ON PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS.
861. This, for the third time, brings under discussion the report of Dr. Bell, of Somerville, near Boston, on spiritual manifestations.
862. It is not in reference to this distinguished physician in his individual capacity that I name him thus often, but in reference to the hypothesis which his allegations must oblige him to sustain, and of which he may be considered a most respectable advocate. Dr. Bell not only admits, but confirms by his own testimony, the important fact of the movement of heavy bodies without contact. His experience, in this respect, is more striking than mine, since he has not only seen this phenomena take place repeatedly, but on one occasion, as before stated, saw tables move fifty feet, intelligently obedient to his directions. He also admits the reception of such communications from pretended spirits, as spiritualists would consider as coming from real spirits. Yet on the negative ground, that agreeably to his experience, nothing was found to be communicable but what pre-existed in the mind of some mortal present, he infers that the ideas received are not derived from spirits, but from the minds of those mortals who are parties to the process.
863. Of course our distinguished friend thus involves himself in the task of explaining not only the intellectual, but also the mechanical movements, by the mental agency of the media who participate in the conditions under which the manifestations occur.
864. I have already adduced manifestations irreconcilable with the assumption on which the whole of Dr. Bell’s inference is built, ([111] to 288.) But were his observations verified, in order to make them justify the abnegation of spirits, it should be shown that any spirit could tell him any thing which must be known to him, whether known to the spirits or not. Remembering all the facts communicated to him by his spirit brother, it should be shown that any other spirit could narrate them as well as his spirit brother. Any inquiry made of any spirit, of which the answer is known to the inquirer, should be told on request as well as any other; but it will be found that answers are given only to those of which the spirit knows the answers independently, through his own memory. Under favourable circumstances mental questions are answered; but often, when mental questions cannot be answered, those put verbally are replied to. I have detected spirit impostors, by their inability to tell the name of my sister in the spheres.
865. I postponed the discussion on this question until I should have submitted to the reader the communications which I had received. I trust that these are of a nature to show that they could not have originated in my mind, nor in those of the media through whom they were obtained.
866. Whatever want of ability may be shown, by Dr. Bell, to exist in the communications alleged to come from Paine, Swedenborg, and Bacon, or from spirits personating those distinguished men, it cannot do away the valuable information which I have obtained from my spirit father and others, sanctioned by a convocation of spirits. It has been shown that in a few pages of that communication, there is vastly more knowledge of our happy prospects in the future world, than all that can be found in the Scriptures.
867. Dr. Bell will not, I am sure, suspect me of any want of truthfulness, and will hardly flatter the media and myself with an unconscious origination of ideas, which had never before occurred to either.
868. If he finds that in the case of Swedenborg and Bacon the spirits are below their medial instruments in capacity, he will find that in the instance of my spirit friends this estimate must be inverted.
869. My experience does not tend to establish that there is less folly or more wisdom in the inhabitants of the spirit world than in this. I concur with Dr. Bell in the opinion that the work to which he alludes, attributed to the spirit of Paine, merits all the denunciation which he bestows on it. I concur that it must be the work of a mind, whether celestial or mundane, ignorant of the rudiments of chemical philosophy. But if such a work coming from a mortal would not disprove the author’s claim to be a mortal human being, wherefore then should a foolish book coming from a foolish, ignorant spirit, personating Paine, disprove the author to be a spirit? It only shows that low, ignorant, foolish spirits personate the spirits of eminent authors; but does that disprove the existence of spirits? Does madness or idiocy annihilate the victim of these afflictions? But in all cases where communications are obtained through speaking or writing media, the minds of the media are liable, unconsciously, to pervert or repress the sentiments of the spirits, and therefore are not trusted by me, unless corroborated by communications through the alphabet.