The performances of tied mediums have been specially represented in England by the Davenport Brothers, who ‘are generally recognized by Spiritualists as genuine media, and attribute the reverse opinion so deeply rooted in the public mind, to the untruthfulness of the London and many other newspapers.’ The performers were bound fast and shut by themselves in a dark cabinet, with musical instruments, whence not only musical sounds proceeded, but the coats of the mediums were taken off and replaced; yet on inspection their bodies were discovered still bound. The spirits would also release the bound mediums from their cords, however carefully tied about them.[[244]] Now the idea of supernatural unbinding is very ancient, vouched for as it is by no less a personage than the crafty Odysseus himself, in his adventure on board the ship of the Thesprotians:
‘Me on the well-benched vessel, strongly bound,
They leave, and snatch their meal upon the beach.
But to my help the gods themselves unwound
My cords with ease, though firmly twisted round.’
In early English chronicle, we find it in a story told by the Venerable Bede. A certain Imma was found all but dead on the field of battle, and taken prisoner, but when he began to recover and was put in bonds to prevent his escaping, no sooner did his binders leave him but he was loose again. The earl who owned him enquired whether he had about him such ‘loosening letters’ (literas solutorias) as tales were told of; the man replied that he knew naught of such arts; yet when his owner sold him to another master, there was still no binding him. The received explanation of this strange power was emphatically a spiritual one. His brother had sought for his dead body, and finding another like him, buried it and proceeded to say masses for his brother’s soul, by the celebration whereof it came to pass that no one could fasten him, for he was out of bonds again directly. So they sent him home to Kent, whence he duly returned his ransom, and his story, it is related, stimulated many to devotion, who understood by it how salutary are masses to the redemption both of soul and body. Again, there prevailed in Scotland up to the 18th century this notion: when the lunatics who had been brought to St. Fillan’s Pool to be bathed, were laid bound in the neighbouring church next night, if they were found loose in the morning their recovery was expected, but if at dawn they were still bound, their cure was doubtful.
The untying trick performed among savages is so similar to that of our mountebanks, that when we find the North American Indian jugglers doing both this and the familiar trick of breathing fire, we are at a loss to judge whether they inherited these two feats from their savage ancestors, or borrowed them from the white men. The point is not, however, the mere performance of the untying trick, but its being attributed to the help of spiritual beings. This notion is thoroughly at home in savage culture. It comes out well in the Esquimaux’ accounts which date from early in the 18th century. Cranz thus describes the Greenland angekok setting out on his mystic journey to heaven and hell. When he has drummed awhile and made all sorts of wondrous contortions, he is himself bound with a thong by one of his pupils, his head between his legs, and his hands behind his back. All the lamps in the house are put out, and the windows darkened, for no one must see him hold intercourse with his spirit, no one must move or even scratch his head, that the spirit may not be interfered with—or rather, says the missionary, that no one may catch him at his trickery, for there is no going up to heaven in broad daylight. At last, after strange noises have been heard, and a visit has been received or paid to the torngak or spirit, the magician reappears unbound, but pale and excited, and gives an account of his adventures. Castrén’s account of the similar proceedings of the Siberian shamans is as follows: ‘They are practised’ he says, ‘in all sorts of conjuring-tricks, by which they know how to dazzle the simple crowd, and inspire greater trust in themselves. One of the most usual juggleries of the shamans in the Government of Tomsk consists of the following hocus-pocus, a wonder to the Russians as well as to the Samoieds. The shaman sits down on the wrong side of a dry reindeer-hide spread in the middle of the floor. There he lets himself be bound hand and foot by the assistants. The shutters are closed, and the shaman begins to invoke his ministering spirits. All at once there arises a mysterious ghostliness in the dark space. Voices are heard from different parts, both within and without the yurt, while on the dry reindeer skin there is a rattling and drumming in regular time. Bears growl, snakes hiss, and squirrels leap about in the room. At last this uncanny work ceases, and the audience impatiently await the result of the game. A few moments pass in this expectation, and behold, the shaman walks in free and unbound from outside. No one doubts that it was the spirits who were drumming, growling, and hissing, who released the shaman from his bonds, and who carried him by secret ways out of the yurt.’[[245]]
On the whole, the ethnography of spiritualism bears on practical opinion somewhat in this manner. Beside the question of the absolute truth or falsity of the alleged possessions, names-oracles, doubles, brain-waves, furniture movings, and floatings in the air, there remains the history of spiritualistic belief as a matter of opinion. Hereby it appears that the received spiritualistic theory of the alleged phenomena belongs to the philosophy of savages. As to such matters as apparitions or possessions this is obvious, and it holds in more extreme cases. Suppose a wild North American Indian looking on at a spirit-séance in London. As to the presence of disembodied spirits, manifesting themselves by raps, noises, voices, and other physical actions, the savage would be perfectly at home in the proceedings, for such things are part and parcel of his recognized system of nature. The part of the affair really strange to him would be the introduction of such arts as spelling and writing, which do belong to a different state of civilization from his. The issue raised by the comparison of savage, barbaric, and civilized spiritualism, is this: Do the Red Indian medicine-man, the Tatar necromancer, the Highland ghost-seer, and the Boston medium, share the possession of belief and knowledge of the highest truth and import, which, nevertheless, the great intellectual movement of the last two centuries has simply thrown aside as worthless? Is what we are habitually boasting of and calling new enlightenment, then, in fact a decay of knowledge? If so, this is a truly remarkable case of degeneration, and the savages whom some ethnographers look on as degenerate from a higher civilization, may turn on their accusers and charge them with having fallen from the high level of savage knowledge.
Throughout the whole of this varied investigation, whether of the dwindling survival of old culture, or of its bursting forth afresh in active revival, it may perhaps be complained that its illustrations should be chosen so much among things worn out, worthless, frivolous, or even bad with downright harmful folly. It is in fact so, and I have taken up this course of argument with full knowledge and intent. For, indeed, we have in such enquiries continual reason to be thankful for fools. It is quite wonderful, even if we hardly go below the surface of the subject, to see how large a share stupidity and unpractical conservatism and dogged superstition have had in preserving for us traces of the history of our race, which practical utilitarianism would have remorselessly swept away. The savage is firmly, obstinately conservative. No man appeals with more unhesitating confidence to the great precedent-makers of the past; the wisdom of his ancestors can control against the most obvious evidence his own opinions and actions. We listen with pity to the rude Indian as he maintains against civilized science and experience the authority of his rude forefathers. We smile at the Chinese appealing against modern innovation to the golden precepts of Confucius, who in his time looked back with the same prostrate reverence to sages still more ancient, counselling his disciples to follow the seasons of Hea, to ride in the carriage of Yin, to wear the ceremonial cap of Chow.
The nobler tendency of advancing culture, and above all of scientific culture, is to honour the dead without grovelling before them, to profit by the past without sacrificing the present to it. Yet even the modern civilized world has but half learnt this lesson, and an unprejudiced survey may lead us to judge how many of our ideas and customs exist rather by being old than by being good. Now in dealing with hurtful superstitions, the proof that they are things which it is the tendency of savagery to produce, and of higher culture to destroy, is accepted as a fair controversial argument. The mere historical position of a belief or custom may raise a presumption as to its origin which becomes a presumption as to its authenticity. Dr. Middleton’s celebrated Letter from Rome shows cases in point. He mentions the image of Diana at Ephesus which fell from the sky, thereby damaging the pretensions of the Calabrian image of St. Dominic, which, according to pious tradition, was likewise brought down from heaven. He notices that as the blood of St. Januarius now melts miraculously without heat, so ages ago the priests of Gnatia tried to persuade Horace, on his road to Brundusium, that the frankincense in their temple had the habit of melting in like manner: