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INTERIOR VISION. 51
set, they have invariably been invested with the attributes of the magical. We must carefully guard ourselves from credulity. Such things as these presumed Spiritual Disclosures have been known in allages. There is nothing newer, other than that they have been suddenly and widely noticed, in these psychologico-magnetic displays — this supposed spiritual betrayal —this counter-working and false working of the universal transitive evolvement — these aberrations of polarity. We have an abiding. dislike to, and we cordially dissent from, all this epileptic wandering; all this convulsive, incoherent, blameworthy — nay, audacious reaching out at forbidden things. The pampered human mind can run into any extreme. We, on the contrary, are friends to the solidest and plainest common sense.
‘We apprehend that the explanation of the great majority of the spiritual manifestations — as they are called —may be, that the forceful magnetism with which the world is charged is (in states of excitement) impelled through the medium — probably the stronger through the reflective VACUITY; and that it undulates again outwards, as we see the rings, or rather the single ring, upon a sheet of water circumvolve from about a stone suddenly dropped in. The exterior, magnetic, unconscious rings may become intelligent, from which ‘motived circles ’— obeying laws of which we know nothing, or from which invisible walls, come sounds — vibrates motion. It may be at the intersection of these ‘ out-of-sense’ circles (which, from the multitude of minds, must be innumerable, though they are altogether unsuspected) at which are struck all that strange attraction and repulsion which we call sympathy and antipathy, and in which are mind-commerce, and all the puzzling phenomena of the so-called spiritual shows. Thus the mind answers toitself. And instead of ‘ spirit’ having much to do with it, it is mainly the invisible ‘ microscopical,’ ‘unnecessary work to the world’ of man’s own other nature ; real spirit being in the majority of cases still as far off as ever, and outside and transcended of all of it! All the grave gossip and delusion, therefore, of religious communication and of impartments (truly pieced out, in his wild imagination, by the consultant’s own convulsive ingenuity) of disembodied individualities, must fall to the ground. The phenomena are indisputable. What they are, the scientific world has yet to learn. We seem to fall, in these things, into a wide field of vital magnetism. And also into mindcontagion.” . .
«To reduce the question into the narrowest limits —do spirits exist? Is there anything apart from the solid, the tangible, the senses of man, the bulk of nature? Can intelligences exist without a body? Is the world of soul within the world of flesh, or is the world of flesh within the world of spirit? Which is the real thing, the material or the immaterial? <All the speculation — all the purposes of life may be confined within these circumscribed bounds. Either this world is all, or it is almost, nothing. For if the senses are all of the man; if Nature is just the mere solids
set, they have invariably been invested with the attributes of the magical. We must carefully guard ourselves from credulity. Such things as these presumed Spiritual Disclosures have been known in allages. There is nothing newer, other than that they have been suddenly and widely noticed, in these psychologico-magnetic displays — this supposed spiritual betrayal —this counter-working and false working of the universal transitive evolvement — these aberrations of polarity. We have an abiding. dislike to, and we cordially dissent from, all this epileptic wandering; all this convulsive, incoherent, blameworthy — nay, audacious reaching out at forbidden things. The pampered human mind can run into any extreme. We, on the contrary, are friends to the solidest and plainest common sense.
‘We apprehend that the explanation of the great majority of the spiritual manifestations — as they are called —may be, that the forceful magnetism with which the world is charged is (in states of excitement) impelled through the medium — probably the stronger through the reflective VACUITY; and that it undulates again outwards, as we see the rings, or rather the single ring, upon a sheet of water circumvolve from about a stone suddenly dropped in. The exterior, magnetic, unconscious rings may become intelligent, from which ‘motived circles ’— obeying laws of which we know nothing, or from which invisible walls, come sounds — vibrates motion. It may be at the intersection of these ‘ out-of-sense’ circles (which, from the multitude of minds, must be innumerable, though they are altogether unsuspected) at which are struck all that strange attraction and repulsion which we call sympathy and antipathy, and in which are mind-commerce, and all the puzzling phenomena of the so-called spiritual shows. Thus the mind answers toitself. And instead of ‘ spirit’ having much to do with it, it is mainly the invisible ‘ microscopical,’ ‘unnecessary work to the world’ of man’s own other nature ; real spirit being in the majority of cases still as far off as ever, and outside and transcended of all of it! All the grave gossip and delusion, therefore, of religious communication and of impartments (truly pieced out, in his wild imagination, by the consultant’s own convulsive ingenuity) of disembodied individualities, must fall to the ground. The phenomena are indisputable. What they are, the scientific world has yet to learn. We seem to fall, in these things, into a wide field of vital magnetism. And also into mindcontagion.” . .
«To reduce the question into the narrowest limits —do spirits exist? Is there anything apart from the solid, the tangible, the senses of man, the bulk of nature? Can intelligences exist without a body? Is the world of soul within the world of flesh, or is the world of flesh within the world of spirit? Which is the real thing, the material or the immaterial? <All the speculation — all the purposes of life may be confined within these circumscribed bounds. Either this world is all, or it is almost, nothing. For if the senses are all of the man; if Nature is just the mere solids
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