising the dead, and bringing in Hekate herself visibly, and drawing down the moon?’ Kleodemos then goes on to relate how the conjurer first had his four minæ down for sacrificial expenses, and then made a clay Cupid, and sent it flying through the air to fetch the girl whom Glaukias had fallen in love with, and presently, lo and behold, there she was knocking at the door! The interlocutor, however, comments in a sceptical vein on the narrative. It was scarce needful, he says, to have taken the trouble to send for the girl with clay, and a magician from the Hyperboreans, and even the moon, considering that for twenty drachmas she would have let herself be taken to the Hyperboreans themselves; and she seems, moreover, to have been affected in quite an opposite way to spirits, for whereas these beings take flight if they hear the noise of brass or iron, Chrysis no sooner hears the chink of silver anywhere, but she comes toward the sound.[[240]] Another early instance of the belief in miraculous suspension is in the life of Iamblichus, the great Neo-Platonist mystic. His disciples says Eunapius, told him they had heard a report from his servants, that while in prayer to the gods he had been lifted more than ten cubits from the ground, his body and clothes changing to a beautiful golden colour, but after he ceased from prayer his body became as before, and then he came down to the ground and returned to the society of his followers. They entreated him therefore, ‘Why, O most divine teacher, why dost thou do such things by thyself, and not let us partake of the more perfect wisdom?’ Then Iamblichus, though not given to laughter, laughed at this story, and said to them, ‘It was no fool who tricked you thus, but the thing is not true.’[[241]]
After a while, the prodigy which the Platonist disclaimed, became a usual attribute of Christian saints. Thus St. Richard, then chancellor to St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, one day softly opening the chapel door, to see why the archbishop did not come to dinner, saw him raised high in the air, with his knees bent and his arms stretched out; falling gently to the ground, and seeing the chancellor, he complained that he had hindered him of great spiritual delight and comfort. So St. Philip Neri used to be sometimes seen raised several yards from the ground during his rapturous devotions, with a bright light shining from his countenance. St. Ignatius Loyola is declared to have been raised about two feet under the same circumstances, and similar legends of devout ascetics being not only metaphorically but materially ‘raised above the earth’ are told in the lives of St. Dominic, St. Dunstan, St. Theresa, and other less-known saints. In the last century, Dom Calmet speaks of knowing a good monk who rises sometimes from the ground and remains involuntarily suspended, especially on seeing some devotional image or hearing some devout prayer, and also a nun who has often seen herself raised in spite of herself to a certain distance from the earth. Unfortunately the great commentator does not specify any witnesses as having seen the monk and nun rise in the air. If they only thought themselves thus elevated, their stories can only rank with that of the young man mentioned by De Maistre, who so often seemed to himself to float in the air, that he came to suspect that gravitation might not be natural to man.[[242]] The hallucination of rising and floating in the air is extremely common, and ascetics of all religions are especially liable to it.
Among modern accounts of diabolic possession, also, the rising in the air is described as taking place not subjectively but objectively. In 1657, Richard Jones, a sprightly lad of twelve years old, living at Shepton Mallet, was bewitched by one Jane Brooks; he was seen to rise in the air and pass over a garden wall some thirty yards, and at other times was found in a room with his hands flat against a beam at the top of the room, and his body two or three feet from the ground, nine people at a time seeing him in this latter position. Jane Brooks was accordingly condemned and executed at Chard Assizes in March, 1658. Richard, the Surrey demoniac of 1689, was hoisted up in the air and let down by Satan; at the beginning of his fits he was, as it were, blown or snatched or borne up suddenly from his chair, as if he would have flown away, but that those who held him hung to his arms and legs and clung about him. One account (not the official medical one) of the demoniacal possessions at Morzine in Savoy, in 1864, relates that a patient was held suspended in the air by an invisible force during some seconds or minutes above the cemetery, in the presence of the archbishop.[[243]] Modern spiritualists claim this power as possessed by certain distinguished living mediums, who, indeed, profess to rival in sober fact the aerostatic miracles of Buddhist and Catholic legend. The force employed is of course considered to be that of the spirits.