At first its opponents met it with expressions of utter contempt and cries of “humbug.” Many ingenious and scientific persons volunteered their efforts to expose the “trick;” and if they seemed, in some instances, to meet with momentary success in solving the mystery, the next day would bring with it some new form of the phenomenon to which none of their theories would apply. Being finally discouraged by repeated failures to explain the hidden cause of these wonders, they withdrew from the field, and for many years allowed the matter to go by default; and only within the last twelvemonth has investigation of the subject been re-aroused by the introduction into this country of the little instrument called “the Planchette”—an instrument which, to our certain knowledge, was used at least ten years ago in France, and that, too, as a supposed means of communicating with departed spirits.
This little board has been welcomed as a “toy” or a “game” into thousands of families, without suspicion of its having the remotest connection with so-called “Spiritualism.” The cry has been raised,
“Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,”
but too late! The Trojan walls are everywhere down; the wooden horse is already dragged into the city with all the armed heroes concealed in its bowels; the battle has commenced, and must be fought out to the bitter end, as best it may be; and in the numerous magazine and newspaper articles that have lately appeared on the subject, we have probably only the beginning of a clash of arms which must terminate one way or another.
Should our grave and learned philosophers find themselves overcome by this little three-legged spider, it will be mortifying; but in order to avoid that result, we fear they will have to do better than they have done yet.
On the other hand, before the Spiritualists can be allowed to claim the final victory in this contest, they should, it seems to me, be required to answer the following questions in a manner satisfactory to the highest intelligence and the better moral and religious sense of the community:
Why is it that “spirits” communicating through your mediums, by Planchette or otherwise, can not relate, plainly and circumstantially, any required incident of their lives, as a man would relate his history to a friend, instead of dealing so much in vague and ambiguous generalities, as they almost always do, and that, too, often in the bad grammar or bad spelling of the medium? Or, as a question allied to this, why is it that what purports to be the same spirit, generally, if not always, fails, when trial is made, to identify himself in the same manner through any two different mediums? Or, as another question still allied to the above, why is it that your Websters, Clays, Calhouns, and others, speaking through mediums, so universally give the idea that they have deteriorated in intellect since they passed into the spirit-world? And why is it that so little discourse or writing that possesses real merit, and so much that is mere drivel, has come through your mediums, if spirits are the authors? And why does it so often happen that the spirits—if they are spirits—can not communicate anything except what is already in the mind of the medium, or at least of some other person present? It does not quite answer these questions to say that the medium is “undeveloped” unless you explain to us precisely on what principle the undevelopment affects the case. A speaking-trumpet may be “undeveloped”—cracked or wanting in some of its parts, so as to deteriorate the sound made through it; but we should at least expect that a man speaking through it would speak his own thoughts, and not the thoughts of the trumpet.
And then, looking at this subject in its moral and social aspects, the question should be answered: Why, on the supposition that these communications really come from immortal spirits, have they made so little progress, during the twenty years that they have been with us, in elevating the moral and social standard of human nature, in making better husbands and wives, parents and children, citizens and philanthropists, in drawing mankind together in harmony and charity, and founding and endowing great institutions for the elevation of the race? Rather may we not ask, in all kindness, why is it that the Spiritualist community has been little more than a Babel from the beginning to the present moment?
Or, ascending to the class of themes that come under the head of Religion: Why is it that prayer is so generally ignored, and the worship of God regarded as an unworthy superstition? Why is it that in the diatribes, dissertations, and speeches of those who profess to act under the sanction of the “spirits,” we have a reproduction of so much of the slang and ribaldry of the infidels of the last century, and of the German Rationalism of the present, which is now being rejected by the Germans themselves? And why is it that in their references to the great lights of the world, we so often have Confucius, Jesus Christ, and William Shakspeare jumbled up into indistinguishability?