Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIV, May 1852, Vol. IV

by Various

We need no better test. Apply it to the supernatural of the Scriptures, and it furnishes one of the strongest evidences of their truth. So serious a book can not be a lie. Bring to this criterion the modern charlatanry, which so wantonly assumes the name of faith, "obtruding itself with its fleshly mind" into the domain of the true supernatural, and yet denying the supernatural—bring it to this criterion, we say, and it is at once shown to be "earthly, sensual, devilish"—a grotesque reflection of some of the worst things of this world thrown back in lurid distortion from the darkness visible of the Satanic realms. But even this may be assigning to it too high a rank. The position can not be charged with irrationality which assumes that the "mocking fiend" may sometimes be permitted to practice his jugglings on those rash fools, who would venture too near to his domain of falsehood. But in most of the modern cases of this kind, we are beginning to have little doubt that sheer imposture is the predominant if not the only element.

On the outward evidence, however, we can not at present dwell, since it is with the reasoning of these charlatans we design that our brief strictures shall be mainly occupied. In this, too, we find the proof of falsehood. For we return again to our text—the marvelous may be believed, the absurd no amount of evidence can prove. And here some thoughts suggest themselves to which we must give expression. What amount of solid thinking, what discrimination of ideas, what right knowledge of words, what degree of logical training, which, although not the discoverer of truth, is the surest guard against error—in a word, what amount of general, solid, mental culture must there be in an age distinguished for the extensive circulation and approbation of such works as Davis's Revelations of Nature, and Davis's Great Harmonia, and Dodd's Psychology, &c., &c.? Could it have been so when Butler wrote his immortal Analogy; or, farther back, when Howe preached his Living Temple as evening lectures to a country congregation, and Baxter's tracts were found in every hamlet in England? Could it have been so in our own land, when Edwards preached his deep theology to plain men in plain New England villages? The marvelous, we may well suppose, would have had no lack of believers in those days. But would such absurdities in reasoning have ever gained currency in those thinking though little scientific periods? With all our talk of science, and progress, and universities, and common schools, and the schoolmaster being abroad in the land, there must be, somewhere, something wrong in our most modern ideas and modern modes of education. Is not the physical element too predominant, and is it not to the common smatterings in this department that such a pretended spiritualism, yet real materialism, is directly to be traced? A superficial sciolism, extensive enough in its facts, but utterly hollow in its philosophy, is the food with which the common mind is every where crammed even to satiety, while there is such a serious lack of the logical, the theological, the Biblical, the classical, the historical—in short, of those elements which must furnish the foundation of all right thinking, and without which other knowledge is more likely to lead to error than to truth.

But we can at present only hint at this. In respect to the reasonings of these scientific discoverers (as they claim to be), we may say that their fallacies get currency from this very cause, namely, the general want of discrimination in respect to the true bounds of fundamental ideas, and that abuse of language which is the necessary result. If the consequences were not so serious, nothing could be more amusing than their pretensions, or their method. They would have us believe that they are the martyrs—Galileos—Bacons—Harveys, all of them. Each one is a suffering Servetus, while all the bigotry of the theological world, with all its inquisitorial priests and furious Calvins, is ever ready to crush their new science, and give the crown of martyrdom to its devoted teachers.

They have, too, the sagacity to perceive that audiences, in general, love to be addressed in the technics of a scientific style, whether rightly used or not. The vender of quack medicines has discovered the same secret; and hence he, too, has his array of causes and effects, and fluids, and mediums, and counteracting forces, and grand systems of circulation, and positive and negative states. To be thus addressed raises the hearer or reader at once in his own estimation, and thus prepares him, sometimes, for the reception of almost any kind of nonsense. He acquires, too, an interest in these high matters; and if not himself an actual martyr to science, becomes at least a sympathizer with those who are doomed to all this infamous persecution.

The usual course has now become so stereotyped, that one who has attended a number of lectures of this kind, will be able to predict the general method of remark quite as well as Davis is said to have foretold that of Dr. Bushnell. He will be certain of the very places where the peculiar and most original cant of the school will be sure to come in. He will know just when and where to look out for Galileo and the priests, and the Puritans and the Quakers, and Fulton and the steam-engine. He anticipates precisely the spot where the lecturer will tell us how Bacon "used up" the Stagyrite, and how wonderfully knowledge has grown since that remarkable event, and how all previous progress was preparatory to this new science, which it has been reserved for our bold martyr not only to discover in its elements, but to present full formed and full grown to his astonished hearers,—and which, moreover, he generously offers to teach to private classes (the ladies to be by themselves) at the exceedingly reasonable rate of ten dollars per course.

Sometimes the whole of this scientific claptrap will consist of the dextrous use of some one long new-coined term, very much like those that are invented for the venders of soaps and perfumes to express the psychology of their most ingenious and philosophical compounds. The lecturer has discovered a new word, and it stands to him in place of a mine of thought. In Martinus Scriblerus we read of a project to banish metaphysics out of Spain. It was to be done by forbidding the use of the compounds and decompounds of the substantive verb. "Take away from the scholastic metaphysician," says this ingenious reformer, "his ens, his entitas, his essentia, &c., and there is an end of him." So also we have known lectures, and even books, on some of these new psychologies from which the abstraction of a single term would cause the whole to collapse. And yet to the quackish lecturer it is the key to unlock all his scientific treasures. He has somehow picked up a word, and he is deluding himself, and trying to delude others, into the notion that he has really caught an idea. The connection of soul and body is no longer a mystery. Science has at length dragged it out of its dark retreat. Nothing can be simpler than the explanation at length afforded of the fact which had so long baffled all inquiry. It is wholly owing to the nervo-vital fluid. But how is this? Is this connecting medium mind, or matter, or a compound of both, or a tertium quid? If it is either the first or the second, the mystery is just where it was before. If it be said that it is the last (the only answer which does not at once annihilate itself), the further query arises—How is that to be a medium which needs itself a medium, or rather two other distinct media, to serve as connecting links between it and the two worlds it would unite? Or is it a bridge without an abutment on either shore?

But what are all such difficulties to our modern Galileo, or to his scientific audience? It is the nervo-vital fluid, whether or no. There is a charming philosophy in the very sound, and it is impossible that so good a term should not mean something. It is an admirable word—a most euphonic word—and since the parts are certainly significant, there can be no reason why the whole compound should not be so likewise.

Another of these magic words is electricity. It is getting to be the universal solvent for all scientific difficulties. It is life, it is gravitation, it is attraction, it is generation, it is creation, it is development, it is law, it is sensation, it is thought, it is every thing. "Give me a place to put my lever," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world!" Give us electricity and nervo-vital fluids, say our biologists, and we will explain the mystery of all organizations, from the animalcule to the universe!

We repeat it, The downright impositions in respect to facts, are not so insulting to an audience, as the quackish reasoning which is often presented by way of explanation. To state an example: One of the most common performances of these mountebanks consists in the pretended control of one mind or one person over the senses, the actions, the volitions, and even the moral states of another. The performance is generally contemptible enough in itself, but it is rendered still more so when our man of science undertakes, as he generally does, to explain to his audience the profound rationale of his proceedings. The lecturer most modestly and reverently disclaims for himself the possession of supernatural powers. It is all science—all strictly in accordance with "natural laws" and performed on the most rational and scientific principles. He had broken no law of mind or matter, as he would make perfectly level to the understandings of his most respectable auditory. The grand agent in the whole process was electricity, or the nervo-vital fluid. By means of this, the mind of the operator was transferred to the soul of the subject, and hence it is perfectly plain that the emotions and mental exercises of the one become the emotions and mental exercises of the other. A terrific scene was fancied (in the case which we have now in mind it was a picture of serpents), and the patient was thrown into a state of most agitating fright. Now that an impostor, or a juggler, might deceive the senses of an audience, is nothing incredible, and implies nothing derogatory to their intelligence. That some physical effect may have been produced on the nervous system of some peculiarly sensitive subject, is by no means beyond belief; or that in some way, explicable or inexplicable, the agitation and convulsion may have had a real existence. So far it may have been wholly false, or partly false and partly real. Again, whether there may or may not be unknown fluids through which one mind or one body affects another, is not the question. If it were so, it would only be analogous to the ordinary modes of mediate communication by air, and light, and sound, and would be liable in kind, if not in degree, to the same imperfections. Still would it be true, whatever the media, ordinary or extraordinary, that only as mind is communicated to mind as it really is, can one affect the emotions, and exercises, and states of the other. There may be less, there never can be more, in the effect than in the cause.

Here, then, is the palpable absurdity, which should bring a blush of shame upon every audience, and every individual calling himself rational, who is for a moment affected by it. The mind of the operator, it is maintained, is, for the time being, the mind of the patient. It has taken possession of his thinking and feeling province. This is the philosophy that Aristotle never knew, and of which even Bacon hardly had a glimpse. Let us test it. As the lecturer is a very frank and fearless man, he invites the fullest examination, not only of his facts, but of his reasoning. Some one may, therefore, be supposed to present the following or similar questions: You willed, did you, the scene and the state of mind which produced these alarming results? Exactly so. Was it, then, a simple volition of the effect, as an effect (if such a thing were possible), or accompanied in your own mind, by a conception of the scene presented? Certainly, replies the triumphant lecturer, the whole rationale, as you have been told, consisted in throwing my mind into that of the subject. He thought what I thought—he felt what I felt. Very well. But were you frightened at the snakes? Did terror constitute any part of the exercises of your own mind? This is a puzzler, but there is an apparent way of surmounting the difficulty. The patient, it may be said, believes in the reality of the scene presented, while the operator does not. But this only suggests a still greater absurdity. This belief, or non-belief, is certainly a very important part of the mental and emotional state. How comes one of the most essential ingredients to be left behind in the psychological transfer? Does the operator will it thus to be? We have never heard any such thing alleged; but if it were so, it would only be the crowning folly of this superlatively foolish process—this very lunacy of nonsense. Such volition itself would then become a part of the mental state, and must pass over to the patient along with the other thoughts and emotions, and with all the absurdity involved in it, or require another volition to keep it back, and still another volition for this, and so on, ad infinitum. Have any of our readers ever seen a foolish dog running round and round after his own tail, and ever jerking it away just when he seemed to himself to be on the point of catching it? Nothing can furnish a better illustration of the exceeding folly that has often in this way been presented as profound and scientific reasoning to what have been styled enlightened and respectable audiences.