In spite of all the light that has been shed upon obscure processes, and all the triumphs of the knowledge of "the order of Nature," there remains to this day in this country a surprising amount of ignorance, accompanied by blind unreasoning devotion to traditional beliefs in magic, and a love of the preposterous fancies of a barbarous past, simply because they are preposterous! "There is something in it," is a favourite phrase, and the words put by Shakespear into the mouth of the demented Hamlet, who thinks he has seen and conversed with a ghost, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy," are gravely quoted as though they were applicable to the Horatios of to-day. We have no reason to suppose that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. Those who inappropriately quote this saying as though it were proverbial wisdom are usually persons of very small knowledge, and mistake their own limitations for those of mankind in general.
The real and effective answer to all such head-shakings and airs of mystery is to demand that the reputed marvel shall be brought before us for examination. The method of the disciples of the founders of the Royal Society is not to deny or to assert possibilities. They hold it to be futile to discuss why such and such a thing should not exist, and still worse to conclude that it does exist, or to hold its existence to be probable, because you cannot say why it should not exist. The real question is, "Does it exist? Is it so?" And the only way of dealing with that question is to have the marvel brought before you and subjected to examination and test. "Nullius in verba!" The mere statement of dozens of witnesses merely gives you as a thing to explain or account for, not the marvel reported, but the fact that certain persons say or are reported to say that it does. What you have to examine, in the absence of the marvel itself, is, "How is it that these people make this statement?" You must inquire into the capacities and opportunities of the witnesses. There are several possible and probable answers to that inquiry. For instance, it may be that the witnesses are merely inaccurate, or are self-deceived, or deceived by the trickery or credulity of others, or are insane, or are deliberately stating what is false. Another and often the least probable answer is that the witnesses or reporters state what they do because it is the simple truth. The statements made have to be accounted for by one or other of these hypotheses or suggestions, and each suggestion as to the origin of the statements must be tested by reference to independent facts in order to dismiss or to confirm it.
The whole of what is called "modern occultism," including spiritualism, second-sight, thought transference (so-called telepathy), crystal-gazing, astrology, and such mysteries, can only be treated reasonably in the way I have mentioned. We ask for a demonstration of the occurrence of the mysterious communications or prophecies, or "raps" or "levitations," or whatever it may be. Lovers of science have never been unwilling to investigate such marvels if fairly and squarely brought before them. In the very few cases which have been submitted in this way to scientific examination, the marvel has been shown to be either childish fraud or a mere conjurer's trick, or else the facts adduced in evidence have proved to be entirely insufficient to support the conclusion that there is anything unusual at work, or beyond the experience of scientific investigators.
It is unfortunately true that most persons are quite unprepared to admit the deficiencies of their own powers of observation and of memory, and are also unaware of their own ignorance of perfectly natural occurrences which continually lead to self-deception and illusion. Moreover, the capacity for logical inference and argument is not common. The whole past and present history of what is called "the occult" is enveloped in an atmosphere of self-deception and of readiness to be deceived by others to which misplaced confidence in their own cleverness and power of detecting trickery renders many—one may almost say most—people victims. The physician who has given his life to the study of mental aberration and diseases of the mind is the only really qualified investigator of these "marvels," and no one who has closely studied what is known in the domain of mental physiology and pathology has any difficulty in understanding, and bringing into relation with large classes of established facts as to illusions and mental aberration, the "beliefs" in magic and second-sight which are here and there found flourishing at the present day, as well as the, at first sight startling, evidence of highly accomplished men who have suffered from such delusions.
Leaving aside all these more extreme cases of what we may call "challenges" to science, let me cite one or two of the more ordinary classes of cases in which science is either attacked or treated with disdain by modern wonder-mongers. It was declared by a writer in the eighteenth century that, after all, human knowledge is a very small thing, since we cannot even tell on one day what the weather is going to be on the next; still less can we control it. That remains perfectly true to-day, although by the hourly observation and record of the movements of "areas of depression" in the atmosphere and the telegraphic communication of these records from all parts of the Atlantic region of the northern hemisphere to central stations, a very important degree of accuracy in foretelling gales, and even minor changes of weather, has been reached. Side by side with this organized study of the movements of "weather" we still have the so-called "almanacs," in which, as in the days of old, certain wizards claim to foretell the weather of a year, as well as other events. It is less surprising that these wizards should find believers when one discovers that there are actually well-to-do, "half-educated" people in England who believe at this day that the delightful clever exhibitors of mechanical tricks and sleight-of-hand are really (as they usually are called) "conjurers"—that is to say, that they conjure spirits and use the "black art." Not long ago, having published my experience of the trickery of "dowsers," and the illusion known as the "divining-rod," I received a letter in which my correspondent related that, being in the coffee-room of an hotel in a country town, he was asked by a man who was there to stretch out his hand. He did so, and the man placed four coppers in a pile upon it. The man then took up an empty matchbox which happened to be on the table, and placed it over the coppers as they lay on my correspondent's hand. After an interval of three or four seconds the man lifted the matchbox, and the coppers were gone! This, which I need hardly say is one of the most common "conjuring tricks" familiar to every schoolboy, was, according to my correspondent, proof to him that the man possessed powers "not dreamed of in your philosophy," and that such powers and those of discovery by use of the divining-rod and similar occult arts are possessed by many gifted beings!
It is to be hoped that such credulity is not very common—it is difficult to form an estimate as to its prevalence, for it breaks out in different directions in different individuals. The more impudent quack remedies for various diseases have had believers amongst all classes of society—and occasionally some enthusiast bursts out with indignation in a letter to the papers, complaining that men of science or the medical profession neglect their duty to the public and refuse to examine the wonderful cure. In all these cases the cure is either a drug which is perfectly well known and practically worthless for the treatment of the disease for which it is recommended, or—as in the case of the celebrated "blue electricity" and "red electricity" (nonsensical names in themselves) sold by an Italian swindler as a cure for cancer and patronized by aristocratic ladies and the late Mr. Stead—is found to be absolutely non-existent. In this last case the liquid sold in little bottles at a high price was nothing but plain water! A more respectable case was the advocacy a few weeks ago by a correspondent in a morning paper of a common African plant (a kind of basil) as a sure destructive or warder-off of mosquitoes when grown near human habitations, and therefore a protective against malaria. Nothing could have been more emphatic than the declaration of the value of this plant by its advocate. But a few days afterwards a letter appeared from a scientific man, giving an account of careful and varied experiments, already made and published, which show that this basil, although containing in its leaves "thymol," as do some other aromatic herbs, yet neither when grown in quantity nor when crushed and spread out in a room has any effect whatever in checking the access of mosquitoes and other flies! In this case, the reputed medical marvel was to hand: it was dealt with, tested, and, as they say in the old register of the Royal Society, "was found faulty."
CHAPTER XXXVII
DIVINATION AND PALMISTRY
THE gradual passage of the race of man from the condition of "beasts that reason not" to that of "persons of understanding and reason" has been an immensely long and a very painful one. It is not yet complete—is far, indeed, from being so—even amongst the most favoured classes of the most highly civilized peoples of to-day. Just as our bodily evolution and adaptation to present conditions is incomplete and exhibits what Metchnikoff has called "disharmonies"—that is, retentions of ancestral structures now not only useless, but even positively injurious—so does the mental condition attained by civilized man (if we do not limit our observation to exceptional instances) exhibit a retention—by means of records and accepted teaching—of beliefs and tendencies which were among the first products of the blundering efforts of human reason, and have caused atrocious suffering to millions of human beings in the long process of mental development. At one time the whole race lived in a world of delusions and fantastic beliefs—the outcome of false or defective observation rather than of false logic. These false conclusions as to many subjects were inevitable as soon as man began to reason at all. It was the necessary and injurious accompaniment of the growing habit of "reasoning" by which the more fortunate races have eventually been brought, step by step, to correct conclusions and a dominant position at the present day. The progress from the almost universal prevalence of an enormous system of preposterous false beliefs or conclusions onward to the triumph of sound knowledge has not only taken an immense period of time, but left whole races of men and large sections of the population—even in those races which have produced individuals remarkable for their power of discovering the truth—still subject to the early erroneous conceptions of natural processes and of man's relation to them.