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Title: The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
Author: Orestes Augustus Brownson
Release date: September 11, 2025 [eBook #76858]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1854
Credits: Tim Lindell, KD Weeks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
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THE SPIRIT-RAPPER.
THE
SPIRIT-RAPPER;
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
BY
O. A. BROWNSON,
AUTHOR OF “CHARLES ELWOOD.”
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY.
LONDON:
CHARLES DOLMAN.
M.DCCC.LIV.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY.
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
If the critics undertake to determine, by any recognized rules of art,
to what class of literary productions the following unpretending work
belongs, I think they will be sorely puzzled. I am sure I am puzzled
myself to say what it is. It is not a novel; it is not a romance; it is
not a biography of a real individual; it is not a dissertation, an
essay, or a regular treatise; and yet it perhaps has some elements of
them all, thrown together in just such a way as best suited my
convenience, or my purpose.
I wanted to write a book, easy to write and not precisely hard to read,
on the new superstition, or old superstition under a new name, exciting
just now no little attention at home and abroad; and I chose such a
literary form as I—not, properly speaking, a literary man—could best
manage, and which would afford me the most facilities for bringing
distinctly before the reader the various points to which I wished to
direct his attention. If the critics think that I have chosen badly,
they are at liberty to bestow upon the author as much of the castigation
which, in his capacity of Reviewer, he has for many years been in the
habit of bestowing upon others, as they think proper. I have thought it
but fair to give those whom I may have offended by my own criticisms in
another place, an opportunity to pay their debts and wipe off old
scores.
The book, though affecting some degree of levity, is serious in its
aims, and truthful in its statements. There is no fiction in it, save
its machinery. What is given as fact, is fact, or at least so regarded
by the author. The facts narrated, or strictly analogous facts, I have
either seen myself, or given on what I regard as ample evidence. The
theory presented as their explanation, and the reasoning by which it is
sustained, speak for themselves, and are left to the judgment of the
reader.
The connection of spirit-rapping, or the spirit-manifestations, with
modern philanthropy, visionary reforms, socialism, and revolutionism, is
not an imagination of my own. It is historical, and asserted by the
Spiritists, or Spiritualists themselves, as any one may satisfy himself
who can have the patience to look through their Library. I have
endeavored to be scrupulously exact in all my statements and
representations in this respect. The shafts which the author shoots at
random may perhaps hit some well-meaning persons who get crotchets in
their heads, or astride of hobbies; but they are not poisoned with
malice, and will titillate the skin, rather than penetrate the flesh.
I have not aimed at originality, or at displaying my erudition in the
Black Art. I have certainly read some on the subject, and at one period
of my life made myself acquainted with more “deviltry” than ever did or
ever will do me any good. I have however drawn very little from
“forbidden” sources. In writing, I have used freely a recent French
work, from which I have taken the larger portion of my facts, and many
of my arguments, although I had previously studied the subject for
myself, had learned the same facts, with one or two exceptions, from
other sources, and had adopted the same solution. The work I refer to is
entitled, _Pneumatologie des Esprits et de leurs Manifestations
fluidiques_. By the Marquis Etudes de M——. Paris, 1853. There are some
views, not unimportant, in this work, which I am not prepared to accept;
but, upon the whole, it is the only really sensible and scientific work
I have seen on the subject, and I freely confess that I have done little
more than transfer its substance to my pages.
The volume when it was begun was intended to be published anonymously,
but my publishers have preferred to issue it with the name of the
author. I think they have judged unwisely, but as they ought to know
their own trade better than I, and as there is nothing in it that I am
particularly ashamed of or unwilling to avow, I cheerfully comply with
their request, and send it out with my name, to make or mar its fortune.
If it tend in any degree to throw light on the dark facts of history, to
check superstition, to rebuke unreasoning scepticism, and to recall the
age to faith in the Gospel of our Lord, the purpose, the serious
purpose, for which it was written will be answered, and I shall be
content, whatever reception it may otherwise meet from the public.
THE AUTHOR.
BOSTON, August 11, 1854.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST LESSON 1
CHAPTER II.
GUESSES 10
CHAPTER III.
FURTHER EXPERIMENTS 22
CHAPTER IV.
AN EXPLOSION 33
CHAPTER V.
SOME PROGRESS 46
CHAPTER VI.
TABLE TURNING 61
CHAPTER VII.
A LESSON IN PHILANTHROPY 71
CHAPTER VIII.
A LESSON IN WORLD-REFORM 91
CHAPTER IX.
THE CONSPIRACY 112
CHAPTER X.
MR. COTTON IS PUZZLED 133
CHAPTER XI.
WORTH CONSIDERING 154
CHAPTER XII.
A MISSIONARY TOUR 173
CHAPTER XIII.
THE TOUR CONTINUED 184
CHAPTER XIV.
ROME AND THE REVOLUTION 199
CHAPTER XV.
THE ULTERIOR PROJECT 218
CHAPTER XVI.
A REBUFF 239
CHAPTER XVII.
A GLEAM OF HOPE 245
CHAPTER XVIII.
RELIGIOUS MONOMANIA 257
CHAPTER XIX.
MESMERISM INSUFFICIENT 275
CHAPTER XX.
SHEER DEVILTRY 290
CHAPTER XXI.
SPIRIT-MANIFESTATIONS 303
CHAPTER XXII.
SUPERSTITION 316
CHAPTER XXIII.
DIFFICULTIES 329
CHAPTER XXIV.
LEFT IN THE LURCH 347
CHAPTER XXV.
CONCLUSIONS 363
CHAPTER XXVI.
CONVERSION 387
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SPIRIT-RAPPER.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST LESSON.
My days are numbered; I am drawing near to the close of my earthly
pilgrimage, and I must soon take my final departure,—whither, I dread to
think. But before I go I would leave a brief record of some incidents in
my worse than unprofitable life. A few who have known me, and will have
the charity to breathe a prayer at my grave, may be glad to possess it;
and others of my countrymen, who know not what to think of the
marvellous phenomena daily and hourly exhibited in their midst, or are
vainly striving to explain them on natural principles, may find it
neither uninteresting nor uninstructive.
Of my exterior life I have not much to record, for though few have
played a more active or important part in the great events of the past
few years, my name has rarely been connected with them before the
public. I was born in a small town in Western New York. My parents were
honest agriculturists from Connecticut, and descended from ancestors
who, with Hooker, founded the colony of Hartford. They were among the
early settlers of what used to be called the “Holland Purchase,” and,
till emigrating to the new world west of the Genesee, were rigid
Puritans. Like most emigrants from the land of “steady habits,” they
were intelligent, moral, industrious, and economical, and, as a matter
of course, soon prospered in this world’s goods, and became able to give
their only son the best education the State could furnish, and to leave
him a competent estate. I made my preparatory studies at Batavia, and
entered, at seventeen, the Freshman class of Union College, Schenectady.
I remained at college four years, a diligent, if not a brilliant
student, and graduated at the close with the highest standing, and the
general love and esteem of my classmates.
My early predilection was for the mathematical and physical sciences.
The moral and intellectual sciences were not much to my taste. I took no
great interest in them. They struck me as vague, uncertain, and
unprofitable. I preferred what M. Comte has since called _Positive
Philosophy_. I soon mastered mathematics, mechanics, and physics, as far
as they were taught in our college, but I found my greatest delight in
chemistry, which, by its subtle analyses, seemed to promise me an
approach to the vital principle and to the essences of things.
On leaving college I studied—not very profoundly—medicine, and took my
degree, less with a view to professional practice, in which I never
engaged, than with a view to general science. After taking my degree as
Doctor of Medicine, I resumed and extended my college studies, entered
largely into the study of natural history, physical geography, zoölogy,
geology, mineralogy, and indeed all the ’ologies, then so fashionable
that one must have a smattering of them if he would woo successfully his
sweetheart. I paid some attention to Gall and Spurzheim’s new science of
Phrenology, when Spurzheim visited this country, where he died, and was
much interested in it till I had the misfortune to listen to a course of
lectures in its exposition and defence, by George Combe, Esq., the great
Scottish phrenologist. That course upset me, and I have since abandoned
Phrenology, save so far as I find it taught by Plato in his Timæus, and
only laughed at its pretensions and its adherents.
I was arrested, for a moment, by Boston Transcendentalism, but I could
not make much of it. Its chiefs told me that I was not spiritual enough
to appreciate it, and that I was too much under the despotism of the
understanding to be able to rise to those empyrean regions where the
soul asserts her freedom, and sports with infinite delight in all the
luxury of the unintelligible. I thought they talked metaphysics, what
neither their hearers nor themselves could understand; and finding
myself very little enlightened by their intelligible unintelligibility,
their dark utterances, and their Orphic sayings, I gave them up, and
returned to my laboratory.
About 1836, I made the acquaintance of Dr. P——, or, as he claimed to be,
the Marquis de P——, a native of one of the French West India Islands,
but brought up and educated at Paris, where he had been a
Saint-Simonian, and a chief of the _savans_ of the new religion. The
decision of the French courts in 1833, that Saint-Simonism was not a
religion, and therefore that its chiefs were not priests, and entitled
to a salary from the state, dispersed the new sect, and he soon after
came to the United States, and commenced, though with a very imperfect
knowledge of our language, and very little facility in speaking it, a
course of lectures in several of our eastern cities, on Mesmerism, or,
as he preferred to call it, Animal Magnetism. His appearance was by no
means prepossessing, and his manners, though unpretending, were very far
from indicating that exquisite grace and polish which are supposed, for
what reason I know not, to be peculiar to the Frenchman; but he was a
serious, earnest-minded man, who in several branches of science had made
solid studies. I knew him well, and esteemed him much.
At that time I had paid not much attention to Mesmerism. I had heard of
Mesmer indeed, of his extraordinary pretensions, and the wonderful
phenomena which he professed to produce by his rod and tub; but I had
supposed that the matter had been put at rest for all sensible persons
by the famous report of the French Academy in 1784, signed, among
others, by Bailly the astronomer, and our own Franklin. I supposed that
every scientific man acquiesced in the conclusion of that report, that
the extraordinary phenomena exhibited by magnetism were to be ascribed
to the imagination, and that from the date of that report magnetism had
ceased to occupy the attention of the scientific. I was therefore
surprised, nay, scandalized, to find a man of real science, and, as I
wished to believe, of real worth, professing faith in what I had been
led to regard as an exploded humbug, and which, at the very best, could
have no practical utility beyond illustrating the deceptive power of the
imagination, and the sad consequences which might result to those
weak-minded people who become dupes to their own disordered fancy.
Dr. P—— assured me that I was mistaken both as to the bearing and as to
the effect of the famous report of the French Academy. That report, he
said, concedes the reality of the mesmeric phenomena, and only declares
that the assertion of Mesmer, that they are produced by means of a
subtle fluid analogous to electricity or magnetism, was not proven or
demonstrated by the experiments the commission witnessed; which gives no
uneasiness to any animal magnetist in our day, because now no one
pretends to explain those phenomena by means of such a fluid. It is
true, he said, the commission, in their published report, assert that
the phenomena are to be explained by the imagination; but in a private
report, addressed to the king, they say, that “it is impossible not to
recognize in them a _great power_ which agitates and subjects the
patients, and of which the magnetizer appears to be the depositary.”
This, contended Dr. P——, is by no means compatible with the theory which
ascribes them to the imagination, for that theory supposes the cause
that produces them to be in the magnetized, since it is to their
imagination, not to that of the magnetizer, that they are to be
ascribed; but in this secret report, the power which produces them is
assumed to be in the magnetizer, “of which,” it says, “he who magnetizes
seems to be the depositary.” For these, as well as other reasons, he
said, the report of the Academy was not regarded by magnetists as any
authority against Animal Magnetism as understood and practised at the
present time.
Moreover, he assured me, that the report of the Academy had not settled
the question, or seriously checked the cultivation or the progress of
Animal Magnetism. It had at no moment ceased to be studied and
practised, chiefly for its therapeutic effects, and, as he proved to me,
was at the time firmly held and practised by large numbers of the most
upright, benevolent, learned, and scientific members of the medical
profession in France, Germany, and Great Britain. It had continued to
make progress, and was now very generally held and respected on the
continent of Europe. If I would not be behind my age, if I would not
remain ignorant of a very curious and interesting class of phenomena, I
must, he insisted, investigate and make myself acquainted with Animal
Magnetism. I should do it as a lover of science; I should do it more
especially as a lover of my race, as a friend of humanity; for I might
rest assured that Animal Magnetism is the most facile and powerful means
ever yet discovered of solacing, and to a great extent curing, a
thousand ills that flesh is heir to.
My curiosity, I confess, was excited, and I resolved to investigate the
subject. Dr. P—— had picked up, somewhere in Rhode Island, a
somnambulist, an honest, simple-minded young woman, of no great strength
of intellect, and very little education or knowledge. She was sickly,
and suffering from some nervous affection. He had found her very
susceptible to the mesmeric influence, and he made her the subject of
numerous experiments. He had brought her, in the winter of 1836-7, to
Boston, and there exhibited her to his class. Spending that winter in
the same city, I consented one afternoon to be present at his
experiments. There were some twenty or thirty gentlemen present on the
occasion, mostly lawyers, physicians, ministers, and literary and
scientific gentlemen of distinction, all disbelievers in Mesmerism, and
on the alert to detect the least sign of deception or complicity.
The Doctor introduced his patient, who took her seat in an arm-chair
placed in the centre of the room, and, without any visible sign from Dr.
P——, was in a few minutes apparently fast asleep. Her breathing was
regular, her pulse natural, and her sleep sound and tranquil. Was it
sleep? It was, as far as we could ascertain, and sleep accompanied by
complete insensibility. We resorted to every imaginable contrivance to
awaken her. One tickled her nose with a feather, another shook her with
all his might, another discharged a pistol close to her ear, another
stuck pins and needles into her flesh,—all without the least effect.
There was no quivering or shrinking, no muscular contraction, and to the
rudest proofs she was as insensible as a corpse. We all exhausted our
inventive powers in vain, and stood astounded, unwilling to trust our
own senses, and yet unable to detect the least conceivable deception or
collusion. We none of us knew what to think or say. We were taken all
aback.
Various written questions, after we had given over trying to awaken her,
were handed to Dr. P——, which he put to her mentally, without a word or
sign that we could any of us discern, and to which she instantly
answered. One question was, the time of the day; she answered, and
answered correctly, much more so than most gentlemen’s watches present.
To every question put she answered, and so far as any of us knew, or
could ascertain, with perfect accuracy. The Doctor at length told her he
thought she had slept long enough, and would do well to wake up.
Instantly she was wide awake, and apparently unconscious of all that had
passed. She remained awake for some time, when Dr. P—— said to her, “I
will you to go to sleep again for just fifteen minutes, and then to wake
up.” Instantly she dropped asleep. One or two of the company took the
Doctor into a different part of the room, got him into an angry
discussion, and made him forget the order he had given. I stood by the
somnambulist holding my watch in my hand, and to my astonishment,
precisely at the expiration of fifteen minutes, she awoke. Various other
experiments were tried, various severe tests were put;—some of them with
complete success, others, indeed, proved total failures; and after a
session of about three hours the party broke up and went to their
several homes, some two or three converted, the greater part satisfied
that there was and could be no collusion or deception, and yet wholly
sceptical as to the alleged magnetic power.
CHAPTER II.
GUESSES.
It is no easy matter to give full credit to the reality of the mesmeric
phenomena, or to admit the alleged facts, and when forced to do so by a
mass of testimony which it is impossible to resist, nothing is more
natural than that we should suggest various hypotheses to account for
them. Of all these hypotheses no one, to those who have been
eye-witnesses of the mesmeric phenomena, is less satisfactory than that
which attributes them to a species of juggling or sleight-of-hand, or to
collusion between the magnetized and the magnetizer. Whatever may be the
jugglery or connivance in particular cases, or whatever be the real
solution of the problem, we must, as a general rule, admit the good
faith of the parties. The man who could produce by address or skill, by
art, the wonderful phenomena produced by the mesmerizer, who could so
successfully elude the scrutiny of the most acute and intelligent
witnesses, and so effectually deceive the senses of all classes, would
have no motive to practise mesmerism, for he could produce more
excitement, and gain more notoriety, and more money as a professed
juggler. It is very easy for those who have never seen the mesmeric
phenomena, to set them down as a mere cheat, which they, if present,
could very easily have detected, but it is very possible that they who
have witnessed them are as able to detect an imposition as would be
these critics themselves, and are far better judges than they are, not
having seen them, unless we are to suppose that the blind can in some
cases see better than those who have eyes. Among the innumerable
witnesses of these phenomena there may be as careful and as intelligent
observers as those who emit their oracles with solemn gravity on matters
of which they confessedly know nothing. Academicians and members of
royal and scientific societies are no doubt very respectable personages,
but they are not always the best observers in the world. I would trust
“Jack” to distinguish between a seal or horse-mackerel and the
sea-serpent, much quicker than I would Professor Owen or Professor
Agassiz. Learned academicians and members of scientific societies,
whether of Paris or London, Berlin or Philadelphia, are the easiest
people in the world to impose upon. A clever lad could pass off upon
them a sucker for a pike, and a crawfish for a lobster. But they need
not judge all the world by themselves. Human testimony is not yet become
wholly worthless. There is a cloud both of competent and of credible
witnesses in almost every country, to the reality of the mesmeric
phenomena, and to the good faith, the simplicity, and trustworthiness of
both mesmerizers and mesmerized. Whatever be the agent that actually
produces these extraordinary phenomena, we must seek it elsewhere than
in mere jugglery, sleight-of-hand, trickery, or fraud.
I do not give the results of my first experiments as any thing very
wonderful. They would excite little attention now. Mesmerism is much
more advanced than it was in the hands of my French friend. It is true,
there were rumors even then of far more marvellous phenomena, strange
stories of clairvoyance or second-sight were whispered, and strange
revelations of an invisible world, not recognized by received science,
were hinted; but my friend would not heed them. He was a rationalist,
and would not hear of any thing not explicable on natural principles.
But what I witnessed convinced me of the reality of the magnetic sleep,
and of the subjection of the somnambulist to the will of the mesmerizer,
or that one person can, under certain circumstances, exercise an
absolute control over the organs of another, and render the
somnambulist, during the magnetic sleep, absolutely insensible to all
save the mesmerizer. Here was certainly a marvellous power; what was it?
Was it, as Bailly and Franklin’s Report of 1784 asserted, the
imagination? Singular effect of imagination that would put a person
asleep at another’s will, render her completely insensible—dead to all
the world but the mesmerizer; make her go to sleep and wake up at the
time specified, answer questions only mentally put, and with a
promptness and an accuracy wholly impossible in her normal state! A very
inexplicable imagination that, and itself not less puzzling than the
mesmeric phenomena themselves.
“No, it is not imagination,” insisted Dr. P——, “any more than it is a
magnetic fluid, as asserted by Mesmer. It is the will of the magnetizer
operating immediately on the will of the somnambulist, and through that
on her organs. Or rather, it is the spiritual being in me operating
immediately on the spiritual being in her, and therefore these phenomena
afford an excellent refutation of materialism, and reveal a great and
glorious law of human nature, recognized, though misconceived, in all
ages and nations; a mighty law, but hitherto denied to human nature, and
supposed to be something lying out of our sphere, superhuman, and even
supernatural. Modern science began by denying the mysterious facts
recorded in history, but it is beginning to accept them, and to show
that they are all explicable on the principles of human nature.”
“What strikes me as most remarkable in the mesmeric phenomena,” said Mr.
Winslow, a rather grave minister of the extreme left of the Unitarian
denomination, who had joined Dr. P—— and myself on our way to my
lodgings, “what strikes me as most remarkable in the mesmeric phenomena
is, not the kind of power they reveal, but the degree. Every man who has
been accustomed to public speaking, if he has observed, is conscious of
a kindred power.”
“To put his audience asleep,” interposed Jack Wheatley, a young lawyer,
who was usually one of my companions while in the city, “but not always
to make them submissive to his will.”
“It is a mysterious power,” continued Mr. Winslow, “which the orator
seems to have over his audience, a power of which he is conscious, but
which is wholly unintelligible to himself.”
“But very intelligible to his hearers,” interposed Jack.
“You are impertinent, sir,” replied the minister, with offended dignity.
Sometimes when I have attempted to preach, I have found myself, though
perfectly familiar with my subject, hardly able to say a word. My ideas
dance around and before my mind like summer insects, but at such a
distance, and with such rapidity, that I strive in vain to seize them.
If I do succeed in saying something, my words penetrate not my hearers;
they as it were rebound, and affect only myself.”
“Indeed!” interjected the incorrigible Jack.
“Other times,” continued Mr. Winslow, not heeding Jack’s exclamation,
“my ideas seem to come of themselves, to flow without effort, and to
clothe themselves, without any thought or intervention of mine, in the
most fitting words. I find myself elevated above myself; I am in
intimate relation with the minds of my hearers. It seems that an
electric current passes from them to me and from me to them, making us
as it were one man. I speak with their combined force added to my own,
and each of them hears and takes in my words with the united
understanding of all.”
“There may be something in that,” said Jack. “You know, Doctor,” turning
to me, “that I have no more religion than a horse, and am seldom serious
for five consecutive minutes in my life. Well, being in the country the
other evening, on a visit to a crotchety old aunt, whose very cat would
not dare to purr or to wash her face on Sunday, and finding it
exceedingly dull, I took it into my head to seek a little amusement or
diversion by attending a Methodist prayer-meeting, or conference, held
in a school-house close by. I seldom go to meeting, but once-and-awhile
I like to attend a Methodist evening gathering. I sometimes find plenty
of fun. The performances this evening had begun before my arrival, for,
as usual, I was rather late. On entering I found the house crowded
almost to suffocation. Ten or a dozen men, women, boys, and girls, were
down on their knees, all screaming at once from the very top of their
lungs, and the rest of the brethren and sisters were groaning, shouting,
clapping their hands, in glorious confusion. I worked my way along to a
vacant spot which I spied just before a blazing fire. Turning my back to
the fire, and holding aside the skirts of my coat so that they should
not get scorched, I stood and looked for some minutes on the scene
before me. At first I was struck with its comical character, and was
much amused; soon, however, I grew serious, became sad, and then
indignant, that beings in human shape, and endowed, I presumed, with the
faculty of reason, should make such fools of themselves. I inwardly
resolved that for once I would “speak in meeting,” and that as soon as
there should be a pause or a lull, so that I could stand some chance of
making myself heard, I would give them a piece of Jack Wheatley’s mind.
In a word, I resolved to give them a downright scolding, and to tell
them plainly what fools they were to suppose that they could please God
by acting like so many bedlamites or howling dervishes.
“Well, after some fifteen or twenty minutes, there came a slacking up,
and I opened my mouth. I remembered what my old rhetoric master had
taught me, though how I came to is a puzzle, and resolved to begin in a
modest and conciliatory manner. It would not do to shock them in the
outset. I must first gain their ears and their good-will. So I began
with a grave face and a solemn tone, and made some commonplace remarks
on religion, and the duty to love and worship God, meaning, (after my
preliminary remarks, intended to gain the jury,) to bring in, with
crushing effect, my rebukes. But the brethren did not wait. Mistaking me
for a pious exhorter, they cried out almost at my first words, “Amen!”
“Glory!” “Bless the Lord!” “Go on, brother!” Will you believe it?
Instantly I caught the enthusiasm, became possessed by the =genius
loci=, entered in spite of myself into the spirit of the meeting, and
gave a most magnificent methodistical exhortation. The brethren and
sisters were edified, were enraptured, and when the time came for the
meeting to break up, the leader requested me to close the performances
with prayer, which I did with great fervor and unction. The spell lasted
till I got out of the house into the open air.”
“So Saul was among the prophets,” remarked Mr. Winslow, as Jack
concluded. “I am not surprised, for something similar occurred to myself
when I first began to preach. There is, I believe, something infectious
in these Methodist gatherings, and a wise man often finds himself acting
in them as a fool acteth.”
“Few wise men, I should think, ever go near them,” I remarked.
“I know not how that may be,” replied Mr. Winslow, “but there are few
men that are always wise, or who never find themselves doing a foolish
action. Even the greatest and wisest of our race sometimes unbend, and
prove that there are points in which they are united to ordinary
humanity. There is in this secret and invisible influence, to which I
refer, of one man over another that has long arrested my attention.
Often have I known both speaker and hearers electrified by a few
commonplace words, carried away, it would seem, by a force not their
own; now melted into tears; now inflamed with a pure and unearthly love;
now maddened with rage; now fired with a lofty enthusiasm, swelling with
heroic emotions, and panting to do heroic deeds. In these moments man is
more than man; a higher than man possesses him, and he becomes
thaumaturgic, works miracles, removes mountains, stops the course of
rivers, heals the sick, casts out devils, moves, speaks, and acts a god.
I call it the demonic element of human nature, and I think, if these
mesmeric phenomena turn out to be real, they will be found to have their
explanation in this mysterious and even fearful element, which the older
theologians called faith, and superstition looks upon as supernatural.”
“That there is some analogy between Animal Magnetism and the class of
facts to which you refer, or which you have in your mind,” observed Dr.
P——, “I do not deny. But, after all, what is the power which produces
them? To resolve one class of facts into another, equally if not more
mysterious, is not to explain them.”
“But what more, my dear Doctor,” I asked, “do you yourself do? There are
here two distinct questions: Is there really such a class of
extraordinary phenomena as you mesmerizers assert? and if so, what is
the agent or efficient cause in producing them? As to the first, I am so
far satisfied as to concede that the remarkable phenomena asserted may
be real; but I have not seen enough to warrant any sound induction as to
their cause or general law. I must continue my observation of facts much
longer, and extend it much further, before I proceed to any induction in
the case. You say they are produced by the will of one acting
immediately on the will of another, and through that on the organs of
the person magnetized, by virtue, as you allege, of a law of human
nature. Yet you do not tell us what this law is, or what is the nature
of that which my reverend friend calls the demonic power of man.”
“In no case does it belong to man to answer similar questions,” replied
Dr. P——. “We in no case know the essences of things. All that men are
able to do is to observe phenomena, and from them to infer or affirm
that there is and must be an agent or power which produces them. Can you
tell me what is gravitation? All you can tell me is, that bodies fall or
tend to the centre of the earth, and what are the laws and conditions of
that tendency. What is electricity? You cannot tell me. You can only
tell me that there is a certain class of phenomena, which you can trace
to a certain invisible and imponderable agent, and to that invisible and
unknown agent, that ‘occult power,’ as an earlier philosophy would have
called it, you give the name of electricity. All you can know of it is,
its existence, the laws by which it operates, the means by which you can
avail yourself of it, get power over it, avert it from your house or
barn when it breaks forth in the thunder-gust, or use it to drive your
machinery, to convey your messages, or to solace your pain. Science
calls it a fluid, but what it is in itself science knows not, for it has
seen it only in its operations or effects. So with this power, or law of
human nature, to which I ascribe the magnetic phenomena. All I pretend
to tell is, that the law is a reality, and all I pretend to demonstrate
is, that we may avail ourselves of it, and use it for the most useful
and noble purposes. This is enough. All we need to know is its
existence, or the purposes to which it may be applied, and how we can
apply it or render it serviceable. Let man know that he has it, and then
let him learn how to use it.”
“But after all, I am a little frightened at the supposition of this
power,” remarked Mr. Winslow. “There is something fearful in this
complete subjection of one, soul and body, to the will of another. The
somnambulist is, during the mesmeric trance, the slave of the
mesmerizer, as much so as was the genie to the possessor of the
wonderful lamp, and he may do with him or her what he pleases. Is there
not danger here? May he not use his power in a base way, to gratify his
passions, his lusts, his hatred, or his revenge, and with complete
impunity, since the somnambulist retains no consciousness or
recollection on returning to the normal state, of what passed during the
magnetic slumber? Let Animal Magnetism become generally known and
practised, and who could know when or where he was safe? Any one of us
might at any moment fall a victim, or be made the blind instrument of
the basest and most malignant passions of others.”
“Those are idle fears,” replied Dr. P——; “none but virtuous men can
exercise the power, or if others can, they can exercise it only for
honest and benevolent purposes.”
“That, if true, would be reassuring,” I observed; “but, for myself, I
revolt at the bare idea of being so completely in the power of another,
however honest or well-disposed he may be. I choose to be my own, and
not another’s.”
CHAPTER III.
FURTHER EXPERIMENTS.
Dr. P—— continued his lectures, private instructions, and experiments
for some months, and very soon they began to produce their natural
effect. No people are more disposed to run after every novelty, or are
naturally more fond of the marvellous than the Anglo-Americans. They
live in a constant state of excitement, and are always craving some new
stimulant. They have been transplanted from the old homestead, are
without ancestors, traditions, old associations, or fixed habits
transmitted from generation to generation through a long series of ages.
They have descended, in great part, from the sects that separated in the
seventeenth century from the Anglican Church, which had in the sixteenth
century itself separated from the Church of Rome, and to a great extent
broken with antiquity. They are a new people,—in many respects a
child-people, with the simplicity, freshness, impressibility,
unsteadiness, curiosity, caprice, and waywardness of children. They must
have their playthings, and they no sooner obtain a new toy than they
tire of it, throw it away, and seek another. Yet are they richly
endowed, and they possess in the highest degree many of the nobler
virtues of our nature. They are a poetical and imaginative, as well as a
reasoning and practical people. They have a robust and not unkindly
nature,—are susceptible of deep emotions, and capable of heroic deeds.
They treat few subjects with absolute indifference, and seldom fail to
give any one who has, or professes to have, something to say, a
tolerably fair and patient hearing. Whoever is able to touch their
fancy, stir their feelings, excite their curiosity, or their
marvellousness, is pretty sure of having them run after him—for a time.
Animal Magnetism soon became the fashion, in the principal towns and
villages of the Eastern and Middle States. Old men and women, young men
and maidens, boys and girls, of all classes and sizes, were engaged in
studying the mesmeric phenomena, and mesmerizing or being
mesmerized,—some declaring themselves believers, some expressing
modestly their doubts, the majority, while half believing, loudly
declaring themselves inveterate sceptics. Jack Wheatley very soon became
a famous mesmerizer—for sport. He laughed at the whole concern, and yet
he was the most successful of the mesmerizers, and his _subjects_ always
behaved with great propriety, seldom, if ever, failing him, or
disappointing the wondering spectators. Mr. Winslow, after hesitating a
while, began to try experiments himself, and found that he had a
wonderful magnetic power, especially over the young misses and spinsters
of his congregation. He found by actual experiment, often repeated, and
fully attested, that he could mesmerize without being in the same room
with his subject, without any previous communication of his intent, and
even persons with whom he had no acquaintance, and had never spoken.
More than once he had thrown a young lady in an adjoining room into the
magnetic slumber. Of this there could be no doubt. He knew well his own
intention, and hundreds of witnesses were ready to depose to the fact of
the slumber. At first he tried this experiment only upon those who had
been previously mesmerized, but he afterwards tried it with brilliant
success on others.
But the marvel did not stop here. Mr. Winslow soon found that he could
magnetize material objects, which in turn would magnetize persons. He
wished to mesmerize a young lady, without communicating to her his wish.
He mesmerized a glass of water, which was handed her by a person
ignorant of what he had done, and of his intention. She drank of it, and
in a very few minutes sank into a profound magnetic slumber, and
exhibited the phenomena usually exhibited in artificial somnambulism.
When I first heard of this experiment I laughed at it, for it seemed to
me a wholly inadmissible fact. I could conceive it possible for mind to
act on mind; for the will of the magnetizer to affect the will of the
magnetized; but it was repugnant to all received science to suppose that
mind or spirit can, without some natural medium, operate on material
objects. But from what I subsequently saw and did myself, and what I was
assured of by others, both competent and credible, I became convinced
that I must admit it, or reject all human testimony.
Mr. Winslow, once become a mesmerizer, very soon left Dr. P—— far
behind. In pushing forward his investigations, he found that he could
not only throw persons, not indeed every one, but one in twenty-five or
thirty, into the mesmeric sleep, render them insensible, dead as it were
to all the world except himself, but that he could develop in them, or
superinduce upon them, a marvellous physical strength. I saw him place a
weak and sickly boy in a chair on the platform of his lecture room, and
so nerve his arm that not two of the strongest men could move it. He
would, by his mental operation, so nail the chair to the floor that no
force applied to it could raise it. He would throw the boy by the same
operation upon the floor, render his whole body, neck, legs, arms,
fingers, and toes, rigid, and stiff as a crowbar; then suddenly relax
all his limbs, and render him as flexible as a reed—now fill him with
rage, make him rave furiously, rush through the audience as one
possessed, overthrowing every thing and every one in his way—now recall
him, soothe his rage, make him cry and weep as if afflicted with the
deepest and most inconsolable grief, and now dry at once his tears, and
break forth into the wildest and maddest joy.
These were singular phenomena. Whence this apparently superhuman
strength? That certainly was no effect of complicity, for the boy
exhibited a physical strength far surpassing that of both mesmerizer and
mesmerized in their normal state. It could not be the effect of
imagination. “For how,” said Mr. Winslow, “can you explain by
imagination the effect produced on material objects? You see that I can
magnetize a glass of water or a bunch of flowers. Do you pretend that
these are endowed with imagination; are not only sensitive, but also
intellectual, and even volitive? Have the most common material objects
sense, intellect, and will? Imagination, highly excited, may indeed
develop and concentrate the strength which one has, but how impart a
strength which one has not?”
“I have been studying these wonderful phenomena,” said Mr. Increase
Mather Cotton, a rigid puritan minister of high standing, and who had
accompanied me to see Mr. Winslow’s experiments, “and I think I see in
them the works of the devil.”
“Why, sir,” replied Mr. Winslow, “I do these things myself. My patients
move and act, are paralyzed, laugh, cry, weep, rage, foam, run, fly,
fight, or make love, at my will. Do you think I am the devil?”
“Be not too confident,” replied Mr. Cotton. “You may yet find that, if
not the devil yourself, that it is a devil, and a very base and wicked
devil, that moves you, and uses you as the instrument of his malice.”
“I have no belief,” answered Mr. Winslow, “in devils or demons, as
separate and intelligent beings.”
“I know very well, sir, that you are a Sadducee, and believe in neither
angel nor spirit, although you would fain pass for a Christian
minister,” replied, with a severe tone, the stanch puritan, whose great
ancestor had taken so conspicuous a part in Salem witchcraft.
“You do me wrong, Mr. Cotton,” replied Mr. Winslow. “I am a Christian,
and no Sadducee. I believe in the Christian religion as firmly as you
do. I do not deny angel or spirit. By _angel_ I understand what the word
itself imports, a messenger, and by _spirit_, a power, force, or energy.
But I do not suppose that I am to understand by either an order of
beings distinct and separate from man. I concede the spiritual power or
energy, but it is the power or energy of the human being; I grant the
demonic character of these phenomena, but the force that produces them
is the demonic force of human nature itself. There are no personal
angels, and no personal devils or demons.”
“And no personal God, you will say next, I presume,” replied Mr. Cotton
with a sneer.
“God is personal in me, in the human personality,” proudly answered Mr.
Winslow. “Personality is a circumscription, a limitation; and God, since
he is infinite, incapable of circumscription, cannot be personal in
himself. He can be personal only in creatures, and consequently, only in
such creatures as have personality, that is, men.”
“Your notion of personality is of a piece with your whole miscalled
theology,” replied Mr. Cotton. “Personality is the last complement of
rational nature. If the nature is rational, that is, capable of
intelligent and voluntary activity, and complete, it is a person, and if
infinite, an infinite person. Your argument is a mere sophism, founded
on a false definition of personality. A little philosophy or common
sense would be of great service to such _Christian_ ministers as you
are.”
“Let us not,” I interposed, “get involved in a theological discussion.
We are to investigate this subject as men of science, not as
theologians. We have here a scientific subject, and science leaves
theologians to their speculations, without presuming to intervene in
their interminable, useless, and wearisome disputes. If your theology is
true, it can never be in conflict with science.”
“If your science be true, or really be science,” retorted Mr. Cotton,
“it can never be in conflict with theology. I do not attempt to deduce
my science from my theology, but I make my theology the mistress of my
science. Whatever is inconsistent with it, I know beforehand cannot be
genuine science, or true philosophy.”
“That may or may not be so,” I replied; “but I am no theologian. I am an
humble cultivator of science, and I consider myself free to push my
scientific investigations into all subjects independently, without
restraint, without leave asked or obtained either from you or my friend
Mr. Winslow. All history has its superstitious and marvellous side.
Science has heretofore denied the reality of that side of history, and
regarded the marvellous facts with which ancient and mediæval history is
filled, as never having really taken place, or as the result of fraud,
trickery, or imposture, exaggerated by the credulity, the ignorance, the
wonder, and the disordered imaginations of the multitude. These mesmeric
phenomena may throw a new light on that class of facts; they may even
relieve history from the charges which have been brought against it, and
rehabilitate the ages that we have condemned, so far at least as the
facts themselves are concerned, though not necessarily as to the
theories by which they were in past times generally explained. I am
myself at present bewildered. I am not willing to admit the facts, but I
am unable to deny them. If they must be accepted, I incline to the view
of my friend Mr. Winslow, and am disposed to assume that there is in
human nature a law not hitherto well understood, a mysterious power,
what he here calls the demonic power of human nature, the limits and
extent of which science has not as yet explored.”
“There is something mysterious in man,” remarked Mr. Sandborn, a
Universalist minister present. “I remember, some years ago, that one
summer I was very much out of health. I suffered much from a bowel
complaint, which brought me very low. But my mind was exceedingly
active, and I seemed to myself to have not only more than my ordinary
intellectual power, but also at my command a mass of information on a
great variety of subjects which I was sure I had never acquired in the
course of my ordinary studies. I seemed familiar with several physical
sciences which I had never studied, and with facts, real facts too,
which I had never learned. While I was in this state, I was visited at
my residence, in the village of Ithaca, New York, by a young friend, a
brother minister, residing some eighteen or twenty miles distant. He saw
my state, and urged me to go out and spend a few weeks with him at his
boarding-house. The pure breezes, he said, from the hills would do me
good, revive my languishing body, and restore me to health. I accepted
my young friend’s invitation, and the next morning we took the stage,
and after some three hours’ drive were set down at his lodgings. We were
hardly seated in his library, when a servant brought him a letter which
had been taken from the post-office during his absence. I saw a slight
blush on his face as he took the letter, and instantly comprehended that
it was from his ‘ladye love,’ although I was entirely ignorant that he
was paying his attentions to any one, or that he had any matrimonial
intentions. Asking my permission, he broke the seal, and read his letter
in my presence. When he had done, I said to him,
“‘You have there a letter from your sweetheart, the young lady to whom
you are engaged to be married.’
“‘How do you know that?’ he asked in reply.
“‘O that is evident,’ I replied. ‘I see it in your face. Let me see the
letter, and I will tell you her character.’
“‘I would rather not,’ he answered.
“‘I do not wish to read it,’ said I, ‘I only wish to look at the
handwriting.’
“‘But can you tell a person’s character by seeing his handwriting.’
“‘Certainly, nothing is easier,’ I replied, although I had never tried,
or even heard of such a thing before.
“He then handed me the letter. I fixed my eye on the writing for a
moment without reading a word of the letter, and I saw, or seemed to
see, standing before me, at some six or eight feet distant, a very
good-looking young lady, a little below the medium size, with an
agreeable expression of face, apparently about eighteen years of age, as
plainly as I see any one of you now in this room. I proceeded quietly
and at my ease to describe her to my friend. I told her age, described
her size, her height, her complexion, the color and texture of her hair,
the colors and quality of her dress, indeed her whole external
appearance, even to a hardly perceptible mole on her right cheek. My
friend, you may well suppose, listened to me with surprise,
astonishment, and wonder, and several times interrupted me with the
question ‘Are you really the devil?’ He agreed that my description was
accurate, and far more so than he could himself have given.
“I then proceeded, to my friend’s equal astonishment, to describe her
moral and intellectual qualities, her disposition, her education, her
tastes, her habits, &c., all of which he declared were correctly
described, as far as he himself knew. I had never previously seen or
heard of the young lady, who lived in another State, and was actually at
the moment some hundred and fifty miles distant. But this was not all.
My friend married the young lady in the course of two or three months,
and two years afterwards I called at his house, and was introduced to a
lady whom I instantly recognized as the one whose image I had previously
seen before me.[1] There is something in all this, and analogous facts
related and well attested by others, that I cannot explain.”
-----
Footnote 1:
A literal fact, in the experience of the author.
-----
We all agreed that the case was remarkable, and apparently inexplicable,
on any known principles of received science.
CHAPTER IV.
AN EXPLOSION.
Dr. P—— having accomplished his object in visiting this country, and
being invited home by his family, took his leave of us in the summer of
1840, and returned to the West Indies. I have not seen him since. But he
left behind a large number of disciples, and we had no lack of
mesmerizers, and mesmerizers to whom he was a mere child. Some of these
made mesmerism a trade, and gave public lectures and experiments as a
means of gaining notoriety and filling their pockets. Others made their
experiments in private circles, and from curiosity, or in the interests
of science, and not unfrequently by way of amusement. Mr. Winslow
devoted much time to a series of experiments intended to prove the
reality of what he called the demonic element of human nature. He wished
to be able to accept and explain the miracles recorded in sacred and
profane history on natural principles, without the recognition of the
supernatural. Jack Wheatley continued his experiments, apparently more
in jest than in earnest, and was remarkably successful. He had no theory
on the subject, said nothing of the use to which mesmerism might be
applied, and never speculated on the cause of the mesmeric phenomena. He
contented himself with producing them, and leaving others to use or
explain them as they saw proper.
A year had passed without my seeing Jack. In the winter of 1840-41,
while on a visit to Boston, I met him one day accidentally in the
street, and was startled at his altered appearance. His look was wild
and oppressed, his face was pale and sallow, his youth and bloom were
gone, and his body was wasted to a skeleton. He made as if he would
avoid me, and with reluctance and a certain timidity replied to my
greeting.
“Why, Jack, what is the matter?”
“Don’t you see? I see her night and day,” he replied with a shudder, as
if he beheld some strange and horrible vision from which he would avert
his looks, but could not.
“See what?” said I. “I see nothing.”
He trembled all over, and seemed unable to speak. Seeing that he had
either lost his wits, or was fast losing them, I took his arm in mine,
and with gentle violence led him to my lodgings, at no great distance,
conducted him to my room, and induced him to repose himself on the sofa.
I closed the door, and seated myself by his side. I took his hand, and
caressed his forehead and temples as if he had been a child. He seemed
soothed. “Tell me, Jack,” said I, in a voice almost as gentle and
affectionate as that of a mother, “tell me what has happened.”
“I am lost, I am damned.”
“Say not that. As long as life lasts no one is lost, and nothing is
irreparable.”
“Life no longer lasts. I do not live. I killed her.”
“No, no. But of whom do you speak?”
“You did not know. I never told you. You seemed to be a cast-iron man,
as Miss Martineau says of Mr. Calhoun, and disposed to put every
sentiment in your crucible, and subject it to your retorts and
blowpipes.”
“But Mr. Calhoun has a heart, as I have had ample occasion to prove.”
“I was always light and trifling, careless, gay, and joyous, yet I truly
and deeply loved.”
“And none the less deeply and truly because gay and joyous.”
“But you know nothing of love?”
“No man is always wise.”
“But you will laugh at me.”
“My dear Jack, there are few hearts without some little romance, in some
hidden or unhidden corner. There are not many persons unwilling to
listen to a story of true and genuine love.”
“I was young and foolish, but I loved one, and one whom I thought every
way worthy, a thousand times worthy, of my love. I felt myself
infinitely her inferior, and unworthy even to kiss the ground on which
she had trodden.”
“That is easily comprehended.”
“Now you are laughing at me.”
“No, I am not. But you may leave something to my imagination, if not to
my experience. I do not doubt that she whom you loved had all imaginable
charms, all conceivable graces, and all possible and impossible
perfections.”
“But my Isabel _was_ the most beautiful, sweet, amiable, and glorious
creature that ever gladdened the earth with her presence.”
“Unquestionably. He who doubts that his mistress is an angel, is divine,
is a goddess, has his liver whole, and I will warrant him sound in wind
and limb. The lover never finds his mistress mortal till after the
wedding.”
“You are incorrigible. You promised not to laugh at me. Indeed, indeed,
Doctor, I do not deserve to be laughed at.”
“I own it, my dear Jack, and nothing is farther from my heart than to
laugh at you. But do tell me what has happened. I am really grieved to
see you so afflicted.”
“Well, I loved Isabel, and had the happiness of believing that she
returned my love. I gained her consent, and that of her parents and my
own, and we were only waiting till I was fairly established in my
profession to be married. Notwithstanding Shakspeare’s _dictum_, the
course of our true love _did_ run smooth. There never was a lover’s
quarrel between us, and there were no obstacles interposed by friends,
enemies, or fortune. My acquaintance accidentally formed with you
brought me into company with Dr. P——, and interested me in Animal
Magnetism. In mere sport, as a pastime, I began trying my mesmeric
powers on one and another of my young friends. Capital fun we found it.
None of us dreamed of there being any harm in it, or that we might not
sport with it as we pleased without any unpleasant consequences. I know
not how it was, but I proved to be a powerful magnetizer, although I was
said not to have the right sort of temperament for a mesmerizer. My
experiments rarely failed, and were almost always unusually brilliant.
“One evening at a friend’s house, where some ten or a dozen of my
companions and acquaintances were assembled, I mesmerized a boy about
twelve years old. I found him completely under my control, and perfectly
docile to all my intentions. His behavior was admirable. I asked him
mentally a large number of questions which it was certain that in his
normal state he could not answer, and which he answered explicitly, with
surprising accuracy. He had never been taught music, and in his normal
state could not distinguish even one tune from another. I willed him to
seat himself at the piano, and play for us a favorite waltz of Mozart.
He obeyed, and performed it with accuracy, with spirit, a delicacy of
touch, and brilliancy of effect, which none of us had ever heard
equalled, or even approached. I then mentally ordered him to sing us, to
his own accompaniment, one or two songs from Fra Diavolo, which were
then in fashion. He obeyed. We were all surprised, and began talking
among ourselves of the apparent miracle, when, to our still greater
astonishment, he commenced playing of his own accord a strange piece,
which none of us knew or had ever heard, and which, for its wild and
unearthly character, for its brilliancy, depth, and pathos, surpassed
all that we had ever conceived of music. We were all entranced. Here was
some agency not the boy’s, not mine, not that of any one present. Such
strains had never had mortal composer.
“I knew not what to think, and so contrived not to think at all, but
enjoyed the music, and looked no farther. _Carpe diem_, you know, was my
philosophy. I saw I had a brilliant subject, and I resolved to make the
most of him. I had heard of the marvellous powers of clairvoyance and
second sight exhibited by some somnambulists. I blindfolded the boy, and
gave him a letter. He read it with ease. I placed another at the back of
his neck, he read that also; I placed another, folded up, on the back of
his head. He told me who was the writer, described his appearance, his
complexion, size, and character, with more accuracy than I could have
done, although the writer was well known to me, and must have been a
total stranger to the boy. I took the boy with me on a journey, that is,
mentally. We stopped at Providence, went on to Stonington, took the
steamer for New York, landed and went up Broadway, down the Bowery, and
through several other streets. He named the hotels, churches, and other
public buildings we passed, and read the signs over the shop doors. We
went up the Hudson, to Albany, from there on to Utica, Rochester,
Niagara Falls, and then returned, and on our way back stopped at your
house in Genesee county, with which you know I am familiar. We went into
the library, and the laboratory, in each of which he named and
accurately described the principal objects. Having come back, we took an
excursion into the other world, of which he told us strange things,
which none of us believed, for we were all Unitarians, Universalists, or
unbelievers, and his revelations seemed to favor what is called
Orthodoxy.
“My betrothed was present at all these experiments. She was greatly
excited. Time and again she wished that I would mesmerize her. She
wished this much more after she had heard the boy describe what he saw
in the other world. I know not why, but I shrunk from complying with her
wish. I saw no harm in others being mesmerized, and I had, without any
scruple, mesmerized young ladies by the dozen; but some how or other I
could not bear to have my Isabel mesmerized, or even to mesmerize her
myself. I instinctively felt that there would be something indelicate in
it, something hardly modest, and that it would be a sort of desecration.
She was modest, retiring, even timid, but her curiosity was excited, and
she would brook no denial.
“A true daughter of Eve. Women are timid creatures, but will brave Satan
himself to gratify their curiosity, or their passions.”
“That now is malicious.”
“Never mind; go on.”
“I was at length obliged to consent, but only to magnetize her at her
father’s house, and at first only in presence of her mother or her
sister. She yielded very readily to the mesmeric influence, and became a
remarkable clairvoyant. She had, when in the magnetic slumber, not only
a clear view of remote terrestrial things, of which she had no previous
knowledge, and which were equally unknown to me, but also of heaven and
hell, and revealed to me strange things of angels and spirits, of the
state of departed souls, good and bad, and of their intercourse with the
living. We both became deeply interested, and took every opportunity to
make our investigations. We were left much alone, and she remained in
the mesmeric state from one to two hours almost every day or evening. If
I was unable to visit her, she would, though I knew it not, invite some
female friend to mesmerize her, for gradually she seemed to wish to live
only in the mesmeric state, and appeared restless and uneasy when out of
it. Her physical system began to suffer. She complained, when awake, of
a universal lassitude. The bloom faded from her cheek, her eye assumed a
wild, lustreless glare, and her motions were heavy and languid. She was
listless, absent, forgetful, taking little or no interest in anybody or
any thing. I beheld her, as you may well believe, with great anxiety and
alarm.
“One evening, about two months ago, I visited her. I found her alone,
and in a few minutes threw her into the mesmeric sleep, for it was only
in that state that her mind retained its strength and brilliancy. She
was attacked with convulsions and spasms as I had never seen her before.
I hastened to awake her. It was too late! I had killed her; and that
countenance which had been so dear to me, which had so often beamed on
me with the sweet smile of love, now bore only the expression of fear,
horror, rage, and anguish. It was the face of a demon. It froze my blood
to behold it.
“I had my own grief to bear, I had to endure the tortures of my own
remorse and utter despair, and to face the grief, silent, but deep, of
her father, and the rage of her mother, who cursed me, cursed me as only
a mother in the violence of her wrath and grief can curse. How I lived
through that dreadful night I know not. The relations agreed to conceal
the circumstances of Isabel’s death. I followed her to the tomb, and
returned to my own home, blasted, withered, worse than dead.
“All this was bad enough, but worse followed. The day after the funeral,
while sitting alone in my office, I saw, at a few feet from me, partly
behind me, a grayish appearance, without any sharply defined outline. I
looked at it for a moment, and it assumed then the well-known form of
her I the day before followed to the grave, and, horror of horrors, with
that fearful expression of face with which she had died. It came nearer
to me, I receded; it followed, I rushed into the street; it pursued, I
turned aside my face, it turned as I turned, so as to be always within
my view. From that day to this has it haunted me; I have scarcely a
moment’s respite. Day or night, light or dark, with my eyes opened or
closed, always does it stand before me, and glare on me with that
terrible look. I cannot sleep; I cannot eat; I have no rest. The only
few moments of quiet I have had are those since I have been with you in
this room. I do not see it now. O, it was a sad day for me when I chose
Animal Magnetism for a plaything!”
I was much affected by Jack’s sufferings. I was not surprised at the
fatal effects of mesmerism on the young lady; for death, I had been
assured, is no unfrequent result of what the physicians who practise it
call its injudicious use. The form which haunted him gave me no
uneasiness, as it was, in my opinion, clearly a case of hallucination, a
species of monomania, well known to the physicians of our lunatic
hospitals, and our writers on mania or insanity. The shock my young
friend had received had probably produced some slight lesion of the
brain, and the imagination gave shape to the deceptive appearance, as in
dreams we see often reproduced, following us, preceding us, or dancing
around us, the shapes and images which had deeply impressed us when
awake. But I was fond of poor Jack, and my great anxiety was to console
him, and to prevent what might be only a temporary hallucination from
becoming a confirmed insanity. Finding him better when with me, I
persuaded him, with the consent of his family, who understood very
little of his case, and feared for his reason, to accompany me to my
home in Western New York, and to place himself under my care.
He remained very much depressed for several months, but gradually his
appetite returned; he was able to get some sleep, and his health began
to improve. The vision did not entirely leave him, especially when
alone, or not with me, but its visits became less and less frequent, and
less and less appalling. The expression of the face gradually became
less horrible, and more human, but still indicated great suffering and
profound grief. In the course of a year, however, he seemed to have
recovered, and returned to Boston. But in proportion as he seemed to be
regaining his health and peace of mind, as far as peace of mind he could
hope to have, a very singular change began to come over me.
I had spent my time, since leaving college, in literary ease and
scientific pursuits. I had had few strong or violent passions to trouble
me, and few things had wounded me very deeply. I had had, it is true, my
little romances, but not being of a sentimental turn, and having a
strong constitution and most excellent health, they had hardly rippled
the surface of the ordinarily smooth current of my life. I had pursued
science as a pastime. I took an easy, pleasant interest in it, but had
no passion for it. I had no enthusiasm, and found in the pursuit only a
gentle excitement, as in reading one of James’s novels, which, by the
by, are the best of all novels, for you can take them up or lay them
down when you please. Spare me, I always say, those much-be-praised
works of fiction which deal with strong and violent passions, which
produce in the reader a painfully intense interest, and which, when you
once begin reading them, you cannot lay down till you have read to the
end. I avoid reading such a novel, as I avoid a night’s debauch.
But now a change came over me. I became restless, and had an intense
longing to explore the secrets of things, and to look within the veil
with which nature kindly shrouds her laboratory. I longed to make myself
acquainted with the primal elements of being, and to be able to command
them; I burned to enlarge not only my knowledge, but my forces. I would
be able to raise the tempest on the deep, to fly through the air, to
wield the lightning, to leave and enter my body at will, to succor my
friends or overwhelm my enemies at a distance. I would read the stars,
comprehend their influences, and command their courses. I envied the old
Chaldean sages, the mighty magicians of the East, and the wizards and
weird sisters of the North. Why should it not be literally true that
mind is omnipotent over matter? Is not man called the lord of this lower
creation? Why then should he fear, or not be able to exercise his
lordship? Had we not seen the wonders of science? Had not man learned to
make the lightnings his steeds, and flames of fire his ministers? What
are the mighty forces of nature? May not man seize them, use them, and
wield their might at his pleasure?
Such thoughts were new to me, still more new were those intense
longings. The horizon of human power seemed to enlarge around me, and I
seemed to rise in the majesty and might of my nature. I was becoming, as
it were, a new man. The ethereal fire within had hitherto slumbered. It
was now kindled, and its flames aspired to their native heaven. I would
no longer be the puny thing I had been. Henceforth I would be a man; a
man in the full and lofty sense of the word. Now suddenly my soul seemed
to grow, and to become too large for my body, against which it beat as
the prisoner beats his head against the walls of his prison-house. I
knew not then the source or nature of these feelings, and I cherished
them as precious intimations of my affinity with the Origin and Source
of all things. At times I was elated; my eye glowed with an unwonted
fire, and sparkled with an unearthly brilliancy; my step was elastic,
and my whole frame seemed to have received new youth and buoyancy, and
to be in some measure withdrawn from the ordinary laws of gravitation.
It seemed as if all the great forces of nature flowed into me, and
become subject to my will. Nothing was impossible to me.
CHAPTER V.
SOME PROGRESS.
Hitherto I had neither been magnetized myself nor magnetized others. I
had read the principal works which had been written in French and
English on the subject, and had witnessed and carefully analyzed the
experiments made by my friends; but now I madly resolved to make
experiments for myself.
A portion of the winter of 1841-2 I spent in Philadelphia, and as my
acquaintance was principally with the Hicksite Quakers, Unitarians,
Swedenborgians, Universalists, and open unbelievers in all religion, I
was, as a matter of course, thrown into the very circles where Animal
Magnetism, as well as all conceivable novelties and absurdities, were
the order of the day. My friends and associates were nearly all
philanthropists and world-reformers. There were among them seers and
seeresses, enthusiasts and fanatics, socialists and communists,
abolitionists and anti-hangmen, radicals and women’s-rights men of both
sexes; all professing the deepest and most disinterested love for
mankind, and claiming to be moved by the single desire to do good to the
race. All agreed that hitherto every thing had gone wrong; all agreed in
denouncing all forms of religion and government that had hitherto
obtained amongst men; all agreed in declaiming against the clergy of all
denominations, in manifesting their indignation against all political
and civil rule, and whatever tended in the least to restrain the
passions of individuals or the multitude, in asserting the wonderful
progress of the human race during the last hundred years, and in
predicting that a new era was about to dawn for the world; but beyond
this I could find scarcely a point on which any two of them were not at
loggerheads.
I cannot say that the differences I found among these excellent people
when it concerned their philanthropic projects or their various schemes
of world-reform, edified me much, but I was charmed with their
disinterestedness, with their zeal, and their superiority to the
restraints of popular prejudice, and what they stigmatized as
conventionalism. I was above all delighted to observe the new importance
assumed in behalf of woman; and it was a real pleasure to hear a
charming young lady, whose face a painter might have chosen for his
model, in a sweet musical voice, and a gentle and loving look, which
made you all unconsciously take her hand in yours, defend our great
grandmother Eve, and maintain that her act, which an ungrateful world
had held to have been the source of all the vice, the crime, the sin and
misery of mankind, was an act of lofty heroism, of noble daring, of pure
disinterested love for man. Adam, but for her, would have tamely
submitted to the tyrannical order he had received, and the race would
never have known how to distinguish between good and evil. How, with the
sweet young lady—I see and hear her now—sitting on a stool near me,
laying her hand in the fervor of her argument on mine, and looking up
with all the witchery of her eyes into my face, how could I fail to be
convinced that man is cold, calculating, selfish, and cowardly, and that
the world cannot be reformed without the destruction of the male (it
might be called the _mal_) organization of society, the elevation of
woman to her proper sphere, and the infusion into the government and
management of public and private affairs, some portion of the love, the
daring, the enthusiasm, and disinterestedness of woman’s heart? There
was nothing to be said in reply.
But alas! unhappy Saint Simonians; you believed also that the evils
endured by the race were owing, in great measure, to the fact that
society had hitherto been organized and governed by men as distinguished
from women, and therefore without the female element. You would in your
reorganization of the world, avoid this sad mistake. You could not agree
on the definitive organization of mankind till you had obtained the
voice of woman. But how obtain that from woman, the slave of the old
male organization? A _Père suprême_ you had found, but a woman to sit by
his side as _Mère suprême_, and to exercise with him equal authority,
you found not, and could proceed no further. You selected twelve
apostles, and sent them forth in search of a _Mère suprême_. They
searched France, England, Germany, Italy, all Europe, even to the harem
of the Grand Turk, but they found her not, and returned and reported
their ill-success. Then fear and consternation seized you; then fell
despair took possession of your souls; then you saw all your hopes
blasted, and you separated and dissolved in thin air. Perhaps, if you
had sent your apostles to the United States, to Philadelphia or Boston,
you might have succeeded, and Père Enfantin not have vanished from
Paris, the capital of the world, to waste himself as an engineer in the
service of Mehemet Ali.
It was a real pleasure to find these men of advanced views, and these
women of burning hearts and strong minds, who had outgrown the narrow
prejudices of their sex, all substituting the love of mankind for the
love of God. They all agreed that philanthropy was the highest virtue,
and the only virtue. Charity was an obsolete virtue, no longer in use,
and not suited to our advanced stage of human progress. That taught us
to love man in God, but we have learned to love God in man; that is, man
himself, without any reference to God. This was charming, and
emancipated us from our thraldom to priests, and all old-fashioned
religion. What was better still, I found that even this noble
philanthropy received a very liberal interpretation, and did not
interfere at all with those pleasant passions and vices, called anger,
spite, envy, &c. It was only a love of man in the abstract, the love of
mankind in general, which permitted the most sublime hatred or
indifference to all men in particular. Wonderful nineteenth century! I
exclaimed; wonderful seers and seeresses, and most delightful moralists
are these modern world-reformers!
In this pleasant and delightful circle mesmerism attracted its full
share of attention. I met it in almost every circle where I happened to
be present. It seemed to take the place of cards, music, and dancing.
One evening I was at a friend’s house, where were collected some
twenty-five or thirty gentlemen and ladies, or perhaps I should say,
ladies and gentlemen, mainly on my account, for I was, in a small way,
something of a lion, and our people are great in lionizing whenever they
have an opportunity, as Dickens, Kossuth, Padre Gavazzi, and others
hardly less worthy can abundantly testify. Indeed, our people are
democrats only from envy and spite. In their souls they are the most
aristocratic people in the world, and would be so avowedly, only they
have no legitimate aristocracy. Democracy has its origin in the
feeling,—since I am as good as you, and since I cannot be an aristocrat,
you shall be a democrat with me.
In this private party there were two or three somnambulists, and twice
that number of mesmerizers. My friend, Mr. Winslow, from Boston, was
present, and also Mr. Cotton, who was in the city on some business
pertaining to holding a world’s convention in London for evangelizing
France, Italy, and other benighted countries of Europe. Mr. Winslow was
in high spirits. He was sure that he was making out his proofs that
there is a demonic element in human nature, never once reflecting, that
if demonic it is not human.
“I am,” said he, “on the point of rehabilitating history. Miracles,
divinations, sorceries, magic, the black arts, which surprise us in all
history, sacred and profane, and which are either denied outright, or
ascribed to supernatural agencies, I think I shall be able to accept, as
facts, as real phenomena, and explain on natural principles. I think I
have in mesmerism an explanation of them all.”
“So you imagine that with mesmerism you may take your place with the
magicians of Egypt, and enter into a successful contest with Moses,”
said Mr. Cotton. “You forget that those magicians were discomfited, and
at the third trial were obliged to give up and acknowledge themselves
beaten. ‘The finger of God is here.’”
“Moses was a superior mesmerizer, and he mesmerized for a good, and they
for a bad purpose, which makes all the difference in the world,” replied
Mr. Winslow.
“But these magicians, then, could exercise the mesmeric power up to a
certain point, and for evil; I thought it was a doctrine of mesmerizers,
that none but virtuous and honest men could mesmerize, and these only
for a good and honest purpose,” said Mr. Cotton.
“I am not,” said I, “particularly interested in explaining what the
Germans call the Night-Side of nature, or the marvellous deeds recorded
in sacred and profane history; I would be able to do those deeds,
reproduce those wonderful phenomena, and exert myself a power over the
primordial elements or primitive forces of nature, be they spirits, be
they what they will. I am tired of being pent up within this narrow
cage, and of being the slave of every external influence. I would master
nature; ride upon the whirlwind and direct the storm. There may, for
aught I know, be an element of truth in the marvellous machinery of the
Arabian Nights Entertainments, and something more than the extravagances
of an Oriental imagination in those tales of magic, of good and evil
Genii. What, if the tale of Aladdin’s Lamp were true? Who dare say that
the river and ocean gods, the Naiads, the Dryads, Hamadryads, Pan and
his reed, Apollo and his lyre, Mercury and his wand, the supernal and
infernal gods of classic poetry, were all mere creatures of the poetic
imagination? Perhaps even the _diablerie_ of modern German romance, of
Hoffman, Baron de Fouquè, and others, has more of reality than most
readers suspect.”
“All the gods of the Gentiles were devils,” replied Mr. Cotton, “and to
a considerable extent I concede the reality you intimate. There are good
angels and bad, and both have intercourse with mankind. The air swarms
with evil spirits, with devils, fallen angels, endowed with a more than
human intelligence, and a more than human power. These are under a chief
called Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan, who seeks to seduce men from their
allegiance to God, to make them receive him for their master, to put him
in the place of God, and to pay him divine honors. It was this fallen
angel, the prince of this world as St. Paul calls him, and the prince of
the powers of the air, who everywhere and unceasingly besieges the
Christian, and against whom we have to be constantly on the guard, that
the ancient Gentiles literally worshipped as God, and it is these evil
spirits, these powers of the air, that swarm around us, and infest all
nature, that ancient classic poetry celebrates, and that your modern
philosophers would persuade us were mere poetic fancies.”
“The powers or forces themselves, I concede,” said Mr. Winslow, “but I
do not recognize their personality, nor their superhuman character.”
“Perhaps,” said I, “Mr. Winslow is a little too hasty in supposing them
to be the innate power or force of human nature. This power exerted by
the mesmerizer may well be natural and yet not be human. It may be one
of the mighty forces of universal nature, which the mesmerizer has the
secret of using or bringing to bear in the accomplishment of his own
purposes. In mesmerism, perhaps, we may find the key to the mysteries of
nature, and the secret of rendering practically available all the great
and mighty powers at work in nature’s laboratory, so that a man may
learn to strengthen himself with all the force of the entire universe.”
“The power you speak of,” said Mr. Wilson, an ex-Unitarian parson, and
who passed for a Transcendentalist, “I believe to be very real. We
sometimes ascribe it to the will, and it is true that under certain
relations the will has great energy, and is well nigh invincible. Yet it
is not, I apprehend, so much the energy of the will itself as of faith,
which brings the will into harmony with the primordial laws of the
universe, and strengthens it by all the forces of nature. ‘If ye had
faith as a grain of mustard seed,’ said Jesus, ‘ye could say to this
mountain, be removed and planted in yonder sea, and it should obey you.’
I am far from being able to prescribe the limits of full, undoubting,
and unwavering faith. Faith is thaumaturgic, always a miracle-worker,
and if we could only undertake with a calm and full confidence of
success, I have little doubt but the meanest of us might work greater
miracles than any recorded in history. ‘If ye believe, ye shall do
greater works than these.’”
“There is more in this power of faith than received philosophy has
fathomed. By it one’s eyes are opened, and he seems to penetrate the
profoundest mysteries of the universe, even to the essence of the
Godhead. We may mark it in all our undertakings. Whatever we attempt,
nothing doubting, we are almost sure to accomplish. Let me, as a public
speaker, desire to produce a certain effect, and let me have full
confidence that I shall succeed, and I am sure not to fail. Let me utter
a sentiment, with my whole soul absorbed in it, confident that it is
going right to the hearts of my hearers, and it goes there. Whenever I
am conscious in what I am saying, of this calm, undoubting faith, I am
sure of my audience. I no sooner open my lips than I have them under my
control, and I can do with them as I please. When I have felt this faith
in what I was about to utter, I have felt before uttering it, its effect
upon the assembly, and my whole frame has been sensible of something
like an electric shock, and it seemed that my audience and I were
connected by a magnetic chain. In conversing with a friend, in whom I
have full faith, and to whom I can speak with full confidence, I have
felt the same. Our souls seem to be melted into one, to move with one
and the same will, and each to be exalted and strengthened by the
combined power of both. Then rise we into the upper regions of truth,
far above the unaided flight of either. Heaven opens to us, and we
behold the hidden things of God. Something the same is felt also when
one goes forth in love with nature, and yields to her gentle and
hallowing influences. We inhale power with her fragrant odors, become
conscious of purer, loftier and holier thoughts and feelings, and form
stronger and nobler resolutions.”
“All that,” said Mr. Cotton, “is common enough, but it is easily
explained by sympathy and imagination.”
“But,” Mr. Wilson replied, “what, then, is the power of sympathy or
imagination? That is a question I cannot answer. I yield to the power,
enjoy it, and question it not. Begin to question it, and it is gone. I
know well that philosophers call the power I speak of under one aspect,
love, under another, sympathy, under another, imagination, under still
another, faith, but what it is in itself they cannot tell me. Be it what
it will, it is demonic, supernatural, an element in human nature, of
which men in all ages have had glimpses, but of which none of us have as
yet had any thing more. The history of our race everywhere bristles with
prodigies. These prodigies were once regarded as miracles, and supposed
to be wrought by the finger of God; now an unbelieving age treats them
as impostures, cheats, fabrications, proving only people’s love of the
marvellous, their natural proneness to superstition, and the ease with
which they can be gulled by the crafty and the designing. I believe
them, for the most part, real. I believe that there are times when man
has a power over the elements, and can make the spirits obey him. Who
knows but the time may come, perhaps is now near, when the law by which
this power operates will be discovered, and this power, which has
hitherto been irregular and transient in its manifestations, will became
common and regular, and therefore bear the marks of a fixed and
permanent law of nature?
“But, call it what you will, it is not identical with the human will,
nor in my opinion is it, strictly speaking, a property of human nature.
It is an overshadowing, an all-pervading power, identical, most likely,
with that Power which creates and manifests itself in the universe. We
can avail ourselves of it, not because it is ours, but by placing
ourselves in harmony with it, within its focal range, and suffering its
rays to be all concentred in us.”
“That is substantially my own view,” remarked Mr. Winslow, “and I regard
mesmerism as revealing the regular and permanent means by which we can
avail ourselves of that creative and miracle-working power. I do not
pretend that man is thaumaturgic in himself, as distinguished from the
Being from whom his life emanates, but by virtue of his union with the
Fountain of All Force.”
“I think,” said Mr. Sowerby, an ex-Methodist elder, “that by magnetism,
we shall be able to explain the operations of the Holy Ghost, and the
mysteries of regeneration.”
“More likely,” interrupted Mr. Cotton, “the operations of Satan, and the
Mystery of Iniquity.”
“Yes, but in a sense thou dost not mean,” interposed Obediah Mott, a
Hicksite Quaker. “Thou knowest how difficult it is for thee to explain
the Popish miracles, many of which thou knowest come exceedingly well
attested. Mesmerism will show thee, that they were wrought by mesmeric
influences.”
“But I have no wish to explain Popish miracles on a principle that would
take from Christian miracles all their value. I hate popery, but I love
the Gospel more.”
The conversation was continued for some time, in the small circle around
me. In another part of the room they had got a somnambulist, and were
making various experiments. When the larger part of the company had
dispersed, I requested Mr. Winslow to try if he could not mesmerize me.
He did not think he should succeed. He thought I had not the sort of
temperament to be magnetized; that I had too strong a will, too robust a
constitution, and quite too vigorous health. It would at any rate
require far more mesmeric power than he had to subdue me. However, he
would try, and do what he could.
I seated myself in an arm chair, with my feet to the south, and Mr.
Winslow began with his passes. The first ten minutes he produced not the
slightest effect, for I resisted him by the whole force of my will. At
length I closed my eyes, and resigned myself to his influence. I now
became aware of his passes, though they were made without actually
touching me. It seemed as if slight electric sparks were emitted from
the tips of his fingers, producing a slight, but agreeable, and as it
were a cooling sensation. I felt slight spasmodic affections at the pit
of my stomach, which gradually became violent. My arms made involuntary
motions, and my legs and feet felt light and flew up as he extended his
passes over them. I had not the least inclination to sleep, but found
that he was actually exerting an influence over my body greater than at
all pleased me. I tried, and found that I could arrest his influence if
I willed, and that he had power over me only so long as I offered no
voluntary opposition. I alternately yielded and resisted, and found that
he had no power to overcome my own will. He operated for about an hour,
with no other effects than those I have mentioned, and gave up the task
of putting me to sleep as hopeless. The most remarkable thing about it,
that I recollect, though it did not much strike me at the time, was,
that although my eyes were closed, I saw or seemed to see distinctly,
slight luminous appearances at the ends of his fingers as he made his
passes. These luminous appearances were in rapid motion, and seemed of a
bluish tinge edged with yellowish white.
There was nothing in the experiment that could establish the reality of
the mesmeric influence to bystanders, but there was enough to satisfy me
that it was neither jugglery nor imagination. I could easily see from
the experiment, that upon persons differently constituted from myself,
less accustomed to self-control, and to the quiet analysis of their own
feelings, much greater and more striking effect must have been produced.
I never submitted myself to an experiment of the sort again. I found
that in my own case it was quite unnecessary, and that I could do all
that the mesmerized could without being thrown into the somnambulic
state. I commenced from that time to practise mesmerism myself. I
entered upon a course of experiments which carried me much farther than
the masters I was acquainted with. I found, that while no machinery for
magnetizing was absolutely indispensable, yet passes with the hand were
serviceable, and that the tub and rod of Mesmer, which had been
discarded, were of great assistance. Metallic balls, properly prepared,
and magnetized, and placed in the hand of the person to be affected, as
practised by the Electro-Biologists, very much facilitated the process.
I was thus brought back to Mesmer, and induced to reject the doctrine of
the ultra-spiritualists, who would have it that the effects are produced
by the simple will acting on the will of the person to be mesmerized.
There was certainly a fluid in the case, whether electric, magnetic, or
as the Baron Riechenbach would say, _odic_, and whether it is to be
regarded as efficient cause or only as an instrument, as maintained by a
recent French author, who seems to have studied the whole subject with
rare patience, and yet rarer good sense.
CHAPTER VI.
TABLE TURNING.
The point to which I at first directed my attention was to ascertain the
power, which, by means of mesmerism, I might acquire over the elemental
forces of nature. I found that with or without actual contact I could at
will paralyze the whole body of another, subject it in great measure to
my own will, and force it to obey my bidding. I could render it
preternaturally weak and preternaturally strong. I found also that I
could produce all these effects at a distance, by means of magnetized
inanimate objects. For instance, I would magnetize a bunch of flowers,
and a person knowing nothing of what I had done, who should take them up
and smell of them, would exhibit all the usual phenomena of the
mesmerized. Here it was evident that the mesmeric power, whatever it
might be, could act directly on matter, and lodge itself in a material
object. It was clear then that the mesmeric phenomena had a real
objective cause, and therefore could not be the effects either of
imagination or hallucination. Here was a most striking and important
fact, and one which entirely refuted the ultra spiritualism of the
majority of mesmerizers.
My experiments in clairvoyance and second sight were equally surprising
in their results. The theory of those who conceded the facts was, that
in some inexplicable way, the somnambulist uses the brain of him with
whom he or she is _en rapport_, and therefore is restricted in the
clairvoyant power to the images already in that brain. I mesmerize, say
a young woman. In her mesmeric state she becomes clairvoyant. She can
see with my organs of vision whatever I myself can see, or have seen,
but nothing else. She can tell my most secret thoughts and intentions,
or those of any one with whom she is _en rapport_, but nothing more. She
can answer correctly any question the answer to which is known to the
interrogator, but not questions the answer to which is unknown to him.
But repeated and well-attested experiments prove to the contrary.
Nothing is more common than for her to answer correctly questions
equally unknown to herself and to those with whom she is placed in
communication, and in cases where it is certain the answer could not be
known by any human means to either. The magnetic power was, then,
clearly a medium of knowledge distinct from the brain or mind of the
magnetizer, or individual with whom the magnetized is _en rapport_.
What tends to confirm this is the surprising fact that persons
mesmerized by a mesmerized glass of water, or bunch of flowers, manifest
equally a superhuman knowledge. I passed one day by a boarding-school,
and threw over the wall, unseen myself, a bunch of flowers which I had
mesmerized. One of the young ladies saw it, picked it up, smelled it,
and placed it in her bosom. Almost instantly she became strangely
affected, seemed bewitched, acted as one possessed. But what it is
important to note is, that she saw and described, as was clearly proved,
things with perfect accuracy, which none of the inmates of the school,
and neither she nor I, had any human means of knowing. She had learned
no language but English, and yet could understand and answer readily in
any language in which she was questioned, could and did foretell events,
with all the particulars of time and place when they would happen.
Moreover, the poor girl herself complained of feeling herself under a
foreign power, and one which made her say and do things to which she
felt, even at the moment, the greatest repugnance. It was clear, then,
that the mesmeric power was not a mere blind force, but acted from
intelligence and will, and an intelligence and will foreign to mine, for
how could I lodge my intelligence and will in a bunch of flowers, and
render them there more powerful than in myself? Clearly the force was
not exclusively material, unless matter can be endowed with intelligence
and will.
I was somewhat puzzled, it is true, but I was resolved to continue my
experiments, and wrest from nature, if possible her last secret. I soon
found that it was not necessary to operate with others; that I had the
clairvoyant power myself. With a slight effort I could throw myself into
the mesmeric state. As soon as I found myself in this state I seemed no
longer master of myself. I suffered in entering into it, and on coming
out of it, convulsions more or less violent. While in it, I felt
oppressed at the pit of my stomach, and my organs of speech seemed to be
used by another. When I spoke, it was clear to me that I heard a voice
at the pit of my stomach, speaking the words, and I was perfectly
conscious of struggling not to say things which, nevertheless, were
uttered by my organs. If in this state I sat down to write, my arm and
pen seemed seized upon by a foreign power, and moved and guided without
any agency of mine. What I wrote I knew not, and had never had in my
mind till it came off the end of my pen, and I read it as written down.
Evidently the power was distinct from me, and operated by a will not my
own.
But I was not at all pleased to find myself subject even momentarily to
a foreign power. I did not choose to let another use my organs, and to
suffer my own will to lie in abeyance. The question arose, whether the
same power could not be made to operate without using my organs. If I
could mesmerize a material object, and by that mesmerize persons, why
might I not mesmerize by it other material objects, and make them serve
as organs to this power? I tried the experiment. I mesmerized a bunch of
flowers and laid them on a table in my room, with the will that they
should communicate to the table their mesmeric virtue. Immediately the
table began to move, and to dance round the room, to raise itself from
the floor, to balance itself on two legs, then on one leg, to come to me
or remove from me as I willed. I was delighted. I found the force could
be communicated to the table. I wished to ascertain whether this power
was intelligent or not. I required the table, if it could understand me,
to give two raps with one of its feet. Immediately it did so. Then I
required it, by the same sign, to tell me, whether it understood me by
virtue of the mesmeric force. It gave the sign. Then I requested it to
tell me, in the same way, whether this mesmeric force is one of the
forces of nature, like electricity or magnetism, or whether it is a
spirit. There was no answer. Is it, I asked, a spirit? No answer. If not
a spirit, let the table, I said, strike with one foot. No movement. I
went to the table, and found it, as it were, nailed to the floor. I
could not move it. I am a strong man, of far more than ordinary physical
strength, and was then in its full possession. The table was a light
card-table, but with all my strength, repeatedly put forth, I could not
so much as raise one end of it. This was extraordinary. I sat down on
the sofa at a little distance. Immediately I began to hear slight raps,
apparently under the table. Very soon they became louder, and seemed to
be sometimes on the table, and sometimes under it; sometimes they seemed
to come from a corner of the room, and sometimes from under the floor. I
knew not what to make of them, but I felt no alarm, and remained calm
and undisturbed, in the full possession of all my faculties. In some six
or eight minutes they ceased, and then I saw the bunch of flowers which
still lay on the table, taken up without visible agency, and carried and
placed in a porcelain vase on the mantle shelf. I was sure I was
surrounded by invisible and mysterious agencies, but I began to
apprehend that I was in the condition of the Magician’s apprentice, sung
by Goethe, who had overheard the word by which the master evoked the
spirits, but had forgotten or had not learned that by which he dismissed
them. I however retained my equanimity, and felt that I had gained at
least something.
The next day I tried my experiments anew. This time I merely mesmerized
the table. It soon began to move, raising itself about six inches from
the floor, and whirling round like a dancing dervish. It seemed animated
by a capricious or rather a mocking spirit, and it was some time before
I could make it behave with a little sobriety. But I had spent the
greater part of the night in consulting an old work on magic, which some
years before I picked up on one of the Quais of Paris. It was written
chiefly in characters and hieroglyphics, which at first I could not
decipher; but at length I stumbled upon what I found to be a key to
their meaning, and which was scarcely any meaning at all. However, I
obtained one or two significant hints, and I went armed with a new
power. I held a long dialogue with the table, which, however, I shall
not record. I ascertained the origin of the raps, how to produce them,
and how to read them. But this was but a trifle. I would have the power
visible to my eyes, submissive to my orders, and speak to me in plain
and intelligible language, properly so called. I obtained a promise that
this should come in due time, but that for the present I must suffer the
force to remain invisible, and be content with a language of mere
arbitrary signs.
I was informed that I was on the eve of gratifying my most secret and
ardent wish, and that I should have, in full measure, the knowledge and
power I craved. But I was not yet prepared, inasmuch as I craved them
for an irreligious end. I was moved by no noble motive. I was moved by
curiosity, and the love of power, for my own sake, not from love and
sympathy with mankind. I was not in harmony with the great principles of
nature, and did not seek the real end of the universe. I needed
purification, a sublimation of my affections, and an elevation of my
aims. I had devoted myself to the physical sciences, which was all very
well, but I had neglected moral science, which was not well. I had only
partially imbibed the spirit of the age, and took no part in the great
movements of the day; felt no interest in the great questions of social
amelioration and progress. I had no sympathy with the poorest and most
numerous class, and made no efforts to emancipate the slave, or to
elevate woman to her proper sphere in social and political life. I did
not properly love my race, and had no due appreciation of humanity. I
had great talents, great abilities, and might, if I would, make myself
the Messiah of the nineteenth century.
But what had I done? What good cause could boast of having had me for
its friend and advocate? Had I aided the Moral Reform Association? Had I
raised my voice in behalf of the Abolitionists? Had Owen or Fourier
found me a coadjutor in time of need? Had I risked my popularity in
defending new and unpopular sects, those prophets of the future? Or had
I given my sympathy to those noble spirits everywhere moving society,
and risking their lives to overthrow the tyranny of church and state, to
conquer liberty, and to raise up the down-trodden millions of mankind?
No, no; I had done nothing of all this. I might have been kind and
useful to this or that individual, and sympathized with suffering when
immediately under my eyes, and removable or mitigable by my individual
effort; but I had not sympathized with humanity, and labored to relieve
the poor and destitute, to enlighten the ignorant and superstitious of
remote and neglected regions. The age is philanthropic, and love is the
great miracle-worker of our times. In love you place yourself in harmony
with the source of all things, make yourself one with God, and possessor
of his omnipotence. Learn to love, associate yourself heart and soul
with the movement party of the times, and you will soon render yourself
capable of receiving an answer to your questions and your wishes.
It must not be supposed that all this was told me at once, or in plain,
direct terms. It was told me only a little at a time, and in a very
indirect and cumbersome mode of communication. It required several weeks
daily communing with my mesmerized table, and in spelling out the raps
with which I was favored. But though it reproved me, I was still
delighted. The power was good, and this accorded with my previous
conviction. I regarded the power which, by mesmerism, was brought into
play, as one of the primordial laws or elemental forces of nature, and
as nature was good, as it worked always to a good end, of course I could
hope to avail myself of it only in proportion as I myself became good
and devoted to the end to which nature herself works. God will work with
and for us, only as we work with and for him; that is, for the end for
which he himself works. As to the intelligence apparently possessed by
this force, that was in harmony with what of philosophy I had. Is not
God infinite, universal intelligence? and is he not the original and
similitude of the universe? What, then, is the universe itself but an
emanation of infinite and universal intelligence. All creatures
participate their creator, for they are nothing without him, and
therefore all that exists must participate intelligence, or be a
participated intelligence, and, of course, the higher the order of
existence, the greater and more comprehensive its intelligence. All
nature bears evidence that its laws are the laws of reason, and that its
primitive forces are intelligent forces. How, then, should this force
not be intelligent, and if intelligent, far more intelligent than I?
I resolved to prepare for placing myself in immediate relation with
infinite power and intelligence. I thought I caught a glimpse of a
deeper significance in the words, “ye shall be as gods,” than had been
generally suspected, and I began to think in real earnest that my sweet
lady friend in Philadelphia, who had so eloquently and lovingly defended
Eve in eating the forbidden fruit, was quite right, and that her
disobedience was really a brave and heroic act. Man could really become
as a god, but the priests had invented the prohibition to prevent him.
The god of the priests, then, could not be the true God, and Satan,
instead of being regarded as the enemy, should be, as the author of
_Festus_ seems to teach, loved and honored as the friend of man. A new
light seemed to break in at once upon my mind. The world had hitherto
worshipped a false god; it had called evil good, and good evil; it had
enshrined in its temples the enemy of man, and chained to the Caucasian
rock that god Prometheus, who was the true and noble friend and
benefactor of the race.
CHAPTER VII.
A LESSON IN PHILANTHROPY.
Full of my new resolution, I immediately set myself at work to carry it
into effect. The safest and most expeditious way of doing it, I thought,
would be to place myself at once in communication with some prominent
and well-instructed philanthropist. Accordingly, I started forthwith for
Philadelphia, to consult the beautiful and fascinating young lady, who,
in my previous visit, had so warmly and energetically defended the
eating of the forbidden fruit at the suggestion of that first of
philanthropists, as a brave, heroic, and disinterested act. She, of all
my acquaintances and friends, was unquestionably the one best fitted to
complete my initiation into the mysteries of philanthropy, and to
inspire and direct me in my efforts at world-reform.
This lady, whom, out of respect to the great Montanus, who claimed to be
the Paraclete or Comforter, and professed to have the power of working
miracles very much of the character of those wrought by our modern
mesmerizers and spiritualists, I must be permitted to call Priscilla,
had some years before touched my fancy, and if the truth must be
confessed, had made more than an ordinary impression on my heart. She
had often visited me in my waking dreams, as a lovely, though flitting
vision. She was at my last visit at least twenty-five years old, but as
fresh and as blooming as at seventeen, when first I had the pleasure of
meeting her. She was a sweet lady, with a lovely and graceful figure,
exquisitely moulded, regular and expressive features, and as learned, as
brilliant, as fascinating, and as enthusiastic as the celebrated Hypatia
of Alexandria, who stirred up the zeal of the good monks of Nitria, gave
so much trouble to Saint Cyrill, and spread such a halo around expiring
paganism. She had been sent by the Abolition Society as a delegate to
the great Anti-Slavery World’s Convention at London, and being denied a
seat in that illustrious body, because a woman, she had turned her
attention to the question of woman’s rights, and, after travelling a few
months on the continent, had returned home well instructed in Godwin’s
Political Justice, and a devout believer in Mary Wolstonecroft. She was
liberal in her views, and very far from being a “one-idea” woman. Her
mind was large and comprehensive, and her heart was capacious and loving
enough to embrace and warm all classes of reformers, white, red, black,
religious, moral, political, social, and domestic.
The morning after my arrival in the City of Brotherly Love, I called on
Priscilla at her residence in Arch Street, as I supposed with her
mother. I found her surrounded by some ten or a dozen reformers,
variously dressed; some in petticoats, some in pantaloons: some with and
some without beards; the majority appearing to be of what grammarians
call the epicene gender. She greeted me kindly, and requested me to be
seated; she would be disengaged in a few moments. I took a seat, and
amused myself as well as I could in studying the interesting group
before me, and considering the sort of materials that go to the making
up of a world-reformer, and the charming associates I was likely to have
in my new career. Having listened to their several reports, heard their
suggestions, and given them her directions, Priscilla soon dismissed
them with a sweet smile, and a graceful salute with her hand, that would
have done credit to the grace and dignity of an empress. She then seated
herself near me, and welcomed me most cordially and affectionately to
Philadelphia. My visit was an unexpected pleasure, but all the more
welcome. “But,” she exclaimed, looking me more closely in the face, and
struck with my changed and careworn expression, “what in the world, my
friend, has happened to you?”
I was about to reply, when I observed that we were not alone. An
exceedingly meek and submissive-looking man, if man he could be called,
had just entered the room, and seemed to be hesitating whether to
advance or retreat. I looked inquiringly at Priscilla.
“O, it is only my husband,” she replied. Then turning, with her sweet
face to him, with an indefinable charm in her soft musical tones, said,
“You may leave us, dear James. This gentleman and I would be alone.”
He quietly retreated through the door he had entered, gently closed it,
and went away without speaking a word, or betraying the least sign of
discontent.
“But, my dear madam,” said I, “this takes me by surprise. I was not
aware that you had a husband.”
“Possibly not; yet I have been married these five years.”
“What! you were married when I was in the city last year and had the
pleasure of meeting you, and having that most pleasant and instructive
conversation with you?”
“Most assuredly.”
“This alters my plan. I had made up my mind,—”
“Not to marry me yourself?”
“Pardon me, my dear madam, but I own that I had dreamed of something of
the sort.”
“You might have done worse. I could have made you a good wife, but you
would never have made me a good husband.”
“Why not? I am not precisely a man to be slightly rejected.”
“That may be; and had you proposed in season, I might not have rejected
you. I am glad, however, that you did not, for I might have loved you,
and you alone, and then I should never have become a philanthropist, and
devoted all my sympathies and energies to the emancipation of my sex,
and to the development and progress of my race. You would have engrossed
all my thoughts and affections, and have been my tyrant.”
“But if I had loved you in return, and laid my own heart at your feet?”
“That would have made the matter worse. In loving me you would only have
loved yourself, and sought only your own pleasure. Men usually love only
to sacrifice her they love to themselves; while woman, when she loves,
is ready to sacrifice herself to her beloved. Man’s love is selfish;
woman’s is disinterested.”
“Women are disinterested creatures, and never exact any return for their
love!”
“They are more disinterested than you believe. There is nothing that a
true woman will not do for him she loves. She will abandon herself
without reserve to his wishes, go through fire and water, nay, hell
itself, for him, and take delight in damning her own soul, to please
him.”
“That is because her love is an instinct, a blind passion, a sort of
madness or frenzy, not a sober, rational affection.”
“Perhaps so; but it is rather because her love is love. Unhappily, woman
feels, she does not reason, or if she reasons, it is only in the
interest of her feeling. Reason is cold, calculating; love is warm and
self-sacrificing. It is heedless of consequences.”
“And therefore is the better for having reason or prudence for a
companion.”
“It is clear that you have never loved.”
“Perhaps not; but at any rate I think I could have loved you very much
in your own fashion.”
“That is not improbable, at least, as far as it is in your calculating
nature; for I have been thought to have my attractions, and it would not
be difficult to make any man my slave—unless I loved him. Yet you would
always have loved me as a master, and have always held me in subjection.
There are natures born to command. You would never have loved me as my
dear James loves me, and never have been the meek, submissive, quiet,
dear good man that he is. His love is not tyrannical, and it imposes no
burden on me. He interferes with none of my plans, restrains none of my
movements, and is satisfied with feeling that he is my husband and
belongs to me, without once presuming to think of me as his wife and as
belonging to him.”
“That is charming, and must, no doubt, entirely satisfy your heart.”
“That is my own affair. But I will tell you that it does not, and that
it does.”
“But that is a riddle; pray rede it.”
“It does not satisfy the deep want of the heart to love, for no woman
can love, with all her heart, a man she can make her slave, or who does
not maintain himself as her master. But as I would not become any one’s
slave, as I would not that any man should engross all my affections, and
compel me to live all my life in love’s delirium, it satisfies, and more
than satisfies me. It leaves me free to be a philanthropist, and does
not compel me to give up to one what was meant for mankind. If my
husband engrossed all my affections I should be happy and contented at
home, and should never seek relief in going abroad.”
“And should it not be so?”
“Consult the parsons and old-fashioned moralists, and they will tell you
that it should. But I am a philanthropist. My James loves me sincerely,
warmly, disinterestedly, consults my wishes, does whatever I require of
him, has full confidence in me, is proud of me, and never doubts that
whatever I do is perfect. That is enough.”
“But do you return his love with a disinterestedness and generosity
equal to his own?”
“Why should I? It is enough for him that I permit him to love me, and to
call himself my husband. For myself, I remain free to be a
philanthropist. I cannot give my heart to any individual. I reserve its
deepest and holiest affections for mankind.”
“But mankind, without individuals, is an abstraction, a nullity; and to
love the race, without loving individuals, is worse than loving a statue
or a shadow.”
“Ah! my dear friend, I see that you have not studied the profound
philosophy of Plato, and are still a Nominalist, and therefore an
egotist. You are still a psychologist, stuck fast in the slough of
individualism.”
“It may be so, my dear Priscilla, but I am willing and even anxious to
be liberated and set right. I have resolved, let come what will, to be a
philanthropist, and to become a world-reformer; and it is to solicit
your instructions and assistance to this end that I have visited your
city, and sought my interview with you this morning.”
She shook her head and looked doubtingly.
“Do not doubt it,” I said, “I am serious, never more serious in my life.
I am on the verge of important discoveries, and perhaps well-nigh within
reach of a more than human power. But it is necessary that I at first
become a philanthropist, unite myself with the movement party of the
age, and take a decided and an active part in the great philanthropic
reforms now so widely agitated, and live henceforth for mankind, and not
for myself alone.”
“Is this true?”
“Most assuredly; as true as that I am here present.”
Slowly conviction seemed to fasten on her mind as she saw my serious and
earnest manner, and indeed my agitation, as I rose from my chair and
stood before her. A brilliant joy suddenly sparkled from her large,
liquid, deep blue eye, and radiated over her whole face. Springing from
her seat, and seizing me by both my hands, “This is too much,” she
exclaimed. “This I had wished, had prayed for, but had not dared hope.”
Her eyes filled with sweet tears, and, as if overcome with her emotions,
she sunk into my arms, and rested her head upon my shoulder. I pressed
her to my breast. But she instantly recovered herself, and we both
resumed our seats. After a few moments’ silence, Priscilla, with an
animated and contented look, exclaimed:—
“Now, my dear, dearest friend, I have hope. The good work will now go
bravely on. Pure, noble, and strong-minded women to coöperate with me, I
have found, but a man, a full-grown man, with a clear head, and a
well-balanced mind, heretofore found I not. The men who have been ready
to embark with me, are dwarfs, pigmies, simpletons, needy adventurers,
cheats, knaves, or crack-brained enthusiasts, with but one idea in their
heads, and that only half an idea. Drill them as I may, I can make
nothing of them.”
“But,” said I, maliciously, “is not your dear James a philanthropist and
reformer?”
“My dear James is my husband,” she said, with dignity and spirit. “But
you are slow to comprehend these things. The great and glorious work of
regenerating man and society, cannot be carried on either by man alone
or by woman alone. The two must be united and coöperate, or there can be
no spiritual, as there can be no natural, offspring. But in
regeneration, in the palingenesia, it is not at all necessary that they
be husband and wife after the flesh. Married and made one in spirit they
must be, but not married and made one flesh. Man and woman are each
other’s half, and they must be brought together to make a complete,
active, and productive whole. But the relation of husband and wife is a
purely domestic relation, and looks solely to a domestic end. If each
finds the complementary half in the other, both are satisfied,
contented, and neither has any wish or motive to look beyond the circle
of the purely domestic affections.”
“That is, they who find their bliss at home have no need and no
temptation to go a-roaming.”
“Precisely.”
“Then it is unhappiness, discontent, uneasiness, want, at home, that
makes men and women turn philanthropists, and take to world-reform?”
“Yes; and herein you learn the deep philosophy of life, and the
significance of that Religion of Sorrow, of which Carlyle speaks so
touchingly, and which the world has professed for two thousand years,
but which it has never understood. Hear my favorite poet:—
‘The Fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon
Lit by rays from the Blest;
The Lethe of nature
Can’t trance him again,
Whose soul sees the Perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.
‘Profounder, profounder
Man’s spirit must dive;
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him,
With sweetness untold,
Once found,—for new heavens
He spurneth the old.
‘Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame then restores;
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in the stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free?
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.
‘Eterne alternation,
Now follows, now flies,
Under pain, pleasure,
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway,
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.’
“The ‘love of the Best’ is our innate and deathless desire of happiness,
our being’s end and aim. Happiness is ever the coy maiden, that still
woos us onward, and flies ever as pursued,
‘Man never is, but always to be blest.’
In this deep ever-recurring want of the soul for happiness, the source
of all our pain and sorrow, is the spring and motive of all our
activity, and in activity is all our life and joy. Hence, ‘under pain
pleasure, under pleasure pain lies.’ All our life and joy have their
root in pain and sorrow, in this eternal craving of the soul to be what
we are not, and to have what we have not. The pain and sorrow spur us
on, and lead us to acquire and possess. But no possession satisfies us.
The most coveted is no sooner obtained than it is loathed and cast away.
‘The heavens that now draw him,
With sweetness untold,
Once found,—for new heavens
He spurneth the old.’
“Love dies in the wooing. The acquiring is more than the possessing. All
possessing leaves the heart empty,—an aching void within, which nothing
fills or can fill. This aching void will not let us rest, will not leave
us in repose, which is only another name for inaction, death, but
compels us to exert ourselves, to struggle with all our strength and
energy to make new acquisitions. In this struggle, in these efforts,
humanity is developed, and the progress of the race carried on.”
“Carried on, my dear Priscilla, towards what? Sings not your poet,
‘Profounder, profounder
Man’s spirit must dive,
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive?’”
“That is the glorious secret, my dear friend. The end of man is not the
possession, but the pursuit, of happiness, or rather eternal progress
and growth. By the fact that the pain, the want, the aching void,
remains eternally, there is and must be eternal activity, therefore
eternal development and progress of humanity.”
“But as that development and progress leave us as far as ever from
happiness, or fixed and durable good, I see not in what consists their
value.”
“Their value is obvious. Good is relative to the end of a being, and
consists in going to the end for which it exists. Progress being our
end, of course our good must consist in making progress. This progress
is the progress of the race, and is effected by the activity of
individuals, and to it all the activity of individuals, whether what is
called vicious or virtuous, alike contributes.”
“If all our activity, our vices, and crimes, as well as our virtues,
contribute to this progress, or to the realization of our destiny, I do
not see any great call for us to be world reformers. Moreover, our
destiny seems to be any thing but a cheering one. Your poet-philosophy
is apparently very sad. If we are destined to chase forever a happiness
that flies us, a good that recedes as we advance, all exertion seems to
me as idle, as useless as that of the child striving to grasp the
rainbow.”
“So it may seem to you, for you are, as yet, not a philanthropist. You
are still affected by your egotism, and unable to appreciate any
activity that does not bring something solid and durable to the
individual. Here is the rock on which all old-fashioned morality splits.
Individuals are nothing in themselves; they are real, substantial, only
in humanity. The race is every thing. Individuals die, the race
survives. Men and women have no substantiality of their own. They are
merely the bubbles that rise on the surface of the broad ocean of
humanity, burst, disappear, and become as if they had not been. Foolish
bubbles, ye forget your own nothingness, and would arrogate to
yourselves all the rights and prerogatives, glory and happiness of
humanity. The race is not for individuals; individuals are for the race.
They are simply the sensations, sentiments, and cognitions of the race,
in which it manifests its own inherent virtuality, and through which it
is developed and carried forward in its endless career through the
ages,—through which it grows and realizes its own eternal and glorious
destiny. The progress you are to seek is not the progress of
individuals, for individuals have, properly speaking, no progress; but
the progress of the race, which is and can be effected only by the
activity of individual men and women.”
“Still, I do not comprehend the work there is for world-reformers.”
“Why, you are stupid, Doctor. All activity, whether called vicious or
criminal, is good, for it aids progress. But nothing is vicious,
criminal, or sinful, except that which represses the free activity of
individuals, and thus hinders the development and growth of the race. It
was, therefore, not a friend, but an enemy, that imposed upon our first
parents the prohibition to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. It was a friend, not an enemy, that inspired Eve with the
thought and the courage to disregard that prohibition, to reach forth
her hand and pluck the fruit, and having eaten thereof, to give it also
unto her husband. The fable was invented by priests and governors as a
means of imposing their system of restraints, of establishing their
restrictive policy, to which they have adhered, as old fogie politicians
adhere to protection. They have always had a horror of free trade, as
incompatible with their monopoly, and have made it their study to
repress our native activity, to keep us cabined, cribbed, and confined,
within the narrow enclosure of their hidebound systems, of their
immoral, contracted, galling, and senseless conventionalism. They will
not allow nature, humanity, fair play. They brand, as from the enemy of
souls, all free activity. The heart must move according to their rules,
and love or hate as they bid; the mind must run only in the grooves
which they have hollowed out, and never dare search beneath their solemn
shams, or send sharp and piercing glances into the artificial world they
have built up around us. We must repress our purest and noblest
instincts, and crucify our sweetest and holiest affections. Everywhere
restraint, repression, tyranny. The church tyrannizes over the state;
the state tyrannizes over man and society; man and society tyrannize
over woman, making her a puppet, a toy, or a drudge. Here, my dear, dear
friend, behold your work, and that of your fellow-reformers. Go forth
and break down this vast system of tyranny. Emancipate the state from
the church, man and society from the state, and woman from man and
society.”
“But some government, some restraint is necessary to keep our appetites,
passions, and lusts within bounds, and to maintain peace and order in
the community.”
“Alas! my friend, how hard it is for you to cease to be an egotist, and
to learn to be a philanthropist. Know, that philanthropy seeks no
individual, no exclusive good, and does not consist in loving and
seeking the welfare of our fellow men and women. It is the love of man,
not men, and seeks the welfare of the race, not of individuals. The
welfare of the race consists in progress, which is effected only by free
activity. All free activity is good, virtuous, right. Virtue is in
action, not in non-action, which is death, the wages of sin. The only
good is free activity, and every conceivable good is included in that
one word, LIBERTY.”
“But liberty, if not sustained and regulated by authority, may
degenerate into license.”
“Still, _mon pauvre ami_, in bondage to the law, and ignorant of the
glorious liberty of the children of God. Away with your legal cant. By
the deeds of the law no flesh ever was or ever will be justified. Long
had the world groaned in this ignoble bondage, but know you not that it
was to set them free that the Liberator came? O, liberty! sweet, sacred
liberty! how I love thee! My heart and soul pant for thee as the thirsty
hind pants for brooks of water. My flesh cries out for thee. Thou art my
God, and to thee I consecrate my life, my love, and on thy altar I offer
myself a living holocaust.”
“Is there really no difference between liberty and license?”
“Be not the dupe of words. You seek to be a philanthropist.
Philanthropy, I tell you again and again, is the love of man, mankind,
humanity. Who that loves humanity would repress any thing human? If man
is the supreme object of your love, how can you distrust any human
tendency, or fear any human activity?”
“Suppose, my dear Priscilla, who speak to me as one inspired, I should
forget myself so far as not to remember James, and proceed to make love
to his wife?”
“She would say you have a very short memory, and no very great sagacity.
She would most likely know how to oppose her activity to yours.”
“And thus surrender her doctrine; for in such case her activity would
overcome mine, or mine would overcome and restrain hers.”
“Not necessarily. There would be a struggle of opposing forces, a free
activity on both sides, and whatever the result, a development and
progress of humanity. But all this is folly. There can be no love
passages between us. We understand each other on such matters. United,
married, if you will, in spirit, we are, or if not, must be, but we have
no leisure or inclination for dalliance, which would be foreign to our
mission. Our thoughts, I trust, yours as well as mine, rise higher, and
move in a serener atmosphere. But be not disheartened. Our relation is,
and must be, purely spiritual.”
“I did but ask the question, my dear Priscilla, in order to see if you
were prepared to carry out your doctrine to its legitimate conclusion.”
“That was foolish. No true woman ever stops half way in her principles,
or shrinks from carrying them out, by a cold and cowardly calculation of
consequences. She leaves that to masculine virtue. When once women adopt
a principle, they are prepared to follow it to its last results, without
counting the sacrifice. You men cannot do this. You are always
hesitating, deliberating, craving the end, but afraid to grasp it,
compromising with your reason and your conscience. Recollect Macbeth,
and Lady Macbeth, as painted by Shakspeare, who knew man’s heart and
woman’s too. Here is the reason why you always stop half way in your
reforms, or never do more than patch a piece of new cloth on to an old
garment, which only makes the rent worse. Hence your need of woman’s
straightforward logic, her disinterestedness, her singleness of heart,
her constancy of purpose, and her invincible courage.”
“But perhaps, my dear lady, women are not seldom rash, and what you
commend in them is the effect of narrowness of view, and not of that
clear and enlarged comprehensiveness, that “many sidedness,” to use a
Germanism, which is desirable in a true and trustworthy reformer.
Perhaps she lacks prudence, and may not use sufficient caution in
adopting her principles, and thus may adopt false principles, and find
ruin where she imagines she is to find only safety.”
“It is safer to trust her instincts than man’s reason. Yet I deny not
the danger to which you allude, and therefore it is that it is never
safe to trust her to act alone. Hence the necessity, in all our
movements for reform, of the strict union of man and woman. She needs
him as a drag on her too great rapidity of motion, and to temper her
zeal with his prudence, and he needs her to inspire him with courage,
energy, and love. Either is only a half without the other, and both must
be united, as I have already told you, to form a complete and productive
whole.”
“I think I now understand what is meant by philanthropy. I have the
idea, but as a pure idea it amounts to nothing. We must realize it, or
reduce it to practice. Our great work is to remodel the world according
to this idea. But how is this to be done?”
“That is undoubtedly the most difficult question, although our
difficulties will not end even there. When we have ascertained what we
are to do, and how it is to be done, we have still the difficult task to
do it. But courage, _mon ami_. Once started, reforms are carried forward
by their own momentum, and, like popular rumor, grow as they go onward.
For myself, I am not exclusive, and have no special plan of my own. I
listen to all sorts of plans, and countenance all sorts of reforms. None
of them commend themselves in all respects to my understanding any more
than to my taste. But all seem to me to be inspired by the same spirit,
and in different ways to work to one and the same end. There is a
diversity of gifts. All see not truth under the same aspect; none,
perhaps, see it under all aspects at once, and each sees it under some
special aspect. We must tolerate them all; for to attempt to bring them
all into order, and to compel them all to think alike, and to work after
one and the same manner, or in one and the same method, is absurd, and
if successful, would only establish in another, and perhaps in an
aggravated form, the very system of tyranny and repression we are
laboring to demolish. You know something already of our reformers, and
the most prominent are now in the city, holding conventions. We have
representatives from all the Northern and Middle States, and several
English and Continental philanthropists. Some of them, I cannot say how
many, will meet at my house this evening, and you must meet with them.
You will find their conversation interesting and instructive, and
perhaps you will become acquainted with some who will give you valuable
hints, although, to confess the truth, I have no very high opinion of
any of them, taken individually. Be sure and not fail me; come early, at
seven o’clock.”
So saying, she rose, gave me her hand, _au revoir_, and I departed to my
lodgings, charmed with the sweetness and fascinated by the manner of
Priscilla, rather than enlightened by her philosophy or convinced by her
reasons.
CHAPTER VIII.
A LESSON IN WORLD-REFORM.
When I returned in the evening, I found Priscilla in high spirits, more
radiant and fascinating than ever. Her company were slowly assembling in
her luxuriously, and even elegantly furnished rooms. Among the earlier
arrivals were my friend, Mr. Winslow, and strange enough, my Puritan
acquaintance, Mr. Cotton, who had recently become a resident of
Philadelphia, and pastor of a Presbyterian church in that city. Others
were announced, some whom I knew, but more whom I knew not. The majority
were from the middle and upper classes, although all classes of society
had their male or female representatives. The principle on which they
came together was universal philanthropy, and whoever was a
philanthropist, and had an idea, or the smallest fraction of an idea,
had the _entrée_, unless he had African blood in his veins. All were of
course abolitionists, or friends of the blacks, and therefore excluded
studiously the negroes from their social gatherings. Generally speaking,
all professed universal democracy, and hence were very exclusive in
their feelings, and aristocratic in their tone and bearing; that is, so
far as aristocracy consists in a consciousness, not of one’s own worth,
but of the worthlessness of his brother. The company was too large to
have only one centre, and gradually separated into groups according to
their special tastes and tendencies. In the centre of each group was
some male or female reformer, distinguished from the rest by superior
knowledge, volubility, or impudence, and regarded as the oracle of his
or her own set, for however loud people’s profession of democratic
equality, nature will show itself, and every set of them will have its
chief, honored as my Lord or my Lady.
Mr. Winslow had been dismissed from his parish, and having no other
means of getting his living, he had followed the example of Mr. Sowerby,
and devoted himself to lecturing and experimenting on mesmerism. He was
urging upon Priscilla the importance of forming mesmeric circles in all
the cities, towns, and villages, of the Union. The first thing to be
done was to organize a philanthropic Ladies’ Aid Society, for the
purpose of supporting a mesmeric travelling agent or missionary, whose
business should be to form these circles or associations, instruct some
member of each in the art of mesmerizing, and serve as their common
centre and bond of union. If no one more worthy were found he would
himself consent to accept, for a moderate salary, such agency, or to be
such missionary. These circles formed, and affiliated, visibly and
invisibly to each other, would become a powerful body, and exert a moral
influence which both the church and the state, politicians and
clergymen, would be obliged to respect. In this way he was sure all the
elementary forces of nature herself could be brought to bear on the
great and glorious work of world-reform.
Mr. Edgerton, a New England Transcendentalist, a thin, spare man, with a
large nose, and a cast of Yankee shrewdness in his not unhandsome face,
was not favorable to this plan. “I dislike,” he said, “associations.
They absorb the individual, and establish social despotism. All set
plans of world-reform are bad. Every one must have a theory, a plan, a
Morrison’s pill. No one trusts to nature. None are satisfied with wild
flowers or native forests. All seek an artificial garden. They will not
hear the robin sing unless it is shut up in a cage. The rich undress of
nature is an offence, and she must be decked out in the latest fashion
of Paris or London, and copy the grimaces of a French dancing-master, or
lisp like an Andalusian beauty, before they will open their hearts to
her magic power. Say to all this, Get behind me, Satan. Dare assert
yourselves; plant yourselves on your imperishable instincts; sing your
own song of joy, your own wail of grief; speak your own word; tell what
your own soul seeth, and leave the effect to take care of itself. Eschew
the crowd, eschew self-consciousness, form no plan, propose no end, seek
no moral, but speak out from your own heart; build as builds the bee her
cell, sing as sings the bird, the grasshopper, or the cricket.”
“So,” said Mr. Merton, a young man, with a fine classic head and face,
who seemed to have been drawn hither by mere curiosity, “so you think
the nearer men approach to birds and insects the better it will be for
the world.”
“I never dispute,” replied Mr. Edgerton. “I utter the word given me to
utter, and leave it as the ostrich leaveth her eggs. Men should be
seers, not philosophers; prophets, not reasoners. I never offer proof of
what I say. I could not prove it, if asked. If it is true, genuine, the
fit word, opportunely spoken, it will prove itself. If it approves not
itself to you, it is not for you. You are not prepared to receive it. It
is not true for you. Be it so. It is true for me, and for those like me.
Fash not yourself about it, but leave us to enjoy it in peace.”
“But are we to understand,” replied Mr. Merton, “that truth varies as
vary individual minds?”
“Sir, you will excuse me. I am no logician, and eschew dialectics. Truth
is one, it is the Whole, the All, the universal Being. It is a reality
in, under, and over all, manifesting itself under an infinite variety of
aspects. Every one beholds it under some one of its aspects, no one
beholds it under all. Each mind in that it is real, is itself, is a
manifestation of it, but no one is it in its integrity and universality,
any more than the bubble on its surface is the whole ocean. Under each
particular bubble lies, however, the whole ocean, and if it will speak
not from its diversity, its bubbleosity, in which sense it is only an
apparition, an appearance, a show, an unreality, but from what is real
in it, from its real substantial self, it may truly call itself the
whole ocean. So, under each individual mind lies all truth, all reality,
all being; and hence, in so far as they are real, all minds are one and
the same. Men are weak, are puny, differ from one another because they
seek to live in their diversity, and to find their truth, their reality,
in their individuality. Let them eschew their individuality, which is to
their reality, their real self, only what the bubbleosity of the bubble
is to the ocean, and fall back on their identity, on the universal truth
which underlies them. If they will be men, real men, not make-believes,
strong men, thinking men, let them be themselves, sink back into their
underlying reality, on the One Man, and suffer the universal Over-Soul
to flow into them, and speak through them without let or impediment.”
“We must,” said another Transcendentalist, sometimes called the American
Orpheus, “return to the simplicity of childhood. ‘Except ye be converted
and become as a little child, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom
of heaven.’ The man who thinks, Rousseau has well said, is already a
depraved animal. All learning is a forgetting; science and wisdom are
gathered from babes and sucklings. We are not prepared as yet to talk of
world-reform. We must _be_ before we can _do_; be men before we can do
men’s work. All _being_ is in _doing_; rather all _doing_ is in _being_.
Ideas are the essences, the realities of things. Seek ideas. They will
take to themselves hands, build them a temple, and instaurate their
worship. Seek not ideas from books; they are lies. Seek them not of the
learned and grey-haired; they have lost them. Be docile and childlike;
seat yourself by the cradle, at the feet of awful childhood, and look
into babies’ eyes.”
“What we want to cure the evils of society,” broke in Mr. Kerrison,—a
tinker, I believe,—a small man in a snuff-colored frock coat, with sharp
grey eyes, lank cheeks, a short nose, a pointed chin, and squeaking
voice, “is a Children’s Protection Society; a society that shall protect
children from the indelicacy, the cruelty, and inhumanity of their
brutal parents. There is nothing more shocking to our finer
sensibilities, or more outrageous to true philanthropy, than to see a
full-grown woman, tall and stout, with a red face, fiery eyes, and a
harsh voice,—or a full-grown man, yet taller and stouter, stern and
awful in his look, terrible in his anger tones,—seize a poor helpless
little boy or girl,—yes, or girl,—not more than three or four years old
it may be, and taking him or her across the knee, strike on the very
seat of her or him, blow after blow, till the poor little thing screams
with pain and agony. It is indelicate, cruel, barbarous. How would the
father or mother like to be treated in the same way? It blunts the
delicate sensibility of the child, sours his temper, hardens his heart,
develops and strengthens all his harsh and angry feelings, and prepares
him to be, when he grows up, as bad as was his father or his mother.”
“Our friend,” added Mr. Silliman, an amiable young minister, a
Unitarian, I believe, or, as he said, a Preacher of the religion of
Humanity, “has, I think, gone to the root of the matter. The evils of
individuals and of society have their origin in the harsh, cruel,
unfeeling, and indelicate manner in which parents bring up their
children. Children should never be restrained, should never be crossed;
they should always be caressed by the soft, delicate hand of love, be
surrounded by sweet and smiling faces, by lovely and attractive images,
live in communion with fresh and fragrant nature, and find life all one
fairy day.”
“Young America,” interposed Mr. Merton, “will thank you both, I have no
doubt. The abolition of corporal chastisement will meet the decided
approval of our little folks, and perhaps of our patriots. It is
questionable whether this flogging of children is not an infringement
upon equal rights. I do not see what the father in my town, universal
democrat as he was, had to reply to the question put to him the other
day by Young America. A little rascal, some ten or twelve years old, had
done some mischief, for which his father flogged him. Young America bore
it with heroic fortitude, as if the honor of his country and of the race
was at stake in his person, and when it was over, with the calm and
dignified air of a man and a freeman, folded his arms across his breast,
looked up to his father, and asked,—‘Father, is not this a free
country?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘By what right, then, do you flog me?’”
“Parents,” said a cross-grained old maid, “are wholly incapable of
bringing up their children. They have no judgment, no steadiness; at one
moment whipping them without rhyme or reason, and the next soothing them
with candy, and smothering them with caresses. They impart to them their
own tempers, passions, weaknesses, and prejudices. There should be
established infant schools at the public expense, where all the
children, as soon as twelve months old, should be placed, and brought up
by proper persons trained and prepared in normal schools for that
purpose.”
“You will have to go farther back than that, my good woman,” said Mr.
Long, an English gentleman just arrived in the country and announced as
the Prophet of the Newness. “Children are born with an inclination to
evil, and are hardly born before they manifest vicious tempers and a
fondness for doing precisely what they ought not to do. If suffered to
have their own way, they would never live to grow up. They must, as they
are now born, be restrained and even whipped, for their own good. Here
the sins of the parents are visited upon the children. We must begin
with the parents. We live in a depraved state, and children inherit
vitiated moral and physical constitutions from their fathers and
mothers. We must look to this fact, and sternly prohibit all persons of
obviously vitiated moral or physical constitutions from begetting or
bearing children. After that we must turn our attention to improving the
breed, as our English farmers have done in the case of their horses,
oxen, cows, sheep, swine, dogs, and hens.”
“That may be rather difficult to manage in a free country,” said Dr.
Muzzleton, a professor of Surgery in a Western medical college, “and can
hardly be tried, except by the master with his negroes on our Southern
plantations. The hopes of philanthropists must rest on something more
practical, and less difficult to be accomplished. The philanthropist’s
dependence is on dietetic reform. The vitiated moral and physical
constitution of parents, and which they impart to their children, comes
unquestionably from the use of animal food. It is necessary, therefore,
to abolish the use of animal food, and have people feed only on a
vegetable diet. Nature shows this in the very construction of the human
teeth, which are very different from those of the lion, the tiger, and
other carniverous animals. Carnivorous animals have no grinders, and
their teeth are fitted only for tearing. Man has incisors and molars,
which shows that he was intended to cut and grind his food.”
“But which serve him very well, since he does not usually eat flesh raw,
but cooks it,” remarked Mr. Merton. “But the antediluvians eat no flesh.
They lived on a vegetable diet, were vegetarians, and yet they became so
corrupt that the Almighty sent a flood and destroyed them all, with the
exception of eight persons.”
“Where do you learn that?” asked Dr. Muzzleton.
“From the Bible and tradition,” replied Mr. Merton.
All stared, and many broke out into a loud laugh, at the joke of citing
the Bible and tradition as authority in an assembly of philanthropists
and reformers. Dr. Muzzleton looked round with great blandness, and said
to Mr. Merton, “You see, my young friend, the majority is against you. I
respect the Bible in matters pertaining to another world, but I am
speaking now as a man of science, not as a theologian. I leave theology
to the clergy,” bowing on his right to Mr. Cotton, and on his left to
Mr. Winslow.
“I respect the Bible in theology no more than I do in science,” said
Miss Rose Winter, a strong-minded woman, and a decided reformer, of
Jewish descent. “The first thing for all reformers to do is to destroy
the authority of the Bible and emancipate the Christian world from its
morality. It is the great supporter of all abuses, and it and the church
are almost our only obstacles to overcome. It sanctions the use of wine
and animal food, slavery and the restitution of the fugitive slave, war
and capital punishment. It asserts the divine right of government, and
forbids resistance to power. It is the fountain of superstition, and the
grand bulwark of priestcraft. It calls woman the weaker vessel, forbids
her to speak in meeting, and commands her to be in subjection to her
husband. We are fools and madmen to talk of our reforms as long as we
regard the Bible as any thing more than a last year’s almanac.”
“In that I think you are right, my dear lady,” said Mr. Cotton, dryly.
“I esteem the Bible a good book,” said Mr. Winslow. “It contains more
genuine and sublime poetry than any other book I am acquainted with, not
even excepting Homer. But I do not accept its plenary inspiration, and I
feel bound to believe only the truths I find in it.”
“And these,” remarked Mr. Merton, “I suppose are only what happens to
accord with your own opinions for the time being.”
“The Bible,” interposed Priscilla, “is a genuine book, and faithfully
records the real experience of prophets and seers of old times, and is
of no value to us save as interpreted by the facts of each one’s own
inner life. Much of it is local, temporary, colored by the nation and
age that produced it, and is no longer of any significance for us; but
what there is in it universal, that is the genuine utterance of
universal nature, and true for all persons, times, and places, should be
accepted, as we accept every genuine word, by whomsoever uttered.”
Mr. Merton shrugged his shoulders and said nothing; Mr. Cotton looked
black, was scandalized, and muttered, “Rank infidelity.” “And what
else,” said a very gentlemanly young man, who had been talking nonsense
for an hour to a bevy of young ladies in a corner of the room, and
apparently indifferent to the great matters under discussion, “and what
else did his reverence expect in a company of reformers? Yet we are not
really infidels. We have only thrown off the mask, and ceased to be
hypocrites. Whatever man’s profession, ever since it was said, ‘It is
not good for man to be alone,’ and Eve was brought blushing to his
bower, woman has been the real shrine at which he has worshipped. This
is our ancestral religion, and true to the religion of my fathers, I
make woman my Divinity, and lay my offering at Leila’s feet.”
“Do not believe him,” said a saucy young thing, with a sparkling eye and
pouting lips. “He worships only himself. Here I have been this half hour
trying to convince him that there is something mystic in woman, and that
science and religion, as now organized, are false and mischievous,
because they are the product of man’s genius alone. I have said all the
flattering things I could to make him take up the cause of Woman’s
Rights, and he has only laughed at me.”
“You wrong me, fair and adorable Leila; woman reigns supreme now, and we
are slaves; what more can she ask?”
“She should be elevated to be the equal of man,” said Leila.
“Lowered, my Leila would say,” replied the young gentleman.
“And placed in the possession of the same political franchises, have the
right to vote at all elections, and be declared eligible to any and
every office political, civil, or military,” continued Leila, without
heeding the interruption.
“But that,” said Mr. Merton, “would be hardly fair to us men, and would
moreover be dangerous to republican liberty. Mademoiselle Leila would of
course be a candidate for the Assembly. All the young men would vote for
her, because they would secure her good graces, and all the old men
would do the same, in order to prove that they are not old, and have not
yet lost their sensibility to female loveliness and worth; she would be
elected unanimously. In the Assembly she would rise to propose some
measure, throw aside her veil, beam forth upon us with all her charms,
and for the same reasons all would support her. She would reign as a
despot, which, as a republican, I must protest against.”
“She might have rivals; all men do not see with the same eyes,” sagely
remarked a venerable spinster, with a dried and withered form and face,
puckering up her mouth, and endeavoring to look killing.”
“That is well thought of,” said Mr. Merton.
“Besides,” added Mr. Winslow, “the votes of the women would be as
numerous as those of the men, and might be thrown for a candidate of the
other sex.”
“And you may trust to the women themselves to see that no one of their
own sex has a monopoly of power,” added, caustically, Mr. Cotton.
“You are hard upon us women,” pleaded Priscilla. “Women have their
weaknesses as well as men theirs, but they can love and admire beauty in
their own sex, as much as they do ugliness in men. I do not suppose that
placing them on an equality in all respects with men will increase their
power as women, but it will increase their power as reasonable human
beings. I think woman would lose much of her peculiar power as woman
over man, and this I should by no means regret. I would break down the
tyranny of sex as I would that of caste or class. I would have men and
women so trained, that they could meet, converse, or act together as
simple human beings, without ever recurring, even in thought, to the
difference of sex.”
“That,” said the young worshipper of woman, “would be cruel. It would be
like spreading a pall over the sun, or extinguishing the lamp of life.
Even the garden of Eden
—— was a wild,
And man the hermit sighed, till woman smil’d.”
“As long as I remember my mother or my sister,” said Mr. Merton, “I
would never meet a woman, however high or however humble, without taking
note of the fact that she is a woman.”
“Things are best as God made them,” added Mr. Cotton. “Men and women
have each their peculiar character and sphere. Women would gain nothing
by exchanging the petticoat for the breeches, or men by exchanging the
breeches for the petticoat.”
“But I wish,” said Leila, poutingly, “to be treated as a reasonable
being, and that the young gentlemen who do me the honor to address me
would treat me as if I had common sense. I do not want compliments paid
to my hands and feet, my face, lips, nose, eyes, and eyebrows.”
“And yet,” said I, “my sweet Leila, they are well worth complimenting.”
She smiled, and seemed not displeased.
“I suspect,” remarked Mr. Cotton, with his Puritan slyness, “that the
young lady finds the affluence of such compliments more endurable than
she would their absence.”
“I do not deal much in compliments,” said Mr. Merton, “but I do not much
fancy persons who are always wise, and never open their mouths without
giving utterance to some grave maxim for the conduct of life. There is a
time to be silly as well as a time to be wise. Life is made up of little
things, and he is a sad moralist who has no leniency for trifles. I love
myself to look upon a pretty face, and find no great objection to those
pleasant nothings which are the current coin of well-bred conversation
between the sexes. Even a gallant speech, a happily-turned compliment,
when it brings no blush to the cheek of modesty, is quite endurable.”
“I thought you were a parson, Mr. Merton,” said Priscilla, “and am
surprised to find you so tolerant of what it is said your cloth
generally condemns.”
“The fair Priscilla may have mistaken my cloth. I am a man, and I hope a
gentleman. I love society, and find an exquisite charm in the social
intercourse of cultivated men and women. That charm would vanish were
they to meet and converse, not as men and women, gentlemen and ladies,
but as simple human beings. Could you carry out your doctrine, your sex
would, I fear, be the first to suffer from it.”
“Perhaps they would,” said Priscilla; “but it is woman’s lot to suffer,
and she was born to redeem the race by her private sorrows. She will not
shrink from the sacrifice. You need her at the polls, in the legislative
halls, in the executive chair, on the judge’s bench, as well as in the
saloon, to give purity and elevation to your affections,
disinterestedness and courage to your conduct.”
“Rather let her be present to infuse noble qualities into our hearts in
childhood, and to cherish and invigorate them in our manhood,” added Mr.
Merton. “Let her mission be by a sweet, quiet, and gentle influence to
form us from our infancy for lofty and heroic deeds, and let it be ours
to do them.”
“I do not like this discussion at all,” broke in Thomas Jefferson Andrew
Jackson Hobbs, a thorough-going radical, with an unshaved and unwashen
face, long, lank, uncombed hair, and a gray, patched frock coat, leather
pantaloons, a red waistcoat, and a red bandanna handkerchief tied round
his neck for a cravat. “The world can never be reformed by the
instrumentality of government, whether in the hands of man or woman. The
curse of the world is that it has been governed too much. That is the
best government that governs least, and a better is that which governs
none at all. We want no government, least of all a government made up of
female politicians and intriguers. There never yet was a great crime or
a great iniquity, but a woman had a hand in it. The devil, when he would
ruin mankind, always begins by seducing woman, and making her his
accomplice. We must get rid of all government, break down church and
state, sweep away religion and politics, and exterminate all priests and
politicians, whether in pantaloons or petticoats, in broadcloth or
homespun, and bring back that state of things which was in Judea, ‘when
there was no king in Israel, and every man did what was right in his own
eyes.’”
“Boldly said,” remarked Signor Giovanni Urbini, a leader of young Italy,
“but it is hardly wise. The people are not yet, especially in my
country, prepared for it. They have so long been the slaves of power,
and the tools of superstition, that they would be shocked at its bare
announcement. They must have their Madonnas, their San Carlos, their San
Felippos, and their capucin frati. But a thoroughgoing democratic
revolution is no doubt needed, and such a revolution will necessarily
result in a no less thorough and radical revolution in religion; but
this last we had better leave to come of itself. You cannot work with
purely negative ideas. You must have something positive, and that must
be the positive idea of the age. Kings, princes, nobles, priests,
religions in our times are at a discount, and the secret, silent, but
irresistible tendency is to bring up the people. Assert, then, boldly
everywhere people-king, people-pontiff, people-god. Fling out to the
breeze the virgin banner of the people. Go forth to war in the name of
the people, in the inspiration of the people, and always and everywhere
shout THE PEOPLE, THE PEOPLE. Break the fetters which now bind the
people, emancipate them from their present masters, assert their
supremacy, and establish their power, which of course in the last
analysis will be our power over them. They will then re-organize
society, religion, and politics, and every thing else, after the best
model, and in the way which will best meet our wishes.”
“I am decidedly opposed to my friend Urbini’s doctrine,” frankly
asserted M. Beaubien, from the sunny south of France, “I want no
king-people, and if I must be tyrannized over, I prefer it should be by
one man rather than the many-headed and capricious multitude. The evils
under which society groans is individualism, which now exerts itself in
universal competition, so highly prized by your foolish and stupid
political economists. These evils can be removed by no political or
religious revolution, neither by your Luthers nor your Robespierres.
They can be removed only by the pacific organization of labor, and the
arrangement of laborers in groups and series according to their special
tastes and capacities, on the newly-discovered principle that
‘attractions are proportional to destiny.’”
“A better plan,” suggested M. Icarie, also from la belle France, “is to
abolish all private property, all private households, industry, and
economy, and have the whole community supported, lodged, fed, clothed,
feasted or nursed, and transported from place to place, from house to
house, at the public expense.”
“Admirable,” interposed Mr. Cotton, “but who will support the public,
and whence will the public draw its funds?”
“Singular questions,” replied M. Icarie. “The public will support
itself, and draw the necessary funds from the public treasury, as a
matter of course.”
“And where does the treasury get them?” asked, with a sneer, M. Le
Prohne, a native of the ancient Dauphiny, who towered head and shoulders
above all the rest. “All your schemes are idle and absurd; property is
robbery; abolish it, and all distinction between _thine_ and _mine_, and
establish a grand People’s Bank, and give each one an equal credit on
its books.”
“And who,” sarcastically remarked M. Icarie, “will take care of the
Bank, and be responsible for its managers, or see that the drafts of
individuals are duly honored?”
“Why not,” I asked in my enthusiasm, “make an equal division of property
among all the members of the community?”
“That would do very well for a start,” suggested Mr. Cotton, “but he was
afraid that come Saturday night, a good many would demand, like the
sailor, that the property be divided again, as they no longer retained
their proportion.”
This produced a smile, and as it was late, the company broke up and
departed. Those who had had an opportunity of bringing forward their
views were very much edified; others who had been obliged to listen, or
to keep back their own projects, thought the party exceedingly dull, and
could not help thinking that the evening had been spent very
unprofitably.
There were, indeed, persons there with plans of reform as wise, as deep,
and as practicable as those I have taken notice of, and I owe an apology
to their authors for my omissions. These omissions are the result of no
ill feeling, and of no intentional neglect; and I certainly would repair
them, but as I am pressed for time, and am not writing a history of
reformers and projected reforms in a thousand volumes in-folio, the
thing is absolutely out of the question. Let it suffice for me to say,
that I have by me still some thousand and one of these projects, all of
which their authors did me the honor to send me, with their respects,
and all of which I examined with all the care and diligence they
deserved.
I returned to my lodgings, not so much enlightened or edified by what I
had heard as I might have desired, though not much disappointed or
discouraged. No plan had been suggested that was not unsatisfactory,
and, taken in itself alone, that was not obviously either mischievous or
absurd. But under them all I saw one and the same spirit, the spirit of
the age, and all were striking indications of a great and powerful
movement in the direction of something different from what is now the
established order. No one of them would be realized, but it was well to
encourage this movement, to join with this free and powerful spirit.
Something, as Mr. Micawber was wont to say, “might turn up,” and out of
the seeming darkness light might at length shine, and out of the
apparent chaos order might finally spring forth. I would lend myself to
the spirit working, and trust to future developments. With that I
undressed, went to bed, and dreamed of Leila, no, Priscilla; no, yes,—it
was Priscilla. I was the victorious champion of reform. She was binding
my brow with the crown of laurel, when I awoke, and was sad that it was
only a dream.
CHAPTER IX.
THE CONSPIRACY.
I slept late the next morning, and it was the middle of the forenoon
before I awoke. I arose, made my toilette, drank a cup of coffee, and
went to arrange my future plans with Priscilla. I found her sad and
apprehensive. She was a true woman, and had no misgivings as to the
excellence of the cause she had espoused, but she feared that the
conversations of the previous evening might have disheartened me, and
made me change my resolution. I set her mind at rest on this point, and
assured her that, though I might often change my methods of effecting a
resolution once taken, yet nothing could prevent my persistence in it
but an absolute conviction of its wickedness, or its absolute
impossibility. I had wedded myself to the spirit of the age for better
or for worse, and would, if need be, devote myself body and soul to the
cause of World-Reform.
On hearing me say this, her face brightened up, and shone with a
radiance I had never seen it wear before. She seemed perfectly happy,
and turned to me with a look of perfect satisfaction. I will not say
that at that moment I had not forgotten the lady’s husband, and I will
not pretend to say what words of misplaced tenderness might have been
uttered or responded to, if we had been left to ourselves. She was
young, beautiful, fascinating, and I was a man in the prime of life.
Happily, as the interview was becoming dangerous, Mr. Merton was
announced. This young man, who seemed to have thought beyond his years,
had deeply interested me the previous evening. I knew not who he was,
whence he came, or why he associated with persons with whom he seemed to
have very little sympathy. He was evidently a gentleman, and well
educated. His dress was rich but plain, his manners were simple and
unpretending. He was tall and well proportioned, with a classical head,
a high, broad forehead, large, black eyes, and very thick, dark hair.
His features were open and manly, and his voice low, rich, and musical.
It was a pleasure to hear him speak. His name was English, but he seemed
to be of foreign descent, although I afterwards learned that he was an
American, and even a New Englander, but bred and educated abroad. He
apologized for calling, but he could not refrain from paying his
respects to his fair and amiable hostess of the evening. He hoped that
she had enjoyed herself with her guests, and that she had suffered no
inconvenience from the heat of the rooms occasioned by so great a crowd.
He was most happy also to meet me. He had heard of me, knew and highly
esteemed some of my friends, and regretted that he had not previously
had the honor of making my acquaintance.
He was requested to be seated, and assured that his call was most
agreeable, and that we both hoped to meet him often and cultivate a
further acquaintance. The conversation ran on for some time in an easy
natural way, on a variety of general topics, till Priscilla, whose soul
was absorbed in her philanthropic projects, asked Mr. Merton how it
happened that she had the pleasure of meeting him so often among
reformers. “You evidently,” said she, “are not of us. The quiet remarks,
sometimes serious, sometimes sarcastic, which you every now-and-then
make, prove that you have no sympathy with us.”
“I am not surprised, my dear Madam, at your question,” replied Mr.
Merton, “yet I too am a reformer, in my way, perhaps not precisely in
your way, nor on so large a scale as that on which you and your friends
propose to carry on reform. I have not the talent, nor the disposition
to engage in any thing so magnificent. I think reform, like charity,
should begin at home.”
“But not end there,” said I.
“Certainly not,” he replied; “certainly not with those who have leisure
and means to carry it further. But I find that it is more than I can do,
by my unassisted efforts, to reform myself, and if I can succeed in
saving my own soul, I shall be quite contented. It is, I fear, more than
I shall be able to do.”
“I see, sir, you are no philanthropist,” said Priscilla.
“Perhaps not, I am comparatively a young man, but am quite old-fashioned
in many of my notions.”
“One of those, I dare say, who have eyes only in the back side of their
heads, and live only among tombs,” said I, in a tone between jesting and
earnest.
“I have not yet sufficiently mastered the wisdom of antiquity to be
authorized to cry out against it,” he replied. “I make no doubt,
however, but you, dear lady, and you my learned friend, are quite
competent to reject the old wisdom for the new.”
“On the contrary, I am inclined to think that my present tendency is to
reject the new for the old, the modern for the ancient. Or, rather, it
seems to me that the progress of modern science is rapidly and surely
leading us back to the ancient wisdom.”
“There were in the old world, as there are in the modern, two wisdoms,
the wisdom from above, and the wisdom from below. May I be permitted to
ask to which of these you regard modern science as conducting?”
“There has been in regard to these ancient wisdoms,” said Priscilla,
“much misconception. The world in its nonage was imposed upon, and
induced to call evil good and good evil. The wisdom I assume, and am
laboring to diffuse, is that which the priests have branded as Satanic.
Satan is my hero. He was a bold and daring rebel, and the first to set
the example of resistance to despotism, and to assert unbounded freedom.
For this all the priests, all rulers, despots, all who would hold their
brethren in bondage, have cursed him. I take his part, and hope to live
to see his memory vindicated, and amends made for the wrong which has
been done him.”
“That is a candid avowal, my fair lady, and one which we seldom,
especially among your sex, hear made. I suspect, that Madame Priscilla
has listened or will listen to the modern spiritualism, which seems to
me to be a revival of demonic worship. May I entreat you, dear lady, to
pause and reconsider the conclusion to which you have come? The ancient
Gentiles deserted the true God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and all
things visible and invisible, and followed strange gods, erected their
temples and consecrated their altars to devils, to fallen spirits, and I
need not tell you how their minds became darkened, and their hearts
corrupted. Do not, I entreat you, seek to revive the gross, cruel, and
obscene superstitions of the ancient Gentiles, and on which Christianity
has made an unrelenting war from the first.”
“I was sure, Mr. Merton, you were a parson. Will you deny it now?” said
Priscilla.
“I am not aware that I have said any thing but what any honest Christian
or fair-minded man, who really wishes well to his fellow beings, and who
has read history, might not very well say. It is not necessary to be a
parson, I should hope, in order to have good sense and good feeling.”
“I do not see, Mr. Merton,” said I, “any tendency to superstition in
modern spiritualism. Superstition is in charging to supernatural
intervention what is explicable on natural principles.”
“That is one form of superstition,” replied Mr. Merton, “but there is
another, which consists in ascribing effects to inadequate causes, as
where one augurs good luck from seeing the new moon over his right
shoulder, or bad luck if on the day he sets out on his travels a red
squirrel crosses his path. But I interrupt you.”
“I believe the spirits which are evoked in our days are real, but that
they are the primal forces of nature, and that it is on strictly natural
principles that they are called to our aid,” I resumed. “There is no
superstition in this.”
“It is not improbable that the ancient Gentiles thought as much. I am by
no means disposed to ascribe all the phenomena of mesmerism,
table-turning, and spiritual rapping to superhuman or preternatural
agency. Satan can affect us only through the natural, but through that
he may carry us beyond or drag us below nature. I believe mesmerism,
strictly speaking, is natural, but I believe also that its practice is
always dangerous, and that it throws its subjects under the power of
Satan. In the so-called mesmeric phenomena there are those which are
natural, and those which are Satanic, although in the present state of
our science it may not be easy in all cases to distinguish between
them.”
Here the conversation, which was beginning to interest me, (for I had a
lurking suspicion that Mr. Merton was right,) was interrupted by the
entrance of Signor Urbini, who gave unequivocal signs that the presence
of Mr. Merton was very disagreeable to him. Mr. Merton, probably not
wishing to encounter young Italy, or to enter into a contest with him at
that time, after a few commonplace remarks, took his leave. Young Italy
was full of fire and enthusiasm, but at the same time, well informed,
subtile, and clear-headed. He had been implicated in a conspiracy for
overthrowing the Austrian government in Milan, and had escaped to
England, where he had concerted with the friends of Italy a plan for
revolutionizing the whole peninsula. He had come to the United States to
enlist as large a portion of our own people as possible on his side, and
to obtain pecuniary aid in carrying out his revolutionary projects. For
himself be had no religion, and feared neither God nor the devil. At
heart, as does every Italian liberal, he despised Protestantism, as a
religion; but his chief reliance was on Protestant nations, and he made
a skilful and adroit appeal to the Protestant hatred of Popery. Italy
was the stronghold of Popery, and if Italy could be wrested from the
Pope, the whole fabric of superstition and priestcraft would fall to the
ground. But this could not be done by any direct attacks on the national
religion, or any direct advocacy of the doctrines of the Reformation.
Out of Italy the appeal might be made to the Protestant feeling, but in
Italy, and by all the leaders of the Italian party it must be made
solely to the national sentiment as against Austria, and to the love of
liberty, the democratic sentiment, as against the Pope and the native
princes. War must be made on the Pope indeed, but ostensibly on him only
as temporal prince. Overthrown as temporal prince, and his States
declared a Republic, and maintained as such, the church, as the upholder
of tyranny on the Continent, would be annihilated, and universal
democracy, and a purely democratic religion could be established
throughout the world; and civilization, arrested by the Goths and
Vandals, who overturned the old Roman Empire, might resume its
triumphant march through the ages. Plans were forming to make the
democratic revolution as nearly simultaneous as possible in France,
Austria, Prussia, and Central Germany; at least to give these countries
sufficient employment at home to render them unable to go to the
assistance of the Pope.
Subsidiary to his purpose, he proposed a grand World’s Convention,
composed of delegates from the whole Protestant world, to be holden as
soon as possible at London. It might be assembled ostensibly for the
purpose of bringing about a better feeling and closer union of the
various Protestant sects, and none but those who could be safely trusted
should be initiated into its ulterior objects. Only the managers need
know its real purpose, or _modus operandi_. It might form a Protestant
Alliance, and recommend the formation of Protestant associations in all
Protestant States for the protection of the Reformation against Popery,
the conversion of the Pope and his Italian subjects. These associations
would have nothing to do but to raise funds, and meet once a year, hear
reports, and listen to flaming speeches in praise of the Bible and
religious liberty, and against the tyranny, idolatry, and superstition
of Popery. Thus they would, without knowing it, prepare the way and
furnish the means of driving the foreigner out of Italy, dethroning the
Pope, establishing the Roman Republic, and spreading liberty throughout
the world, and in a way, too, not to alarm the religious sensibilities
of the Italians, because those who showed themselves to Italians would
have apparently no connection with the Protestant movement.[2]
-----
Footnote 2:
This is in the main historical, and was communicated to the writer
through a mutual friend, by a delegate from Connecticut to the World’s
Convention, alluded to in the text.
-----
The plan of Young Italy, communicated with further details, and which
was substantially carried out from 1845 to 1849, when, contrary to all
human foresight, Republican—not Imperial—France suppressed the Roman
Republic, and restored the Pope, struck Priscilla and myself as
admirable, and we resolved to give it our hearty support. I hoped, by
the new power I had discovered, or was on the point of discovering, to
bring an unexpected force to its aid. The Signor accepted our pledges,
enrolled our names, administered to us the oath, and gave us the signs
and passwords agreed upon by the government of Young Italy.
When Signor Urbini had taken his leave of us, we, that is, Priscilla and
myself, came to a mutual understanding of the respective parts we were
to perform. We agreed that it was useless for either to attempt any
thing without the other. Our covenant was sealed. Poor Priscilla, little
did she foresee what the future had in store for her! But let me not
anticipate. We embraced, and I returned to my lodgings, intending to
leave the next day for my home in western New York. Hardly had I
regained my lodgings at the hotel, when I was called upon by the stanch
old puritan, Mr. Cotton. I have departed far enough from the stand-point
of my puritan ancestors, and have few traces in my moral constitution of
my puritan descent; but, I care not who knows it, I am proud of these
stern old men, the Bradfords, the Brewsters, the Hookers, the
Davenports, and the stout Miles Standish, who came forth into a new
world to battle with the wilderness, the savage, and the devil. Stern
they were, stout-hearted, and strong of arm, yet not without a touch of
human feeling. They had their loves, their affections, and their soft
moments, when Jonathan or Ezekiel wooed his Beulah or his Keziah, who
blushingly responded to his addresses, and the husband kissed his wife,
the mother her boy, if it was not on the Sabbath. Honor to their memory!
They did man’s work, and earned man’s wages, and as well might one of
the modern Trasteverini blush for his old Roman progenitors, as I for my
old puritan ancestors, who brought with them the bravest hearts and the
best laws and the noblest institutions of old England, which they loved
so tenderly, though she sent them forth as the Patriarch’s wife did
Hagar and the dear Ismael into the desert. I liked Mr. Cotton, too, for
his great ancestor’s sake, for great, O Cotton Mather, thou wast in thy
day; hard service didst thou against fiends and witches, and powers
invisible; and a noble epic hast thou left us in thy Magnalia. The
college thou lovedst so well, and which thou didst cherish in thy heart
of hearts, “_pro Christo et Ecclesia_,” may have ceased to cherish thy
memory, and the Second Church, over which thou wast pastor as colleague
with thy father, has learned to blush at thy memory, and to imagine it
shows its wisdom in calling thee a “learned fool.” I, who have as little
sympathy with them as with thee, honor thee as one of the worthies of my
country, and as one who was not the least among the worthies of my
native land in thy day and generation. Men look upon thee as antiquated,
and fancy that they have become wiser than thou wast. Would to Heaven
they had a little of thy good sense, and of the truth, which thou wast
not ashamed to profess and defend!
But this is quite aside from my purpose, and is artistically considered
a blemish in my narrative. But few are the writers who, if they speak
out from warm hearts their true, deep, genuine feelings as they arise,
but will violate some canon of art. I love art, but I love nature more.
I love a smoothly shaven lawn; I say nothing against your artificial
garden, trim and neat, where each plant and shrub grows and flowers
according to rule; but the wild forest, with its irregularities,
decaying logs, huge trees, fresh saplings, and tangled underbrush, was
as a boy, when it was my home, and is now I am a man, much more my
delight. By the same token, I love Boston, whose streets were laid out
by the cows going through the brushwood to drink, where you cannot find
a square corner, or a street a hundred yards in length without a curve,
better than the city of Penn, laid out by a carpenter’s line and chalk,
and presenting only the dull monotony of the chess-board, without the
excitement of the game. Yet the city of Penn has its merits. Many a
pleasant hour have I spent there, and many a sweet association is
entwined in my memory with its rectangles, and its plain, uniform,
drab-colored costume. But I have left Mr. Cotton all this time standing.
It was unintentional, for I was not displeased to see him. He knew me as
the son of an old friend, and he had, both as a friend and as a minister
of religion, called to expostulate with me. He was sure that I was
imperilling my soul, and he could not answer it to his conscience, if he
did not solemnly and yet affectionately warn me of my danger.
I have been sadly remiss in my faith and in my conduct, yet never have I
allowed myself to treat with scorn or contumely any professed minister
of religion who addressed me in tones of sincerity and affectionate
earnestness. Mr. Cotton, I was sure, meant well, although I knew his
expostulations would avail nothing, and his warning be unheeded. I
listened with respect, but untouched. At that time my heart was hard. I
was laboring under a perfect delusion, and body and soul were under the
power of the Evil One. “You may not believe it, Doctor,” said Mr.
Cotton, “but I tell you that you are forming a league with the devil. I
know you have grown wiser than your fathers were; that you deny the
existence of a devil or of evil spirits, but you are wise only in your
own conceit, and you are now really dealing with the devil, are plotting
to do the devil’s work, under pretence of science and world-reform. I
have watched you these many months, and I see where you are going. You
are also permitting yourself to be seduced by a Moabitish woman, and
allowing yourself to be cheated, with your eyes open, out of your five
senses by the sparkle of her eye, and the ruby of her lip. Why have you
suffered her to bewitch you? Leave her, never see her or speak to her
again, or you are a lost man.”
I am naturally a very mild-tempered man, and am not and never was very
sensitive to wounds inflicted by the tongue; and Mr. Cotton might have
abused me or said all manner of hard things against me till he was
exhausted, and I could have remained unmoved; but when he alluded to my
relation with another, especially since I could not defend it, and
called the beautiful, the lovely, the philanthropic Priscilla a
Moabitish woman, and attacked her honor, my blood was up, and I
instantly resolved that he should suffer for it. I however kept this to
myself, assured him that he was uncharitable, and judged an estimable
lady rashly; that my relations with Priscilla were not precisely a
matter for his cognizance, as we were neither of us under his parochial
charge. I respected him as an old friend of my father’s, and as a
descendant of one of the greatest men of the early Massachusetts Colony.
I had no doubt of his good intentions, and affectionate interest in me
and my family; but I was of age, and competent to take care of myself.
What I was doing I was doing with my eyes open, calmly, deliberately,
and from what I held to be justifiable motives. I was prepared to take
the responsibility. Warnings, expostulations, would avail nothing. I was
resolved to push my scientific investigations to the furthest limits
possible. I would, if I should be able, wrest from nature her last
secret, and avail myself of all her mysterious forces. I did not pretend
to say whether there were devils and evil spirits or not, although I
believed God made all things good, very good; but if there were, I had
nothing to do with them, for I invoked mysterious agencies only for a
good end, in the cause of philanthropy and human progress. If they were
spirits I was dealing with, they must be white spirits rather than
black; and if I studied and even practised magic, I was sure it was not
black magic, but white.
“All that is very well said,” replied Mr. Cotton, “and yet you know that
you are carried away by indiscreet curiosity, by an unholy ambition, and
perhaps by lawless lust, and you dare not, alone in your closet, ask the
blessing of God on your proceedings. Bear with me. I am an old man, and
let my gray hairs plead with you, if not my sacred profession. I know
that the young men of our time lose their reverence for religion, and
turn up their noses in profound disgust when we speak to them of duty
and the solemn responsibilities of life. I know they are impatient of
restraint, and burning with a passion for liberty, as they call it. I
know they deem it wisdom to depart from the old ways, to forsake the God
of their fathers, and to hew out to themselves cisterns, alas, broken
cisterns, which will hold no water. But let me tell you, my friend, that
they are only sowing the seeds of future sorrow, and will reap only a
too abundant harvest. No man in his old age ever regretted that he
feared God and practised virtue in his youth.”
“All that may be very true, Mr. Cotton, but much of it comes with no
good grace from a Puritan who has allowed himself the freedom of his own
judgment in religious matters. It is not long since your fathers forsook
their fathers’ God, and hewed out cisterns for themselves; whether
broken cisterns or not, it is not for me to say; certainly they departed
from the old ways, followed the new wisdom of their times, and you honor
them for it. Perhaps posterity will in like manner honor me and my
associates for daring to follow the new wisdom of our times, and to
incur reproach for my adhesion to the work of human emancipation. I am
enlarging the boundaries of human knowledge, laying open to view the
invisible world, and proving that, under the old doctrine of the
communion of saints, there is a great and glorious truth, cheering and
consoling to us in this life of labor and sorrow. I am freeing the world
from the monster, superstition, and delivering the people from their
gloomy fears and terrible apprehensions. They shall no longer start and
tremble at ghosts and hobgoblins, or be obliged, with the Papists, to
cross themselves, or with our New England youth, to whistle Yankee
Doodle to keep their courage up, when, after dark, they go by a
graveyard. What torture did not my superstitious fears cause me in my
childhood! I never have known what it was to fear any living thing. I
have been tried, and have always found my courage and self-possession
equal to the occasion, and I could alone face an armed host without
trembling; but even now I cannot open the door into a dark room without
trepidation, without starting back till reason comes to my aid. I never
sit alone in my room reading till twelve o’clock at night, without
having a mysterious awe creep over me. I am oppressed by the presence of
the invisible, and my very lamp seems to burn blue. All is the sad
effect of the frights I received in my childhood, occasioned by the
ghost and witch stories which old people would meet together and tell of
a long winter’s evening. I, a lad, listened with ears erect, and hair
standing on end. My blood seemed to freeze in my veins, and I dared not
look around me lest I should see the invisible. I was ready to shriek
with agony when sent to bed in the dark, and unless watched would throw
myself into bed without taking off my clothes, and cover up my head and
face in the bed blanket. How terrible was the dark! The impression wears
not out with time, and will remain till death. Now I would free the mind
from all these idle fears, and save the people, especially children,
from these terrible sufferings. It is a good work, and none but white
spirits will aid me in it.”
“Alas! you seem not to have reflected that the devil, when he would
seduce, can disguise himself as an angel of light. Human nature is
terribly corrupt, and yet the great mass of mankind ordinarily are
incapable of choosing evil, for the reason that it is evil. Evil must be
presented to them in the guise of good, or they will not choose it The
devil knows this, and knows the weak side of every one, and he adapts
his temptations accordingly. The weak side of our age is a morbid
sentimentality, a sickly philanthropy, and the devil tempts us now by
appealing to our dominant weakness. He comes to us as a philanthropist,
and his mouth full of fine sentiments, and he proposes only what we are
already prepared to approve. Were he to come as the devil _in propria
persona_, and tell us precisely who and what he is, there are very few
who would not say, ‘Get behind me, Satan.’ Nothing better serves his
purpose than to have us deny his existence; to ascribe his influence to
imagination, hallucination, to natural causes or influences, or in fine,
to good spirits, for then he throws us off our guard, and can operate
without being easily detected. Never was an age more under his influence
than our own, and yet they who pass for its lights and chiefs have
reached that last infirmity of unbelief, the denial of the existence of
the devil. Possessed persons are insane, epileptic, or lunatic persons,
and the wonderful phenomena they exhibit are produced by an electric,
magnetic, or odic fluid, and are to be explained on natural principles,
and such as cannot be so explained, are boldly denied, however well
attested, or ascribed to jugglery, knavery, or collusion. The marvellous
answers of the ancient oracles are ascribed to knavery, as if the whole
world had lost their senses, and could not detect a cheat practised
before their very eyes, and so bunglingly, that we who live two thousand
or three thousand years after, ignorant of all the circumstances of the
case, can detect it, and explain how it was done, without the slightest
difficulty. The devil laughs at this. He would have it so. Your natural
explanations will hereafter create a suspicion that you are little
better than natural fools. But go your way. I see by your incredulous
smile that the devil has you fast in his grip. I have done my duty. My
garments are clean of your blood; and hereafter, when you are feeling
the gnawings of that worm which never dies, and the burning of that fire
which is never quenched, say not, that no one had forewarned you.”
So saying, he took up his hat and cane, and, slightly bowing, left my
room without hearing a word in reply, or giving me a parting greeting.
When he was gone, I laughed to myself at his solemn admonition, and
renewed my resolution that he should suffer for the manner in which he
alluded to my dear Priscilla. He should know whether she was a Moabitish
woman or not. Warn me! Pray what had I done? Where was the harm? Was it
wrong to investigate the principles of nature, to learn what nature
really is, and to call her forces into play, providing they were not
applied to a bad end? Could it be a good spirit that would debar us from
acquiring science, or a bad spirit that would bid us inquire, to learn
our strength, and to use it? Would it be no slight service to relieve
the more mysterious parts of science from the reproaches cast upon them?
Has it not been computed that more than a million of persons alone
suffered as sorcerers and sorceresses, or for dealing with the devil, in
the sixteenth century and seventeenth alone? What injury has not been
done to genuine science by the absurd legislation against magic,
sorcery, and the so called black arts generally. No man could rise above
the vulgar herd, and produce some ingenious piece of mechanism, but the
rabble accused him of magic, and it was lucky if he escaped a criminal
prosecution and conviction before the courts of justice. Was not that
noble heroine, Joan of Arc, who saved France from becoming an English
province, burnt as a witch? Was not Friar Bacon, the father of modern
science, and the forerunner of his namesake of Verulam, accused of
magic, imprisoned, and thus scientific discoveries and useful inventions
postponed for centuries? Had not hundreds of old women, who had nothing
of sorcery about them but their poverty, weakness, and imbecility, been
dragged before the courts, and hung or burnt as witches? What more
lamentable page in our own American history than that of Salem
witchcraft? Is it nothing to disabuse the world, to save so many
innocent victims, remove so great a hinderance to science and heroic
deeds, by bringing the class of facts, superstitiously interpreted,
within the bounds of nature and legitimate science? Then, again, what
may not be finally obtained for the human race? Are the resources of
nature exhausted? They sought once the philosopher’s stone, the elixir
of life, the fountain of youth; who knows but these may one day, and
that not far distant, be found, if not in the shape sought, in others,
more simple and convenient?
Thus I resisted the admonitions of the good old man, and confirmed
myself in my resolution. I meditated a long time as to my future
procedure, and how I could bring my new science, which I trusted soon to
complete, to bear on the great revolutionary movement which the active
spirits of the day had concerted, and which must soon break out. I could
discern my way only dimly, but I trusted the mist would soon clear away,
and my method be no longer obscure or uncertain. Monarchy must be
overthrown because it upholds religion, and religion because it upholds
monarchy, and imposes vexatious restraints. So much was clear, and
determined on. Time and events would reveal the rest.
Late in the evening I called at Priscilla’s, saw her a moment, whispered
a word in her ear, gave her one or two directions, pressed her hand,
only as my accomplice, and henceforth my slave. The next morning I left
Philadelphia, and returned home a much altered man. My body was light
and buoyant, and I felt as if I was all spirit. I simply greeted my
mother, but felt that the strong tie which bound me to her was broken;
my sister, whom I had tenderly loved, was indifferent to me, and I
hardly deigned to notice her. I went into my laboratory, saw that all
was right there; from that I passed into my library to resume my
experiments.
CHAPTER X.
MR. COTTON IS PUZZLED.
I proceeded to magnetize my table. It responded as usual. I put my
former questions, but could get no answer to them, except that the time
for the revelation I solicited was not yet come. I asked, if there was
not a more direct mode of communication possible, and was told there
was. By speech? Not yet. By writing? Yes. I took a slate and pencil, and
placed my hand in the attitude to write. Immediately my hand was moved
by an invisible force, and a communication was made in the handwriting
and signed with the name of my father, who had been dead some eight or
nine years. The purport of it was not much. I did not know but I
unconsciously moved the pencil myself. I wished a better test. I placed
the slate on the table, laid the pencil on it, and called up the power,
whoever or what it might be, to write without my assistance. Very soon
the pencil rose fully up, then fell back, then rose again, and after
vacillating awhile, it became firm in its position and was moved
regularly backwards and forwards, as if directed by the hand of a
scribe. At length it flew up to the ceiling, whirled round there for a
few seconds, and then placed itself quietly on the slate. I examined the
slate, found a communication on it in the handwriting and signed with
the name of Benjamin Franklin. The communication consisted of one or two
proverbs from Poor Richard, and a commonplace remark about electricity.
All this was marvellous enough, but very little to my purpose. It was
not worth while taking so much trouble to get what was of no use when
got.
I sat down in my great arm-chair a few feet from my table, and fell into
a brown study. How long I remained so I do not know, when I was aroused
by a great racket in my room. My table was cutting up capers, rising now
to the ceiling and now frisking round the room, anon balancing itself on
one leg, and then going off into a whirl, that would have broken the
heart of the best waltzer, all to a tune which some invisible hand was
playing upon my guitar,—tune I say, but it was rather a capriccio, and a
medley of a dozen different melodies, thrown together in the wildest
disorder. Very soon this stopped, and then came thundering raps all
about my room, making every thing in it jar. I bid them be quiet, and
not all speak at once, like a lot of old women at a tea-party. They
partially obeyed me. One rapper however continued, but in a more gentle
and polite manner. I was willing to have some conversation with him. I
asked him who he was? He would not answer. What did he want? To
communicate. Very well, I would listen; and he told me that I was not a
good medium myself, for I held the spirits in awe. Ah, spirits, are you?
said I. “Yes.” Very well; I shall be very happy to make your
acquaintance. “But you must find us other mediums; we cannot speak
freely with you.”
Close by me lived the Fox family. There were three sisters; one was
married, and the other two were simple, honest-minded young girls, one
fifteen, the other thirteen. As I passed by their house, I saw them in
the yard. I greeted them, and offered them some flowers which I held in
my hand. The youngest took them, thanked me with a smile, and I pursued
my walk. These were the since world-renowned Misses Fox. In a short time
afterwards they began to be startled by strange, mysterious knockings,
which they could not account for, and which greatly annoyed them. It is
not by any means my intention to follow these girls, in their course
since, with whom I have had very little direct communication; but I owe
it to them and to the public to say, that they were simple-minded,
honest girls, utterly incapable of inventing any thing like these
knockings, or of playing any trick upon the public. The knockings were
and are as much a mystery for them as for others, and they honestly
believe that through them actual communication is held with the spirits
of the departed. They are in good faith, as they some time since evinced
by their wish to become members of the Catholic Church, which certainly
they would not have wished, in this country at least, if they looked
upon themselves as impostors, and had only worldly and selfish ends in
view. They are no doubt deceived, not as to the facts, as to the
phenomena of spirit-rappings, but as to the explanation they give or
attempt to give of them. They have not always been treated, I fear, with
due tenderness, and sufficient pains has not been taken to enlighten
them as to the real nature of these phenomena.
But who need be surprised at this? Received science rejects every thing
of the sort, for it recognizes no invisible world, believes in neither
angel nor spirit, and explains every thing on natural principles. Even
theologians have to a great extent forgotten the terrible influence, in
times past, of demonic agencies, and, if they do not absolutely reject
the instances recorded in the Bible, they are disposed to treat all
other cases as humbuggery, knavery, deception, or to class them with
epilepsy, insanity, hallucination, and other diseases to which we are
subject, and to dismiss them, when they cannot be denied, with the
physicians, under the heads of mania, monomania, nymphomania,
demonopathy, &c. I have before me the _Dictionaire Infernal_ of M.
Collin de Plancy, approved by the late Archbishop of Paris,—him who fell
so gloriously on the barricades, June, 1848, whither he had gone as a
minister of charity and peace,—in which, from beginning to end, there is
a studied effort to represent all these dark and mysterious phenomena as
explicable without any resort to superhuman or diabolical agency. The
excellent author seems to write on the supposition that all the world,
the physicians, the clergy, the magistrates, the civil and
ecclesiastical courts during all past times were merely old grannies,
and had no sound doctrine, and no capacity for investigating the truth
of facts obvious to their senses. With his mode of reasoning, and with
far less violence, I can explain away all the miraculous or mysterious
relations in Biblical history. But so strong is the current against
Satanic agency in the production of these phenomena, and such the
prevailing and shortsighted incredulity of our times, that even those
who suspect the true explanation are, for the most part, deterred from
the ridicule which would be showered upon them from avowing it.
It is no wonder that no kind, considerate friend was found to take these
poor Fox girls by the hand, and attempt to rescue them from their
dangerous state. The great mass of those who could have done so, either
paid no attention at all to the mysterious phenomena asserted, or looked
upon the whole matter as mere humbug. It was easier to crack a joke at
the expense of spirit-rappers, than it was to investigate the facts
alleged, or to offer the true and proper explanation. I had foreseen
that it would be so, or at least, had foreseen that they, whose duty it
is to watch over the interests of religion and morals, were unprepared
to meet the phenomena with success; that they would at first deny and
laugh, and then vituperate and denounce, but would hardly understand and
explain till too late, or till immense mischief had been done. Even now
the first stage is hardly passed, and the movement I commenced by a
present of flowers to these simple girls has extended over the whole
Union, invaded Great Britain, penetrated France in all directions,
carried captive all Scandinavia and a large part of Germany, and is
finding its way into the Italian Peninsula. There are some three hundred
circles or clubs in the city of Philadelphia alone, and the
Spiritualists, as they call themselves, count nearly a million of
believers in our own country. Table-turning, necromancy, divination
becomes a religion with some, and an amusement with others. The
infection seizes all classes, ministers of religion, lawyers,
physicians, judges, comedians, rich and poor, learned and unlearned. The
movement has its quarterly, monthly, and weekly journals, some of them
conducted with great ability, and the spirits, through the writing
mediums, have already furnished it a very considerable library,—yet
hardly a serious effort has as yet been made in this country to
comprehend or arrest it. It is making sad havoc with religion, breaking
up churches, taking its victims from all denominations, with stern
impartiality; and yet the great body of those not under its influence
merely deny, laugh, or cry out, “humbug!” “delusion!” Delusion it is. I
know it now, but not in their sense.
The public never suspected me of having had any hand in producing the
Rappo-Mania; and the Fox girls, even to this day, suspect no connection
between the flowers I gave them and the mysterious knockings which they
heard; and nobody has supposed Andrew Jackson Davis, the most
distinguished of the American _mediums_, of having any relations with
me. He does not suspect it himself, yet he has been more than once
magnetized by me, and it has been in obedience to my will that he has
made his revelations. The public have never connected my name with the
movement, and even Priscilla has never known my full share in it. I have
had my instruments, blind instruments, in all civilized countries, with
whom I have worked, and yet but few of them have known me, or seen me.
My readers may indeed be incredulous as to the influence conveyed by
flowers; but I shall satisfy them on that score before completing my
Confessions. While the Fox girls were annoyed by these mysterious
knockings, and were beginning to draw on them the attention of the
curious and the credulous, and while Andrew Jackson Davis, as yet only a
somnambulist, was dictating his wonderful revelations, and learned
doctors were disputing whether he received them from a white or a black
spirit, whether he really saw what he professed to see in his
clairvoyant state, or only reported to the scribe the lesson which some
cunning scamps had previously taught him, and made him commit to memory;
my old friend Mr. Cotton was made to suffer a severe penalty for the
slighting manner in which he had spoken of Priscilla. Contrary to her
usual custom, Priscilla went one Sunday evening to his evening service.
On leaving the meeting-house, she mingled in the crowd, and so contrived
it as to rub against a granddaughter of Mr. Cotton, an interesting child
of some twelve or thirteen years of age, and without anybody observing
it. She then turned a little aside, got into her carriage, which was
waiting, and drove home. The next day, the young girl, Clara
Starkweather, was singularly affected. Every thing she touched seemed to
stick fast to her fingers. All the dresses, cloaks, shawls, in the house
seemed to have an irresistible propensity to fly to her, and arrange
themselves on her back. She went into the kitchen; the poker, shovel,
and tongs, pots, kettles, pails, basins, all set to dancing towards and
around her, and the frying-pan fastened itself on her head as a cap. Her
mother scolded her, and she, poor thing, began to cry, and declared that
she did not do it, but that it was done by a strange woman, very
beautiful, but very wicked, whom she did not know. The family were all
in consternation. Mr. Cotton was called upon to interpose. He concluded
that it was a case of witchcraft, or of diabolical obsession. He
summoned all the inmates of his family to his study. He was a brave man,
and nothing at all loath to come to hand-grip with the devil, for whom,
with his orthodoxy, he fancied himself more than a match. “We must,” he
said, “resist the evil one; we must wrestle in prayer.” With that he
seated himself before his table, on which lay a splendid edition of the
Bible. He opened the book, intending to read a chapter, before making
his prayer. But he had hardly opened it before it was violently closed,
and rising, seemingly of itself, hit him a heavy blow in his face, which
knocked him from his chair, and nearly stunned him, and then rested
itself on the top of Clara’s head. Mr. Cotton soon recovered from the
blow, and stood up, after the manner of his sect, to pray. He had hardly
opened his mouth, before there was heard such a knocking behind the
walls, against the doors, and under the floor, that every word he
attempted to utter was completely drowned. It was impossible to proceed
amid such a thundering din and racket, which threatened to pull the
house down about their ears. Forthwith out marched from the library
shelves a complete edition of Scott’s Family Bible. The several volumes
drew themselves up on the floor, and proceeded, with great skill and
even science, to knock one another down, while various sounds, as of
mockery and laughter, were heard from various quarters. The brave old
man was fain to resume his chair, when lo! he found himself seated on
the heated gridiron. He started up very quick, as may be imagined, but
happily received no serious injury.
For attraction now succeeded repulsion. All the objects near Clara,
instead of being drawn towards her, were repelled, and moved away from
her. Soon one article of her dress after another flew off, and it was
with the utmost difficulty that they could keep enough on her to hide
her nakedness. This lasted an hour it may be, when all was quiet, and
every thing was found restored to its place, and Mr. Cotton himself
began to think that all was some optical illusion, and to think that he
might have been too hasty in concluding that the devil was engaged in
it.
However the annoyances were only suspended, they were not removed.
During the following night all in the house were awakened by tremendous
knockings heard on the walls and under the floor of the apartment where
Clara slept. All rose, and in their night-clothes rushed to her room,
and found her lying on her bed sobbing, and apparently in the greatest
agony. The bedclothes and her own dresses were scattered all about the
room, cut into narrow strips and entirely ruined. The rappings then were
heard in the library. Mr. Cotton took a light, and went into the room,
and was not a little surprised to find it occupied with some half a
dozen figures of men and women fantastically dressed, all seated, and
listening with grave faces to an inaudible discourse from another figure
in Genevan gown and band, standing before the table on which Mr.
Cotton’s great Bible lay open. Mr. Cotton was a little startled at
first, but he summoned up his courage and advanced. He went straight up
to the figure in gown and band, who seemed to have usurped his
functions, and boldly laid his hand upon his shoulder. Immediately his
candle was extinguished, and he received a blow which felled him to the
floor. In a moment he recovered, passed into another room, obtained
another light, and returned. The phantoms were still there, but he now
saw what they were. The seeming minister was a huge folio of theology,
moulded into a human shape by pieces of carpet, a coat and trousers of
his own, and dressed in his own gown and band. The other figures were
volumes from his library, elongated and stuffed out in a similar way,
and dressed in clothes belonging to different members of the family.
They were stripped, replaced on the book-shelves, and the dresses
returned to the several wardrobes where they belonged. There was no more
disturbance that night.
The next day, when the family were all at dinner, the table, with every
thing on it, suddenly rose to the ceiling, and then suddenly dropped
upon the floor with a noise that shook the whole house, but without any
other injury, or any thing on it being displaced. In the evening, while
they were all seated around the table, listening to a chapter which Mr.
Cotton was reading from the Bible, terrible knockings were again heard
all through the room, and Clara was seen to be raised as it were by some
invisible hand towards the ceiling, and to be borne with great force
through the room, and set down standing on her head. Then, after a
moment, she rose again and hung suspended to the ceiling by her feet and
her head downwards. After an hour the annoyances ceased, and the family
were left quiet. The annoyances continued, varying in their character
from day to day, for three weeks.
Priscilla sent me an account of them, and I thought my old friend had
been sufficiently punished. Moreover, I did not wish too much eclat to
be given at that time to the fantastic tricks I was playing. Mr. Cotton
was sure that it was the work of the devil, that it was witchcraft, and
he did not hesitate to accuse Priscilla. He had tried to get the
authorities to arrest her as a witch, but in this he had failed; for,
although the laws of Pennsylvania, at that time, if not now, recognized
witchcraft as a punishable offence, no magistrate in the city could be
found who did not look upon witchcraft as imaginary, and suspect the
good minister of being in need of physic and good regimen for
entertaining a belief in its reality. I however did not wish Priscilla’s
name to become associated in the gossip of the day with reported
phenomena of the sort, and I sent her an order to discontinue the
annoyances, and to restore every thing which had been injured to its
previous condition. The night she received my order, the noises ceased,
Clara rested quietly, and the family were undisturbed. On rising and
going through the house in the morning, no trace of the previous
disorder was discovered, every thing was in its place, and the clothing
and bedding which had been cut into ribbons, were all restored, and not
a mark of injury was to be found on them. Clara was well, and retained
no recollection of any thing that had happened to her or to the family
during the period she had been so grievously afflicted. Even the family,
Mr. Cotton among the rest, began to doubt, if they had not been the
sport of some strange hallucination, and almost to persuade themselves
that the annoyances had had no objective character.
All this may strike many as wholly incredible, but a thousand instances,
as well attested as any facts can be, of a similar character, can be
adduced. Let me be permitted to relate an instance still more
marvellous, which occurred in 1849, at the presbytery or parsonage of
Cideville, France, in the Department of the Lower Seine, and which
became indirectly the subject of a judicial investigation. The curé of
Cideville encountered at the house of one of his sick parishioners, an
individual, a Mr. G——, who had the reputation of curing diseases in a
mysterious manner. He reproved him severely, and sent him away. Shortly
after, Mr. G—— was arrested and condemned for his malpractices in other
cases, to two years’ imprisonment. The wretched man, recollecting the
reproof he had received from the curé, believed that it was owing to him
that he had been arrested and sent to prison, and, it is said, he threw
out threats of vengeance. One Thorel, a shepherd, a friend and disciple
of the Mr. G——, was also heard to say, that the curé would be made to
repent of what he had done, and that he (Thorel) would himself see that
his master was avenged, and his orders executed.
Two boys, one twelve, the other fourteen, were boarded and educated in
the parsonage by the curé. They were sons of honest, pious, and much
esteemed schoolmasters of the district, and appeared to have inherited
the good qualities of their parents. They were both intended for the
priesthood, and were a great comfort to the good curé, who loved,
cherished, and instructed them, and perhaps obtained something for their
board and tuition to eke out his scanty means of living.
One day there was a public auction, where a great crowd were collected,
and these boys were present among the rest. The shepherd, Thorel, was
there, and seen to approach the younger of the two, but nothing more was
observed. Immediately on the return to the parsonage, a violent
hurricane struck it, followed by blows as from a hammer in every part of
the house, under the floors, above the ceiling, and behind the
wainscoting. Sometimes these blows were weak, short, abrupt, sometimes
so violent as to shake the house, and to threaten to demolish it, as
Thorel, in a moment of rashness had foretold. The blows were heard at
the distance of two kilometres, and a large portion of the inhabitants
of Cideville, a hundred and fifty at a time, it is said, surrounded the
parsonage for hours, examining it in all directions, and seeking in vain
to discover whence the blows proceeded.
This was not all. Whilst these mysterious knockings continued, and made
themselves heard on every point indicated, they reproduced the exact
rhythm of whatever air was demanded of them; the glass in the windows
were broken, and rattled in every direction; the tables were overturned,
or were seen walking about; the chairs were grouped together and
suspended in the air; the dogs were thrown crosswise over one another or
were hung by their tails to the ceiling; knives, brushes, breviaries,
flew out by one window and back through another on the opposite side;
the shovel and tongs quit of themselves the fire-place and walked alone
into the room; the andirons, followed by the fire, recoiled from the
chimney even to the middle of the floor; hammers flew in the air, and
dropped as slowly and as softly as a feather on the floor; the utensils
of the toilet suddenly quitted the chambranle on which they were placed,
and as suddenly returned of their own accord; enormous desks rushed one
against another and were broken, and one loaded with books approached
rapidly and horizontally close to the forehead of Mr. R. de Saint V——,
and, without touching him, dropped perpendicularly upon its feet.
Madame de Saint V——, whose chateau was near to the parsonage, whose
testimony cannot be questioned, and who had witnessed a score of similar
experiments, felt herself drawn one day by the corner of her mantle,
without perceiving the invisible hand that drew it. The Mayor of
Cideville received a violent blow on his thigh, and at the cry forced
from him by this violence, he received a gentle caress, which instantly
relieved him from the pain.
A proprietor, residing fourteen leagues distant, and from whom I hold
this relation, came unexpectedly to Cideville, wholly ignorant of the
mysterious events which were taking place. After a night spent in the
chamber of the boys, he questioned the mysterious knocking, made it
strike in different corners of the room, and established with it the
conditions of a dialogue. One blow, for example, would say yes, two
blows, no; then the number of blows would indicate the number of the
letter in the alphabet, &c. This settled, the witness caused to be
rapped out his surname and Christian name, and those of his children,
his age and theirs, to the year, month, and day,—the name of his
commune, &c. All this was done with such rapidity that he was obliged to
conjure the rapper to proceed more slowly, that he might have more
leisure to verify the answers, all of which he found perfectly exact.
What is more striking is, that this gentleman knew nothing at the time
of spirit-rapping, then beginning to excite attention in the United
States, and it was not till several weeks after that he heard of it.
All this, the sceptics will allege, may be attributed to jugglery, to
the cunning and craft of the juggler, divining the thoughts of the
interrogator before he had detected them himself. But there was
something more still; something which the sceptics will hardly be able
to explain. A priest, a vicar of St. Roch, the Abbé L——, came
accidentally, and wholly unlooked for, to Cideville. To similar
questions he received apparently through his brother, like himself
wholly unknown in the place, answers equally prompt and exact, but with
this singular difference: In one instance the questioner himself was
ignorant, and unable to verify the details of the answer obtained. He
was, indeed, told the age and Christian name of his mother and his
brother, but he had either never known them or had forgotten them. He
however took a note of the answers, and, on his return to Paris,
consulted the registers, and found them literally exact. What now
becomes of the objection against the previous witness, or the
explanation insisted on, that the answer is given by the brain of the
interrogator?
Two landholders from the town of Eu came all express to Cideville. They
were told their names, Christian names, the number of their dogs, their
horses, &c. But still more astonishing were the phenomena that
accompanied the boy believed to have been touched by the shepherd
Thorel. He perceived continually near him the _shade_, or appearance of
a man, in a blouse, whom he did not know, but whom he identified with
Thorel, the first time he was confronted with that person. Even one of
the ecclesiastics present, when the boy said he saw the phantom,
perceived distinctly behind the lad a sort of grayish column or fluidic
vapor, a phenomenon often observed on similar occasions. One day the boy
fell into convulsions, then into a sort of ecstatic syncope, from which
for several hours nothing could rouse him, and which caused a fear that
he was dead. Another time he said that he saw a black hand descending
the chimney, and he cried out that it struck him. Nobody could see the
hand, but those present heard the blow, and saw its mark on the face of
the child, who in his simplicity ran out doors, thinking to see this
hand come out the top of the chimney.
At length several ecclesiastics united at the parsonage, and consulted
how they might be disembarrassed of the annoyance. One proposed one
thing, another proposed another, and a third remarked that he had heard
it said that those mysterious _shades_ feared the point of a sword. At
the risk of a little superstition, they armed themselves with swords,
and stabbed with them wherever the noises were heard. But it is
difficult to hit an agent in constant and rapid motion, and they were
about to desist, when one of them, having more skilfully pursued one of
the noises than the others, all at once a flame flashed forth, followed
by a smoke so dense that they were obliged to open all the windows to
escape immediate suffocation. The smoke dissipated, and calm succeeding
to so terrible an emotion, they resumed their stabbing, and soon they
heard a groan; they continued, the groaning redoubled, and at length
they distinctly heard pronounced the word “pardon.” “Pardon! yes,
certainly, we will forgive you; and more than that, we will pass all the
night in praying for you; but on condition that you come to-morrow, in
person, and beg pardon of this boy.” “Will you forgive us all?” “How
many are you?” “We are five, including the shepherd.” “We will forgive
you all.” All then became quiet in the parsonage; and the rest of that
terrible night was spent calmly in prayer.
The next day, in the afternoon, Thorel presented himself at the
parsonage. His attitude was humble, his language embarrassed, and he
attempted to conceal with his hat certain bloody excoriations on his
face. The boy, as soon as he perceived him, exclaimed, “That is the man,
that is the man who has followed me this fortnight.” He pretended, when
questioned, that he came to get a small organ for his master. “Not so,
Thorel; you know it is not for that that you have come,” he was
answered. “But whence those wounds on your face? who has given them?”
“That is no business of yours; I will not tell.”
“Tell us, then, what you want. Be frank. Have you not come to beg this
boy’s pardon? Do it, then. Down on your knees.”
“Well, be it so; pardon then,” said Thorel, falling upon his knees, and
even while begging the lad’s pardon, drew himself along, and tried to
seize him by his blouse. He succeeded; and from that moment the
sufferings of the boy, and the mysterious noises in the parsonage,
redoubled. The curé, however, persuaded him to go to the mayor’s office.
He went, and as soon as he entered it, he fell three times on his knees,
without being required, and before all the witnesses, begged pardon;
but, at the same time, he drew himself along on his knees, and
endeavored to touch the curé, as he had touched the boy. The curé, after
retreating to a corner of the room, had, in self-defence, to beat him
off with his cane. He avowed that all was to be referred to M. G——, whom
the curé had prevented from earning his bread, and that he could easily
disembarrass the parsonage of the annoyances that were passing there, if
made worth his while.
The curé, in consequence of what had occurred, said, or was reported to
have said, that Thorel was a sorcerer, and had practised sorcery on the
boy at the parsonage. Thorel brought, in consequence, an action against
him for slander. The cause came to trial; the curé pleaded the truth in
justification, and was acquitted. On the trial, the facts I have stated,
as well as many others of no less importance, were testified to under
oath, by a large number of highly intelligent and respectable witnesses,
and not one of them can be denied, if human testimony is in any case to
be taken as conclusive.
Persons of sceptical and critical disposition may imagine that Thorel
was concealed behind the wainscot, but the persons who used their swords
had sense enough to ascertain whether that was so or not; besides, to
suppose it, were wholly inconsistent with other well-established facts
in the case. An hypothesis, to be acceptable, must meet and explain all
the facts, not merely a portion of them. It will not do to adopt a
theory, and then, after the manner of learned academicians and
_philosophical_ historians, reject as inadmissible all the details of
the case not compatible with that theory. But I have introduced this
narrative to prove the credibility of some of my own doings, not to
prove that there is such a thing as is commonly called sorcery—to prove
the validity of an alleged class of phenomena, not their proper
explanation. To this latter point I shall have occasion, before I close,
to speak at full length.
The annoyances, I may add, continued at the parsonage for some time, in
fine till the bishop removed the boys, and the malice of the persecutors
had completed the ruin of the curé. They then ceased, when the original
reason for producing them had been answered.[3]
-----
Footnote 3:
Pneumatologie des Esprits, par le Marquis Eudes de M——.
-----
CHAPTER XI.
WORTH CONSIDERING.
I failed for a long time yet to get any new light on the essential
nature of the agent with which I was operating, and remained still
undecided in my own mind whether it was a spiritual person, superhuman
and invisible, or a simple elemental force of nature, placed at the
command of every man who knows how to use his own powers. The answers I
obtained to my questions were vague, contradictory, and unsatisfactory.
I had no doubt that I was doing what in the eyes of ignorance and
superstition was called dealing with the devil, and practising what had
been denounced, and in former times punished, by the civil law as
sorcery or witchcraft. So much was clear and undeniable. But had not all
the world misunderstood the real nature of what it had condemned as
witchcraft, sorcery, maleficia, and magic? Had they not assumed
unnecessarily a preternatural agency, and an evil agent, where there was
really only a natural, a good, and a benevolent agent?
The bearing of this question on the Christian religion was very obvious,
and I well understood the significance of what Voltaire said, one day,
to a theologian, “_Sathan! c’est le Christianisme tout entier_; PAS DE
SATHAN, PAS DE SAUVEUR,” and I felt that there was truth in what Bayle,
the ablest and acutest of all modern authors opposed to Christianity,
had said: “Prove to unbelievers the existence of evil spirits, and you
will by that alone force them to concede all your dogmas.” In any point
of view, Christianity was pledged to assert the existence of Satan and
his intervention in human affairs, for according to it, Christ was
revealed from heaven and came into the world that he might destroy the
devil and his works. If there was no devil, the mission of Christ had no
motive, no object, and Christianity is a fable.
Moreover, all Christians, whether Catholics asserting the infallibility
and authority of the Church, or Protestants asserting simply the
infallibility and authority of the Bible, were bound to assert the
existence of evil spirits, and the reality of demonic obsession and
possession, of witchcraft, sorcery, and magic, in the common and
opprobrious sense of the terms. As to Catholics, there could be no
question. The Church plainly and unequivocally recognizes the existence
of Satan, as may be gathered from the prayers and ceremonies of Baptism,
as well as from the significance of the Sacrament itself; and not only
his existence, but his power over the natural man, and even material
objects. Thus when the priest, in administering the Sacrament, breathes
gently three times in the face of the child, he exclaims, “Exi ab eo,
immunde spiritus, et da locum Spiritui Sancto Paraclito:” Go out of him,
impure spirit, and give place to the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete; and also
after the prayer _Deus patrum nostrorum_: “Exorcizo te, immunde
spiritus, in nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, ut exeas, et
recedas ab hoc famulo Dei. Ipse enim tibi imperat, maledicte damnate qui
pedibus super mare ambulavit, et Petro mergenti dextram porrexit. Ergo,
maledicte diabole, recognosce sententiam tuam, et da honorem Deo vivo et
vero, da honorem Jesu Christo Filio ejus, et Spiritui Sancto; et recede
ab hoc famulo Dei, quia istum sibi Deus et Dominus noster Jesus Christus
ad suam sanctam gratiam, et benedictionem, fontemque, Baptismatis vocari
dignatus est.” The candidate, before receiving baptism, is asked, “Dost
thou renounce Satan?” and answers, “I renounce him.” “And all his
works?” “I renounce them.” “And all his pomps?” “I renounce them.” So,
in blessing the salt which is used in administering the Sacrament, the
priest says, “Exorcizo te, creatura salis, in nomine Dei Patris
omnipotentis, et in charitate Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et in virtute
Spiritus Sancti, exorcizo te per Deum vivum, per Deum verum, per Deum
sanctum,” &c. The whole proceeds on the supposition that Satan is to be
expelled, dislodged, and the Holy Ghost to be placed, so to speak, in
possession, or the grace of Jesus Christ is to be infused, so that the
Holy Ghost shall henceforth dwell in the heart of the baptized, instead
of Satan, who previously held dominion over it. The Church has also her
exorcists, and her forms of exorcising of evil spirits.
The Bible is no less clear and explicit on the subject than the Church.
It teaches that Satan, in the form of a serpent, seduced Eve to eat of
the forbidden fruit; it relates the doings of the Egyptian magicians; it
forbids necromancy and evocation of the dead, and commands the Jews not
to suffer a witch to live; declares that all the gods of the Gentiles
are devils; tells us that the devil is the prince of this world, that he
goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour; bids us
resist the devil and he will flee from us. St. Paul speaks of the prince
and the powers of the air that besiege us, and against whom we must put
on the whole armor of God, and do valiant battle. Moreover it speaks of
demoniacs, or persons possessed with devils; and among the marvellous
works ascribed to Jesus Christ, is that of expelling demons, or casting
out devils. All Christians, then, must admit that there is a devil, and
that there are evil spirits, who may, and who do, interfere with men,
harass them, and sometimes take literal possession of them. A recent
French author, a sincere Christian believer, has felt this. “The
question,” he says, “at the Christian point of view, is by no means
indifferent, but is, as it were, the mother question, the question of
questions. It is no less than to determine whether the Bible and the
Church have or have not been really mistaken in one of their fundamental
principles. For a man filled with Christian desires, and cherishing at
the same time a respect for evidence, the question is most grave. It
touches the whole of faith, neither more nor less; and as it will not do
to admit in the sacred Scriptures, whose language is assumed to be
inspired, what is called _manners of speaking_, or _complaisances_ for
the age, or _remains of ignorance_, we must be permitted to say, that if
it were proved that the Bible in the time of Pharaoh mistook simple and
miserable jugglers for real _magicians_, poor charlatans for
_enchanters_, a few knavish and lying priests for the false gods of the
Gentiles, simple mummeries for real _evocations_, delirious cataleptics
for spirits of Python, &c.; if it were proved that Jesus Christ, in
granting to his disciples the gift, and prescribing to them the rules,
of expelling demons, mistook a fact of pure physiology; if it were
proved that the Church, in instituting exorcism, and prescribing for it
precise and learned formulas, and, moreover, practising it for eighteen
centuries, has been deceived during all that period,—we should feel that
it is all over with Christianity; we should regard it as condemned, and
hasten to renounce an authority so little judicious, and so little to be
depended upon.” Christians may, undoubtedly, dispute as to this or that
particular case, and say that the evidence of demonic intervention, in
this or that particular instance, is not conclusive; but they cannot,
without renouncing their faith, and becoming Sadducees, deny that such
intervention is possible, or assert that it is improbable. They must
concede its possibility, its probability, and its susceptibility of
proof; and therefore when the evidence in any particular instance is
sufficient to establish the reality of any other class of facts, they
are bound, as reasonable beings, to admit it. To them there is, and can
be no _à priori_ difficulty, for they already believe in the reality of
demonic agents adequate to produce the mysterious phenomena that they
are called upon to accept. Hence, in those ages and countries in which
nobody doubted Christianity, all men of science, physicians,
magistrates, as well as the clergy and the people, readily admitted the
demonic character of the phenomena like those produced in our day by
mesmerism.
But, if the belief in the reality of demonic intervention is integral in
Christianity, the most obvious way of getting rid of Christianity and
its restraints would be to deny that reality, and to explain the
phenomena commonly held as evidence of such intervention, on
physiological and other natural principles. This has been the aim of
science, especially medical science, during the last two hundred years.
This aim was adopted by the so-called wits and philosophers of the last
century, and during this it has begun to be adopted by jurisprudence,
and even to be acquiesced in by a large portion of professed Christian
ministers. Literary men, like Sir Walter Scott; founders of new sects,
like the late Hosea Ballou, of Boston; neologist theologians everywhere;
and that “fourth estate,”—journalism, have all combined to reason,
explain, or laugh away, every thing pertaining to demonology, and to
make the world believe that there is no devil, that evil spirits are
only the creatures of a disordered brain, that apparitions or ghosts are
only hallucinations, possession a peculiar kind of madness or insanity,
and magic mere charlatanry or sleight-of-hand. All this, for an
anti-Christian purpose, was admirable, since even the conservative
portion of the clergy seemed to acquiesce in it.
Nevertheless, this could suffice only to a certain extent. It might
serve to emancipate the intelligent classes, but could not emancipate
the people. The latter half of the eighteenth century—a century of
anti-Christian light, philosophy, physical science, and materialism—was
more distinguished for the mysterious phenomena, usually called
demoniacal, than any other period since the Christianizing of the Roman
Empire, with the single exception of the sixteenth century. Weishaupt,
Mesmer, Saint-Martin, and Cagliostro, did far more to produce the
revolutions and convulsions of European society at the close of that
century, than was done by Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert, Diderot,
Mirabeau, and their associates. These men had no doubt a bad influence,
but it was limited and feeble. It was not they who stirred up all
classes, produced that revolutionary madness, that wild ungovernable
fury of the people which we everywhere witnessed, and nowhere more than
in Paris, the politest and most humane city in the world. The masses
were possessed, they were whirled aloft, were driven hither and thither,
and onward in the terrible work of demolition, by a mysterious power
they did not comprehend, and by a force they were unable, having once
yielded to it, to resist.
You feel this in reading the history of those terrible events. It seems
to you that Satan was unbound, and hell let loose. The historians of
that old French Revolution, such as Mignet, Thiers, Lamartine, Carlyle,
all feel that there was something _fatal_ in it, and have been led, at
least all except the last, to defend it on the ground of fatalism. The
Royalist and Catholic historians, who oppose it, seem never to seize its
spirit. They declaim, denounce, find fault here, find fault there, now
with this action and now with that, but they never explain any thing,
solve any problem which comes up, and they leave the whole a mystery, or
an enigma.
The same phenomena, only on a reduced scale, were observable in the
revolutions of 1848. Everywhere there seemed to be an invisible power at
work. Good, honest Father Bresciani, would explain all this by the
Secret Societies. It is in vain. They did much, those secret societies;
but how explain the existence of those societies themselves, their
horrible principles, and the fidelity of their members in submitting to
what they must know is a thousand times more oppressive than the
institutions they are opposing? Tell me not that all these
revolutionists were incarnate devils; that they cooly, and deliberately,
from ordinary human motives and influences, planned and carried out
their revolutionary enterprise. There were in their ranks men of the
highest intelligence, the purest virtue, and the humanest feelings; men,
all of whose antecedents, whose tendencies, whose studies, professions,
interests, and, I may say, convictions, placed them in the ranks of the
conservatives, were carried away by an invisible force, and shouted out,
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and hurled the brand of the incendiary at
temple, palace, and castle, which sheltered them, as if it was not they
who did it, but a spirit that possessed them. Men caught the infection,
they knew not how, they knew not when, they knew not where. The
revolutionary spirit seemed to float in the air, as it undoubtedly did.
Without Weishaupt, Mesmer, Saint-Martin, Cagliostro, you can never
explain the revolution of 1789, and without me and my accomplices you
can just as little explain those of 1848. There was at work in the
former a power that the wits ridiculed, that science denied, philosophy
disproved, and the clergy hardly dared assert. There was there the
mighty power, whatever it be, which it is said once dared dispute the
empire of heaven with the Omnipotent, and which all ages have called
Satan, whether it is to be called evil with the Christian, or good with
the philanthropist, a person with the believer, or a primitive and
elemental force with the mesmerist. France, Europe was mesmerized. So
was it again in 1848, though with less terrible external convulsions.
It is impossible to bring the great body of the people of any age to
agree with our Voltarian philosophers—to be genuine Sadducees. In the
first place, the writings of the philosophers and academicians do not
reach the mass; and, in the second place, there are constantly occurring
phenomena which, in their apprehension, give the lie to Sadduceism. At
the very time when the philosophers of pagan Rome were losing all faith
in their national religion, doubting almost the existence of the
Divinity and the immortality of the soul, and laughing at augurs and
soothsayers, the people were more superstitious than ever. It was then
that magicians from Asia and Africa flocked to the Eternal City, and
that Isiac, Bacchic, and other Eastern superstitions, with all their
impurities and wild fanaticism, in comparison with which the national
religion was pure, reasonable, and moral, were introduced, and spread as
an epidemic; and the laws of the earlier emperors show how hard and how
ineffectually authority labored to suppress them.
The enemies of Christianity may accept the mysterious phenomena,
commonly regarded as diabolical, and explain them and the miracles of
the Bible and the alleged miracles of the Church on natural principles,
and if they cannot explain them on any known natural principles, they
may make them the basis of an induction of a new natural principle; or,
in other words, invent a natural principle to explain them, as Baron
Reichenbach has done—a principle, element, substance, or force, which he
calls _od_. They may do this, or they may recognize their real spiritual
and superhuman origin, but ascribe them to good, not to evil spirits, or
what is the same thing, maintain that what the world has hitherto
worshipped as good is evil, and what it has been taught to avoid as evil
is good. That is, that Satan is God, and God is Satan.
Swedenborg, in founding his New Jerusalem, or New Church, and Joe Smith,
in founding the Church of the Latter Day Saints, as Mahomet in the
seventh century, virtually adopted the latter course. Swedenborg became,
in the later years of his life, a somnambulist, and could throw himself
into the state which some mesmerists call sleep-waking, in which he was
a clairvoyant, and had the power of second sight. He fancied himself a
prophet, and capable of teaching angels as well as men. But he held the
power he found himself able to exercise, to be good as well as
supernatural.
The same was the case with Joe Smith, an idle, shiftless lad, utterly
incapable of conceiving, far less of executing the project of founding a
new church. He was ignorant, illiterate, and weak, and of bad
reputation. I knew his family, and even him also, in my boyhood, before
he became a prophet. He was one of those persons in whose hand the
divining-rod will operate, and he and others of his family spent much
time in searching with the rod for watercourses, minerals, and hidden
treasures. Every mesmerizer would at once have recognized him as an
impressible subject. He also could throw himself, by artificial means,
that of a peculiar kind of stone, which he called his Urim and Thummim,
into the sleep-waking state, in which only would he or could he
prophesy. In that state he seemed another man. Ordinarily his look was
dull, and heavy, almost stupid; his eye had an inexpressive glare, and
he was rough, and rather profane. But the moment he consulted his Urim
and Thummim, and the spirit was upon him, his face brightened up, his
eye shone and sparkled as living fire, and he seemed instinct with a
life and energy not his own. He was in those times, as one of his
apostles assured me, “awful to behold.”
Much nonsense has been vented by the press about the origin of his
Bible, or the Book of Mormon. The most ridiculous as well as the most
current version of the affair is, that the book was originally written
as a novel, by one Spalding, a Presbyterian minister in Pennsylvania,
and that Joe got hold of the manuscript and published it as a new Bible.
This version is refuted by a simple perusal of the book itself, which is
too much and too little to have had such an origin. In his normal state,
Joe Smith could never have written the more striking passages of the
Book of Mormon; and any man capable of doing it, could never have
written any thing so weak, silly, utterly unmeaning as the rest. No man
ever dreamed of writing it as a novel, and whoever had produced it in
his normal state, would have made it either better in its feebler parts,
or worse in its stronger passages.
The origin of the book was explained to me by one of Joe’s own elders,
on the authority of the person who, as Joe’s amanuensis, wrote it. From
beginning to end, it was dictated by Joe himself, not translated from
plates, as was generally alleged, but apparently from a peculiar stone,
which he subsequently called his Urim and Thummim, and used in his
divination. He placed the stone in his hat, which stood upon a table,
and then taking a seat, he concealed his face in his hat above it, and
commenced dictating in a sleep-waking state, under the influence of the
mysterious power that used or assisted him. I lived near the place where
the book was produced. I had subsequently ample means of investigating
the whole case, and I availed myself of them to the fullest extent. For
a considerable time the Mormon prophets and elders were in the habit of
visiting my house. They hoped to make me a convert, and they spoke to me
with the utmost frankness and unreserve.
Numerous miracles, or what seemed to be miracles—such miracles as evil
spirits have power to perform—and certain marvellous cures were alleged
to be wrought by the prayers and laying on of the hands of the Mormon
elders. Some of these were wrought on persons closely related and well
known to me personally; and I have heard others confirmed by persons of
known intelligence and veracity, whose testimony was as conclusive for
me as would have been my own personal observation. That there was a
superhuman power employed in founding the Mormon church, cannot easily
be doubted by any scientific and philosophic mind that has investigated
the subject; and just as little can a sober man doubt that the power
employed was not Divine, and that Mormonism is literally the Synagogue
of Satan.
It matters little to the enemies of Christianity, whether the public
deny altogether the marvellous phenomena heretofore regarded as
diabolical, whether they accept and explain them by means of a primitive
force or primordial law of nature, or simply ascribe them to Satanic
invasion, provided it be held that Satan is a philanthropist, the friend
and benefactor of the race, not the enemy; for in any case, Christianity
is denied or undermined. But the purely sceptical theory answers only
for the few, who, it is to be remarked, never see any of these
marvellous phenomena, and who, if they did see them, might be led to
embrace Christianity; but it will never suffice for the many, and can
never subserve the views of reformers who would operate upon the masses.
It however makes no practical difference which of the other two
hypotheses is adopted. For myself, I in some sense adopted both, though,
as I have said, I inclined to the naturalistic theory. But even then I
had begun to contemplate an ulterior object, which might make it more
convenient to adopt the latter hypothesis, for it might become necessary
to overthrow Christianity by the introduction, apparently by
supernatural means, of another religion—a religion in harmony with the
wants of the flesh. It is impossible to overthrow a positive religion by
a pure negation, or to get rid of Christianity without substituting
something positive in its place; for it is to be remarked, that
sceptical ages are the most credulous, and that as Christian faith
recedes, superstition advances. Hence we see in Scandinavia unmistakable
evidences of a revival of the worship of Odin; and only a short time
since, the government had to adopt measures to repress it in the north
of Norway. In many parts of Germany we see a decided tendency to revive
the superstition which Christianity supplanted. When men have no longer
religion, they take refuge in superstition; and when they cease to
worship God, they begin to worship the devil. The most interesting
people to the Englishman Layard that he found in the East, were the
devil-worshippers.
But all this is premature. World-Reform, as I had sketched it to myself,
had for its object unbounded liberty, and was to be accomplished, on the
one hand, by the overthrow of all existing governments, and the complete
disruption of all political and civil society; and on the other, by the
total demolition of the Christian Church, and extirpation of the
Christian religion. Of course it would not do to avow all this, for if I
did, I should defeat my own purposes. Faith still lurked in many a
heart; and the persuasion was very general, that some kind of
government, some kind of political, civil, and even moral restraint was
very generally entertained, even by those whom I must make my
accomplices, and use as my tools. It was necessary to keep one’s own
counsel, or to confide it to the smallest number possible. To the world
it would do to avow only the design of divorcing religion from politics,
and of democratizing the church and society. This might be avowed
without shocking the public at large. For this the public mind was in a
measure prepared. A pious priest could be persuaded to advocate
ecclesiastical democracy, as we have seen in the work of the excellent
Rosmini, in the Five Wounds of the Church.
A popularizing tendency among Catholics had been much encouraged by that
powerful priest, the Abbé de La Mennais, and his enthusiastic
associates. It is true, he had fallen under censure, and had been
excommunicated, _eo nomine_, by Rome; but the party he formed, though
disavowing him, still retained somewhat of his spirit, and followed his
tendency. There was a growing party in France, even among the clergy,
who wished to divorce the church from the state, and induce her to
abandon the courts, and cement an intimate alliance with the people, and
lend her powerful influence to the democratic movements of the day. They
had much that was plausible in their favor. The royal and nobiliaire
governments of Europe had always labored to convert the dignitaries of
the church into courtiers, and to make her their tool for enslaving and
fleecing the people. The greatest injury religion had ever received, it
had received from courtier bishops, and the tyranny of the state over
the church, equally fatal to her and to the people. The real interests
of the church would therefore seem to demand of her to make common cause
with the people against kings and aristocrats, and in favor of
democratic institutions. This conviction was becoming very general among
the more earnest and influential Catholic laymen. A corresponding
conviction was also becoming general among the great mass of the
Protestant populations. It was possible, then, to labor to democratize
society without alarming religious convictions; nay, it was possible to
enlist them to a great extent in the same work. Nobody, it is well
known, helped us on more effectually in Europe than many of the most
distinguished among the Catholic clergy and laity. I need only mention
Ventura and Gioberti in Italy, Montalembert, Lacordaire, Cormenin,
Maret, and Archbishop Affre, in France.
But, after all, great movements are never carried on by simple human
means alone, and never get beyond brilliant theories unless inspired and
sustained by a superhuman power, either from heaven or from hell.
Christianity had taught us the weakness of human nature, and I found
that weakness confirmed by experience. Between the power to conceive and
to execute there is a distance. Men might form the most brilliant
ideals, bring out the soundest, most attractive and perfect theories of
reform, but it would avail nothing unless endued with a power not their
own, to realize them in practice. Here was the defect in the plan of
Signor Urbini and Young Italy. It was skilfully devised, it had all of
human wisdom on its side, but it was ideal, and had no power or energy
to realize itself. No man lifteth himself by his own waistbands. Without
the Whereon to stand, Archimedes, with all his mechanical contrivances,
cannot move the world. It is necessary to have a support outside of man;
a source of power which is not human, and as the world would say, either
Divine or Satanic, to be able to accomplish any thing.
But had I not this very power in the agent I had been experimenting
with? What else was this mesmeric agent, whether a primitive, an
elemental force of nature, or indeed a superhuman spirit endowed with
intelligence and will? Mr. Winslow was, in the main, right. Mesmeric
clubs or circles must be formed on all points on which it is necessary
to operate, and batteries be erected everywhere, so that anywhere, and
at any moment, a mesmeric current may be sent instantaneously through
the masses, infusing into them a superhuman resolution and energy, and
making them stand up and march as one man. This, then, was the first
thing to be done. I would erect my mesmeric batteries in every country
in Europe, all connected by an invisible, but unbroken magnetic chain.
This plan, as far as I thought it prudent, I forthwith communicated to
Priscilla, without whose coöperation I could not carry it into effect.
She approved it, and was ready to coöperate in any way I wished. The
poor lady, I may remark, had no longer any will of her own. She had
craved liberty, and had induced me to aid her in establishing it, and
was now only my slave, bound to me in chains, which, struggle as she
might, she could not, of herself alone, break or unfasten.
CHAPTER XII.
A MISSIONARY TOUR.
The civil and political revolution I wished to effect, had apparently,
to a considerable extent, been already effected in my own country, and
the principal theatre of my operations must be in the Old World. There
is no doubt, that, at bottom, the American system does not differ from
the European. It is the same system of repression, and, though it
dispenses with kings and nobles, it asserts, with equal emphasis, the
necessity of government, of law, and morals. The American, in making his
revolution, had no socialistic dreams, no thought of resolving society
into its original elements, denying all authority, rejecting all
government, abolishing all religion and morality, and leaving every man
to do freely whatever seems right in his own eyes, however wrong it may
seem in those of his neighbor. The authors of the American Revolution,
and founders of the American States and the American Union, were any
thing but democrats in the present prevailing sense of the word.
But the progress of ideas and events has so modified the American
system, and done so much towards restoring a perfect democracy, where
the demagogues have every thing their own way, that the chance of
getting up any considerable revolutionary party, except to operate
abroad, is not worth counting. Indeed, it is not necessary to hasten the
march of things here, which is sufficiently rapid towards that point
where democracy resolves itself either into complete individualism or
into an absolute social despotism. I saw and felt this, and looked upon
my own country as more ready to assist me in my philanthropic or Satanic
efforts to revolutionize foreign countries than in need of similar
efforts on its own account.
Let me not, however, be misunderstood. Let me speak as I think and feel
as I lie here confined to my room, from which I am to be removed only to
my grave. I love not democracy, which I regard as from below, not from
above; but I love as little, perhaps much less, absolute or unlimited
monarchy,—your Czarism, Cæsarism, or Imperialism. I may think it unwise,
wrong, wicked even, to attempt to overthrow by revolutionary violence,
an absolute government, where it exists, and is not intolerable in
practice, for the sake of introducing a republic, or even a
constitutional monarchy; but I hold no government a good one, where one
man alone represents the will and the majesty of the nation. I demand a
government of estates, whenever that is practicable, but always a
representative body, with real legislative power, capable of imposing
real and effective restraints on the administration. I demand for the
nation the means of making known freely and effectively, within the
limits of the moral law, its will. I demand freedom of discussion,
deliberation, and decision. I demand the freedom of the press,
temperately, and answerable for its abuse, (which, however, must be a
real abuse;) to criticize publicly the acts of political authority, to
point out the defects of its policy, and to suggest measures for the
public good. I demand a political constitution in which the nation
governs through a king or president, and parliament or legislative body
or bodies. I am, what is sneered at by your imperialists, a
parliamentarian, a constitutionalist, and have no sympathy at all with
the Cæsarism of either France or Russia. I am no radical, no
revolutionist, no friend of sedition, but I love a wise, prudent,
well-regulated liberty, which leaves me all my power to do good, and
therefore, necessarily, to some extent, even to do evil; for if you so
bind me by the civil power that I can do no evil, you take from me my
manhood, make me an automaton, and deprive me of all power to do good
and to acquire merit. Such is my political creed, and therefore let no
man dare, because I favor not now the wild radical movements of the age,
accuse me of being an enemy to liberty, or a worshipper of Cæsarism, or
what is called absolutism.
Not seeing much to be done in my own country, I resolved to go abroad. I
required Priscilla to make herself ready to accompany me, and to take
her husband along with her. I know not whether this latter request
pleased her or not. Woman is woman even when under the power of the Evil
One; and that Priscilla loved me, and loved me madly, she hardly
pretended to conceal. I had, perhaps, loved her, too, for a moment, when
I might do so innocently, and I loved her still as much as remained in
me the power to love. But love or lust was not precisely my ruling
passion, and I would as soon have taken another with me as Priscilla,
could she have served my purpose as well. Even in my worst days I was as
much repelled as attracted by a woman who could betray her husband’s
honor, and I always found a woman, mastered by her passion, and ready to
give up all for love, as it is called, a troublesome rather than an
agreeable companion. A man wishes to find in the woman of his affections
a free soul, moral dignity,—a tender, loving heart, indeed, but with
sufficient strength to stand alone. Lads and lasses in their teens have
very false notions of love, and this is why love so seldom survives the
honeymoon, and why so many complain of unrequited affection and broken
hearts.
But I could not do without Priscilla, and I wished her husband to
accompany her to avoid scandal, and also to serve as manager, to take
charge of all the arrangements in travelling, residing in one place, or
in going from that to another, for which he was admirably adapted. I
found him far more intelligent, far more of a man than I had been led to
suspect from his ready submission to petticoat government. Priscilla had
entirely mistaken him, and might one day find him more than her master.
In a couple of months our arrangements were made for the voyage to
Europe, and for a longer or shorter residence abroad, as we should find
it convenient. We embarked from Boston in one of the Cunard steamers for
Liverpool, in May, 1843. We arrived at Liverpool after a pleasant
passage of thirteen days, and as soon as we could land, and get our
baggage through the custom-house, we departed for London, where we
proposed stopping for some weeks. Let not the reader fear that I am
about to inflict on him a journal of my travels in England and on the
Continent. I did not go abroad as a curious traveller, to see other
lands, and study the ways, manners, customs, institutions, laws,
politics, or religion of other nations. I went for a special object, and
to that I confined myself. I could, if I would, tell very little more
than I might have learned at home. My mission was not to observe and
learn, but to do, and to prepare, and hasten on the grand movement I
contemplated.
I did not find in England much remaining to be done, or that I needed to
do. I saw very few of her nobility, and I was not even once invited to
dine with the Queen. The middle classes I found very much like my own
countrymen, with very much the same culture, ideas, habits, and
pursuits. I found, as at home, a large number of philanthropists, though
less thoroughgoing than ours, and narrower, and less comprehensive in
their views. The common Englishman is a little insular in his notions,
and looks with disdain or pity on all who do not happen to be natives of
his own island world. The American is broad and expanded in his views,
like his extended prairies and boundless forests. No pent up Utica
confines him; the globe is too small for him; and he seriously
contemplates forming a joint-stock company for the construction of a
railroad to the moon. He thinks it will prove a good speculation. They
are both proud, equally proud; but with the Englishman, pride assumes
the form of haughtiness, or a low estimate of others; while with the
American, it assumes that of a conscious superiority to all the rest of
creation.
I did not see much chance of a reform or a democratic revolution in
England at present. True, she had at that time a very considerable body
of Chartists, and a numerous _canaille_, but these I counted for
nothing. No revolution is ever made by the proletarian classes. Wat
Tyler, Jack Cade, and the Jacquerie of France have proved that. No
people can ever overthrow a government till the government betrays
itself. In 1789, and in 1848, in every instance the government, with a
few whiffs of grape-shot, might have dispersed the mob and suppressed
the revolution. _Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat._ I placed no
reliance on the democracy of England, yet I did not at all despair of
her. She had her Reform Bill of 1832, which in due time would be
followed by another, and another, till her House of Commons would come
to be regarded as representing population, not an estate. The extension
of her commerce and manufactures was compelling Sir Robert Peel, an able
man, but a short-sighted statesman, to break up the protective system,
establish free trade, and throw the power into the hands of the urban
class. I did not need to mesmerize him; he was doing my work as fast as
it could be done with safety. Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston, and
their friends, I found had been visited before me. Mr. Gladstone needed
a slight manipulation; but I saw that he was an impressible subject, and
I foresaw that, when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, I should
have every reason to be satisfied with him. Lord Shaftesbury, then Lord
Ashley, I found amply mesmerized by nature and inheritance.
As to aid from England, in carrying on democratic revolutions on the
Continent, especially in Italy, if not in France, I might count on it
with entire confidence, so far as beginning the movements and getting
into trouble were concerned. But I thought possibly I might find her aid
like the devil’s, which suffices to help one into a scrape, but leaves
him to get out the best way he can. She had no interest in helping the
reformers to establish democracy, but she was ready enough to throw the
Continental states into confusion and anarchy. Hers has of late years
been only a half-way genius. Nevertheless, I found in her a few choice
spirits, and erected a mesmeric battery, which has since done some
service to the cause I had at heart. Priscilla was still more successful
among the philanthropic ladies and women with whom she was able to
communicate. We made sure, without much difficulty, of Exeter Hall. It
was a battery already charged, and served, with skill and ability.
We prepared an agent to visit Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and
other considerable English towns, and, upon the whole, were very well
satisfied with our mother country, and in good spirits left England for
Dublin. We were received there with true Irish hospitality. The
Liberator was then in his glory, and filled a large space in the eyes of
the world. He had obtained the Catholic Relief Bill, and opened to his
co-religionists of Great Britain and Ireland a political arena, and was
now agitating for the legislative independence of his native country. A
few months after he was arrested, and sentenced to a fine and a year’s
imprisonment, which virtually put an end to his movement. It broke his
heart both as a patriot and as a lawyer. He received us very coolly at
first, because we were Americans, and the Americans held negro slaves;
but on learning that we were abolitionists and philanthropists, he
opened his large heart to us, and bid us a hundred thousand welcomes. We
could not, however, make much of O’Connell. He was an admirable type of
the general Irish character, and not easily understood. He struck us as
a bundle of opposing qualities, not usually thrown together in the same
individual. A pious Catholic, he was surrounded by unbelievers, and the
patron of the whole herd of philanthropists, whose chief aim was to rid
the world of his religion; a man of impulse, as capricious as a child,
wily as a village attorney, and subtle as the most crafty lawyer, and
acting always upon calculation; a warm-hearted patriot, a genuine lover
of his country, yet with a sharp eye to the “rint,” and leaving it
doubtful to many minds whether he had any higher motives in what he did
than to gain personal distinction, and to elevate his family. He however
interested us as the inventor of a “peaceful agitation,” an invention
which could have been made only by an Irish lawyer, and it was as a
“peaceful agitator” that we chose to think of him. We found his
“peaceful agitation” might be turned to good account in the
constitutional states of the Continent, and we took care to introduce it
into France, when we visited that country, with what effect those who
remember the “Reform Banquets” which preceded the Revolution of
February, 1848, need not to be informed.
From the Liberator, or, as we chose to call him, the Agitator, we went
to meet the chiefs of the Young Ireland party, still apparently acting
in harmony with him. We formed no great expectations of them. They
talked too much, and made too much noise and bluster. We found them in
excellent dispositions, but too unsubstantial for our purpose. They were
all blaze, and no heat. The devil, having no creative power, could not
himself make much of them, and gave them up in despair. Hence their
miserable failure four years later at Slievnamon. Indeed, Ireland was a
country by no means to our philanthropic and reforming purpose, and we
made no account of her in preparing our revolutionary movements. We
however erected a small battery in the west, with a view to some
ulterior operations, and which we left in charge of Exeter Hall. It has
produced some temporary effect; but inasmuch as it has served to arouse
the Popish bishops and clergy to a more diligent discharge of their
duties, in regard to the religious and moral instruction of the people
in that hitherto somewhat neglected district, it is not certain but it
will, in the long run, produce an effect the reverse of that intended.
Rome, too, has sent a man after her own heart to look after the Irish
Church, the present Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland; so the
philanthropists have not much to hope from Ireland. Pat will sometimes
live and talk as an unbeliever, but he has a singular propensity to die
a Christian.
From Ireland we visited Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Highlands, and the
Hebrides—the Highlands and the Hebrides, for the purpose of making
observations on the “second sight” of the natives. We were much pleased
with Scotland. The Scottish character has many admirable features, and
there is not upon the whole a finer race in Europe than the Scotch, when
unperverted. We found nothing to do among them. There was no need of
mesmerizing them. Their own “_ingenuum fervidum_,” a sort of permanent
mesmerization, was amply sufficient for all our purposes. Besides, there
seemed to be a natural and ample supply of the odic fluid in her own
mountains and glens, which were still peopled by brownies and fairies.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE TOUR CONTINUED.
Finding all right in Scotland, we visited Norway, Sweden, and Denmark,
the ancient Scandinavia, the land of Odin, and home of the most
strongly-marked devil-worship to be found in history. With all my study
and experiments, I was far below many mesmerizers I found among the
natives of these countries. I found operative the spirit of the old
Vikings, the Berserkirs, and the Sagas, which had made the Norsemen the
nobility of Europe, and the plunderers of every maritime district, which
had precipitated Gustavus Adolphus upon the Empire to perish at Lützen,
and Charles the Twelfth upon Russian Peter, to meet his fate at Pultowa.
It still survives, hardly restrained by the Christian profession, and
capable of being kindled up anew, and set to work in all its pristine
vigor. Of these northern countries I felt sure, and that I might safely
leave them to themselves.
We passed on to St. Petersburg, and had an interview with the Czar of
all the Russias. We found him one of the noblest-looking men in Europe,
simple, affable, intellectual, and well-informed. He treated us with
distinction on account of our country, with which he said he and his
predecessors had always been on friendly terms, and whose unexampled
prosperity he saw with pleasure. He could understand our politics, and
respected them, for they were based on a principle—a wrong principle he
believed—nevertheless a principle, consistently carried out. He believed
the Russian system, under which one man governs, is far preferable to
ours, under which all govern. However, we might honestly disagree with
him. Apparently he was the most bitter as well as the most powerful
enemy of our revolutionary plans; but we did not despair of him. He
seemed wedded to the _status quo_; but we felt that when once we had
destroyed that, we could make him and his legions do our work, for we
found him a sort of Pope in his own dominions, and not indisposed to
supplant the Pope of Rome. He was, if a friend to Papacy, the enemy of
the real Pope, and that was enough for us.
The Czar, foreseeing the revolutionary movements which would be
attempted in Western Europe, had for the moment ceased to favor the
Panslavic movement which he previously set on foot; but we saw that the
impulse had been given, and that ultimately he must return to it, go on
with it, or be swept away by it. This Panslavic movement to unite the
whole Slavic race, numbering upwards of seventy millions, and holding a
territory capable of supporting twice, if not three times that number of
inhabitants, under one Slavic government, imperial or republican, would
operate, we thought, altogether in our favor; for it would ruin Austria,
the chief support of the Papacy, and give a decided predominance to the
anti-Catholic powers throughout all Europe. We therefore favored it, and
took care to form various circles in support of it, as we traversed the
Empire from St. Petersburg to Moscow, Ninjï Novogorod, Little Russia, to
the Black Sea; and also, among the Serbs of Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, in
European Turkey; Transylvania, the Banat, Croatia, Slavonia, and
Bohemia, in the Austrian Empire.
We visited, on leaving Russia and Slavic Turkey, the kingdom of Hungary.
There we found Kossuth, and he answered our purpose. Priscilla formed a
circle among the Magyar ladies, but it was quite unnecessary. I
initiated Kossuth into my plan, and laid my hand on his head, and
breathed into his mouth, and left him to take care of the Magyar race.
Highly delighted, we passed from Presburg to Vienna, where we stayed
some weeks. The Imperial family and high aristocracy were proof against
our arts, but we found the burghers, the _employés_ of the government,
and especially the students of the University, quite impressible, and we
charged them for a revolution.
From Vienna we passed through Cracow to Warsaw, and from Warsaw we went
to Berlin. In all these places we found every thing favorable. We passed
through the capitals of several of the smaller German States and
principalities, stopped a few days in the Grand Duchy of Baden, and then
hastened to take up our residence at Geneva, in Switzerland. We did not
visit Munich, but sent Lola Montes there, whom Priscilla, at my order,
had prepared. She did very well, but not so well as I expected. She used
her extraordinary powers too much for her own aggrandizement. She should
never have suffered King Louis to have made her a countess. She was too
vain and ostentatious.
We arrived in Geneva, late in the autumn of 1844, and made it our
principal residence till the spring of 1846. We had made no prolonged
stay in Poland, for we found the Poles already mesmerized. Cold and
callous as I had become, I yet had a tear for poor Poland, and, let my
conservative brethren say what they will, I still weep her fate. I am
not affected by the prevailing Russo-phobia, and in the contest now
raging between Russia and the Western powers, I believe that she has the
advantage on the score of justice, though now that they have been mad
and foolish enough to wage war against her, the interests of Europe
perhaps demand their success; for if they fail, she becomes quite too
powerful. There are traits in the Russian character I like, but I can
never forgive the murder of Poland. Catherine, Frederic, and Maria
Theresa, in that crime opened the way to modern revolutions, and
deprived crowned heads, to a powerful extent, of the sympathy of the
friends of justice and order. The Poles had their faults, great and
grievous, but the partition of their kingdom by the three powers of
Russia, Prussia, and Austria, was a crime that no faults could justify,
and, what some would say is worse, a political blunder. Since then, the
Polish nobles have been, and will long continue to be, their evil
genius.
We did not remain long in Germany, for we found most of the German
states already prepared, and already in close communication, after the
German fashion, with the powers of the air. The German genius is mystic,
and plunges either into the profoundest depths of Christian mysticism,
which unites the soul with God, or into the demoniacal mysticism, which
unites it in strictest union with Satan. The German, whatever his
efforts, can never make himself a pure rationalist. He has too much
religiosity for that. He must worship, and when he worships not God, he
worships the devil, and either through the elevating power of the Holy
Ghost rises to heaven, or, through the depressing power of Satan, sinks
to hell. You never find him standing on the simple plane of human
nature, and he is always either superhumanly good or superhumanly
wicked. For an Englishman, an American, an Irishman, there is a medium,
a possibility of compromise, a sort of split-the-difference
character—now saying, good Lord, and now saying, “good devil,”—a _via
media_ genius, which offends both extremes, and satisfies nobody. I like
the German genius better. If the Lord be God, then serve him, if Baal be
God, then in Satan’s name serve Baal. Be either cold or hot, not
lukewarm. _Ernst ist das Leben_ is the German’s motto, and whatever he
proposes to do, whether good or evil, he sets about it in downright
earnest. There is more to hope, and more to fear from the German or
Teutonic race than any other in Europe, for it has very little of the
Italian and French, or the English and American _frivolezza_, that curse
of modern society.
At Geneva we met Mazzini, a remarkable man, in his way, the very genius
of intrigue, and wholly sold to the devil. We also met there the Abbate
Gioberti, a Piedmontese, who had been exiled as a liberal by the
government of Carlo Alberto, the _cidevant_ Carbonaro. He was a Catholic
priest, and though under the censure of the government, and distrusted
by the Jesuits, nay, violently opposed by them, he had not at that time,
so far as I could learn, fallen under the censure of his church. He was
one of the ablest men we met in our European travels, and a fine
specimen of the higher order of Italian genius. Though comparatively
young, not much over forty, he was deeply and solidly learned, and as a
writer on political and philosophical subjects, had, saying nothing of
his peculiar views, no superior, and hardly an equal in all Italy, if
indeed in all Europe.
Gioberti affected to be an Ultramontane, a rigid Catholic, a
thoroughgoing Papist; yet his sympathies were with the liberal or
revolutionary party. He was, first of all, an Italian, and held that the
moral, civil, and political primacy of the world belonged to Italy, and
it was because God had, from remote ages, given to her this primacy,
that the Papal chair was established at Rome. The primacy belonged to
the successors of St. Peter in their quality of _Roman_ pontiffs, who,
as such, were heritors of the Italian _primato_. The Papal authority was
founded in divine right, but mediately through the divine right of the
Italians as heritors of the old Roman sacerdocy, and Italo-Greek
civilization. According to him, the Papacy did not so much continue the
synagogue, as the old Roman priesthood, or rather, the Jewish and Pagan
priesthoods both meet and become one in the Papacy—the summit and
representative of the Christian priesthood.
His plan, therefore, was, first of all, Italian unity, not the
republican or democratic unity of Mazzini and Young Italy, nor yet a
monarchical unity, under a purely secular prince; but a federative union
under the moderatorship of the Pope, made one in the Papacy. The Romans,
he held, at least from the time of Numa, had been an armed priesthood,
and should now resume, under the Pope, their old character and mission.
Italy thus united, thus organized, under the moderatorship of the Pope,
could reassert her primacy, and carry on the work of civilization. With
her twenty-five millions of inhabitants, the natural superiority of her
genius, the moral weight of the Papacy, her peculiar geographical
position, and the productiveness of her soil, she would be impregnable
to attack, and more than able to cope single-handed with any one of the
great European powers. In other words, he sought for the Pope and the
Italians what Nicholas is supposed to seek for the Czar and the
Russians.
The rock on which he split, and I told him so at the time, was in
assuming the intrinsic compatibility of Gentilism and Christianity. He
wished to combine the antique pagan and the modern Christian spirit, and
to train youth to be devout Catholics, and yet, at the same time, proud,
daring, and energetic Gentiles. He did not agree at all with the Abbé
Gaume and the party laboring to exclude the Greek and Roman classics
from our colleges and universities; he had no very high opinion of the
fathers of the Church, with the exception of St. Augustine, and no
patience with the mediæval knights and doctors. He waged unrelenting war
on the philosophy taught by the Jesuits, and, indeed, upon the whole
system of education pursued by those renowned religious religions,
which, he contended, had practically emasculated the European mind,
deprived it of all depth and originality, and of all free and vigorous
activity. Its effect had been to produce, in nearly all Europe, a
universal _frivolezza_, or frivolity of thought and action.
But he forgot to note, that Gentilism and Christianity are directly
opposed one to the other. Christianity educates for heaven, Gentilism
for earth; the former is based on pride, the latter on humility; the one
exalts God, the other exalts man. The Gospel teaches us to despise what
Gentilism honors, and to honor what Gentilism despises, and to possess
the world by rising above it, and trampling it under our feet. A
Christian discipline has for its end, to mortify the flesh, and to make
men live as if dead to the world, and to overcome the world by dying,
not by slaying, by relying on the wisdom and power of God, not on their
own. Gentile discipline trains men primarily for the world, develops the
nobility of pride, not the higher nobility of humility—trains men to
act, by their own wisdom and sagacity, on men, to be artful and
overreaching statesmen, intrepid soldiers, able and invincible
commanders. It is obvious to every one that these two systems can never
be combined, and made to work harmoniously together. Ye cannot serve God
and Mammon.
Taking the Gentile standard, taking a Fabricius, a Scipio, a Cato, a
Cæsar, instead of a St. Bruno or a St. Francis, of Assisium, as a model
man; or a Cornelia instead of Santa Clara or a Santa Theresa, for a
model woman, there can be no doubt of the vast superiority of ancient
Gentilism over modern Catholicity, or even Christianity itself, and, in
this sense, the devout Irishman was right when he said, “Religion has
been the ruin of us,” and more especially as it regards Catholics.
Non-Catholics, as to the empire of this world, display a wisdom, an
energy, and a decision, which you seldom find in strictly Catholic
states, and the only cases in which so-called Catholic states approach
them, is when they put their religion in their pocket, war on the Pope,
or for purely secular ends, on purely earthly principles. The French
Republic, in putting an end to the Mazzinian Reign of Terror, and
restoring Pius the Ninth to his temporal estates, professed no religious
motives, and would have failed if it had. It acted from worldly policy,
and avowedly for the purpose of watching Austria and maintaining French
influence in the Peninsula.
The question is not as Gioberti conceives it; it is not a question of
the fusion of Christian and Gentile virtues, but a question between
Gentilism and Christianity itself. It is not how to train our youth to
be great, noble, energetic, according to the Italo-Greek standard, but
whether we are or are not to be Christians. If Christianity be true,
there can be no question that our youth should be trained for heaven and
not for the world, and taught to be meek, humble, self-denying,
unworldly—to die to the world, and live only to God—to prepare
themselves for dying and living eternally hereafter in heaven. If so
trained, they will not exhibit those traits of character which you so
much admire in the great men of pagan antiquity; they will meditate when
you will think they should act, pray when you would have them fight, and
run to the church when you would have them run against the enemy. But,
at the same time, if Christianity be true, there can be no question that
the management of earthly affairs on Christian principles and for a
Christian end, would be decidedly for the interests of society as well
as for the salvation of the soul. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his
justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
There is an innate and irreconcilable antagonism between Italo-Greek
Gentilism and Christianity. According to Christianity, the world by
wisdom knows not God; and the whole economy of the Gospel is undeniably
to discard the wisdom of this world, and to rely solely on the wisdom
from above, to trust not ourselves, but God alone. The Gospel reverses
all the maxims of Gentile wisdom, and blesses what it curses, and curses
what it blesses. Gentilism had said, Blessed are the proud, the
distinguished, they who are honored and abound in this world’s goods;
the Gospel says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, that is, they who are
humble, lowly-minded, and despise riches and honors. Gentilism had said,
Blessed are they who are quick to resent and avenge their real or
imaginary wrongs; the Gospel says, Blessed are the meek, for they shall
inherit the land. The former had said, Blessed are they that rejoice;
the latter says, Blessed are they that mourn. Gentilism had said,
Blessed are they who thirst for fame, for honor, power, and who live in
luxury, who eat, drink, and are merry; the Gospel says, Blessed are they
who hunger and thirst after justice, Blessed are the merciful, and
Blessed are the clean of heart. Gentilism had said, Blessed is the man
who delights in arms, whom no one dares attack, whom none slander,
revile, or persecute, and who, by his force, craft, or wisdom, has
triumphed over all his enemies, and subjugated them to his will; the
Gospel says, Blessed are the peacemakers, Blessed are they that suffer
persecution for justice’ sake, Blessed are ye when men shall revile you,
and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my
sake: rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven.
The principle of Christianity is humility, meekness, gentleness,
forgiveness of injuries, love of enemies, self-denial, detachment from
the world, and a delight in living, suffering, and dying for the glory
of the cross. In every respect, the principle of Gentilism is the direct
contradictory. Look at the Gospel as you will, and its direct denial of
heathenism everywhere strikes you. Its Author came into the world not in
the pride, pomp, and power of an earthborn majesty. He came in the form
of a servant, a slave, the reputed son of a poor carpenter, at whose
craft he worked with his own hands. The foxes of the earth have holes,
and the fowls of the air have nests, but poorer than they, he had not
where to lay his head. Of the rich, the proud, the great, and honored,
none were with him. His disciples were poor fishermen and publicans. He
sought and accepted no earthly honors; and when the people, in a fit of
momentary enthusiasm, would make him perforce their king, he withdrew,
retired into the mountains, concealed himself, and prayed to his Father.
When betrayed by one of his followers, and delivered into the hands of
his enemies, he made no resistance, and permitted none to be made. He
patiently endures insults, mockeries, and revilings, and opens not his
mouth in his defence, when confronted with his accusers before the bar
of Pilate, but meekly submits to the unjust sentence pronounced against
him, suffers himself to be led unresistingly, bearing his cross, to the
place of execution, and to be crucified between two thieves.
Here is the whole spirit, the whole economy of Christianity. If
Christianity be from God, this means something, and proves that if
Christians are sincere and in earnest, they cannot adopt or even value
the wisdom of the world; and it must always be true, that the children
of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.
Concede the Gospel to be true, and you must own that Christian
asceticism is the highest wisdom, and Gentile wisdom, or the wisdom of
this world, the sublimest foolishness. This St. Paul well understood,
and hence he says, “We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a
stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; but to them that are
called, Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
The foolish things of the world hath God chosen to confound the wise,
and the weak things of the world hath God chosen that he may confound
the strong; and base things of the world, and things contemptible hath
God chosen, and the things that are not, that he might bring to nought
the things which are.”
There is no denying this, and hence the error of Gioberti. He would be
both a Christian priest and a Gentile philosopher, at once a disciple of
the Gospel and of the Portico, and he labored with an ability and a
subtlety to demonstrate by means of a philosophy, considered apart from
the use he made of it, worthy of profound esteem, that this was not only
possible, but demanded by the deepest and truest principles of
ontological science. I do not think that he was at that time an
unbeliever, or that he entertained any doubts of the religion he
professed. But he had little of the sacerdotal character or the
Christian spirit, and I think he was disgusted with what he considered
the weakness, tameness, abjectness, the _frivolezza_ of the Catholic
populations of France and Italy, and out of patience with seeing them
crouching before the haughty infidel, and the domineering heretic or
schismatic. He wished to see them men, men of lofty and daring souls,
scorning to be trampled on, and indignantly hurling back the invading
hosts of barbarians, and boldly and triumphantly asserting the proud
prerogatives which belong to them as possessors and guardians of the
truth of God. He was right after the wisdom of men, but wrong after the
wisdom of God, if Christianity is our standard, and was animated by the
spirit of Gentilism, not by the spirit of the Gospel. He failed, for he
was too pagan for a Christian, and too Christian for a pagan.
The remedy, if remedy is needed, is the return of modern society to
real, earnest, living faith in the Gospel. The age is frivolous, because
it is educated to be Christian, and is at heart unbelieving. It is not
heresy or schism that needs now to be attacked, but unbelief—a moral and
intellectual scepticism, which books and schools do not teach us to
attack successfully. Here schoolmen, men of routine, with their
_probos_, _respondeos_, and _objectiones solvunturs_, stand us in poor
stead. Exquisite polish, gracefully-turned periods, charming
pleasantries, pretty conceits, and soft, sweet sentimentality for boys
and girls in their teens, will stand us in just as little. It is
necessary to abandon routine, the easy habit of speaking _memoriter_,
and learn to think, to master, not merely repeat, what others have said,
but to master for ourselves the principles involved, and to speak out in
a tone of strong, impassioned reasoning, in free, bold, and energetic
language, in defence of the Gospel itself.
CHAPTER XIV.
ROME AND THE REVOLUTION.
In June, 1846, the death of Gregory the Sixteenth, and the election of
Cardinal Mastai and his elevation to the Papacy, under the name of Pius
the Ninth, summoned us to Rome, the Eternal city. I felt a momentary
grief, as I saw the mouldering ruins of pagan Rome, the ancient capital
of Gentilism, and felt indignation at beholding the diminutive Rome that
had supplanted it; but I felt sure that the old gods lingered still in
those ruins of the Capitoline and Palatine hills, and that the time was
drawing near when we might evoke Jupiter Tonans and the fiery Mars, and
the Goddess of Victory, from their slumber of centuries; revive the old
Roman spirit, and reëstablish the old Republic, so long triumphed over
by the barbarism of the cross. Never before had I felt how thoroughly
alienated from the Christian world, and assimilated in my feelings to
the old Gentile world I had become. I was in the capital of the
Christian world, the centre of Christian art, and of the most glorious
Christian associations for two thousand years, and my heart was touched
only at sight of the monuments of pagan antiquity, which time and the
still more destructive hand of man had spared.
But we had no leisure for sight-seeing, and still less for
sentimentalizing over the ruins of that stupendous superstition of which
Rome was the capital, and which had gradually supplanted the patriarchal
Christianity, only slightly corrupted, of the primitive Romans. The
superficial politicians, Catholic and non-Catholic, regard the Papacy as
comparatively of little political or social significancy in our times;
but whoever looks a little below the surface of things, knows very well
that the Pope, though weak as to his temporal states, is not only the
oldest but the most influential sovereign in Europe. The death of one
Pope and the accession of another, is an event which reverberates
through the whole civilized world; and the policy of the sovereign
pontiff, the feeble old man of the Vatican, with hardly a regiment of
guards, has not seldom the preponderating weight in the councils of
princes, although unseen, unrecognized—so much the more inexplicable, as
there no longer remains a truly Catholic government on the globe, and
not a Catholic nation in whose heart lives and breathes the old Catholic
faith. Not a nation in Europe would, to-day, for the sake of religion
alone, rush to the assistance of the Pope; yet the Papacy is everywhere,
and not a court in Europe but trembles when it thinks of the Pope, even
weak and unsupported as he is.
All the Liberals throughout the world held a jubilee as soon as they
heard of the death of the old Pope, who had, no one could tell how, held
them in check. The whole world seemed to have been suddenly relieved of
an invisible burden, and bounded with a wild and frantic joy. The good
time that had been a-coming, now could come. This joy grew wilder and
more frantic still, when it was known that Cardinal Mastai was the new
Pope. He was known to be gentle and humane, kind-hearted and pious, and
suspected of leaning to liberal views, and of being a Giobertian; and
nobody doubted that he would attempt a policy the reverse of Gregory’s.
We, who were in the secret, knew that he was not the choice of Austria,
and had no doubt that he would incline to France, and follow, to no
inconsiderable extent, the advice of Count Rossi, the French Ambassador,
and one of our friends.
At that time Guizot was at the head of the government of France under
Louis Philippe, a Protestant and a quasi-conservative statesman, but
with many sympathies with the European Liberals. He believed, or
professed to believe, that a change in the institutions of the
monarchical states in Europe, giving the people a moderate share in the
government, was demanded by the exigencies of European society, and if
freely offered by authority, and not given as a concession to the people
in arms to effect it, would be a wise and beneficial public measure, and
in an eminent degree politic too, as it would tend to extract the point
from the declamations of the radicals, and prevent, or at least
indefinitely postpone, the revolution with which all Western and Central
Europe was threatened. He had urged this policy upon Prussia, perhaps
upon Austria, certainly upon the smaller German states which had not yet
adopted the constitutional _régime_, and upon the Pope and the other
Italian princes.
We were perfectly well aware of Guizot’s policy, and knew equally well
how to turn it to our account. Your _doctrinaire_, _juste-milieu_, or
_via-media_ statesmen, who follow expediency, and govern without
principle, are generally regarded as wise, prudent, and eminently
practical, but they are among the shortest-sighted mortals to be
encountered, and are as miserable humbugs as the Genevan banker, M.
Necker, who could never understand that government was any thing more
than a question of finance, or its administration any thing more than
the administration of a joint-stock bank. When there is no serious
discontent on the part of subjects, and not the least danger of
revolution or insurrection, authority may modify without danger,
immediate danger at least, the constitution, in favor of popular power,
as the English government did in 1832; but when there is grave
discontent, with or without just cause, and a secret conspiracy is
forming in behalf of liberal or popular institutions, nothing is less
wise or statesmanlike than for authority to make popular concessions
with a view of forestalling and disarming it. The disaffected attribute
such concessions solely to the weakness and fears of the government, and
only rise in their demands, and conspire with the more energy and
courage.
The government, in times of general discontent, as was the case in
Europe from 1839 to 1848, should either concede all and abdicate itself,
or concede nothing, because, if it is to defend itself it needs all its
prerogatives and the concentration of all its powers. The advice of
Guizot was fitted only to weaken the powers that entertained it, and to
render them, in the hour of trial, timid and undecided; and it is only
where authority is timid, hesitating, and undecided, that a popular
revolution can ever succeed. The only wise and even merciful way in such
times is, to make, on the first outbreak, a free use of grapeshot and
the bayonet. There will be no second outbreak, however powerful or well
concerted the conspiracy may have been. Napoleon understood this, and
his nephew understands it, also, tolerably well. No man understands it
better than Nicholas, Autocrat of all the Russias, although his single
unarmed presence is ordinarily all that is necessary to quell an
insurrection in his capital.
There is no doubt that Pius the Ninth, during the first days of his
pontificate, followed, in temporal matters, the advice of the French
government, which, as far as I have been able to learn, never, since
Philip the Fair, has been guilty of giving the Pontiff advice not to his
own hurt. France advised the fatal amnesty and some sort of
quasi-popular institutions. The former was granted, the latter were
promised, and the world was made to believe that for once it had a
liberal Pope. There was nothing heard but _Evviva Pio Nono!_ throughout
Rome, Italy, France, England, and the United States. Radicals, Infidels,
Protestants, and even the Grand Turk, united in one grand chorus of loud
and prolonged exultation. It seemed, to those who saw only the external
manifestation, that all hostility to the Papacy had ceased, and that all
the world were on the eve of becoming Papists. Rome became one perpetual
festival. Songs, hymns, processions, benedictions, speeches, addresses,
congratulations, became the regular order of the day. Multitudes of
Catholics, honest, simple souls, really felt that the day of heresy and
schism, of conflict and trial, for the Church, was over. Some shrewd old
cardinals at Rome took their pinch of snuff, shrugged their shoulders,
and retired to their palaces. We, who knew what agencies were at work,
laughed in our sleeve, and, with all the chiefs of the liberal party,
called upon all the powers which we had prepared, visible and invisible,
to aid in increasing the general intoxication, not doubting but the
Papacy was at its last gasp. For we felt sure that if, by flattery, by
enthusiasm, by loud, long, and reiterated shouts of _Evviva Pio Nono!_
we could get the Pope fairly to enter the path of reform, or what was,
we supposed, the same thing for us, make the Catholic world believe he
had entered it, it was all over with the Papacy, therefore with
Christianity, law, and social order.
No doubt some of the enthusiasm manifested was real, but a great deal of
it was feigned, for the precise purpose of imposing upon the public. We
were not ourselves for a moment deceived. We felt sure that Mastai was a
genuine Pope, that he could hardly be deceived by the demonstrations
which must have been painful to him; which, in fact, gave him no rest,
and which, under pretence of unbounded devotion to him, were becoming
unmanageable, secretly undermining his throne, and growing into a real
conspiracy against his freedom of action. We knew well there must come a
point beyond which he could make no further concession, and our plan was
to get the Catholic populations of Europe so committed to the cause we
pretended he favored, that when that point was reached, we could turn
the popular enthusiasm against him, and he find himself disarmed and
powerless to resist it. In this it is well known that we fully
succeeded.
We should not have gone so far, and succeeded so rapidly, perhaps, had
we not been aided by English politics. Lord John Russell and Lord
Palmerston did not disappoint my expectations. At the time of our visit
to Rome, the government of Louis Philippe was in the zenith of its
glory. The wily monarch seemed to have fully confirmed his throne, and
his prime minister was successful in urging upon a large number of
princes constitutional reforms, and it seemed likely, for a moment, that
the revolutionary party would spend its fury harmlessly under the lead
of the sovereigns themselves. But he deeply offended England by the
Spanish match, the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier with an Infanta of
Spain. By this marriage, he seemed to have completed his circle of
alliances, and to have made himself too powerful for English politics,
and was rendering himself still more so by the constitutional reforms he
was urging upon German and Italian princes. It was necessary to thwart
him, and put an end to his illegitimate reign. Lord Minto was
despatched, and other agents instructed to confer with the chiefs of the
revolutionary party in Italy, and also in France, and encourage them to
insist on reforms effected by the people from below, and to refuse to be
satisfied with reforms effected from above by the princes. These chiefs
were assured of the sympathy, perhaps they were promised the assistance,
of the English government, which makes it a point to support a
revolutionary party in every foreign state.
In the mean time, all the batteries we had erected were opened. Exeter
Hall, and the Protestant Alliance were in full operation, and I thought
it quite certain that a force was accumulated and brought to bear on the
Rock of Peter that would shiver it into ten thousand atoms. Our presence
was no longer necessary at Rome, and after Easter of 1847, we went to
Paris, to fire a train in that city of combustibles. We were not needed
there, for having had interviews with the chiefs of the revolutionary
party in Geneva, we had already prepared them. They had more than
profited by our instructions; they had even improved on them, and stood
in closer relation to the Unknown Force than we did ourselves. All we
could do to aid on the revolution which broke out the following
February, was to persuade some of the leading Liberals to introduce the
“peaceful agitation,” reduced to so perfect a system by O’Connell in
Ireland, which was done in what were called the “Reform Banquets.”
All France at that moment was, in some sense, revolutionary. Guizot, at
the head of the government, was a reformer, as I have shown, but only on
condition that authority took the initiative. But, to admit the
necessity or propriety of any reforms or changes was a tacit concession
altogether to the prejudice of the existing order. After Guizot and his
party, came the dynastique reformers, such as Thiers and Odillon-Barrot,
who wished the Orleans family to possess the throne, but to deprive the
throne of all effective power, and to establish a parliamentary
despotism. The watchword of these at that moment was, the extension of
the electoral franchise. There were at that time, out of a population of
thirty-six millions, only about two hundred thousand electors. After the
dynastique reformers, came the Catholic party, led on by the noble,
learned, eloquent, and singularly pure-minded Montalembert, a man of
principle, of faith and conscience, with whom religion was a living and
all-pervading principle. This party consulted, first of all, the freedom
and independence of the church, and was comparatively indifferent to the
dynastique question. Its drapeau was neither that of Henri Cinque nor
that of the House of Orleans, but religion and social order. The
watchword at that time was, Freedom of Education, denied by the monopoly
secured to the University, which educated in a pantheistic, Voltarian,
or an irreligious sense. As the government sustained the University, and
denied freedom of Education guarantied by the constitution, they opposed
the government.
Behind these came the Legitimists, the adherents of the elder branch of
the Bourbons, filled with old Gallican reminiscences, and whose
watchword was Henri Cinque. They were opposed to the existing
government, ready to take active measures to overthrow it, and were
ready to support the church, in so far as she demanded nothing for
herself, and would lend all her resources to uphold and decorate the
throne. They were a set of superannuated old gentlemen, with polished
manners and courtly address, decorated with some very respectable
prejudices, but wholly ignorant of their times, and incapable of
learning. They were a clog on the Catholic party, and were chiefly
answerable for the reëstablishment of the Bonapartists and the present
Napoleonic Cæsarism in their beautiful country. However, they were
opposed to Louis Philippe, and ready to effect a change.
After the Legitimists, who were royalists and opposed to the existing
government, came the Republicans, moderate and immoderate; the moderates
having for their organ _Le National_, the immoderates _La Réforme_.
These, however, were all opposed to monarchy, whether in the elder or
younger branch of the Bourbons, and wished the _république_,—some, as
Lamartine, Arago, with the Girondins, those phrase-mongers of the old
revolution, the république of the respectables, of the Bourgeoisie,
attorneys, professors, and hommes de lettres; others, such as
Ledru-Rollin, and the Montagnards, a république démocratique, une et
indivisible, with Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, Danton, and Marat;
while others still, too numerous to mention, wished, with Barbeuf, La
République démocratique et sociale; and not a few wished no government,
no political or social order at all. These were the Subterraneans,
reformers after our own hearts, and on whom we chiefly operated, and
through whom we brought the odic force to bear on the revolutionary
movement.
Aside from all these, but ready to coöperate, for the moment, with any
or all of them, as would best serve their purposes, were the
Imperialists, the Bonapartists. After the fall of Napoleon, and the
Restoration of the Bourbons, the Bonapartists had affected liberal, I
may say, democratic ideas, and had lent their powerful influence
throughout Europe to democratize the public mind; and at the time of
which I speak, the chief of the family was very nearly an avowed
socialist, and was hand-and-glove with the Subterraneans. They knew well
that they could be healed only when the waters should be troubled; and,
whether they were troubled by an angel of light or an angel of darkness,
was a matter of perfect indifference, unless, indeed, they had more
confidence in the latter than in the former.
Add to these parties the intrigues of England, who could not forgive the
Spanish match, that crowning act of the Philippine policy, also the
illusions we were able to keep up as to the views and intentions of Pius
the Ninth, and it required no messenger from another world to announce
that France was on the eve of a tremendous convulsion; that the days of
the King of the Barricades were numbered; and that, whatever might be
the afterclap, the reigning dynasty must fall, with a crash that would
be reverberated throughout all Europe. The only care of our party was to
push forward in front the more moderate reformers, more especially the
dynastique reformers, while we organized a Subterranean force that would
drive them, in the moment of their success, beyond the point at which
they aimed, and compel them to accept the République, which, if
proclaimed at Paris, we felt certain that we could, during the panic
which would succeed, fasten upon the nation.
The history of the events that followed is well known, and need not be
repeated. The old king, in the moment of peril, proved that he was a
true Bourbon, incapable of a wise decision or an energetic act. All at
once he had a horror of bloodshed, sacrificed his ministry, called to
his council Thiers, Odillon-Barrot, and other dynastiques, who, vainly
imagining that their bare names would allay the storm which they still
more vainly imagined that they had conjured up, ordered the troops back
to their barracks, and gave up the king and his dynasty to the armed and
infuriated mob. The king abdicated; the Regency, under the Duchess of
Orleans, was scouted; the royal family scampered for their lives towards
England, that _refugium peccatorum_; monarchy was abolished; the
République was proclaimed; a provisional government was organized
impromptu, and a convention of delegates, to be chosen by universal
suffrage, was ordered to meet and give France a regular political
organization.
But a few days elapsed before the movement in Paris was followed by
insurrections in Berlin, Vienna, and a large number of the smaller
German states. The Italian peninsula was all in a blaze; democracy was
in the ascendant in all Europe, except Russia, Spain, Belgium, and
Holland. Hungary demanded independence of Austria; the Slavic
populations of the Austrian Empire at Prague and Agram were preparing to
join in a panslavic movement; Pius the Ninth was deprived of all freedom
of action, and held virtually imprisoned; Naples and Sicily were in full
revolt, and the king ready to concede every thing, and, Bourbon-like
thwarting every effort of his loyal subjects to protect him; Charles
Albert declared himself the sword of the Holy See; the Lombardo-Venetian
kingdom rejected Austrian supremacy, and chose him for king. He marched
at the head of his troops, swelled by contingents from all Italy, to
drive the barbarians back over the mountains, and to clear the peninsula
of every vestige of foreign dominion.
We were elated; we felt that success was sure, and that our grand
philanthropic World-Reform was on the point of being completely
realized. But alas! _homo proponit, Deus disponit_. The spirits had
deceived us. Pius the Ninth displayed a passive courage that we had not
counted on, and nothing could induce him to sanction the war against
Austria; and in spite of all we could do, it finally leaked out, that he
had not sanctioned it, and that the revolutionists had belied him, and
entirely misrepresented his principles, conduct, and wishes. Old
Radetzky, after retreating before Charles Albert till he had obtained
reënforcements, turned upon his pursuer, defeated him, and drove him,
with shame and loss, out of Lombardy. Prince Windishgrätz beat the
rebels in Prague; the lazzaroni flogged the republican heroes in Naples,
and the people seized the throne, in spite of its weak and pusillanimous
occupant. In fine, Cavaignac, after four days of hard fighting,
prostrated the Subterraneans of Paris, and became Dictator of the
Republic. We were no longer in the years of grace ’91, ’92, or ’93. The
age was not as far gone in unbelief as we had reckoned, and the friends
of religion and society were more numerous and more energetic than we
had believed.
Our hopes were damped, but not extinguished. We had thus far used the
Pope, but we could use him no longer, and we must get rid of him, and
completely secularize the Roman government. We had used the Italian
princes; we must now reject them, and abandon Gioberti for Mazzini. We
succeeded in wresting the government entirely from the Pope, but he
himself escaped us, and fled to Gaëta, which was a serious injury to our
cause. The Pope in exile is more powerful than in the Vatican. We meant
to have confined him in his palace, and held him as a puppet in our
hands, and still for a time continued the use of his name; but in this
his flight defeated us. We were obliged to proclaim the Roman Republic,
and the temporal deposition of the Pope, prematurely; but still we
hoped, as we took care not to touch his person or his spiritual
prerogatives, that we should not lose the sympathy of the Catholic
public.
But it was all in vain. Our magic failed us; a more powerful magician
than we intervened, and everywhere the reaction gained ground against
us. Austria, whom we thought we had disposed of, rose Antæus-like from
the ground; the Giobertians, predominant in the Subalpine kingdom, would
not own us. Florence was deserting us; Venice held out, indeed, but
Lombardy was chained by old Radetzky. Great Britain wished us well, gave
us good advice, but came not to our aid; and Spain and Portugal, that we
thought dead, suddenly started into life against us. Russia, though she
loved not the Papacy, detested us, and was ready to interpose to bring
Prussia to her senses, and to assist Austria. And last of all, the
French Republic, which we had been the principal agents in creating,
fearing the preponderance of Austria, and anxious to have an outpost in
the Eternal City, sent her troops against us.
It was in vain to struggle. I saw clearly that the battle was against
us, and that we should never succeed, by political and social
revolutions, in effecting our purpose; and I made up my mind at once to
have nothing more to do with them. I resolved to return home, and fall
back on what I have hinted as an ulterior project. It was in the Autumn
of 1849. The abortive attempt to reorganize the German Empire had
failed, and not to our regret, since we saw, if reorganized at all, it
would not be on democratic principles; the authority of St. Peter was
reëstablished at Rome; the Magyars were forever prostrated in Hungary,
and our friend Kossuth had taken refuge with his friends the Mussulmans,
and France was becoming an orderly government under the Presidency of
Louis Napoleon and the conservative majority of the Legislative
Assembly. There was nothing more that we could do.
It is true, that many of our friends thought differently from me, and
wished to continue the struggle; but I told them that, if they did, they
must do so without my active coöperation; that I should leave them to
their simple human strength, and they would find all their plans
miscarry. The time is not opportune. Christianity has yet a stronger
hold on the European populations than you or I had calculated, and the
Christian party can no longer be duped and made to fight for us. They
thrill with horror now to hear us say, “Christianity is democracy, and
Jesus Christ was the first democrat.” They are beginning to see, as
clearly as we do, that all this is at best absurd, and that our movement
is essentially anti-Christian. They see, they admit, they deplore a
certain number of political and social abuses; but they believe these
abuses more tolerable than the reforms we would effect.
We have given the bishops, the clergy, and the pious laity a horrid
fright; and you will see them, almost to a man, before three years
expire, exultingly consenting to the reëstablishment of pure Cæsarism,
in order to be relieved of their fears of us. Louis Napoleon will
succeed in making himself, almost with the unanimous voice of France,
proclaimed Emperor, with absolute, or virtually absolute power, with no
effective check on his arbitrary will; parliamentary government will be
scouted, as hardly a step removed from Subterranean democracy; free
discussion of public affairs will be closed; the press will be muzzled,
and no voice will be heard throughout the empire, save a voice in praise
or flattery of the new Emperor.
But herein is our consolation and our hope for the future. The new
Emperor will have to deal with Frenchmen; and he counts without his
host, if he thinks he can, for any great length of time, silence
thirty-six millions of French voices, or make them all speak one way.
Mortal man cannot do it. Satan himself could not do it; and only One,
whom we name not here, could do it. Now they are afraid of us, and have
had even an excess of talk. They will consent for a time, even as a
novelty, to be silent, or shout, as an admirable change, _Vive l’
Empereur_, instead of _Vive la République démocratique et sociale_,—_à
bas les Démocrates_, instead of _à bas l’ Aristocrates_, or _l’
Aristocrates à la lantern_, and _à bas les socialistes_, instead of _à
bas les Rois_. But rely upon it, that after a brief repose, these same
Frenchmen will be desirous of _mouvement_, and will by no means be
pleased to find themselves doomed to the silence and stillness of death.
Then will be our time once more, and perhaps then we may be more
successful. Till then I engage no more in political and social reforms.
I shall take myself to that which underlies all political and social
ideas, and slowly, perhaps, but surely, prepare a glorious future. You
will hear from me again, or if not, you will feel the influence of what
I shall do.
With remarks like these, I took my leave of my European revolutionary
friends. I communicated to Priscilla, who had faithfully served me
throughout the time I had been abroad, and powerfully contributed to
such successes as we had had, my design of returning home. We were in
Paris. She would, perhaps, have rather returned to Rome. She had, in
fact, began to droop, and to be weary of the part I had forced her to
play. She had, during our stay in Rome, become a mother, and new
feelings and affections had been awakened in her heart. Her husband had
treated her kindly, forbearingly, but he had much changed, and no longer
favored philanthropy or reform, and it was rumored that he had become
devout. Priscilla evidently began to turn to him with something
approaching the love and esteem she owed him, and would gladly have
broken her _liaison_ with me. But I would not hear of it; she must
return with me.
CHAPTER XV.
THE ULTERIOR PROJECT.
It may be asked why I wished Priscilla to return with me, against her
will, since I had no passion for her, and respected the honor of her
husband. I wished it partly from spite, and partly because it was
necessary to my purpose. She had induced me, or had had more influence
to induce me than any one else, to embark in a cause which I loathed,
and which at the same time I felt myself totally unable to abandon, and
I wished to make her suffer with me. Then, again, I could do nothing
without an accomplice, and that accomplice a woman. I travelled abroad
in the character of a simple American gentleman, not as a mesmerizer, a
magician, or one who commands invisible powers. Nobody abroad, or even
at home, ever suspected me, unless it was good old Mr. Cotton, of any
thing of the sort. In all cases when the mysterious force was to be
exerted, as long as she was connected with me, I employed Priscilla as
my agent. I gave her my orders, which she, without exciting any
suspicion against her or myself, seldom failed to execute to the letter.
Even after her own views and feelings began to change, and she felt the
slavery and degradation of her position, she dared not disobey me. She
stood in awe of my power, and knew well the merciless punishment that
awaited her. Often, often has she begged me, with tears and in the
deepest agony, to undo my spell over her, and to let her go free. I
would not. Had she not declared her spirit eternally wedded to mine? The
truth is, I was half afraid to undo the spell, and emancipate her. She
knew too many of my secrets, might expose me, and defeat all my plans;
and once freed from me, once restored to the empire of reason, she would
feel herself bound in conscience to do so; and when a woman once takes
it into her head to act from conscience, she is, whether she have a good
or a false conscience, as unmanageable as if she were in love. She is as
headstrong under conscience as under passion, and of course absolutely
uncontrollable, because in either case she uses her reason simply in the
service of her feelings. Then, again, I did not like accepting a new
accomplice.
Priscilla, not daring to resist, finally persuaded her husband to
consent to return home. We crossed the Channel to England, and hastened
to embark at Liverpool on board a steamer for New York. We had a stormy
passage, and came near being cast away; but at length arrived in port,
and soon found ourselves in Philadelphia, after an absence of six years
and six months amidst scenes and events of the most exciting character.
We were all changed in looks, but still more in feelings. The fire of
our enthusiasm was extinct, the freshness and sanguine hopes of youth
had fled forever; our labor had been in vain, and there was no bright or
cheering prospect before us. I took my leave of Priscilla at the
public-house where we stopped. When I saw her faded cheek, her sunken
eye and withered form, the wrinkles gathering on her brow, and heard
her, in a broken voice, renew her oft-repeated request, and remembered
what she was some ten or twelve years before, and thought of what I was
too at that time, and what I was now, I had a touch of human feeling,
and pressing her hand to my lips—I had not the heart to refuse—I told
her I would consider it, perhaps I would, and hurried out of the room,
to conceal my emotion, not sorry, after all, to find that I had not
wholly ceased to be human.
The next day, I started for my home in Western New York. Home, alas! no
longer. The house was desolate. During my prolonged absence, my mother
and my only sister had died, and all my family were gone. My library and
my laboratory remained as I had left them. They had no charms for me
now. I looked out upon the familiar scenes of my childhood; they seemed
changed all, and were tame and listless. I met some companions of my
earlier life; there was nothing in common between them and me. Their
voices sounded strange, and grated on my ears. The sad conviction, for
the first time in my life, forced itself upon me, that I was alone, and
deeply I felt my loneness. I had lost my childhood’s faith, which,
though meagre and but a shadow, yet was something. I had no Father in
heaven, no brother or sister on earth. I believed in neither angel nor
spirit. All existence, all being, had dwindled into one invisible,
elemental, impersonal Force, which indeed I could wield, but to what
end?
In my loneness, I felt that the vulgar belief in the devil, in ghosts,
and goblins damned, would be a solace. They would be something, and any
thing is better than nothing. Better is a living dog than a dead lion.
Alas, I had sold myself, and my redemption was far off. Strange enough,
I felt something like passion revive in my guilty breast. I felt, I even
regretted Priscilla’s absence; and it seemed that she was dear to me,
and that I could not endure life without her. I pictured her to myself
as I had first known her, and I wept as I remembered how for long years
I had enslaved her. A voice whispered in my heart, emancipate her. A
momentary feeling of generosity possessed me. I summoned her, as I knew
how, to my presence. She appeared, instantaneously.
“Priscilla,” said I, “I am sad and weary. Life has lost its charms for
me, and I care not how soon I die. I have nothing to live for. You are a
wife and a mother. I absolve you from your pact; be free; return, and
devote yourself to your husband, who is worthy of you, and to your boy.
I have, and will no longer have, power over you.”
A gleam of joy spread over her face, a smile of gratitude played on her
lips, and a look of love shot from her eyes, and the place where she
stood was vacant. She had vanished; but a chattering, as of a thousand
mocking voices, filled my room, and then impish, mocking faces were seen
all around, making mouths at me. I cared not for these. I silenced the
former, and sent away the latter with a word. I retained my magic force
still. But there was joy as well as sorrow in that house in Arch street,
Philadelphia. Priscilla, the day of returning to her own house, had been
taken ill; her husband was alarmed, and called a physician, who could
understand nothing of her case. She grew worse and worse; and during the
time I had summoned her to me, she fell into a sort of stupor, a
complete trance, and to all except her husband, who had seen her in that
state before, and knew that she was subject to trances, she seemed to be
dead. The moment I had absolved her, she came to herself, a sweet smile
on her face, with the hue of perfect health. She arose in bed, embraced
her husband with a warmth and sincerity of affection which he had never
before known, and for the first time since his birth looked upon her boy
with the glad joy of a mother’s heart. But at this moment her husband
was more to her than her babe. She hung on his neck, she pressed him to
her heart, she half-smothered him with kisses, spoke in the terms and
tones of the tenderest and sweetest affection, and it seemed as if she
would pour out upon him, in a single moment, the loaded affections of a
lifetime. “My dear husband, you must forget and forgive the past. I am
yours, yours now, yours alone; heart, soul, and body, forever. The spell
is broken. The delusion is gone; take me, take me, dear James, to your
heart.”
James was a man. He had been dazzled by the beauty and accomplishments
of Priscilla, and thought it enough to be accepted as her husband,
without much scrutiny into the state of her affections. She had, for a
moment, imposed upon him, and he had accepted her notions of woman’s
rights, philanthropy, and world reform. But he did not lack good sense;
he had even a strong mind, firm principles at bottom, and all the
elements of an upright, manly character. A few months’ practical
experience served to cure him of a good deal of his philanthropy, and to
damp the ardor of his zeal for reform. He was, of course, displeased
with my intimacy with Priscilla, and he owed me, it must be owned, no
good will. But his observation pretty soon satisfied him, that whatever
the bond of that intimacy, it was not what directly affected his honor
as a husband, and he resolved that he would seem not to regard it. It
was a bitter trial to him.
His tour abroad, his observation, and his conversations with gentlemen
and ladies, not always of our clique, had opened his eyes to many
things, and made him a stanch conservative. He abandoned all the loose
notions he had previously entertained, renounced his Quaker quietism,
and had become sincerely converted to a real objective Christian faith.
His first thought and care were to reclaim his wife, and, if possible,
to release her from the mysterious power which I seemed to have over
her. He found her as anxious to be released as he was to release her,
and he thought he discovered in her, at times, a growing affection for
himself. It was a difficult case to manage, but he thought it best to be
prudent and discreet, and to avoid every thing that could excite remark,
or that he himself might afterwards regret.
Feeling now that he had himself not been entirely free from blame, that
he was bound to be forgiving, that Priscilla was really his wife, the
mother of his child, and that she probably was freed, though he knew not
how, and did now really love him, he responded with a warmth nearly
equal to her own, to her strong expressions of love, frankly forgave her
all, and pressed her to his heart as his own, his truly beloved wife. It
was for both the happiest moment they had ever known, and in that one
moment James seemed to have been compensated for his patience,
forbearance, and suffering, for so many years.
Priscilla immediately regained her health and cheerfulness, and
resolved, if possible, to recover me from the bondage in which she knew
I was held. How she sped in this, and what new trials, if any, awaited
her, will appear as I proceed in my narrative.
My own feeling of loneness, of desolation, was not relieved by my
release of the woman I had so long held spell-bound, but was aggravated
by the constant annoyance of a passion which I had seldom before
experienced, or which, without much trouble, I had always been able to
subdue. As Priscilla became purified and less unworthy of her husband,
and as she seemed the more completely to have escaped me and to be lost
to me forever, the more did I feel that I could not live without her,
and the more impossible did I find it quietly to endure her absence. I
was mad. I called her. The charm was broken, and she came not; I saw
only a vague, undefined form, flit before my eyes, and heard only a wild
mocking laugh.
Weeks passed, but they seemed ages. Priscilla, in all her loveliness, in
all her gracefulness and dignity, in all the brilliancy of youth and
beauty, was constantly present to my morbid fancy by day, and to my
dreams at night. I was completely unmanned,—wept now as a child over a
lost toy, or now raved as a madman. I could not eat, I could not sleep.
I could endure it no longer. I sold my house and furniture, disposed of
my laboratory and scientific apparatus, packed up my library, and
resolved that henceforth I would take up my residence in Philadelphia.
I had no sooner established myself in my new home, than I called in Arch
street to see Priscilla. Instead of her I found James. He received me
civilly, even kindly, conversed with me of what we had seen abroad, but
Priscilla did not appear. No matter, I would call again. Did so; saw
Priscilla only in presence of her husband. She was looking well, was
affectionate in her tone and manner, but offered me not her hand, and
seemed to take care that I should not so much as touch her dress. Well,
said I to myself, be it so. The weakness shall last no longer. I will be
myself again, and resume the project I had contemplated. I went home,
not cured, but resolved, and immediately commenced my evocation, and
communicated my orders to all the circles I had established throughout
Europe.
I have already hinted what this new project was. It was clear to me,
from my historical reading and my personal observations amid the
exciting scenes of the more recent European revolutions, that the grand
support of social order, and what I have somewhere called the system of
restraint and repression, is Christianity, and that the political and
social reformers can never fully carry out their reforms till they have
totally rooted out from modern society all belief in the Gospel, and all
peculiar reverence for its Author. This is more than hinted by Mazzini
and Kossuth, although the latter is a vice-president of the American
Bible Society, boldly avowed by M. Proudhon, and stoutly contended for
by the German Turnverein and Freimänner. If you concede the Christian
idea of God, says Proudhon, you must at once and forever abandon your
idea of liberty.
It was equally clear to me, that the attempt, by means of political
organizations, and revolutions directed against the papacy, or any
church organization, Catholic or Protestant, to root out Christianity
from the hearts of the people, must at last prove a failure. After all,
there is a natural religiosity in man, and though he will often restrain
and mortify it, and act only in view of purely secular ends,—practically
live as if there were no God, and no hereafter,—he will almost always
return to the order of religious ideas, and adopt or institute some kind
of religious worship to which he will subordinate his political ideas,
and his secular ends. An Epicurus may deny Providence, a Lucretius may
sing, in no mean poetry, that it is impossible, “_revocare defunctos_,”
and even Cicero may laugh at augurs and aruspices, and doubt the
immortality of the soul, yet the sentiment of an invisible Force, of a
mysterious Power that overshadows us, is universal, and the sceptical
philosopher feels an indefinable shudder of awe, perhaps of fear,
whenever he finds himself alone in the dark. Everywhere the shades of
Acheron wander or flit around and before him.
Even in the midst of our pleasures the thought of the invisible and the
supernal intrude unbidden to mar our festivities, and to dash our joy
with an indefinable sadness, shame, and remorse. Even a Voltaire
trembles and blasphemes in dying, at the thought of being denied
Christian burial, and a Volney, who resolves God into blind Nature, and
Christianity into astrology or astronomy, prays lustily to the God he
disowns, in a storm on Lake Erie. Do what we will, we cannot divest
ourselves of the belief or apprehension of invisible powers, who hold
our destiny in their hands; and a people absolutely without any
religion, or at least superstition, is never to be found.
Never had unbelievers a fairer chance for rooting out Christianity by
political and social revolutions, than in the eighteenth century. The
laugh was everywhere against religion and the clergy, a decided
materialistic and infidel philosophy pervaded literature, possessed the
schools, ruled in the courts, and domineered over thought and intellect.
There was lukewarmness in the religious, there were scandals among the
clergy, there were abuses in the state, and therefore an imperious call
for reform. The reformers directed all their movements against religion,
and their means were democratic and social revolution. They were strong,
they were overwhelming in their power. At their bidding, down went
throne and altar, and in ten years the religion they had abolished was
reëstablished, the churches they had closed were reopened at the order
of the soldier they had made their chief, and for democracy in the state
they had an incipient Cæsarism, which, two years later, became a fully
developed and perfect Cæsarism. The same result had followed our own
movement. In January, 1850, religion was far more vigorous in Europe,
than in January, 1840, and democracy at a far greater discount.
It was idle, then, to hope either to destroy political and social
authority in the name of absolute unbelief and irreligion, or to root
out Christianity by political and social movements. Christianity could
be eradicated only by means of a rival religion, and a religion which
could appeal to a supernatural origin, and sustain itself by prodigies,
or what the vulgar would regard as miracles. I had suspected this from
the beginning, and resolved now, that instead of working with the purely
secular passions of men, I would make my appeal to their religiosity.
Mahomet, in the seventh century, had done this admirably for his time
and the East, but had incautiously fixed his superstition in the Koran,
and made it unalterable, and therefore incapable of adapting itself to
the new face which things might assume in the vicissitude of events, the
development of society, and the progress of the race.
Swedenborg had done better, and so had Joe Smith, but neither had
sufficiently provided for the progressiveness of the race, or with
sufficient explicitness consecrated the principle of innovation and
change, and both had retained too many conceptions taken from the old
religion. Yet Swedenborg was to be taken as our starting point, and we
were only to avoid his mistakes, the principal of which was a too strict
and rigid church organization.
When I returned from Europe, I found the directions I had given, before
going abroad, had been pretty faithfully followed; and mesmeric
revelations, through Andrew Jackson Davis, and spiritual communications,
through the Foxes, were beginning to attract public attention. The
spirits were becoming exceedingly anxious to communicate, and made, as
it was supposed, many important revelations. In a few months, spiritual
knockings were becoming quite common, and mediums were found in all
parts of the country. At first, intercourse with the spirits was
obtained only in the somnambulic state, or through the slow and toilsome
medium of raps, but at the same time intimations and assurances were
given that before a great while a more easy and direct method of
communication would be vouchsafed; but, as yet, the public and
individuals were not prepared for that more direct method. The spirits
were willing, but the mediums were not sufficiently advanced, nor
sufficiently spiritualized; and the public was too gross, too
materialistic, and too sceptical. As soon as minds should become more
refined, spiritual, and believing, open vision would be permitted them,
and easy and regular communication would be established, and whoever
wished would have as free and familiar intercourse with the spirit-world
as with the world of the flesh.
At first the great object was to establish the reality of the spiritual
communications. This was to be done by the communication of secrets,
either known only to the interrogator, or incapable of being known to
the medium in any ordinary human or natural way. Sometimes the spirits
played the part of fortune-tellers; sometimes they assumed to be
prophets, and ventured to predict future events, but always events which
either depended on them, or lay in the natural order, and which a
knowledge of natural causes and effects could easily enable them to
foresee.
As the spiritual intercourse extended, and believers multiplied, the
somnambulic and rapping mediums ceased to be the only mediums. The
artificial somnambulic mediums, or mesmerized mediums, disappeared
almost wholly, and to the rapping mediums were added writing mediums and
speaking mediums, and in some instances the spirits became actually
visible to the seers, and telegraphed their messages by visible symbols,
and occasionally in words. Spiritual telegraphing, in some one or all
these ways, became, in a few months, common in all parts of the country;
and, at the expiration of two years, there were three hundred spiritual
circles or clubs in the single city of Philadelphia, and more than half
a million of believers in the United States. The epidemic had broken out
in the North of England and Wales, had spread all over Norway, Denmark,
and Sweden, and Northern and Central Germany, penetrated France in all
directions, and made its appearance even at Rome. In France and Italy,
where the population is either profoundly Christian or profoundly
infidel, the spiritual manifestation had to adopt more discreet and less
startling forms than in our own and some other countries, and to give
place at first to doubt whether it was not mere trickery, or explicable
on recognized scientific principles; and confined itself, to a great
extent, to the phenomena of table-turning, which excited curiosity
without alarming conscience. In France, in the most polished,
fashionable, and, I may almost say, most Catholic society, table-turning
became an amusement.
The next point to be attended to, was the doctrines, the philosophy or
religion, that the spirits were to teach. It would not do to attack the
Gospel too openly, and it was necessary to undermine, rather than to
bombard it. In some respects even, it was advisable to seem to confirm,
as it were by one rising from the dead, some portions of Christian
belief,—such as the immortality of the soul, and the reality of an
invisible spirit-world. The latter was doubted by the free-thinkers; but
it was essential to my project that the free-thinkers, in this respect,
should be converted, for their conversion and acknowledgment of belief
in God and a spirit-world would do much to commend our spiritualism to a
large body of silly and ill-informed Christian believers, who, seeing
such apparently good effects resulting from it, would conclude that
there could be nothing bad in it. By their fruits shall ye know them.
In the American community, to a very great extent, the belief in the
immortality of the soul is supposed to be identical with the belief in
the resurrection of the dead, taught by Christianity; and our
Unitarians, with their rationalistic erudition, very generally hold that
the peculiar and distinctive doctrine taught by our Lord was the
immortality of the soul. But the immortality of the soul was believed by
the whole ancient world, Gentile as well as Jewish; and, though
questioned by some ancient and modern sophists, there never has been
found a people who, as a body, were ignorant of it, or that denied it.
All the ancient, as all modern superstitions recognize it. All believe
the soul is imperishable, though many suppose it will be absorbed in the
Great Fountain of Life, as a drop in the ocean—a misinterpretation of
the Christian doctrine of union with God in the Light of Glory, as the
ultimate end or final beatitude of the just. The doubt was as to the
body, or the _umbra_, the material envelope and companion and external
medium of the soul in this life. The gross outward body they believed
returned to dust, and mingled with its kindred elements; but this
_umbra_, shade, the manes of the dead, which all antiquity carefully
distinguished from the soul, was also, for the most part, believed to be
imperishable; but its reunion with the soul, I do not find the heathen
world ever clearly asserting. In other words, the ancient heathen world,
though it retained the primitive belief in the immortality of the soul,
had lost belief in the resurrection of the body, and the reunion of soul
and body, or at least only retained some traces of it in their doctrine
of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls.
The peculiar Christian doctrine, or the doctrine so insisted on by the
Apostles, was not the immortality of the soul, which was always
presupposed, but the resurrection of the dead, the return to life, not
of that which had not ceased to live, but of that which had died, to
wit, the body. Hence the article in the Apostles’ Creed is not, I
believe the immortality of the soul, but, I believe the resurrection of
the body, _resurrectionem carnis_, the resurrection of the flesh; and to
this belief, it must be remarked, that the spirit-manifestations afford
no confirmation, and indeed they virtually contradict it.
The distinguishing trait of Christian morality is charity, which is
distinguished from philanthropy or benevolence, as a supernaturally
infused virtue is distinguished from a mere human sentiment, but, in the
minds of but too many of those who call themselves Christians, really
confounded with it. The spirits were then, under the name of charity, to
teach a philanthropic, sentimental, and purely human morality, for in
doing so, they would seem to the mass of superficial Christians to be
confirming the distinctive trait of Christian morality, and at the same
time appealing to the morbid spirit of the age.
Bald, naked Universalism is not popular; but there is a very general
disbelief, among the leading men of the times, in the old orthodox
doctrines of heaven and hell, of the last judgment, the everlasting
punishment of the wicked, or that our eternal state is fixed by that in
which we die. Swedenborg had greatly modified these doctrines, and
taught that the punishment of the wicked is purely negative; that men
are in hell only inasmuch as they are not in harmony with God; and not
to be in harmony with God, that is, good, is to be out of the Divine
protection, and exposed to all the sufferings incident to our
abandonment to the natural order of things. He had also recognized
different heavens, rising one above another, and different hells, one
below another; and had hinted or asserted the possibility of the
inhabitants of each improving, and advancing in wisdom and virtue, by
their intercourse with the inhabitants of this world. He had himself
even instructed angels, and assisted feeble and undeveloped souls. Here
were the germs of all that was required. The spirits were to teach that
there are different circles in the other world, into which souls are
admitted according to their respective tastes and degrees of
development, with the chance to rise in due time, if faithful, from the
lowest to the highest. In the lower circles, they are improved by
intercourse with us, as we are ourselves improved by intercourse with
spirits of the higher circle.
The dominant doctrine of our age is that of progress; that the universe
started from certain rude and imperfect beginnings, and, by a continued
series of developments and transformations, is eternally advancing
towards perfection, without however reaching it; and that man,
beginning, if not in the oyster or the tadpole, at least in a feeble and
helpless infancy, develops and advances towards perfect manhood. This
doctrine, which a few facts in natural history, in geology, and
anthropology, at first sight seem to favor, is at bottom wholly
repugnant to the Christian doctrine of a fixed creed, of final repose or
beatitude in God, of final causes, and the final consummation of all
things. So the spirits are to accept it, systematize it, and propose, as
the highest reward of virtue, to be placed on the plane of eternal
progression.
The age is indifferent, syncretic, and disposed to accept all religions
and superstitions as true under certain aspects, and as false under
others, and to pronounce one about as good and about as bad as another.
The spirits, therefore, make no direct war on any of them. In some
places they teach that the Catholic Church is the truest and best of
prevailing religions, but that Protestantism is nevertheless a safe way
of salvation, and that the spirits do not, in the other world, think so
much about differences of churches and creeds, as they did when in this
world. In other places they teach that the Catholic Church is false;
that it is wicked, the enemy of moral and social progress, and that
effectual means should be taken to prevent its extension in the United
States. They do not deny the Bible, nor affirm its inspiration, but
take, to a great extent, the neological view of it, conceding it to be
truthful in many respects, but maintaining it to be unreliable in
others. It was very well when men had nothing better, and no surer means
of information in regard to the spirit-world.
Such is a brief outline of the new religion, which was intended to
supplant Christianity, and to open the way for that “good time a
coming,” for which all our philanthropists and reformers are looking, as
any one may satisfy himself by reading the _Shekinah_, the _Spiritual
Telegraph_, or Judge Edmands’s work, from the prolific press of
Partridge & Brittan, New York. This new religion, which, indeed,
contains nothing new, and which it certainly needed no ghost from the
other world to teach or to suggest, would amount to very little if
promulgated on mere human authority, unsupported by any prodigies,
mysterious or marvellous facts; but, communicated mysteriously from
alleged denizens of another world, bearing the imposing names of William
Penn, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas
Paine, assumes in the minds of the vulgar a high importance, and can
hardly fail to be regarded as overriding Moses and the prophets, our
Lord and his Apostles. It strikes at the foundation of Christianity
itself, and once accepted, it will seem to have a directness and a
completeness of evidence that will entirely set aside, in the minds of
the spiritualists, that in favor of the Gospel. This is what I intended,
and what I hoped.
Having set the so-called spirits in motion, and through them set afloat
a system which I fancied would supplant Christianity, whether in its
Catholic or its sounder Protestant forms, my work seemed done, and I
could retire from my labors. My superintendence was no longer necessary,
and whether the agents I employed were really the spirits or souls of
the dead, as they themselves asserted, or mere elemental forces of
nature, as I was inclined to believe or had wished to persuade myself,
became to me a question of no interest. The work would go on of itself
now, and in a few years Christianity and the Church would be undermined
and fall of themselves. Then monarchy, aristocracy, republicanism, all
forms of civil government, would crumble to pieces, and universal
freedom, leaving every one to believe and do what seems right in his own
eyes, will be realized, and all here, as well as those not here, will be
placed on the plane of eternal progression—progression towards—what?
CHAPTER XVI.
A REBUFF.
I asked not the question, for in fact it did not occur to me; but I
asked another question, What shall I do with myself? A grave question
this. Do what I would, turn the matter over as I might, there was, now
the novelty of the idea had worn off, nothing inspiring in this idea of
eternal progression;—this ever learning, and never coming to the
knowledge of the truth—this everlasting chase after good, and never
coming up with it. Why continue a pursuit which you know beforehand will
bring you never any nearer the object than you are, for as you pursue,
it flies. Is not this evil rather than good, hell rather than heaven? Is
not this the punishment of Ixion?—That war of the Titans upon the gods,
has it not a deep significance? The Titans, the Giants, the Earthborn,
_Terræ filii_, would dethrone the gods, the heaven-born, the divine, and
were defeated and doomed to punishment, to turn forever a wheel, to roll
a huge stone up the steep hill, and just as it is about to reach the
summit, have it slip from the hands and roll down with a thundering
sound; to a task never completed, and always to be renewed, or to
hunger, with food ever in sight, and always just beyond reach; to
thirst, standing to the neck in water, and have it recede always as
approached with the lips. Is not, after all, this the doom that they
bring on themselves who reject the wisdom from above and follow what my
friend Mr. Merton calls the wisdom from below?
I can very well understand progress towards an end, towards a goal that
is fixed and permanent, but a progress towards nothing, or towards a
movable goal, a goal that recedes as approached, is to me quite
unintelligible, and, when I think of it, it seems as absurd as the
supposition of an infinite series. Infinite progression is, in reality,
an infinite absurdity. The origin and end of all things must be perfect,
fixed, and immovable. Every mechanic knows that he cannot generate
motion without a something which is at rest, which can cause or produce
motion without moving itself. Without the immovable, there is and can be
no movable. In like manner, no motion towards what is not immovable, for
if the two bodies remain in the same position relative to each other,
neither, in relation to the other, has moved.
Progress is morally motion towards an end, and if there is no
approximation to the end, there is no progress. As progress is
inconceivable without some end, so it is equally inconceivable without a
shortening of the distance between the progressing agent and the end. If
this distance can be shortened, however little, if not more than a line
in a million of ages, it is not infinite, and the progress cannot be
eternal. This infinite or eternal progression is, then, only a lying
dream.
At the bottom of this idea of progress, which our modern reformers prate
about, is the foolish notion that man is born an inchoate, an incipient
God, and that his destiny is to grow into or become the infinite God;
that he is to grow or develop into the Almighty; that, to be God, is his
ultimate destiny; and, as God is infinite, he is to be eternally
developing and realizing more and more of God, without ever realizing
him in his infinity. The bubble does not burst and lose itself in the
ocean, but by virtue of its bubbleosity it grows and absorbs more and
more of the ocean into itself.
I cannot understand this eternal absorbing process, which, though always
absorbing or assimilating, leaves always the same quantity, physical or
moral, to be absorbed or assimilated. It is impossible to be satisfied
with such a destiny. To be always seeking and never finding, to be
always desiring, craving, and never filled, is not heaven, it is hell,
and the severest hell, in comparison with which the pain of sense, or
natural fire and brimstone were a solace. Man is not moved to act by
desire. His desire to attain must become hope of attaining, before it
can move him, and when you deprive him of that hope, you take from him
all courage, all energy, and all motive to act. Desire to possess the
beloved, may remain and torment the lover, but it can never suffice to
make him continue his pursuit when all hope of success has been
extinguished. I do not say love cannot survive hope, but I do say that
love’s efforts cannot, and it is seldom that even love itself does.
The Christian is stimulated to constant activity, not by charity or love
of God alone, but by hope; and the hope of possessing God, of being
filled with his love, of reposing in the arms of all-sufficing charity,
stimulates onward from grace to grace, and from one degree of perfection
to another. Though he finds not yet perfect repose, though he is not yet
filled, though he has not yet attained, yet he is upheld, buoyed up and
onward by the sure promise, the steadfast hope of attaining, of at last
finding repose, rest in the bosom of his love and his God. He may feel
the clogs of flesh, he may feel that he is absent from his love, and
sigh to reach his home and embrace the spouse of his soul, but he grows
not weary, faints not, and knows nothing of the _ennui_, that
listlessness of spirit, that disgust of life, and disrelish for every
pursuit, which he feels who has no object, no hope, and sees not even in
the most distant future any chance of finding that fulness and repose
which his soul never ceases in this life to crave. In losing sight of
God as final cause, in losing the hope of possessing God as the supreme
good, in substituting endless progression for endless beatitude, full
and complete, I had lost all stimulus to exertion, all motive to exert
myself for any thing.
Why should I act? What had I to gain? Money I did not want; I had more
than I could use. Fame I despised. It was a mere word, born and dying in
the very sound that made it. Power, I had it. If I had more, it could
procure me nothing more than I already possessed. Pleasures? The richest
dishes and the most precious wines palled upon my taste. There remained
another kind of pleasure; but we can even grow weary of women, and
loathe what the morbid senses continue to crave. Still nothing else
remained for me. Yet I had outlived love in any virtuous or innocent
sense of the word, and early training, and some remains of self-respect,
made any other love far more of a torment than a pleasure.
The simple truth was, that I could reconcile myself neither to the
philosophy of the Portico nor the philosophy of the Garden, and was
alike disgusted with the Cynics and the Academicians. I was a man, and
could not live on air, or feed on garbage; I had a soul, and could not
satisfy it by living for the body alone, and having no God, no heaven,
no hope of beatitude, and no fear of hell, I saw nothing to seek,
nothing to gain, and I could only exclaim, _Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia
vanitas_. I could not say, with young and thoughtless sinners, in the
heyday of their youth, and the full flow of their animal spirits,—“Come
on, therefore, and let us enjoy the good things that are present, let us
use the creatures as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine
and ointments, and let not the flower of the spring pass by us. Let us
crown ourselves with roses before they be withered, and let no meadow
escape our riot. Let none of us go without his part in voluptuousness,
and let us leave tokens of our joy in every place, for this is our
portion and our lot.” For of all vanities I had learned that this was
the most empty. Even the devil himself is said to loathe the sensualist,
and to find his stench intolerable. Still Priscilla—I had lost her
perhaps. That touched my pride. We often grieve that lost, which
possessed, was not valued.
CHAPTER XVII.
A GLEAM OF HOPE.
I had not seen Priscilla for over a year, and had struggled hard against
the madness that possessed me. Finding myself out of work, having
completed what I had undertaken, as far as depended on me, I felt that
passion, which I even loathed, reviving within me. Nothing would do but
I must see my former accomplice again. I called as an old friend, and
this time found her alone. She received me with ease, grace, and
cordiality.
There are those who believe that a woman who has once lost even the
modesty and chastity of thought, can never regain them, and become a
truly modest and pure-minded woman. They are greatly mistaken. The
Magdalene had fallen lower than that, and yet those were pure tears with
which she washed our Lord’s feet, and but one purer heart than hers beat
in the breasts of those holy women who stood near the cross, and heard
the loud cry of the God-Man, as he bowed his head and consummated the
world’s redemption. The Fountain, which that rude soldier opened with
his spear that day, suffices to cleanse from the deepest filth, to wash
away the foulest stains, and to make clean and fragrant the most
polluted soul. O ye fallen ones, whether women or men, bathe in that
fountain! and if your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as
snow, and if they be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool.
I had never seen Priscilla more beautiful. The bloom had returned to her
cheek; her form had regained its roundness, and her complexion its
richness. Her eyes were serene and tranquil, and her countenance wore a
sweet, pure, and peaceful expression. She had no need to fear me at that
moment, for I stood, not repelled, but awed, and felt myself in the
presence of virtue, not haughty, austere, and repellant, but lovely,
chaste, and affectionate; natural, easy, and wholly unconscious of
itself.
“I am glad to see you, Doctor,” said she, with a sweet smile. “Sit down.
I have been hoping that you would call, but I was afraid that you had
entirely deserted us.”
“You are changed, Priscilla, since I last saw you; and I should think my
presence would now be even more disagreeable than then.”
“Not at all. I was never more glad to see you in my life, and I never
met you with kinder or more pleasant feelings.”
I did not understand this speech, and began to draw, in my own mind,
certain very foolish conclusions.
“Yes,” she resumed, “I wished to see you, and to see you as I now do,
alone. It is of no use referring to what we were for so many years to
each other; but I wanted to tell you that I did you no little wrong. You
were not innocent, but I was the most guilty. We were both miserable;
and you, you, my dear friend, are unhappy still.”
“I make no complaint. Nobody has heard me whine or whimper over my own
lot. If I have suffered, I have done so in silence.”
“That may be. But you have not forgotten our sojourn at Rome in the
winter of 1848-49?”
“Forgotten it? no, and shall not, as long as I live.”
“Do you remember an old Franciscan monk, that my husband concealed in
our house for some weeks?”
“I do.”
“He was an old man, nearly fourscore. His head was almost perfectly
bald, only a few gray hairs escaped from beneath his _calotte_, and
partially shaded his temples; his form, which had been tall and manly,
was now bent with years, labors, and mortifications; but his feelings
seemed as fresh and playful as those of a child; and the expression of
his face was calm, sweet, and affectionate. It was a peculiar
expression, not often met with, but like that which, you may remember,
we one day remarked in the face of Pius the Ninth. It was an expression
of exceeding peace and celestial love, of a pure and holy soul shining
through a pure and chaste body. The expression is indescribable, but
once seen, can never be forgotten, and seems to be that which Italian
painters seek to give to their saints, especially to the Madonna.
“This venerable old man had, as you may recollect, been denounced, by
the Circulo del Populo, as an obscurantist, an enemy to the republic,
and an adherent to the Pontifical authority. It was intended to include
him in the number of priests and religious massacred at San Callisto. My
husband had formed an acquaintance with him, and, having learned his
danger, smuggled him into our house, where it was presumed nobody would
think of looking for a proscribed priest.”
“I remember him; I did not at all like him, and, had I cared much about
him, would have betrayed him to the Club; for I had the wish of Voltaire
in my heart, that ‘the last king might be strangled with the guts of the
last priest.’ But, as he seemed old and harmless, and generally kept out
of my way, I let him pass.”
“He was a quiet, inoffensive man, and I own I was not sorry that he
should escape the cruel death to which philanthropists and sworn friends
of liberty doomed so many of his brethren. I was not cruel by nature,
and my soul recoiled from the part I was often compelled to take. I
thought it was hardly consistent for us, who advocated unbounded freedom
of thought and action, to send the dagger to the heart, or coolly sever
the carotid artery in the neck of those who chose to think and act
differently from us; but I was held then by a force I could not resist.”
“You mean, Priscilla, now to reproach me.”
“No, my friend, no; I reproach only myself. Had I not originally
consented, no power could have held me in that terrible thraldom. The
agents you employed have no such power over us against our will; though,
when we have once assented to their dominion, it is not always in our
own power alone to reassert our liberty. My husband grew very fond of
the venerable old man, and they spent hours, and even days, together.
What was the subject of their conversation, I knew not, and did not
inquire.
“You returned to Paris, to prevent, if possible, the French from
interfering to suppress the Roman Republic, by organizing a new
insurrection of the Subterraneans, and by reminding the Prince-President
of his previous republican and socialistic professions, and making it
evident to him that the reëstablishment of the Pope would be fatal to
the supremacy of the state, whether republican or imperial. During your
absence you left me tranquil, and I began, for the first time since my
marriage, to enjoy the sweets and tranquillity of domestic life. The
good Franciscan would sometimes spend an evening with me and my husband.
He was of a childlike simplicity, and of most winning manners, but a man
of a cultivated mind, extensive information, and various and profound
erudition. He discoursed much on the old Roman Republic and Empire, on
the grasping ambition and tyranny of the government, the hollowness of
the Roman virtues and the old Roman people, the cruel and impure nature
of their religion, and the looseness and profligacy of their manners.
“He sketched then the introduction of Christianity, showed what enemies
it had to encounter, why it was opposed, the change it introduced into
the moral and social life of the people, its triumphs over paganism, its
conversion and civilization of the northern barbarians, and the
chastity, peace, and happiness it had introduced into the cottage of the
peasant, the castle of the noble, and even the palace of the monarch.
His views seemed clear and precise, and his mind seemed to be
enlightened, and singularly free from the cant of his profession, and
from that credulity, ignorance, and superstition which you and I had
been accustomed to associate with the name of monk. To every question I
asked, he had a clear and intelligent answer; and he was always able to
give a reason, and what appeared a good reason, for whatever judgment he
hazarded. He was evidently a man of an order of intellect, ideas, and
culture entirely different from any that had fallen under my
observation; and I must own that when I listened to him, I was charmed.
I seemed to be under the gentle but superior influence of a good spirit.
I felt calm and tranquil, and I wished that I too might believe, be
pure, holy, a Christian like him.
“Weeks passed on. At length we had a chance to send him in safety to
Portici, where the Holy Father then held his court. The evening before
he was to leave us, he came into the sitting-room, and sat down by me.
‘My dear lady,’ said he, ‘I leave you to-morrow, and I shall not see you
after to-night. You must permit me to thank you for your kindness to the
poor old proscribed monk, and your evident desire to procure him
comfort; all so much the more commendable in you, since you are a
stranger, and not of my religion. I give you my thanks and my blessing;
they are all I have to give; and I shall not cease to pray the good God,
who is no respecter of persons, to reward you for your goodness, and to
grant you his grace.
“‘But, my dear lady, I am a priest; I am also an old man, and have not
many days to tarry here. Let me speak to you in all sincerity and
freedom.’
“Do so, my father, said I, as my eyes filled with tears.
“‘You are still young and beautiful,’ said he; ‘you have naturally a
kind and warm heart, an enthusiastic disposition, and a sincere love of
truth and justice. But, my dear child, your education has been sadly
neglected, and you have been trained to walk in a path that leadeth
where you would not go. You have fallen among evil counsellors and evil
doers, and you are entangled in the meshes of the adversary of souls.
This cause, to which you give your heart, soul, and body, is not what
you think it. You sought liberty, you have found slavery; you sought
love, and you have found only hatred; you sought virtue,
disinterestedness, fidelity,—you have found only vice, selfishness, and
treachery; you sought peace and social regeneration,—you have found only
strife, war, murder, assassination, confusion, anarchy, and oppression.
For yourself personally, the only peaceful days you have known for years
have been during the last few weeks; and your present peace is disturbed
by a mysterious dread, that I need not name or explain to you.
“‘Ask yourself, my child, and answer to yourself, honestly, if you have
not been deceived, and been acting under a fatal delusion. Ask yourself
if it was not a terrible mistake you committed, when you took Satan for
the principle of good, and the Christian’s God for the principle of
evil.’
“But, _padre mio_, what shall I do? I have a suspicion that what you say
is true. I have been a proud, vain, rash, wicked woman. But what shall I
do? I am bound in chains; I am damned.
“‘Damned, not yet, my child. As long as there is life, there is hope.
Those chains must be broken.’
“But they are too strong for me.
“‘True, true, my child, but not too strong for the Lion of the tribe of
Judah. You must be assisted——’
“At that moment the door was burst open; a gang of ruffians rushed in,
and fell upon the aged monk. The old man gave me one look, made rapidly
the sign of the cross over my head, as I had dropped on my knees to
implore them not to harm him. I might as well have pleaded to my marble
jambs. They threw him down. He rose upon his knees, folded his hands
across his breast, and with a bright, celestial expression, exclaimed, O
God, pardon them, and lay not this sin to their charge, for they know
not what they do,—when the leader of the gang plunged a dagger to his
heart. His blood flowed out into my face, and over my dress. After a
minute, they took up the body, and removed it and themselves from my
house. Though protected, to some extent, by our American character, we
did not think it prudent to remain longer in Rome, under the Republic;
and the next day we started for Paris, where we rejoined you.”
“But you never told me of the fate of that old monk before.”
“True, why should I? I could not, before we had separated, have spoken
of him to you without arousing your indignation, and inducing you to
send me again on some of those terrible secret missions on which you had
so often sent me, and which I so abhorred. But I can speak calmly now,
and without fear; and let me beg you to ask yourself the question the
old monk urged me to ask myself. Truth is truth, let it be spoken by
whom it may; and there is no reason why we should not follow good
advice, because given by a monk, even if monks have been all our
lifetime the object of our wrath, or of our derision.”
“Priscilla, I have asked myself that question; but it is of no use. I
have pledged myself, body and soul, and sworn that, come what might, I
would never repent.”
“But that oath was unlawful, and cannot bind. He who has your pledge is
a deceiver, had no right to ask it, has no right to hold it.”
“But I cannot free myself from these chains of death and hell which bind
me.”
“Such as you have been, such as I fear you are, I am told seldom find
mercy; but the deliverance is not impossible. I, worse than you, have
found it.”
“That is not so certain. You are free, only because I, in a sudden fit
of despair, freed you. But I have but to will, and you are as completely
in my power as ever.”
“That I doubt. Except when you called me to emancipate me, you have
exerted no power over me, since the good old priest was received into
our house in Rome.”
“That is owing to my forbearance.”
“Will you swear that? Will you swear that, within twenty-four hours
after you had declared me free, you did not use all your art to enthrall
me again? Did you not call again and again, within a month, at my house,
for that very purpose?”
“But you avoided me, and I could not so much as touch the hem of your
robe.”
“Very true, for I feared you, and I dare not defy you even now; but I
feel very certain that, under the protection of a name at which even
devils must bow, I am safe from all your arts.”
As she said that I rose, walked once or twice across the room, came up
before her, took her hand unresistingly, and placed my hand on her head.
I trembled. I was struck dumb, for I perceived at once that I had no
power there; and, though I evoked them, no spirits came to my aid. But
before I had let go her hand, her husband came into the room, saw us,
feared what I might do, drew his dagger, and before Priscilla could stop
him, or offer a word of explanation, aimed a blow at my heart. Priscilla
attempted to avert it, and so far succeeded, as to change somewhat its
direction. It penetrated, however, the chest, reached the lungs, and
inflicted a wound which, though it is apparently healed, and I seem to
myself to be suffering only from pulmonary consumption, which wastes me
away slowly but surely, my surgeon tells me will yet prove the occasion
of my death.
The moment James, a man of peace, and not at all given to striking, had
struck the blow, he was filled with terror at what he had done. I
assured him, for I retained my presence of mind, which I never yet lost
in any case in my life, that so far as I was concerned, he need not
blame himself, for I deserved the blow, and had long foreseen that
sooner or later his hand must deal it; but, had he delayed a moment, he
would have found it unnecessary, that his wife was safe from my
annoyances, and proof against any art I possessed. Priscilla, as soon as
she recovered from her fright, rather than swoon, told him as much; and
we both did all in our power to reassure and console him. But the matter
must not be bruited abroad, and he must conceal it for his and
Priscilla’s sake. It was concluded that I must remain for the present in
their house. James did what he could to stanch my wound, aided me to
remove to another room, and sent immediately for a surgeon whom we both
knew and could trust. For several weeks I lay at their house, nursed
with great care and tenderness, till I was able to be removed to my own
house. It was rumored that I had been stabbed in the street, but such
things not being rare in our cities, it excited very little remark; and
suspicion, though it fell on the secret societies known to exist, fell
upon no individual in particular, and no pains were taken to ferret out
the supposed assassin. The fact was noted in the journals, and was
instantly forgotten.
CHAPTER XVIII.
RELIGIOUS MONOMANIA.
I had no sooner been removed to my own house, than my old acquaintances
and friends came to see me. Mr. Cotton, the stern but well-meaning old
Puritan, who had infinitely more mind and heart than Young America, that
has learned to laugh at him, had indeed died during my absence abroad.
Mr. Winslow and the others whom I have already introduced, remained.
Poor Jack had recovered, not his former gayety, but his health and
tranquillity, and was entirely freed from the vision which had haunted
him, and which I have no reason to believe was any thing more than a
simple hallucination, occasioned by a powerful shock to his nerves,
producing a diseased state of the imagination. He had returned to
Boston, given up mesmerism, confined himself to the law, and had
prospered in his profession. When he heard of the accident which had
befallen me, he came immediately to see me, and to render me such
assistance as his warm heart prompted. He is still my chief nurse, and
declares that he will not leave me as long as my life lasts. I have
remembered him in my will, and bequeathed him the bulk of my estate,
though he knows it not,—a poor compensation for the blight I brought
upon his early hopes.
Mr. Merton, returning to the city about the time of my being wounded,
lost no time, after my removal to my own house, in renewing our former
acquaintance. Mr. Winslow, and Mr. Sowerby, and Leila and her admirer,
who had become husband and wife, and a sober and sensible couple, were
frequently in the sick man’s room. Nobody deserted me; and never in my
life have I had occasion to complain of ingratitude, or the loss of a
friend. The world is bad enough, but after all not so bad as sometimes
represented. I have always been treated infinitely better than my
deserts; and I have found good sense, warm hearts, and noble virtues,
where least I expected them. I have reproaches only for myself. I have
done a world of wrong, and no good; and yet I have found myself, from my
childhood, surrounded by generous and disinterested affection. People,
speaking generally, are far better individually than they are
collectively; and many private virtues may be found, even in bands of
revolutionists, robbers, and assassins,—virtues which do not rise above
the natural order indeed, and have no promise of reward in heaven, but
which nevertheless are virtues. My observation has taught me to distrust
the censorious, those who rail in good set terms at all mankind or
womankind, although no man living was ever further than I am from
believing in the sinlessness of the race, or from joining in the modern
worship of woman, prompted too often by an innate pruriency unconscious
of itself.
As I became able to bear conversation, and to take part in it
occasionally, mesmerism and the Spirit-Manifestations were a frequent
topic of discourse. Jack sturdily maintained that it was all humbug.
There were indeed strange things, some phenomena which he could not
explain, but he set his face against the whole movement, had no belief
in it, and would have nothing to do with it. There was, though he might
be unable to detect it, some cheat or trickery at the bottom.
Mr. Winslow held fast to his belief in the connection between mesmerism
and all the marvellous, prodigious, or miraculous facts recorded in
history. He accepted those facts substantially as related, but did not
accept their usual explanation. The miracles of sacred history, and the
marvellous facts of profane history, were to be explained on natural
principles, by the mesmeric agent, or by whatever other name we might
call it.
Mr. Merton argued that, if the phenomena usually called Satanic,
obsession, possession, witchcraft, black magic, ghosts or apparitions,
clairvoyance and second sight, could be explained without resort to the
supernatural, the other class of facts, the miracles of sacred history,
could be also explained without the supposition of the special
intervention of Divine power. He thought, if we could account for the
former without Satan, we could for the latter without the supernatural
intervention of God.
Mr. Sowerby held with Mr. Winslow as to the reality of the phenomena,
and their natural explanation, but thought they should be divided into
two classes, one good and the other bad, as produced for a good or a bad
purpose. When produced in a good cause, for a good end, they might be
called Divine; when in a bad cause, for a bad purpose, they might be
called Satanic or diabolical. The agent is in both cases the same, and
the difference is in the mind or will that employs it.
Dr. Corning, my physician, who was a distinguished manigraph, and had
written a work, highly esteemed by the profession, on Insanity, was
quite ready to concede the phenomena called spiritual, or rather
demoniacal, and thought we were bound to do so, or to give up all human
testimony. He also conceded the connection contended for by mesmerists
between mesmerism and so-called demonic phenomena,—a connection, in his
judgment, very evident, and wholly undeniable; but he contended, with
the most eminent manigraphs of France, and indeed with the members of
the profession generally, that the marvellous phenomena recorded were
those of mania, monomania, theosophania, nymphomania, demonopathy, and
all to be explained pathologically. He included them all under the
general head of insanity, and regarded their variety only as so many
different sorts of madness. He had himself witnessed the greater part of
them in his practice, and treated them as symptoms of mania.
“That,” said Mr. Merton, “would be very satisfactory, if the limits of
madness or insanity were well defined, and if physicians could never
mistake, and treat as insane one who is only possessed or obsessed by
the devil. To include the marvellous facts of history under the head of
insanity, without having first established their pathological character,
and settled it that there is no generic or specific difference between
them and acknowledged pathological symptoms, is not to explain them. How
do you prove that a person, otherwise in perfect health, with no
disturbance of the pulse, of the digestive, or any other organs to be
detected, who on all subjects speaks rationally, but who tells you that
a spirit has possession of him, speaks through his organs, throws him
down, and otherwise maltreats him, is insane? I do not say that such a
man is not insane, but how do you prove him insane?
“Why, he exhibits the symptoms of insanity, for none but an insane man
would utter such nonsense.”
“Perhaps so, and perhaps not so. He exhibits symptoms of what you are
pleased to _call_ insanity; but how do you know that you have not called
insanity what you ought to call by another name, possession, for
instance?”
“I do not believe in possession.”
“Precisely, and therefore when you meet what is called possession or
obsession, you call it insanity. That is a convenient way of reasoning,
and not uncommon with learned physicians and physicists; but it is a
begging of the question, not its solution. You reason from a foregone
conclusion. As you yourself and all the profession treat insanity as a
disease, as symptomatic of some lesion or alteration of the physical
system, or of the organs on which the manifestations of the mind depend,
I should suppose it necessary to establish the fact of such lesion or
alteration, before concluding the presence of actual insanity.”
“Insanity, in such case, would be found to be very rare.”
“Very possibly, and perhaps it is much rarer than is commonly supposed.
It is not impossible that a large proportion of those you call insane,
and treat as lunatics, are as sound of body or mind as you or I. Where
we find, physically considered, all the symptoms of health, we cannot,
from purely mental phenomena, infer disease. That the vulgar have often
regarded as under the influence of Satan persons who were merely
epileptic, cataleptic, or insane, is no doubt very true; but it is not
impossible that the learned and scientific have committed not
unfrequently a contrary mistake, and regarded as insane, cataleptics, or
epileptics, persons who were totally free from all pathological
symptoms. How will you, dear Doctor, explain by insanity a case taken
from a thousand similar ones, which I chanced to be reading this
morning, and which is well attested. Allow me to relate it as given by
Dr. Calmeil, one of your own profession, a learned and highly esteemed
manigraph, author of a work, _De la Folie_,[4] and who entertains the
same views that you do. Missionaries who now, says M. Calmeil,[5] cross
the seas to shed the light of faith in the New World, are frequently
surprised to meet energumenes among their neophytes, whilst they
acknowledge that it is seldom that the devil takes possession of the
faithful in the mother country. The letter which I am about to report,
addressed to Winslow, a celebrated physician, in 1738, by a _worthy_
missionary, proves that the delirium of demonopathy may everywhere
become the lot of feeble and timorous souls.
-----
Footnote 4:
Paris, Chez Balliere, 1845. 2 vol. gr. in-8vo.
Footnote 5:
T. 2, p. 417.
-----
“I cannot refuse, at your earnest request,” writes the missionary
Lecour, to write you a detailed account of what took place in the case
of the Cochin-chinese who was possessed, and of whom I had the honor to
speak to you. In May or June, 1733, being in the province of Cham, in
the kingdom of Cochin China, in the church of a burgh called Cheta,
about half a league distant from the capital of the province, there was
brought to me a young man from eighteen to nineteen years of age, and
who was a Christian. His parents told me that he was possessed by a
demon. A little incredulous, I might say to my confusion, quite too much
so, in consequence of my little experience at that time in such things,
of which I had never seen an example, although I had often heard other
Christians speak of them, I examined them to ascertain if there were not
simplicity or malice in their statement. The substance of what was
gathered from them was, that the young man had made an unworthy
communion, and after that had disappeared from the village, had retired
to the mountains, and called himself only the traitor Judas.”
“On this statement, and after some difficulties,” resumes the
missionary, “I went to the hospital where the young man was detained,
fully resolved to believe nothing, unless I saw marks of something
superhuman. I began by questioning him in Latin, a language of which I
knew he had not the least tincture. Extended as he was on the ground,
frothing at his mouth, and violently shaken, he rose immediately on his
seat, and answered me very distinctly, _Ego nescio loqui latine_. I was
so astonished and frightened that I withdrew, with no courage to
question him any further....
“However, some days after, I recommenced with some probationary
commands, taking care to speak always in Latin, of which the young man
was ignorant. Among other commands, I ordered the demon to throw him
forthwith upon the floor. I was instantly obeyed, but he was thrown down
with so much violence, all his limbs being stretched out and rigid as a
crowbar, that the noise was rather that of a falling beam than of a man.
Wearied and exhausted, I thought I would follow the example of the
Bishop of Tilopolis on a similar occasion. In the exorcism, I commanded
the demon, in Latin, to bear him to the ceiling of the church, feet up
and head down. Forthwith his body became stiff, he was drawn into the
church to a column, his feet joined together, his back set against the
column, and, without the aid of his hands, he was run up to the ceiling
in a twinkling, as if drawn up by a pulley, without any act or motion of
his own, suspended with his feet glued to the ceiling, and his head
hanging downwards. I made the demon confess, as I intended to confound
and humble him, and to compel him to quit his hold, the falsity of the
pagan religion. I made him confess that he was a deceiver, and at the
same time compelled him to acknowledge the sanctity of our religion. I
held him suspended in the air, his feet adhering to the ceiling and his
head down, for more than half an hour, but not having sufficient
constancy, so much was I frightened at what I saw, to continue him there
for a longer time, I ordered the demon to place him at my feet without
harming him. He forthwith cast him down, as a bundle of dirty linen, but
without his receiving the least injury. From that day the young man,
though not entirely delivered, was much relieved, and his vexations
daily diminished, especially when I was in the house, and after about
five months he was wholly released, and is now perhaps the best
Christian in Cochin China.”
“Pass over the effect of the exorcism, if you please,” resumed Mr.
Merton, “and tell me what you think, Doctor, of the facts in this case,
which Dr. Calmeil concedes, and which, if he did not, it would not
amount to any thing, for this is only one case out of a thousand.”
“I will say,” replied the Doctor, “with M. Calmeil, that I am very much
obliged to the good missionary for not withholding his account, for he
has described, without knowing it, the phenomena of religious
monomania.”
“It strikes me,” replied Mr. Merton, “that Dr. Corning has not well
examined the case. That some of the phenomena may be regarded as
symptoms of insanity, I do not question, but if I understand insanity,
it is a derangement, an access of what properly belongs to one in his
normal state, but not the accession of something preternatural. It may,
in some respects, sharpen the senses, revive the memory, and render the
faculties, or at least some of them, morbidly active; but I have never
understood that it could enable a man to understand and speak a language
which he had never learned, and of which, in the full possession of all
his faculties, he knew not a word. I can easily understand that in
delirium a man may fancy that he is possessed, and act on the conviction
that he is, but I do not understand how delirium alone can enable a man,
however agile, to climb to the ceiling of a church, his back against a
column, with his feet fastened together, and without using his hands or
arms, and to remain by the simple application of his feet to the ceiling
for one half an hour with his head down, carrying on all the time a
close controversy in this very inconvenient position, and finally
dropping upon the pavement without the least injury. Such a delirium
would, to say the least, be very extraordinary, and I suspect the Doctor
has never found a similar delirium amongst any of his numerous patients
who were unquestionably insane. I will venture to say that however
striking the delirium, the thing is absolutely impossible without
superhuman aid.”
“Part of it is hallucination,” replied the Doctor.
“Whose hallucination? The young man’s, or the missionary’s?” asked Mr.
Merton. “Not the missionary’s, for there is no pretence that he was
insane; and not the young man’s, because the question turns not on what
he saw, or fancied, or imagined, but on what another person, the
missionary, saw.”
“Probably the facts are much exaggerated,” replied Dr. Corning. “The
missionary confesses that he was greatly frightened, and being so, he
may, without impeachment of his honesty, have failed to be strictly
accurate as to the details.”
“Then you question the relation. That alters the case. Let us take,
then, the case, also well attested, of the nuns of Uvertet, which, about
1550, caused for a long time so much astonishment in Brandenburg,
Holland, Italy, and especially in Germany. The nuns were at first
awakened and startled by plaintive moanings.... Sometimes they were
dragged from their beds, and along the floor, as if drawn by their
legs.... Their arms and lower extremities were twisted in every
direction.... Sometimes they bounded in the air and fell with violence
upon the ground.... In moments in which they appeared to enjoy a perfect
calm, they would suddenly fall backwards and be deprived of speech....
Some of them, on the contrary, would amuse themselves in climbing to the
tops of trees, when they would descend, their feet in the air and their
heads down. These attacks began to lose their violence after a duration
of three years. A very singular madness this, which, as the
_Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales_ says, ‘extended over _all_ the
convents of women in Germany, particularly in Saxony and Brandenburg,
and gained even Holland,’ and it might have added, also, Italy. ‘All the
miracles,’ it continues, ‘of the Convulsionaires, or of Animal
Magnetism, were familiar to these nonnains, who were regarded as
possessed. They all foretold future events, leaped and capered, ran up
the sides of walls, spoke foreign languages, &c.’ You may read the
fourteen well authenticated cases recorded by Cotton Mather in his
Magnalia, and you will find that all these, and similar phenomena, were
exhibited by the bewitched or possessed in Massachusetts near the close
of the seventeenth century, and known under the name of ‘Salem
witchcraft,’ though only a portion of them occurred in that famous town.
Do you include all these under the head of insanity?”
“Cotton Mather was a pedant, vain, arrogant, and ambitious of power, and
I did not expect to hear him cited as an authority,” replied the Doctor,
in evident vexation.
“Cotton Mather,” Mr. Merton replied, “was one of the most learned and
distinguished men in New England in his time, and, though I am of
another parish, I respect his memory. I do not cite his opinions; I
merely cite him as the recorder of facts which either he himself had
witnessed with his own eyes, or which had been confessed or proved
before the courts of the colony, and thus far at least his authority is
sufficient. But I will ask you to explain on your hypothesis the
phenomena exhibited by the Ursuline Nuns of Loudun, France, in the
seventeenth century, and the authenticity of which both Bertrand and
Calmeil, as well as others, admit were triumphantly vindicated.”
“I know the case to which you refer,” answered Dr. Corning. “It is the
case of a certain number of nuns who took it into their heads that they
were bewitched by one Urban Grandier, whom they had refused to accept as
their director,—a man of a scandalous life, a great criminal, who
deserved to be executed as he was, if not for sorcery, at least for his
crimes. I see nothing in this case but the usual symptoms of
demonopathy, or religious monomania.”
“The physicians of the time thought differently, and there were then and
there physicians of great eminence who were consulted, and required to
make to the authorities twenty-five or thirty elaborate reports on the
case. But let us recall some of the facts.
“Shortly after, Grandier, a bad priest, was refused by these ladies as
their director; he passed by the convent, and threw a bouquet of flowers
over the wall, which was taken up and smelt of by several of the nuns.
From that moment the disorder commenced. Up to that moment all these
ladies were in the enjoyment of the most perfect health, and strictly
correct in their deportment. They were all connected with families of
distinction and of high birth, and had been carefully brought up, and
yielded to none in their education, their intelligence, their piety,
their virtues, and their accomplishments.
“After some weeks of silence, in which they had sought relief from their
vexations by religious exercises, prayers, fasts, and macerations,
without avail, recourse was had to exorcism. The phenomena then assumed
gigantic proportions. One religious, lying stretched out on her belly,
and her arms twisted over her back, defied the priest who pursued her
with the Holy Sacrament; another doubled over backwards, contrived to
walk with the nape of her neck resting on her heels; another still,
shook her head in the most singular and violent manner. The exorcist
says he had _frequently_ seen them bent over backwards, with the nape of
their neck resting on their heels, walk with surprising swiftness. He
saw one of them, rising from that posture, strike rapidly her shoulders
and breast with her head. They cried out as the howlings of the damned,
as enraged wolves, as terrible beasts, with a force that exceeds the
power of imagination. Their tongues hung out black, swollen, dry, and
hard, and became soft and natural the moment they were drawn back into
the mouth.
“During the intervals of repose, the afflicted ladies sought to return
to their religious exercises, to resume their industry and the
deportment proper to their rank and their state. But on the arrival of
the exorcist nothing was any longer heard but blasphemies and
imprecations. Then the nuns would rise, pass their feet over their
heads, throw their legs apart, with entire forgetfulness of modesty.
Then came what Dr. Calmeil calls hallucinations, which made them
attribute their state to the presence and obsession of evil spirits. The
Abbess, Madame Belfiel, while replying to the questions of the exorcist,
heard a living being speaking in her own body, as it were a foreign
voice emanating from her pharynx. They all heard a voice distinctly
articulated, proceeding from within them, stating that evil angels had
taken possession of their person, and indicating the names, the number,
and the residences of the demons.
“In the month of August, 1635, Gaston, Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis
the Thirteenth, wishing to judge for himself of the state of the
Ursulines, went to Loudun, and was present at several sessions of the
exorcists. The Superioress at first worshipped the Holy Sacrament,
giving all the signs of a violent despair. The Abbé Surin, the exorcist,
repeated the command he had given her, and forthwith her body was thrown
into convulsions, running out a tongue horribly deformed, black, and
granulated as morocco, and without being pressed at all by the teeth.
Among other postures they remarked an extension of the legs, so great
that there were seven feet from one foot to the other. The Superioress
remained in this position a very long time, with strange trembling,
touching the ground only with her belly. Having risen from this
position, the demon was commanded again to approach the Holy Sacrament,
when she became more furious than ever, biting her arms, &c. Then, after
a little time, the agitation ceased, and she returned to herself, with
her pulse as tranquil as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
“The Abbé Surin himself, while he was speaking to the Duke, and about to
make the exorcism, was attacked and twice thrown upon his back, and when
he had risen and proceeded anew to the combat, Père Tranquille demanded
of the supposed demon wherefore he had dared attack Père Surin. He
answered with the organs of the latter, and as if addressing him: ‘I
have done so to avenge myself on you.’ Was the Abbé Surin insane? or did
he simulate delirium?
“The Superioress, at the end of the exorcism, executed an order which
the Duke had just communicated secretly to the exorcist. In a hundred
instances it appeared that the energumenes read the thoughts of the
priest charged with the exorcism. They answered in whatever language
they were addressed, in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Turkish.
They even answered M. de Launay de Razelly in the dialects of several
tribes of American savages, very pertinently, and revealed to him things
that had passed in America. Urban Grandier, when commanded by his bishop
to take the stole and exorcise the Mother Superior, who he said knew
Latin, refused, although challenged to do it, to question her in Greek,
and remained quite confused. Also, the Mother Superior remained for some
considerable time suspended in the air, at an elevation of about two
feet above the ground. In about three months of exorcism the trouble
ceased, and the Ursulines were restored, and resumed in peace their
pious exercises and their usual labors.”
“I see no reason to change my opinion,” remarked the Doctor, at the
conclusion of this recital. “It was a case of monomania, if the facts
were as stated.”
“The facts,” replied Mr. Merton, “are unquestionable. They have all the
authenticity that facts can have, and there is not the least ground for
suspecting the good faith of the parties. They were all in perfect
health, with no symptoms of any disease about them. Now, as insanity, of
whatever variety, cannot render a man more than human, I demand, if
these facts can all be brought within the humanly possible? Does
insanity enable one to assume such difficult postures as are described?
Does it enable one to bend over backwards and walk rapidly with the nape
of the neck resting on his heels; to have the extraordinary extension of
legs mentioned; to read the thoughts of others not expressed; to tell
what is passing fifteen hundred leagues off; to understand and speak
languages never learned or before heard; and to remain for some time
suspended unsupported in the air? And, above all, is insanity or madness
cured by exorcisms? No, no, Doctor. The facts in the case, that is, if
you take not one or two, but _all_ of them, are certainly inexplicable
without the presence of a superhuman power.”
The Doctor was not at all pleased with this conclusion, which he would
by no means admit. He said the conversation, if continued, might injure
his patient, and giving me a few directions, took his hat and cane and
departed, apparently in a very unpleasant humor, and muttering something
about superstition, Salem witchcraft, and the absurdity of educated men
in the nineteenth century believing in such nonsense.
CHAPTER XIX.
MESMERISM INSUFFICIENT.
Insanity explains abnormal, but not superhuman phenomena. It is a
disease of the body, not of the mind itself. The mind, being a simple
spiritual or immaterial substance, is not susceptible of physical
derangement, and mental alienation proceeds from the lesion or
alteration of the bodily organs or conditions on which the mind is
dependent in its manifestations. It is cured, when curable, by medical,
not by purely spiritual treatment; by physic and good regimen, not by
exorcisms.
A few days after the conversation I have detailed, my friends being
again present, the subject was resumed. Dr. Corning sustained his
hypothesis triumphantly by selecting such facts in the cases brought
forward as it would explain, and by denying all the rest,—a very
convenient and common practice of theorizers,—even out of the medical
profession.
Mr. Sowerby, who had made a fortune by mesmerism and spirit-rapping,
thought that only a monomaniac would attempt to explain the mysterious
phenomena in question by insanity. There was in the cases not a symptom
of mania, and the persons affected, in their moments of repose, and even
while the affection lasted, were in the normal exercise of their
faculties, and indicated no signs of mental alienation, answering
always, when answering at all, pertinently, never at random,
consecutively, never incoherently, as is the case with the insane. He
explained them, not by mental alienation, but by the accumulation or
increased activity of a great and all pervading principle, perhaps the
vital principle itself, called the mesmeric or odic principle. He had
himself produced phenomena analogous to the most extraordinary recorded
in history.
Mr. Dodson, an ex-Universalist minister, mentioned on a former occasion,
and who had just published a book on spirit-manifestations, in
refutation of Judge Edmands’s work on the same subject,—a great and
original thinker, and most profound philosopher,—in his own
estimation,—thought that they were all to be explained by
phreno-mesmerism, or electro-psychology. He had an original theory,
borrowed in part from Gall and Spurzheim, who might, to a certain
extent, have borrowed it from the Timeus of Plato, that the back part of
the brain is the seat of involuntary motion, instinct, and unconscious
consciousness, that the anterior part is the seat of voluntary motion
and reflection. The phenomena are artificially produced by
psychologizing the subject, or paralyzing the anterior lobe of the
brain, and leaving the posterior active, and, naturally, by a person’s
sitting down quietly and suppressing the activity of the frontal brain,
and giving free scope to the occipital. There was no devil, and no odic
agent in the case. It was all explained by phreno-mesmerism, or by the
passivity of some, and the increased activity of other portions of the
brain. But he was asked how this could enable a person to foretell
future events, to read the unexpressed thoughts of others, to manifest
extraordinary physical strength, to understand and speak languages never
learned, to tell what is passing in distant places, and to remain
suspended in the air in defiance of the laws of gravitation. He said all
these were psychological phenomena, or, as Dr. Corning called them,
hallucinations, nothing of the sort really taking place.
Mr. Sowerby would not listen to him, and there was almost a quarrel
between the two ex-ministers. But their rage being finally mollified by
a witticism from Jack, the conversation resumed its pacific character.
“You say, Mr. Sowerby,” said Dr. Corning, “that you have produced
phenomena analogous to those recorded in history?”
“Certainly,” answered Mr. Sowerby.
“And by the mesmeric or odic principle?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“What is your evidence of the existence of such a principle? or your
proof that such a principle exists?”
“The phenomena I produce or find produced by it.”
“So, you take the phenomena to prove the principle, and the principle to
explain the phenomena,” said Dr. Corning, who could reason as well as
anybody when it concerned the refutation of a theory not his own.
“I am not disposed to question the existence of such a principle,”
said Mr. Merton, “except in the form asserted by Mr. Dodson, or when
it is explained as the immediate action of the mind or will of the
mesmerizer upon the mesmerized. The fluid asserted by Mesmer, after
the animal magnetists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as
Wirdig, Fludd, Maxwell, Kircher, Van Helmont, simply revised by Baron
Reichenbach with a great show of demonstration, though denied by
Deleuze and some other mesmerists, I have no good reason for doubting.
I am willing to concede the fact, that this fluid or agent exists and
is employed by Mr. Sowerby in his experiments. I am willing to concede
that there is a fluid or agent, not electricity, not magnetism, but
analogous to them, contended for by Baron Reichenbach, that pervades a
numerous class of bodies, and may be artificially accumulated, or
stimulated to increased activity. But suppose this; suppose the
mesmerizer, wizard, sorcerer, witch, magician, actually uses it, I
must still ask Mr. Sowerby to tell me how he proves it to be the sole
principle of the phenomena produced? That in most of the cases
recorded, if not in all, there are proper mesmeric or odic phenomena,
naturally or artificially produced, is, I think, undeniable. The
flowers used by Grandier, in the case of the nuns of Loudun, and the
fumigations and sufflations of the old magicians, all prove the resort
to magnetism. The rod and tub of Mesmer, and the cumbrous machinery he
used, though not indispensable, every magnetizer knows are a useful
mean. But as these are only subsidiary, how is it to be demonstrated
that mesmerism itself is the sole efficient cause, not merely of some
of the accessory phenomena, but of them all? In the phenomena of
table-turning, so extensively witnessed, magnetism is not absolutely
essential. They began, as all the recent spirit-manifestations, in
mesmerism, and at first the table was mesmerized by a circle formed
round it, joining their hands and resting them on it.”
“The tables are turned,” said Dr. Corning, “by the involuntary and
unconscious muscular contraction of the hands pressing upon it. This has
been proved.”
“So says a French Academician, and so also says Professor Farraday, and
tables, very likely, may be turned in some such way; but the table is
frequently known to turn and cut up its capers without any circle being
formed, without any person being near it, or visible hand touching it.”
“That is true,” said I, “for I have myself seen the most extraordinary
phenomena of table-turning when it was certain no pressure, voluntary or
involuntary, had been applied to it by any person visible in the room. I
have seen a table turn in spite of the efforts of four strong men to
hold it still, rise up without any visible agency, fly over the heads of
the company, rush with violence from one end of the room to the other,
spin round like a top, balance itself on one leg and then on another,—in
fine, move along some inches on the floor with the weight of a dozen men
resting on it, raise itself from the floor with them, and remain
suspended a foot above it, for some minutes.”
“There can be no doubt of that,” said Mr. Merton. “In Cochin China, we
are told on good authority, that in the time of the predecessors of
Gia-long, it was a custom in the province of Xu-Ngué, on certain
solemnities, to invite the most celebrated tutelar genii of the towns
and villages of the kingdom to games and a public trial of their
strength. A long and heavy bark, with eight benches of oars, was placed
dry in the centre of a large hall, and the trial consisted in seeing
which of these could move it farthest or with the greatest ease. The
judges and spectators took their stand at a little distance, and saw, as
they called the names and titles of the genii placed on the bark, the
huge machine tip one side and then the other, and finally advance and
then recede. Some of the genii would push it forward several feet,
others only a few inches. But one who made it come and go with the
greatest facility, was the tutelar genius of the maritime village of
Ke-Chan, worshipped under the name of Hon-Leo-Hanh, whose temple was in
consequence thronged with pilgrims, and enriched with votive offerings.”
“But conceding,” continued Mr. Merton, “that mesmerism plays its part, I
wish to know how Mr. Sowerby proves that it alone suffices for the
production of the phenomena? Is it not possible that another power steps
in, and, either alone or in concurrence, produces them? May it not be
that mesmerism only facilitates or prepares the way for the demonic
action, produces the state or condition of the human subject favorable
to Satanic invasion, and therefore is to be regarded rather as the
occasion than as the efficient cause of the phenomena?”
“But I admit no devil; I do not believe that there are any demons,” said
Mr. Sowerby.
“I am aware of that,” said Mr. Merton, “but I suppose that,
notwithstanding your disbelief, there may be a devil, the prince of this
world, as the Scriptures plainly teach. It is possible that there are
whole legions of devils, that the air swarms with them, and that they
have power to tempt and to vex and harass those they would seduce from
allegiance to the Most High. Their non-existence, at least their
non-intervention, must be proved before you are entitled to conclude
that your mesmeric or odic agent is the sole efficient cause of the
phenomena.”
“But that,” said Mr. Dodson, “would overthrow all the so-called
inductive sciences.”
“If so, I cannot help it,” replied Mr. Merton. “The inductive
philosophers have accumulated a mass of rich and valuable facts by their
observations and experiments, for which I am grateful to them; but I set
no great store by the ever-changing theories which they imagine or
invent to explain these facts. But let this pass. If Mr. Sowerby’s
mesmeric or odic force does not explain all the phenomena in the case, I
presume that he will concede that it is not the sole principle of their
production.”
“Certainly,” replied Mr. Sowerby.
“This odic agent, is it not a simple natural principle or force, and
without reason or intelligence?”
“It is in itself unintelligent, I admit.”
“But in the phenomena there are evident marks of intelligence, which
proceed neither from the mesmerizer nor the mesmerized. How do you
explain that?”
“The intelligence is the instinctive or involuntary intelligence
proceeding from the back part of the brain,” answered Mr. Dodson.
“Back part of whose brain?” asked Mr. Merton.
“The mesmerized or psychologized,” replied that philosophic gentleman.
“But there cannot proceed, voluntarily or involuntarily, instinctively
or rationally, from the back brain or the front brain, what is not in
it, or an intelligence which its owner does not possess. I do not now
speak of the intelligence of either the operator or the one operated
upon, but of an intelligence of a third party. In the recorded and
undeniable phenomena to be explained there appears a third party, which
acts intelligently, and gives information unknown to either of the other
parties. Take the case of the spectre that appeared to Brutus before the
battle of Pharsalia, or that which appeared to Julian on the eve of the
battle in which he fell mortally wounded, and hundreds of similar
cases.”
“They are mere hallucinations,” interposed Dr. Corning.
“What proves the contrary,” replied Mr. Merton, “is the fact that they
had accurate knowledge of future events, which hallucinations have not.
I place no stress on the fact that a prediction was uttered, or
seemingly uttered, for that might be a hallucination; the point to be
attended to is its literal fulfilment, showing a knowledge of the future
not possessed by the individual to whom the prediction was made, nor,
supposing mesmerism employed, by the mesmerizer. Here was an intelligent
third party.
“There is a very well authenticated case of a domestic in the German
village of Kleische, who, returning one evening from a place near by,
where she had been sent of an errand, saw a little gray man, not larger
than an infant, who, because she would neither go with him nor answer
him, threatened her, and told her, as she reached the threshold of her
master’s house, that she should be blind and dumb for four days. The
prediction was exactly fulfilled. Instances enough are on record of
persons afflicted, as they supposed, by evil spirits, who have foretold
the day and hour when they would be delivered. In the case of the
parsonage of Cideville, which in 1849 made so much noise in France, the
agent that rapped was intelligent, for the raps gave distinct and
intelligent answers to the questions addressed to it, and communicated
facts unknown to the questioner and to all the persons present.
“The ancient pagan oracles may be cited. They did not, I concede,
foretell what belongs exclusively to the supernatural providence of God,
but they did foretell, clearly and distinctly, events belonging to the
natural order, beyond the reach of ordinary human foresight. That many
of the responses were false, that many of them were ambiguous and suited
to the event, let it turn out which way it might, I by no means deny,
but this cannot be said of all of them. The contrary is evident from the
great reputation they enjoyed, and the long ages that they were
consulted, not by the vulgar only, but by kings, princes, nobles, and
philosophers, of the most learned and polite nations of Gentile
antiquity. Men are deceived, deluded, but never by pure falsehood. It is
the truth mingled with the falsehood that deceives or misleads them.”
“But the whole,” said Jack, “was a system of jugglery, cheatery, and
knavery, of the heathen priests.”
“I do not defend,” replied Mr. Merton, “the ancient pagan superstitions,
nor the strict honesty, any more than the immaculate purity, of the
ancient priesthoods; but I have learned not to explain great effects by
petty causes, like the shallow-pated philosophers of the last century,
and the historians of the school of Voltaire, Hume, and Robertson, who
had no more comprehension of the real causes and concatenation of events
than a respectable goose. All heathenism was founded on delusion, but
not a delusion originating with, and kept up by, the trickery and
jugglery of priests, who were often greater dupes than any others. No
art, craft, jugglery, or fraud, could be carried on for three thousand
years in the bosom of cultivated nations without detection. There were
men in ancient heathendom as able and as willing to detect human
imposture, as are our modern philosophers, who tell us so gravely in
their elaborate works how the priests contrived to work their miracles,
and to keep the people in subjection. The only sound philosophy proceeds
on the assumption of the general good faith of mankind, or that they
dupe and are duped, save in individual cases, without malice prepense.
“In these oracles there was a superhuman intelligence, and an
intelligence which was neither that of those who consulted nor that of
those who gave the response, and it tells you itself why the oracles
after the birth of our Saviour and the spread of Christianity, became
mute.
Me puer Hebræus, divos Deus ipse gubernans,
Cedere sede jubet, tristemque redire sub Orcum;
Aris ergo dehinc tacitus abscedito nostris.
The Hebrew youth, himself God and master of the gods, had reduced them
to silence. Whence this third intelligence? It cannot come from the odic
agent, for that is unintelligent.”
“I do not agree with Mr. Sowerby,” said Mr. Winslow. “I believe all
existence is intelligent, and all forces intelligent forces. God is
infinite intelligence. He is the principle and similitude of all things,
and therefore every thing must, like him, be intelligent.”
“That was my view,” said I, “or else I should have had no hesitation in
explaining a large portion of the mysterious phenomena by the old notion
of demonic invasion.”
“Yet this view,” replied Mr. Merton, “is decidedly untenable. God, in
the sense of creator, is the principle of all things, and in the sense
that the ideas or types after which he creates them are in his eternal
reason, he is their similitude; but it is not necessary to suppose that
every creature imitates him in all his attributes, which would suppose
that a cabbage has intellect and will, and a granite block is endowed
with charity. The infinite intelligence of God supposes that all are
created, ordered, and governed by, and according to, intelligence, but
not that every creature is intelligent, or an intelligence. We might as
well say that every creature is infinite, for God is infinity, as well
as intelligence.
“In the phenomena of demonopathy the patient is distinctly conscious of
an intelligence not his own. The Mother Superior in the convent of
Loudun was distinctly conscious that the words spoken by her organs did
not proceed from her intelligence, and that they were uttered, not by
her will, but against it. There is a thousand times more evidence of
this third intelligence, and that it is personal, than Baron Reichenbach
has adduced in proof of his odic agent. The nuns of Loudun knew what
they did, and they struggled with all their might against the power that
afflicted them. They knew as well that their words and actions proceeded
from a foreign personality, and not from themselves, as you know that my
words and actions do not proceed from you. They held in the greatest
horror the blasphemous words their organs were made to utter, and the
indecent postures they were made to assume, and sought deliverance by
prayer and pious practices. That does not proceed from one’s own will,
which he holds in horror, and struggles against.”
“The will and intelligence was that of Grandier, who mesmerized them.
He, by the mesmeric agent, had placed himself in relation with them, and
he moved them as a mesmerizer does his somnambulist,” said Mr. Sowerby.
“That Grandier persecuted them, and was in some sense near them, is what
they uniformly asserted, and what I am not disposed to deny, but that it
was he who possessed them, and used their organs, is not to be supposed;
because one human being cannot thus possess another, and because the
intelligence and will displayed surpassed his own. Grandier, if he
afflicted them, did it only by means of a foreign power, foreign both to
his personality and theirs, as even Mr. Sowerby contends; but this
foreign power must have had, as is evident from the recorded phenomena,
intelligence and will of its own.”
After a long discussion on this point, which I had hardly for a moment
questioned, for I had proved it by my experiments with Priscilla, and
with tables and inanimate objects, time and again, though I saw not all
that it involved, all except the Doctor and Jack agreed that it must be
so. The Doctor would not make an admission that required him to modify
what he had written and published on insanity, and Jack would not hear a
word on the subject. His experience was explicable on the assumption of
hallucination, and he would not believe anybody had had a more
marvellous experience than his own.
“But,” said Mr. Merton, “this wonder-working power, if it have
intelligence and will, must be a spirit, good or bad, and, also a
superhuman spirit, since the phenomena are superhuman.”
“So,” said Dr. Corning, “here we are in the middle of the nineteenth
century, in this age of science, after so much has been said and written
against the folly, ignorance, barbarism, and superstition of past ages,
back in the old superstitious belief in demons, good and bad angels,
ghosts and hobgoblins, fairies and ghouls, witches and witchcraft,
sorcery and magic. Well, gentlemen, I have done. I am inclined to
believe there must be a devil, for if there were no devil we could
hardly have such poor success in bringing the world to reason, and
curing it of superstition.”
“There may be more truth in what you say than you suspect,” said Mr.
Merton. “The devil is the father of ignorance, credulity, and
superstition, no less than of false science, infidelity, and
irreligion.”
CHAPTER XX.
SHEER DEVILTRY.
A few days after this last conversation, I was visited by Judge Preston,
whom I had slightly known in former years,—a man of very respectable
gifts and attainments, and of high standing in the community. He had
been a politician, lawyer, legislator, and was now a Justice of the
Supreme Court of his native State. He was moral, upright, candid, and
sincere, but like too many of his class, as well as of mine, had grown
up and lived without any fixed or determinate views of religion. To say
he had rejected Christianity, would be hardly just; but he had only
vague notions of what is Christianity, and if he did not absolutely
disbelieve a future state, he had no firm belief in the immortality of
the soul. He rather wished than hoped to live again. He had not long
before lost his wife, whom he tenderly loved, and her death had plunged
him into an inconsolable grief. He wept, and refused to be comforted. A
friend drew him one evening into a circle of Spiritualists or
Spiritists, and after much persuasion, induced him to seek through a
medium an interview with his deceased wife. What he saw and heard
convinced him, and he soon found that he was himself a medium—a writing
medium, I believe.
Judge Preston, in connection with a physician of some eminence, and his
friend Van Schaick, formerly a member of the United States Senate, a
prominent politician a few years since, and in religion a Swedenborgian,
had just published a work, of large dimensions as well as pretensions,
on Spiritualism and Spirit-manifestations, very well written, and not
without interest to those who would investigate the subject of demonic
invasion.
He said that he had called to see me in obedience to an order given him
by Benjamin Franklin, who assured him that I could, if I chose, give him
some information on the subject of the spirit-manifestations, for I had
had more to do with them than any man living.
I replied that I was very glad to see him; but, as to the conversation
on spirit-manifestations, I must decline taking part in it myself. I was
very weak, and I did not think I could give him any information of
importance. He could probably learn much more from the shades of
Franklin, William Penn, or George Washington, than from me. George Fox
and Oliver Cromwell could tell him many things; Swedenborg and Joe Smith
more yet. I advised him to call up the Mormon prophet, who could
probably give him more light on the subject than any one who had gone to
the spirit-world since Mahomet. I should, however, be most happy to hear
him and my highly esteemed friend Mr. Merton, who was present, converse
on the subject.
“Mr. Merton,” said the Judge, “I perceive is not a believer, and I am
not fond of conversing with sceptics.”
“Judge Preston,” said Mr. Merton, “can hardly call me a sceptic, and I
think, were we to compare notes, he would find me believing too much
rather than too little.”
“It may be so,” said the Judge, “but I feel as if I was in the presence
of an unbeliever, and an enemy of the spirits.”
“We must not place too much reliance on our feelings; and the habit of
carefully noting them, and taking them as our guides, is not to be
encouraged,” answered Mr. Merton. “Our feelings become warped, obscure
our perceptions, and mislead our judgment. I certainly do not deny the
facts, or the phenomena which you call spirit-manifestations, although I
may not, and probably do not, admit your explanation of them, nor the
doctrines concerning God, the universe, and man and his destiny, which I
find in your book.”
“But do you believe that spirits from the other world do really
communicate with the living?”
“That there is in many of the phenomena, I say not in all, which you
call spirit-manifestations, a real spiritual invasion, I do not doubt;
but whether the spirits are the souls of the departed, or really demons
or devils personating them, is a question to which you do not seem to
me, from your book, to have paid sufficient attention. You are
necromancers, diviners with the spirits of the dead. Necromancers are
almost as old as history. We find them alluded to in Genesis. Moses
forbids necromancy, or the evocation of the dead, and commands that
necromancers shall be put to death. In all ancient and modern pagan
nations, necromancy is found to be a very common species of divination.
The African magicians found at Cairo practise it even at the present
time, as we find testified to by an English nobleman and a French
academician, though by a seeing medium, not, as is the case with you, by
rapping, talking, and writing mediums. The famous Count de Cagliostro,
or rather Giuseppo Balsamo, at the close of the last century, professed
to enable persons of distinction to converse with the spirits of eminent
individuals, long since dead; and evocation of the dead has long been
practised at Paris by students of the University. You are real diviners,
attempting, by means of evoking the dead, to divine secrets, whether of
the past or the future, unknown to the living. You practise what the
world has always called divination, and that species of divination
called necromancy. Thus far, all is plain, certain, undeniable, and
therefore you do that which the Christian world has always held to be
unlawful, and a dealing with the devils. This, however, is nothing to
you, for you place the authority of the spirits above that of Jesus
Christ, and do not hesitate to make Christianity give place to
spiritism. But what I wish you to tell me is, the evidence on which you
assert that the invading or communicating spirits are really the souls
of men and women who once lived in the flesh?”
“They themselves expressly affirm it, and prove it by proving that they
have the knowledge of the earthly lives of the persons they say they
are, which we should expect them to have in case they were those very
persons.”
“The question, you will perceive, my dear Judge, is one of identity—a
question with which, as a lawyer and a judge, you must have often had
occasion to deal. Is the evidence you assign sufficient?”
“On my professional honor and reputation, I say it is.”
“Do you find the spirits always tell the truth?”
“No. I have said in my book they frequently lie.”
“Then the simple fact that a spirit says he is Franklin, Adams,
Jefferson, Washington, George Fox, William Penn, or Martin Luther, is
not a sufficient proof that he is.”
“I concede it. But I do not rely on his word alone. I examine the
spirit, and I conclude he is identically Franklin only when I find that
he has that intimate acquaintance with the earthly life of Franklin
which I should expect to find in case he really were Franklin.”
“But that intimate acquaintance does not establish the identity, unless
you know beforehand that the spirit could not have it, unless he were
Franklin. The spirits, I find by consulting your book, have told you the
most secret things of your own past life, and secrets which could by no
human means be known to any one but yourself. Yet the spirit who knew
these secrets was not yourself, but an intelligence distinct from you.
Now, if the spirit could show himself thus intimately acquainted with
your earthly life without being you, why might he not be intimately
acquainted with Franklin’s earthly life without being Franklin?”
“That is a point of view under which I have not considered the question.
But, nevertheless, I have subjected the spirits to severe tests, and
compelled them to confirm what they say by extraordinary visible
manifestations.”
“But the difficulty I find is, that there is nothing in those
manifestations that necessarily establishes the identity pretended; for
they do not necessarily establish the credibility of the power
exhibiting them, as you yourself allow, when you acknowledge that the
spirits are untruthful, and not unfrequently lie to you. Miracles
accredit the miracle-worker, establish his credibility, only when they
are such as can be performed only by the finger of God. If they are such
as can be performed by a created power, without special Divine
intervention, or such as might be performed by a lying spirit, they
prove nothing as to the credibility of their author. A messenger, or a
person claiming to be a messenger from God, performs a miracle which can
be performed only by the hand of God, and thus establishes his
credibility, because he proves by the miracle that God is with him,
vouches for what he says; and God, we know, can neither deceive nor be
deceived, and therefore will not endorse a deceiver. But prodigies,
though superhuman, which do not transcend the powers of created
intelligence, do not accredit the agent who performs them, certainly not
when it is conceded the agent can, and in many cases does, lie and
deceive. I must think, my dear Judge, that you have been hasty in
concluding the identity pretended. All you can conclude, from the
phenomena in the case, is, that there is present a superhuman spirit,
personating or pretending to be Bacon, Franklin, Penn, Swedenborg, or
some other well known person who has lived in the flesh, and is able to
speak and act in the character assumed.”
“My attention, I grant, has not been so specially turned to the question
of identity of the spirit with the individual personated, as it has been
to establishing the reality of the spiritual presence,” said the Judge.
“And you have been mainly intent on and carried away, I presume, by the
revelations you have received, or doctrines on the greatest of all
topics taught you by the spirits.”
“That is true. I have been much more impressed and confirmed by them
than by the visible or physical manifestations which I have witnessed.
The sublime doctrines and pure morality which the spirits teach have
chiefly won my conviction.”
“But these, however much they may seem to you, are very little to the
Christian believer. In their most favorable light, they do not approach
in sublimity and purity, human reason alone being judge, the Gospel of
our Lord. There is nothing new in your spiritual philosophy, and your
morality merely travesties a few principles of Christian morality. You
assert the immortality of the soul, never, in ancient or modern times,
denied by the heathen world; but the peculiar Christian doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead, and of future rewards and punishments, you do
not recognize. You hardly stand on a level with Cicero or Seneca. You
travestie the Christian doctrine of charity, or substitute for it a
watery philanthropy, or a sickly sentimentality. There is in your system
some subtilty, some cunning, chicanery, and ingenuity, but no deep
philosophy, no lofty wisdom, no broad, comprehensive principles, no
robust, manly virtue. The point on which you place the most importance
is that of infinite progression, which is an infinite absurdity; and
inasmuch as it denies the doctrine of final causes, denies God himself,
and is, in the last analysis, pure atheism.
“That some true and good things are said by the spirits, I do not deny.
The devil can disguise himself and appear as an angel of light. He is a
great fool, no doubt, but not fool enough to attempt to seduce men by
evil as evil. He must present falsehood in the guise of truth, and evil
in the guise of good, if he would do evil. It is not likely that he
would begin by shocking the moral sense of the community, and we should
expect him to recognize and appeal to the moral sentiments and dominant
beliefs of the men of the age; and this is all that you can say of the
teachings of the spirits. But, except the confirmation of the fact
taught by religion in all ages, that there are spiritual beings,
superior to man, who surround us and may invade us, nothing they teach
can be relied on, because their veracity is not established, and their
unveracious and lying character is conceded.”
“There are lying spirits, I concede, but all are not,” interposed the
Judge.
“Be that as it may, in what transcends your own knowledge, or is
verifiable by your own natural powers, you have no means of
distinguishing them, or of determining when the communication is true,
or when it is false. When a spirit unfolds to you a system of the
universe,—a system which comes not within the range of scientific
investigation,—you cannot say that he is not deluding you, and giving
you fairy gold, which will turn out to be chips or vile stubble.”
“You think us deluded, then?”
“In what you see and hear, no; in regard to what lies beyond, yes. I
believe you honest; I believe you really receive communications from
invisible spirits; I believe you fabricate, simulate nothing. I give you
full credit so far as regards the mysterious phenomena you relate; I
agree with you in the conclusion that these phenomena are produced by
spirits; but I regard as not proved the identity of these spirits with
the spirits who were once united as human souls to bodies; and what they
teach of God, the universe, and human destiny, I regard as a delusion—a
Satanic delusion, designed to seduce you from, or to prevent you from
returning to, your allegiance to God and his Christ.”
“That this is the fact,” said I, “I am quite sure. If any proof of
it were wanting, it might be found in the fact that these
spirit-manifestations are even by Judge Preston himself identified
with those which have always been opposed to Christianity, and by it
pronounced Satanic; and by the further fact, that they teach as
truth the principal doctrines which the movement party of the day
oppose to the Gospel. Take the doctrines set forth by the Seer
Davis, those which you find in the _Shekinah_, and even in Judge
Preston’s own book, and you find them in substance the prevailing
infidelity of the times, dressed out in a spiritual garb. I have
very good reasons for knowing that these spirit-manifestations have
been started for the very purpose of overthrowing Christianity by
means of an infidel superstition. The prime mover had precisely this
object, and no other.”
“We have,” said the Judge, “only your word for that. I regard these
phenomena from God.”
“So the devil wishes you to regard them, for he seeks, by means of them,
to carry on his war against the Christian’s God, and to get himself
worshipped as God,” said I.
“The devil,” said Mr. Merton, “can go only the length of his chain, and
that chain is much shorter than it was in old heathen times. He can do
only what he is permitted, and it is very possible that what he is now
doing will turn out to his signal discomfiture. It will give a serious
blow to the materialism and Sadducism of the age, lead men to believe in
the reality of the spirit-world, and when that is done, they will have
made one step towards believing in Christ. The age is so infirm as to
deny the existence of the devil; and even becoming able to believe once
more in the reality of his Satanic majesty, will be a symptom, slight
though it may be, of convalescence.”
“We,” remarked the Judge, “are no Sadducees. We believe in both angel
and spirit, in good angels and bad angels.”
“That is something,” said Mr. Merton; “and, if you open your hearts, and
keep them open to the light, you may in time believe more, and escape
the meshes in which Satan has now entangled you. Your great mistake is
in supposing that these good and bad angels are departed souls. I do not
say that departed souls may not revisit the earth; they have done so,
and they may continue to do so, but the human soul never becomes an
angel or a demon. It is all very well to say of a departed dear one, he
or she is an angel in heaven, but taken literally, it is never true. In
the resurrection, our Lord says the just are like the angels of God, in
the respect that they are neither male nor female, and neither marry nor
are given in marriage, but he does not say that they are angels; and the
Scriptures distinguish between the company of the angels and the spirits
of just men made perfect. Men were created a little lower than the
angels, and they are of a different order. The demons or devils are not
wicked souls separated from their bodies, and wandering on this or the
other side of the dark-flowing Acheron, but the angels who kept not
their first estate, and were cast out of heaven.
“These fallen angels, under their chief, Lucifer or Satan, carry on
their rebellion against God by seeking to seduce men from their
allegiance to their rightful sovereign. They can and do invade men,
because they are superior to men, and are malicious enough to do it. But
the good angels never do it, for they work not by violence, but by
moral, persuasive, peaceful, and gentle influences; and human souls
cannot do it, for the _strong_ keepeth the house till a _stronger_ comes
and binds him. Nothing remains then, my dear Judge, but to regard these
spirit-manifestations, in so far as real, as the invasions of Satan, as
produced, not by good angels or departed souls, but by the fallen
angels, called demons by the Gentiles, and therefore, all these
mysterious phenomena, in so far as they are not produced by natural
agencies, as sheer deviltry. This is the only conclusion to which I, as
a Christian philosopher, can come respecting them.”
CHAPTER XXI.
SPIRIT-MANIFESTATIONS.
Mr. Merton’s conclusion did not precisely please me, although I had
suspected it from the first. Yet it troubled me, and I would gladly have
escaped it. The next day, when Mr. Merton called to see me, as he did
every day, I told him that I did not like his conclusion, and I wished
he would give me his real thoughts on the subject.
“Without recurring to the teachings of Christianity, which I have the
happiness of believing, I could not,” said he, “explain these mysterious
spirit-manifestations, and I should not know what to think of them. I
might be tempted to deny them, as does our friend Jack—to believe them
produced by some inexplicable jugglery, even against my better judgment;
or I might try to acquiesce in the belief of our friend the “udge, that
they are the souls of the departed. Most likely, I should treat them
simply as inexplicable, and attempt to construct no theory for their
solution.
“I am unwilling to suppose the supernatural, and will not, where I
cannot satisfactorily demonstrate the insufficiency of the natural. The
whole history of our race bristles with prodigies, with marvellous
facts, clearly divisible into two distinct and even opposite orders. The
one seem to have for their object to draw men towards God, and assist
them in ascending to him as their last end and supreme good; the other
seem to have for their object to draw men away from God, and to aid men
in descending into the depths of night and darkness. Man has a double
nature, is composed of body and soul, and on the one side has a natural
aspiration to God, and on the other a natural tendency from God, towards
the creature, and thence towards night and chaos. A supernatural power
assists him to rise; a preternatural power assists him, so to speak, to
descend. But whether in the ascending or in the descending scale, it is
not easy to say where the natural ends and the supernatural begins, for
in both cases the foreign power presupposes the natural, and blends in
with it, and simply transforms the action.
“There is, no doubt, much in either order set down by the vulgar to
foreign intervention, that is really explicable on natural principles.
Good, pious people cry out ‘a miracle,’ not seldom where no miracle is;
and I should be sorry to be obliged to make an act of faith in all the
miracles recorded in the legends of the saints. I should be equally
sorry to be obliged to believe every tale that is told of Satanic
invasion. I have a deep and settled horror of scepticism, but also a
horror no less of superstition. I would no more be credulous than
incredulous. I do not like to undertake the refutation of those who
explain the facts of the night-side of nature on natural principles, for
it is hard to do it, without giving more or less occasion in many minds
to superstition. It is only in cases, like the present, where the
disease is an epidemic, more destructive than the cholera or the plague,
that I am willing to do what I can to draw attention to their real
character.
“In regard to the dark prodigies, if I may so call them, I think not a
few included by the vulgar under this head should be dismissed as mere
jugglery; others may be explained by animal magnetism, and imply neither
fraud nor dealing with devils, but are not innocent, because produced
not by a justifiable motive, and are in all cases to be discountenanced
because of dangerous tendency; others still may, perhaps, be explicable
by natural causes, which science has not yet investigated, and of which
we are ignorant.
“But a residuum remains which it is impossible to explain without the
assumption of Satanic intervention. Such are some of the cases which you
have heard me relate. Such are many of the phenomena which you yourself
must have witnessed, and perhaps been instrumental in producing. Such,
too, is the inspiration of Mahomet, if we may rely on the account given
us by his friends, as well as the demon of Socrates, and such are
evidently the well known cases of the Camisards or Tremblers of the
Cevennes in 1688, George Fox and the early Quakers, Swedenborg, and the
trance or ectasy of the Methodists, and finally Joe Smith and the Mormon
prophets. In all these cases there are evident marks of superhuman
intervention, and which no man in his sober senses, and instructed in
the Christian religion, can pretend is the intervention of the Holy
Ghost, or of good angels. The perturbation, the disorder, the trembling,
the falling backwards, the foaming at the mouth, the violence which
always in these cases accompany the presence of the spirit, are so many
sure indications that it is an evil, not a good spirit. The Lord was not
in the strong wind that rent the mountain; he was not in the fire that
wrapt it in flames; but in the still small voice that made the prophet
step forth from his cave to listen. When the Lord comes in his gracious
visitations all is sweetness and peace. No disturbance of the physical
system, no whirling and howling, no storm or tempest, no wringing and
twisting of the arms and legs, no violent or indecent postures, no
abnormal development or exercise of the faculties, mark the incoming of
the Holy Ghost. All is calm and serene; the understanding is
illuminated, the heart is warmed, the will is strengthened, and the
whole soul is elevated by the infusion of a supernatural grace. There is
no crisis, no forgetfulness on awaking from a trance. But whenever it is
the reverse, wherever there is violence, distortion, quaking, trembling,
and disturbance, we know that if any spirit is present it is an evil
spirit, which delights in violence and disorder, and displays power
without love, force without goodness, knowledge without gentleness.
“Everybody has heard, I suppose, of the prodigies wrought by touching
the tomb of the Deacon Paris, the famous Jansenist saint, and the
violent controversy they occasioned between the Jansenists and the
Jesuits, the former trying to magnify them into miracles to the honor of
their sect, and the Jesuits very unnecessarily and very unwisely, in my
judgment, laboring to disprove or discredit them as facts. The prodigies
are well authenticated, and I see no way of denying them without
throwing doubt on all human testimony. Among them I select those which
indicate, on the part of the affected, a surprising power of physical
resistance, and among these I select only one, that of Jeanne Moulu, a
young woman, from twenty-two to twenty-three years of age, given by the
_Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales_. This young woman, in her
convulsions, was placed with her back against a wall, and a man of great
strength took an andiron weighing some twenty-five pounds, and struck
her on her stomach several blows in succession with all his strength,
sometimes to the number of one hundred blows and over. A brother gave
her sixty blows, and afterwards, trying his blows against the wall, it
gave way at the twenty-fifth blow. It was in vain, says Carré de
Montgeron, a grave magistrate, that I struck with all my force, the
convulsionary complained that my blows brought her no relief, and
obliged me to place the andiron in the hands of a large and very strong
man found among the spectators. He spared nothing, but put forth all his
strength, and dealt such terrible blows on the pit of her stomach that
they shook the wall against which she was supported. She made him give
her the hundred blows which she had demanded at first, counting for
nothing the sixty she had received from me. When the andiron sunk so
deep into the pit of her stomach as to seem to reach her back, the young
woman would exclaim, ‘That relieves me. Courage, my brother; strike
harder, if you can.’ The blows were struck on the naked skin, but
without bruising or breaking it in the least. The convulsionary, after
this, lay on the floor, and there was placed upon her a heavy plank on
which stood a score or more of persons, weighing all together at least
four thousand pounds. Then a flint stone, weighing twenty-two pounds,
was hurled with full force a hundred times in succession upon her bosom.
At each blow, the whole room shook, the floor trembled, and the
spectators shuddered at the sound of the frightful blows.
“There were other phenomena of a character no less extraordinary, but I
pass them over, all of which were notorious, and witnessed by half, one
writer says, all Paris. Hume says that they have all the authenticity
that human testimony can give, and that we can deny them only on the
ground that such things are absolutely impossible. Humanly impossible I
concede, but, as they are not of a character to come from God, I must
believe them to be Satanic, and that the persons were really possessed
and sustained by evil spirits.
“The case of frequent occurrence among the lower class of the Lamas,
related by M. Huc in his travels in Mongolia, Thibet, and China, is
one that cannot be explained save on the ground of Satanic
intervention,—that of a Lama, a sort of Boudhist monk, who opens his
belly, takes out his entrails, and places them before him, and then
returns immediately to his former state.
“‘When the appointed hour has arrived,’ says M. Huc, ‘the whole
multitude of pilgrims repair to the great court of the Lama convent,
where an altar is erected. At length the Bokte makes his appearance; he
advances gravely amid the acclamations of the crowd, seats himself on
the altar, and taking a cutlass from his girdle, places it between his
knees, while the crowd of Lamas, ranged in a circle at his feet,
commence the terrible invocations that prelude this frightful ceremony.
By degrees, as they proceed in their recital, the Bokte seems to tremble
in every limb, and gradually fall into strong convulsions. Then the song
of the Lamas becomes wilder and more animated, and the recitation is
changed for cries and howlings. Suddenly the Bokte flings away the scarf
which he has worn, snatches off his girdle, and with the sacred cutlass
rips himself entirely open. As the blood gushes out, the multitude
prostrate themselves before the horrid spectacle, and the sufferer is
immediately interrogated concerning future events and things concealed
from human knowledge. His answers to these questions are regarded as
oracles.
“‘As soon as the devout curiosity of the pilgrims is satisfied, the
Lamas resume their recitations and prayers; and the Bokte, taking up in
his right hand a quantity of his blood, carries it to his mouth, blows
three times on it, and casts it, with a loud cry, into the air. He then
passes his hand rapidly over his stomach, and it becomes whole as it was
before, without the slightest trace being left of the diabolical
operation, with the exception of an extreme lassitude.’
“Occurrences like these are not rare, and I could fill volumes with
phenomena equally extraordinary, which I cannot deny, and which cannot
be explained without the assumption of a superhuman agent, and I may
add, a diabolical agent. Dupotet exhibits, by means of his magic ring,
almost daily in Paris, the most extraordinary magic wonders, and he
confesses that he does it by means of a mental evocation, and by virtue
of a PACT.
“Now these, and facts like these, instructed as I am in the Christian
faith, and holding it without any doubt, prove to me that the Satanic
invasion, demonic possession, and obsession, are no fables, but facts
not to be denied, though each particular case must stand on its own
merits, and be received or rejected according to the evidence. In
general I am slow to believe this or that particular case is diabolic,
and I require clear and irrefragable proof, strong and perfectly
reliable testimony.
“The criteria of demonic invasion or obsession, as laid down by the
Christian church, for the guidance of exorcists, are seven:
1. Power of knowing the unexpressed thoughts of others.
2. Understanding of unknown languages.
3. Power of speaking unknown or foreign languages.
4. Knowledge of future events.
5. Knowledge of things passing in distant places.
6. Exhibition of superior physical strength.
7. Suspension of the body in the air during a considerable time.
“Now I find all these in the recent spirit-manifestations, clearly and
distinctly testified to by such occular witnesses as Dr. Dexter, Judge
Edmands, and the Hon. N. P. Talmadge, not to mention any others. The
Spiritualists or Spiritists do not deny, they assert that the
manifestations they witness are strictly analogous to the class of facts
which have been always regarded as Satanic. At first, the spirits
communicated by rapping and moving furniture. But now, besides rapping
mediums, there are writing mediums, seeing mediums, and speaking
mediums. In these last three cases they admit the fact of spiritual
invasion, and even call it possession. In the case of the speaking
medium particularly, I find it contended that the spirit takes
possession of the medium, generally a woman, maltreats her at times,
throws her down, gives her convulsions, and forces her to do things
which she is unwilling to do, and compels her organs to utter words to
which she has the greatest repugnance.
“Hear Judge Edmands. ‘I have frequently known mental questions answered,
that is, questions merely framed in the mind of the interrogator, and
not revealed by him or known to others. Preparatory to meeting a circle,
I have sat down alone in my room, and carefully prepared a series of
questions to be propounded, and I have been surprised to find my
questions answered, and in the precise order in which I wrote them,
without my even taking my memorandum out of my pocket, and when I knew
not a person present even knew that I had prepared questions, much less
what they were. My most secret thoughts, those which I never uttered to
mortal man or woman, have been freely spoken to, as if I had uttered
them. Purposes which I have privately entertained have been publicly
revealed, and I have once and again been admonished that my every
thought was known to, and could be disclosed by, the intelligence which
was thus manifesting itself.
“‘I have heard the mediums use Greek, Latin, Spanish, and French, when I
knew that they had no knowledge of any language but their own; and it is
a fact that can be attested by many, that often there has been speaking
and writing in foreign languages and unknown tongues by those who were
unacquainted with either.’
“Dr. Dexter is explicit to the same purpose. I need not multiply
citations. The books of the spiritualists are full of instances in
point. And as it is clear, from the phenomena presented, that the
superhuman intelligence and power manifested are not Divine, I can, as a
rational man, only conclude that they are Satanic. I believe the persons
engaged in the unhallowed intercourse are, to a great extent, in good
faith, and have no suspicion that they are really dealing with devils.”
“I believe you are right,” said I. “One thing is certain, that even in
mesmerizing, there is always an implicit mental evocation, and without
it, I venture to say, no one was ever able to exhibit the mesmeric
phenomena. The effort of the will which the mesmerizer makes, whether he
uses passes or not, is at bottom an evocation, a calling up of the
mesmeric spirit; and he who set the spirits a rapping, you may be sure,
had made a virtual, if not an explicit, a tacit, if not an express
compact with the devil. But there is one thing farther I would have you
explain, that is, the connection of spirit-manifestations with so-called
animal magnetism.”
“That is a great subject, and would lead me too far for my time and for
your strength. There are different spirits that besiege us or invade us,
but those that usually do so probably, after the language of St. Paul,
swarm in the air, and inhabit what the ancients called Ether. Many of
the fathers, and some later doctors of the Church have believed that
they are created with and inhabit fine ethereal bodies. However this may
be, they no doubt, in their operation, assume such bodies, and
consequently find their operations facilitated by a subtile material
medium, such as the mesmeric fluid. Hence I do not regard mesmerism
itself as Satanic, but as facilitating demonic invasion.
“There is also in man what the ancients called the _umbra_, the shade,
which is not the soul, nor the body in its mere outward sense. It is, as
it were, the interior lining of the body, capable, to a certain extent,
of being detached from it, without however losing its relation to it.
Hence the phenomena of bi-location, so frequently noticed in the annals
of sorcery or witchcraft, can be conceived as possible. The body lies in
a trance, and the soul with its _umbra_ is able to carry on, by the
assistance of the demon, its deviltry, even at a distance; and the
wounds given to the shade will reappear on the body, as has been often
observed.
“But you must excuse me from entering further into this intricate and
mysterious subject. Many ingenious theories have been devised, but I
wish to deal as little with them as possible. There is a laudable
curiosity, there is also an unlawful curiosity, and there is a science
which is not desirable. I have been obliged, in the way of my calling,
to study it; but I never touch it, without regretting its necessity.
Spare me. The knowledge that cannot enlighten, that cannot aid virtue,
and only leads astray, should never be sought.”
CHAPTER XXII.
SUPERSTITION.
I had, almost from the first, suspected Mr. Merton’s conclusion, and
should never for a moment have doubted it, had I not grown up in the
disbelief of evil spirits. Science, or what passes for science, had long
denied all supernatural and all superhuman intervention in the affairs
of mankind; and I, like the majority of my contemporaries, had grown up
a complete Epicurean. There was, perhaps, a God who had created the
world, but having created it, and impressed upon it certain fixed and
invariable laws, he left it to take care of itself. I denied his
providence, or, what is the same thing, resolved it into the uniform and
inflexible laws of nature, and like my friends of the French Eclectic
school, saw the Divine intervention only in the necessary and immutable
elements of human history. God was for me simply Fate, Invincible
Necessity, and therefore no free person, no object of reverence, love,
or worship.
Having excluded Providence, I necessarily rejected the ministry of
angels. I resolved all nature into a collection of forces operative by
intrinsic and necessary laws. Man is one of these forces, neither the
strongest nor the weakest. In his own intrinsic strength he is not much,
but by placing himself in a right position with regard to the other
forces of nature, he may make them work in him and for him, and thus
increase his strength by the whole of theirs, as the millwright makes
use of the force of the stream to turn his mill, the inventor of the
magnetic telegraph of the lightning to convey his messages, or as the
sailor avails himself of the wind to propel his ship.
Belief in the free or voluntary intervention of the Divinity in human
affairs, I had been taught by received science to regard as
superstition. Religion, Christian or Mahometan, Jewish or Pagan,
inasmuch as it always presupposes the supernatural, or the intervention
of God _extra naturam_, or otherwise than in and through the laws of
nature, was superstition. The ministry of angels was superstition. The
assertion of Satanic interposition was, beyond all doubt, superstition.
The facts which had led to the supposition of Divine providence, and of
the ministry of good and evil angels, were, no doubt, real; but ignorant
of the laws of nature, men had misinterpreted them, and assigned them
causes which are unreal. All religion has, I said, its origin in
ignorance, and necessarily recedes as science advances. Hence I felt
that it would be only a proof of my ignorance and superstition to
ascribe the mysterious phenomena to any spiritual or supernatural
agency.
Even after the explanations of Mr. Merton, and after my reason was
silenced, I was unwilling to abandon my prejudices, and accept his
conclusion. What, should I, in this nineteenth century, in this age of
genuine science, which has done so much to roll back the clouds and
dissipate the darkness which enveloped past ages, consent to adopt the
vulgar belief of the sixteenth century, when men were but just escaping
from the thraldom of Romanism—of the thirteenth century, when they were
but just beginning to emerge from barbarism—of the first century, when
still buried in the night of heathenism? My pride of science, my pride
of intellect, revolted at the thought. What ridicule would not be
showered upon me by the wits and free-thinkers of the age, should it be
known, or even suspected!
I hesitated long, for I saw at once, that if I admitted the existence
and influence of Satan, I must go farther, and concede the Christian
mysteries. I must abandon liberal Christianity, deny the supposed
progress of recent times in religious notions, and return to
old-fashioned orthodoxy. Perhaps I should find it necessary to go even
further back than the orthodoxy of my own country. This was no pleasant
thought. To unlearn all I had learned, to regard all my most cherished
convictions as so many delusions, to become in reality as a little
child, and to commence life anew, as Jesus Christ taught we must do, if
we would enter into the kingdom of heaven, was too humiliating to be
contemplated with pleasure even on my dying bed, and when the world was
fast disappearing from my view. What would have been the result of my
internal struggle, if I had been left wholly to myself, I will not
pretend to say. But I was not so left. Mr. Merton was with me almost
daily, and seemed always to read my thoughts before I expressed them,
and to comprehend my difficulties.
“Your great mistake,” said he to me one day, when the subject came up,
“is in supposing that religion is the offspring of ignorance, and stands
opposed to science. Your assumption that man began in ignorance, and has
attained to science only by long and patient research and laborious
experiment, is at best gratuitous. Some things, of course, have been
acquired only in process of time. Man has made progress in the knowledge
of all that which he himself has done, or has suffered; but nothing
requires you to assume that his progress in knowledge is any thing more
than progress in the knowledge of his own doing and suffering. It is not
likely that Adam knew the history of the battle of Pharsalia, of
Hastings, Bovines, or Waterloo; it is not probable that he was
acquainted with the steam-engine, the cotton-gin, the spinning-jenny,
the power-loom, or the lightning telegraph. But he may have received
from his Maker, as religion teaches, a knowledge of the nature and
causes of things, and of his moral relations and duties, equal to that
possessed by the most enlightened of his posterity.
“Historically considered,” proceeded Mr. Merton, “the earliest belief of
mankind was the existence, unity, and free providence of God—a belief in
strict accordance with the deductions of genuine science in every age.
Every language under heaven bears indelible traces of that belief, and
would be unintelligible, absolutely insignificant, if it were denied.
Yet all languages are radically one and the same, and must, in some
form, have been given supernaturally to man, for man speaks only as he
has learned to speak; and it would have required language to invent
language.”
“But if all languages are radically the same, how do you explain their
manifest differences?” I asked.
“That is a question which I leave to the philologists; but they, I
believe, very easily prove that these differences are not radical, and
that they are due principally to the differences of pursuits, of
circumstances, temperaments, and pronunciation of different tribes
having little or no intercourse with one another. However great or small
they may be, or whatever their causes, it has been proved that they are
only modifications of one and the same original tongue.”
“But you know,” said I, “that religion is progressive, and that the
earliest religion of mankind was a gross fetichism, a worship of animals
and inanimate things. From that gross superstition we can trace its
gradual purification and progress towards the sublime monotheism of
Moses, Socrates, Plato, and Jesus, moulded by the Church fathers into
Christian theology.”
“I know no such thing,” replied Mr. Merton, “and St. Paul, who was a
good philosopher as well as an inspired apostle, tells us that men left
the true God to worship creeping things and four-footed beasts. The
monotheism you speak of is historically older than the fetichism of
which you would make it a development. What you are pleased to call the
monotheism of Moses, was older than that lawgiver. Moses, under Divine
inspiration and direction, founded the Jewish state, or commonwealth,
and instituted the Jewish worship, but he did not introduce a new faith
or theology. The faith or doctrine he taught concerning God and moral
duty, was that of the old patriarchs, and the same which had been held
from Adam. Christian faith and theology have come down to us through the
line of the patriarchs and the Jews, not through that of the Gentiles,
and, if a development at all, is not a development of heathenism, but of
the earlier patriarchal religion preserved in the synagogue. Hence St.
Augustine says, that faith has not changed; as believed the fathers, so
we believe—only they believed in a Christ who was to come, and we
believe in a Christ who has come.
“Then, again, the monotheism, if monotheism it was, of Socrates and
Plato, was not a development or gradual purification of fetichism or of
the gross forms of nature-worship. They themselves tell you as much, and
always claim to be restorers, not innovators. In asserting the unity of
God, they profess always to revive the belief or the wisdom of the
ancients. No one can have studied the various forms of heathenism
without finding in them ample evidence that they are not primitive
formations. They all bear witness to a type which is not in themselves—a
type from which they have departed, not a type which they are
approaching or realizing. They bear the deep traces of corruption, and
are evidently travesties of the old patriarchal or primitive religion,
without a knowledge of which they are absolutely inexplicable. The
memory of the loss of its primitive perfection, all heathenism retains
in its heart. All heathenism is imprinted with profound grief for a lost
good, and never does it show signs of a true joy. There is sadness in
all its rites, gay and joyous as it tries to make them. Its joy is a
drunken joy, and its boisterous mirth is the wild laugh of the maniac.
But over the whole of heathenism, even in its grossest forms, there
hovers always the primitive monotheism. It retains always some
reminiscence of the belief in one supreme God, Father of gods and men.
Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, and others, acquainted with the Jewish
belief, and meditating on this reminiscence, undoubtedly rose to
sublimer and more rational views of the Divinity than those which were
entertained by the vulgar; but this says nothing in favor of that
gradual development and purification of heathenism, which you and a well
known modern school assert, and assert without one single fact to
support you.
“You must rely on history,” continued Mr. Merton, “for your theory
professes to be historical, and to sustain itself by facts. But history
has been tolerably authentic for some thousands of years. How happens
it, if your theory be correct, that we find no instance of this gradual
development and purification of heathenism? In all the cases where the
history can be traced, it is undeniable that the purest or the least
deformed state of any heathen superstition is its earliest; and the
grossest, the most corrupt and revolting, is always its latest. Nothing
in this world ever reforms itself, and the inevitable tendency of all
error, as of all vice, is from bad to worse. Compare the popular
religion of Rome under the kings, with the popular religion under the
pagan emperors, and you will find this proved.
“Indeed, my friend, your whole theory is false. Never yet has religion
receded before the advance of true science, and religion, as you well
say, has always asserted the supernatural, the interposition of God in
human affairs, _extra naturam_. Always, too, has it asserted the
existence of good and bad angels, and their intervention on the one hand
by Divine command, and on the other by Divine permission, in the affairs
of mankind. This belief of all ages is itself a phenomenon to be
explained, accounted for; and you will find it impossible to explain it,
or account for it, without admitting its substantial truth. Men may err
in supposing a supernatural or superhuman intervention where none takes
place, and undoubtedly they have so erred time and again; but they could
not have so erred if they had not already had the idea or belief of such
interposition. Whence comes that idea or belief? If that is false,
explain whence comes the general error before the particular? A general
_à priori_ error is impossible. All error is in the misapplication of
truth. A general error is nothing but a generalization by way of
induction of particular errors, or misapplications of truth to
particulars, and is therefore necessarily subsequent to them. If there
were in reality no true religion, there could be no false religion, as
if there were no genuine, there could be no counterfeit coin. Always is
the true prior to the false; and how then could mankind come to assert a
false supernatural interposition, if they had no prior belief in a true
supernatural interposition, or believe in such an interposition, if no
such interposition had ever taken place?”
“But how will you clear this belief in Satanic interposition from the
charge of superstition?” I asked.
“Superstition, my friend, is a word oftener used,” replied Mr. Merton,
“than understood. The heathen religions were all superstitions, I grant,
because they all ascribed effects to unreal or inadequate causes. To
believe in the existence of good and bad angels is not superstition, if
good and bad angels really exist, any more than it is to believe in the
existence of men and women, horses or oxen. Where there is no error,
there is no superstition. Suppose a fairy really to exist, there is no
superstition in believing the fact. Suppose the ministry of angels to be
a fact, there is nothing superstitious, unreasonable, or unscientific in
believing it, or in ascribing to that ministry real effects. Suppose
fallen angels or wicked spirits do really exist, do really tempt us, and
by Divine permission, do really besiege or possess us, there is no
superstition in believing it, in taking the proper precautions against
them, or the proper measures to disperse or expel them. If the real
origin of the phenomena we have been considering is diabolical, nothing
is more reasonable than to believe it; and to ascribe them to natural
causes, would be unscientific, and itself a sort of superstition.
Undoubtedly, the spirit-rappers, or spiritualists, as they call
themselves, are superstitious. What they call spiritualism is rank
superstition, because they believe the phenomena are produced by the
_shades_ or spirits of the dead, and the word _superstition_ was
originally used, I believe, to imply a belief in, and a dread of, the
influence of the departed on the living; but to ascribe them to fallen
angels, if such they are, is no superstition at all, for then they are
ascribed to an adequate cause, and to their real cause.
“There are two opposite errors,” concluded Mr. Merton, “both equally
hostile to religion and to good sense,—superstition and irreligion. Each
is an abuse, as the schoolmen say, an _excess_ in a contrary direction;
and unhappily, the tendency of most men is to one or the other. Nothing
is more certain than that in every age much superstition has been
connected with the doctrine I have contended for.”
“That,” said I, “is what makes me dread and hesitate to accept it.”
“I know,” Mr. Merton replied, “all that you would say on that score. I
have myself read history, and, no less than you, been shocked by its
abuses. But there is no truth that cannot be or that has not been
abused. I am as much opposed to these abuses as you are. It will not do
to suppose that every event a little out of the range of our ordinary
experience, is a miracle, or effected, if good, by Angelic, if bad, by
Satanic agency. Every time a murrain prevails among the cattle, it will
not do to ascribe it to sorcery, or when the butter will not come, to
lay the blame upon Robin Goodfellow. The tendency to do so is
undoubtedly a superstitious tendency. But the contrary, or Sadducean
tendency, to believe in neither angel nor spirit, is even more
dangerous. I do not believe every tale of witchcraft I hear, and I am
slow to believe in actual Satanic invasion in any particular case that
may be alleged. The Church has always asserted the possibility of such
invasion, but she does not permit a resort to exorcism on every apparent
instance of it. She demands previous consultation, long examination, and
the judgment of the most rigid science. While the greatest caution
should be exercised as to every case of supposed actual Satanic
invasion, we should guard equally against running into the contrary
error of denying that such invasion ever takes place. An unreasonable
scepticism is as far removed from true wisdom and virtue, as an
unreasonable belief. Modern science is sceptical; and it is more
important just now to guard against scepticism and its irreligion, than
it is to guard against superstition.
“Yet we deceive ourselves, if we suppose that the scepticism of science
has penetrated far into the popular mind, even in our own country.
Science can never root out popular superstitions. While the few laugh at
the superstition of the vulgar, that superstition, though modified
perhaps as to its forms, continues to thrive, and attains, not
unfrequently, even a more vigorous growth. The old popular
superstitions, brought hither by our ancestors, still live in the heart
of the people, and in forms as gross and as revolting as in the
seventeenth century. Superstition is cured, not by a sceptical science,
denying altogether the spirit-world, but by religion, which, while it
recognizes that world, teaches us to draw accurately the line of
demarcation between genuine and counterfeit spirit-manifestations. The
people cannot live in absolute irreligion; and where they have not
religion, they will have superstition. The tendency of modern science is
to destroy all religious faith, and therefore to promote, indirectly,
the very evil it proposes to cure,—the common effect of all unbaptized
science, as of all unbaptized philanthropy.”
“There is some truth in that, I must own,” I remarked. “I know not why
it is so, but every effort made, although with the purest and best
intentions in the world, outside of Christianity, seem always to fail,
or to end only in aggravating the very evils they were intended to cure.
There is less real liberty in France to-day than there was before the
meeting of the States-General in May, 1789. The revolutions which,
during the last sixty or seventy years, have so terribly raged on
European soil, though made in behalf of liberty or of popular
representation, have resulted only in depriving each nation in which
they have taken place of its former too feeble checks on power, and in
rendering the monarchy more absolute. The same may be said in principle
of all our efforts at philanthropic reform on a smaller scale.”
“Undoubtedly,” replied Mr. Merton; “and the reason is, that the glory of
whatever is good is due to God, and he will suffer no plans to succeed
that would rob him of his due. He has himself given us his law, and
provided us the means of salvation, temporal and eternal; and whosoever
seeks salvation by any other means, or in contempt of that law, must
fail, and shamefully fail.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
DIFFICULTIES.
“What you say, Mr. Merton,” said Jack, “may be very plausible, but you
will never convince me that Almighty God, the loving Father of us all,
would ever permit his children to be exposed to Satanic invasion. It
would impeach either his wisdom and love, or his power.”
“Why more than his permission of the same vexations and afflictions by
any other agency?” asked Mr. Merton, very quietly. “The facts, the
phenomena themselves are undeniable, and must be produced by some
agency, and by Divine permission too. While they remain the same, I
cannot see how their production by Satan, any more than their production
by some other created or secondary cause, is incompatible with the
Divine perfection.”
“I do not pretend to be able to say how that is,” replied Jack, “but I
will never believe that God will allow the devil, or any other being
subject to his power, to have such influence over the children he loves.
It is contrary to common sense. It is nonsense, absurdity, blasphemy.”
“I am very much of Jack’s opinion,” interposed Dr. Corning, who had for
a long time ceased to take any part in our conversations. “If there is a
God, a God who is Lord Omnipotent, the devil, if devil there be, must be
subject to him, and unable to do any thing without his permission. Can
any reasonable man believe that God would permit the devil to harass and
afflict, besiege and possess his children? Would a human father permit,
if he could help it, an enemy to exercise a corresponding power over his
own offspring? God is love, and love worketh no ill, and, as far as in
its power to prevent, suffers no ill to be worked to any one.”
“All that,” replied Mr. Merton, “would be very conclusive, if the facts
or phenomena did not exist to give it a flat denial. Here are the facts,
and whatever origin you assign them, they remain, in themselves
considered, the same. You assign insanity as their origin. Be it so. But
would a God who is love, who is wisdom, who is omnipotence, suffer his
children to be afflicted with so grievous a disease as insanity, one so
terrible and so humiliating in its effects? Insanity must be subject to
his dominion; and why then does he suffer any one to become insane?”
“Many of these facts, as you call them, are the result of mere jugglery
and sheer imposture,” answered the Doctor, “and do not deserve a
moment’s consideration.”
“Be it so,” replied Mr. Merton. “But how can God permit such jugglery
and imposture?”
“They are the works of man, and the results of evil passions,” promptly
replied Dr. Corning.
“Very good,” said Mr. Merton; “but whence these evil passions? and how
can God, consistently with his perfections, permit them to produce such
pernicious effects? You see, my dear Doctor, turn which way you will,
take what ground you please, your argument can always be retorted. As
far as the Divine perfection is concerned, it makes no difference, since
the facts really exist, whether you ascribe them to Satanic invasion or
to insanity, to the evil passions of man, or to the elemental forces or
inherent laws of nature; for, on any of these suppositions, you ascribe
them to a created cause, dependent on God as first cause for its very
existence, and therefore a cause that cannot operate without his
permission. The whole question resolves itself into the old question,
then, of the origin of evil. Evil certainly could not exist without the
permission of God; and yet you yourself concede that evil does exist.
How can God, consistently with his perfections, permit it? This is the
question; and, if he can permit it at all, he can as well permit it when
produced by one agent, as when produced by another.”
“But that,” said Dr. Corning, “is a question for you to answer, as well
as for me.”
“Not in the case before us,” rejoined Mr. Merton, “because your
objection concedes the existence of evil, and only denies it as the work
of a particular agent. But let that pass. I can answer the question only
in the light of Christian theology. According to that theology, there is
no real evil but sin; and sin is always voluntary on the part of the
sinner. God chose to create men and angels free moral agents, that they
might be capable of virtue, and of meriting the rewards of obedience. He
could not so create us without making us capable of abusing our freedom,
for obedience is not and cannot be meritorious where there is no power
of disobedience, as disobedience is not culpable where there is no power
of obedience. Hence the saints in heaven, having no longer the power of
disobedience, do not merit by their obedience, and simply enjoy the
rewards of their obedience in their state of probation on earth. If any
do not obtain the rewards of obedience, the fault is their own, and they
have no one to blame but themselves. Their failure is voluntary; they
fail only because they choose to fail.
“In regard to the Satanic vexations,” continued Mr. Merton, ”we must
bear in mind that Satan has no power to harm us—not even a hair of our
head—against our free will or deliberate assent. It is always in our
power to resist him, and even to turn his machinations and vexations
against him, and to make them occasions of merit. ‘Count it all joy, my
brethren,’ says the blessed Apostle St. James, ‘when ye fall into divers
temptations,’ that is, trials and afflictions. The evil is not in the
temptation even to sin, but in the free, voluntary assent; it is not in
the vexations and afflictions, obsessions and possessions, but in our
voluntary abuse of them, or failure to turn them to a good account. God
suffers no one to be tempted or tried or harassed beyond what he can
bear. Always is his grace sufficient for all straits. Always stands firm
his promise, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee;’ and this sustains and
consoles us in the midst of our greatest distress, our severest trials,
and our most perfect abandonment. We may always, if we will, come forth
from the furnace of affliction purified as gold tried in the fire. It
depends on our own free will whether the vexations of Satan shall do us
good or harm. If we choose, we can always prevent his wiles from doing
us evil, and derive profit from his malice. This is a sufficient answer
to the objection drawn from the perfection of God. It is no impeachment
of Divine Love to let loose an enemy against us for our good, or to give
us an opportunity to acquire merit, any more than it is to Divine
Justice to permit an enemy to harass us as a punishment for our sins.
Satanic temptations and invasions are sometimes permitted for the one
purpose, and sometimes for the other, and in either case are perfectly
compatible with the attributes of God.”
“I think I can understand that,” I remarked, “and I think also I can see
in it a manifestation of Divine love. God, in permitting these vexations
against the wicked, manifests his justice; but in permitting them
against the good, he manifests his love, and turns the malice of Satan
against himself. What Satan intends shall work our ruin, by the grace of
God is made to work our higher perfection; and thus God overcomes Satan
by educing good from evil.”
“Undoubtedly,” added Mr. Merton, “God often permits Satan to afflict the
faithful, to prove them,—sometimes to humble them, to chastise their
spiritual pride, and to become their occasion of rising to a purer and
loftier virtue; and in such cases we may say he educes good from evil,
and makes the malice of Satan redound to his own glory. In the cases
where he permits Satan to harass by way of penalty, he equally makes the
Satanic malice redound to his glory, for God’s glory is no less
interested, so to speak, in justice than in love. There is no
discrepancy between the Divine attributes; and the manifestation of his
justice is no less essential to his glory, or the good of his creatures,
than the manifestation of his love or mercy. The beginning of love is
the love of justice, equity, right.”
“But be that as it may,” said Jack, “I have heard it contended by
theologians that Satan has been bound since the coming of Christ, and
has no longer any power, since Christ triumphed over him on the cross,
to besiege or to possess men, as it is supposed he had before.”
“I am not answerable,” replied Mr. Merton, “for what you may have heard
theologians maintain. I concede that our Lord, on his part, triumphed
over Satan on the cross; I also concede, that since the coming of our
Lord, and the spread of Christianity, the power of Satan has been
greatly curtailed; but I know no authority for saying that he does not
continue to go about ‘as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,’ or
that he has not power still to besiege men, and literally take
possession of them. The Church, whether Catholic or Protestant, has a
form of exorcism, and continues to practise it. The faithful are daily
winning victories over him, and if God gives them the grace of
perseverance, they will finally overcome him, and obtain a triumph; but
their warfare with him ceases not so long as they remain in the flesh.
Satan, it is true, has no power to harm us against our deliberate
consent, and it is far easier to resist him now, than it was before our
Lord died on the cross, because grace is more abundant; but still he may
besiege and actually possess the holiest of men, the most devoted
followers of the Lord, at least so far as it is given to men to judge.
He cannot harm us without our own fault; but he may vex, afflict, even
possess us, without any blame on our part, as a man may become sick, or
even insane, without any fault of his own.
“Out of the Christian society,” continued Mr. Merton, “where there are
wanting the means which Christians have to defend themselves against his
approaches, and to drive him away, his power is, no doubt, far greater.
Among Mahometans, and among the pagan tribes of Asia, Africa, and
America, inhabiting a land which has, so to speak, never been baptized,
or sprinkled with holy water, his power is still very great; and, if we
may credit the well-attested reports of our missionaries, almost as
great as ever. He recovers his power, too, in Christian nations in
proportion as they recede from the faith and piety of the Gospel, and
fall anew into heathenism.”
“But there are some difficulties, under the point of view of
jurisprudence, in the way of your doctrine of Satanic invasion,”
interposed Jack. “Suppose a man possessed by a devil kills another, or
commits some act which the law regards as a crime, is the man guilty,
and to be punished?”
“You are a lawyer,” replied Mr. Merton, “and nothing is more natural
than that you should ask that question. The difficulties you suggest,
however, are no greater on the supposition of Satanic invasion than on
any other theory. They are the same, whether we contend that the person
is subjected by Satan or by mesmerism, by a primitive or elemental force
of nature, or by what some manigraphs call madness without delirium, or
instinctive insanity. The question turns on the fact whether the man is
involuntarily and completely subjugated, or whether he retains the
exercise of his free will; or, in other words, whether the actions are
really his, or those of the power that oppresses or subjugates him. For
myself, I think our courts are beginning to adopt a very dangerous
doctrine with regard to insanity, and are admitting the plea of insanity
where it ought not to be entertained. In an Eastern city, not long
since, it was gravely contended by counsel, that a man must be held to
be insane and irresponsible, because his crimes were so aggravated.
Under this lies a dangerous principle, which, in its development, will
lead to the conclusion that all great criminals are insane and
irresponsible. But in regard to another class of cases, cases in which
there obviously is no inebriety, ill health, or delirium, and yet in
which the person seems to himself to be irresistibly urged by a foreign
power, against his will, to the commission of horrible acts, I think the
law, or the practice of the courts, is quite too severe. I take a case
cited to my hand by a respectable French writer, that of a father who
killed his young son. The father was an honest, temperate, and
industrious man, of a mild and affectionate disposition, and it is clear
that he loved his son with great tenderness.
“‘The night in which I did the deed,’ says the unhappy father, ‘I was so
agitated, that I trembled in my whole body.... I am unable to conceive
how I could commit a crime so atrocious. I was so agitated, so troubled
in my brain, and felt something within me so irresistible, that I was
_obliged_ to commit the deed. I was fasting. I was not sick; and I am
wholly unable to explain how it was possible for me to do it. Twice
before I had had the horrible inclination to kill my child. The first
time was last winter, about six weeks before Easter. I was at work
making a sledge, and my boy, as usual, was playing near me. In his
playfulness, he climbed upon my back, and clasped me round the neck. My
wife, thinking he would hinder me from working, called him away; but I
loved him so much, that I patiently endured all his frolicsome tricks. I
took him upon my knees to play with him, and in that very moment I
thought I heard a voice within me, saying, ‘You cannot help it. Your
child must die, and you must kill him.’ I was startled, seized with
fear, my heart palpitated, and I instantly set him down, rushed out of
the room, and went to the mill, where I stayed till nightfall, till my
evil thought passed away.
“‘The second time was one morning a few days before Easter. My wife was
busy with the affairs of the house, and I was lying on the bed, with my
child near me. He asked me for some bread, and I gave him a cake, which
he eat with great pleasure. At that moment, as I was watching him with
tender affection, I thought I heard again a voice within me, saying, in
a low tone, ‘You must kill him.’ I shuddered at myself, experienced
violent palpitations, and felt a heavy oppression within my breast. I
instantly jumped from the bed, and ran out of the house. I began saying
my prayers, went to the stable, and busied myself with various labors,
and did all in my power to drive away the evil thoughts that beset me. I
finally succeeded, but not till midday, in regaining the mastery of
myself, and in recovering my tranquillity. In neither of these cases was
I drunk, or had been for many weeks previous; nor was I at the third
access, when I took the life of my child.’[6]
-----
Footnote 6:
_Pneumatalogie des Esprits_, p. 186 _et seq._
-----
“Now here was a man who was not sick, who was not in liquor, who was not
delirious, who was evidently a mild and loving father, and who yet, in
consequence of an impression, killed his child, whom evidently he loved
with all a father’s fondness. This man the courts condemn as a horrid
murderer.”
“And why not?” said Jack. “It is evident his free will remained. Twice
he resisted the temptation, and regained the mastery of himself; and
nothing proves that he might not have done so the third time, if he had
done his best.”
“It is possible,” replied Mr. Merton, “and therefore I do not say the
man was absolutely innocent. But we see he did struggle against the evil
thought, and twice successfully; and he yielded even at last only from
an impression, all but irresistible at the moment, and therefore he
cannot be said to have had the full possession of his freedom. In
proportion as his power of external resistance was diminished by the
impression, or the mysterious influence that acted on him, was
diminished his responsibility. He who yields only to a powerful
temptation, is less guilty than he who does the same deed under only a
slight or feeble temptation. The courts should take cognizance of the
strength of the impression under which the man acts, and take into the
account the more or less resistance that was possible. If the man
succumbs only after a long and severe struggle, that should go to
mitigate his guilt.
“Dr. Cazeauvielh relates the case of a woman who attempted to kill her
infant sleeping in the cradle. ‘I am,’ said she to the doctor, ‘the most
miserable of beings. Never was anybody like me. The other day I
approached the cradle, and I looked upon my darling. Fearing I should do
him harm, I went away to the house of my neighbor. Then, in spite of
myself, I returned, for _something_ seemed to push me. I went near my
infant, and attempted to choke it with my hands, but my legs failed me,
and I became senseless.’ This woman, Dr. Cazeauvielh tells us, loved her
relations and her child, and her intellectual faculties were not
injured. It is true he regards her as insane; but how can there be
insanity, with the full possession of the intellectual faculties? She
struggled against the _something_ that pushed her, and had a horror of
the crime; the law ought, therefore, to treat her with indulgence, yet
it does not, because there really is here no delirium. In the middle
ages, which you regard as so barbarous and cruel, she would not have
been held responsible, because her act would have been explained as the
result of a foreign power, which for the time being overcame her
resistance, and pushed her to do that for which she had a natural
horror.
“Yet a difference should no doubt be made between cases like these,
where the unhappy person commits a deed for which he has a natural
horror, and against which he struggles, and those in which the criminal,
so to speak, has a natural relish for his crime, delights, and persists
in it. Take the case of Gilles Garnier, which occupied the attention of
all France in the reign of Louis the Thirteenth. ‘This man-wolf,’
(_loup-garou_,) says Bodin, ‘carried away a girl from ten to twelve
years of age, killed her with his hands and teeth, and eat the flesh
from her thighs and arms. Some time afterwards he strangled a boy ten
years old, and eat his flesh. Still later he killed another boy, from
twelve to thirteen, with the intention of eating him, but was
prevented.’ He was arrested, convicted, and burnt alive. There was here
no insanity; the horrid deeds were all avowed with the minutest
circumstances, the intention was express, and the crime was repeated and
persisted in. I cannot regard this monster as innocent, for I cannot
discover that he resisted or struggled against the diabolical impulse.
“Take the case of Leger, a recent case, related by Dr. Cazeauvielh, from
the monster’s own confessions. He lived in a cave, and had an unnatural
craving to feed on human flesh. One day he perceived a little girl, ran
to her, passed a handkerchief around her body, threw her upon his back,
plunged into the woods and hastened to his cave, where he killed and
buried her. Arrested three days after, he immediately told his name,
where he lived, and said that having received a blow on his head, he had
left his country and his family. In his prison he related how he had
lived in caverns in the rocks. ‘Wretch,’ said the physician to him,‘you
have eaten the heart of this little girl. Confess the truth.’ He then
answered in trembling, ‘Yes, I did so, but not all at once.’ After that
he sought no longer to conceal his crimes, and with great coolness and
indifference related a long series of horrible deeds which he had
committed. He revealed them, even to the minutest particulars; he
produced the proofs, and pointed out to the court the place of the
crime, and the manner in which it had been consummated. The judge had no
need to question him, for he himself disclosed all of his own accord. On
the trial, his features wore a mild and placid aspect. He seemed quite
unconcerned and insensible, except his face assumed an air of gayety and
satisfaction during the reading of the indictment. After about half an
hour’s deliberation, the court rejected the plea of insanity, and
declared him guilty of homicide, with premeditation and lying in wait.
He heard his sentence with the same placid indifference, and was
executed a few days after. This seems to me to prove that the middle
ages were not more severe than we are to-day.”
“But Leger,” said Dr. Corning, “was evidently a madman. Georget is right
in saying that he was a madman, because none but a madman would say that
he had been led to commit murder by a blind and _irresistible_ will.”
“That might do to say, if we were certain of the truth of the
materialistic doctrines taught at Paris some forty or fifty years ago,
but which are now generally rejected. Dr. Cazeauvielh, however, concedes
that persons of this description, without being deprived by their
madness of free will, are yet carried away, driven onward by an idea, by
something indefinable, which is precisely what theologians mean by
obsession. The court decided correctly, I think, in rejecting the plea
of insanity in the case of the monster Leger, and in condemning him to
death, though evidently under Satanic influence when he committed his
horrible and disgusting crimes—crimes which recall the Ghouls of the
Arabian Nights—because there was no struggle of the human person against
the invading spirit.
“Satan can by Divine permission enter our bodies, compel, as it were,
the human person to stand aside, and use our organs himself, and do
whatever he pleases with them; but he cannot annihilate the human
person, or take from the soul free will. Always is it in the power of
the possessed to resist, morally and effectually, the evil intentions of
the devil. The possessed retains his own consciousness, his own
intellectual and moral faculties unimpaired, and never confounds himself
with the spirit that possesses him. Always, then, does he retain the
power of internal protest and struggle. Wherever this power is
exercised, and there is clearly a struggle, there is no responsibility
attaching to him, whatever the crimes the body, through the possession
of the devil, is made to commit. But it may often happen that this power
to protest is not exercised, and the possessed yields his moral assent
to the crimes committed by the demon that possesses him. He then becomes
a partaker of their guilt. Wherever it is clear that he has not
internally resisted, that he has not struggled against the demon, and
protested against his iniquity, the law should punish him for the crimes
as severely as if there had been no possession at all. The error of
modern jurisprudence is that, not recognizing the fact of possession, it
punishes alike both classes, or it lets off both under the plea of
insanity. In the latter case justice becomes too lax, and the greater
the criminal, the more enormous his crime, the less likely is he to be
punished; in the former case justice is too severe, and persons really
innocent, and meritorious even, are condemned as the basest of
criminals. The law in the middle ages, or before the wonderful progress
of intelligence and humanity in modern times, distinguished between the
two classes, and knew how to acquit the innocent and to punish the
guilty. Now the tendency is either to acquit or to condemn both
indiscriminately.”
Dr. Corning and Mr. Merton, after this, revived their former discussion
of the question of insanity; but as nothing was really added on either
side to what had been previously said, I do not think it necessary to
record their conversation. For myself, it seemed to me that the question
between the theory which explains the phenomena by insanity, and that
which explains them by Satanic invasion, is of immense practical
importance. When the old doctrine was rejected, the law became
excessively severe, and humanity was shocked. Philosophers and
philanthropists sought to mitigate it by asserting the doctrine of
necessity, of materialism, of the inherent goodness of the soul, and by
ascribing all misdeeds to external influences, to the action of nature,
society, government, &c. In other words, they sought to mitigate the law
by denying all moral turpitude.
But latterly the older doctrine of spiritualism, as opposed to
materialism, and of freedom as opposed to necessity, has revived, and
the old severity of the law must return, unless some new way can be
discovered of escaping it. This new way is the plea of insanity. The
tendency now is to make insanity a plea for every crime of some little
magnitude. Our lunatic hospitals are crowded; new ones are constructed,
and no inconsiderable portion of our population are likely to become
their inmates. Physicians, carried away by their false science and
mistaken humanity, discard all the old criteria of lunacy, and the
courts, following them, will soon find that all persons brought before
them for trial are insane and irresponsible. The guilty will go unwhipt
of justice, because no guilt will be recognized. If the phenomena in
question are to be explained by insanity, I do not see what crime it
will not cover.
The subject deserves serious consideration. For my part, I cannot
recognize insanity where the person evidently retains his intellectual
powers underanged or unimpaired, where he retains the faculty of
reasoning and judging correctly, however he may be driven by foreign
influences to this or that crime. When he tells me that he was obliged
by _something_ to do this or that, and that when he did it, it seemed to
him that it was not he, but some power impelling him, I raise no
question of insanity, but simply, as Merton suggests we should, the
question of internal resistance, and measure him by the greater or less
energy and persistence of that internal resistance.
CHAPTER XXIV.
LEFT IN THE LURCH.
Though I remained an invalid, there were times when I revived, and
almost flattered myself that I might yet, in spite of the
prognostications of my physician, recover. I was still comparatively
young, and I did not precisely like the thought of dying. The simple
pain of dying did not affright me; nor had I much reluctance to leave
the world, where there was little that had any charm for me. But I could
not help sending now and then uneasy glances beyond the tomb. There
might be a spirit-world beyond, and death might not after all extinguish
the life of the soul. I might, perhaps, live in that unknown world,
retain my personal identity, and distinct consciousness and memory. I
might, too, at least I could not say it was impossible, be punished
there for my sins in this world, and be condemned to have for my
companions those very devils whose acquaintance I had so assiduously
cultivated here. That might not be pleasant. Indeed, I began to have
many painful reflections, and to ask myself if I had not been all my
life making a fool of myself. I had been promised great things, but what
had I obtained?
“Your experience, my dear friend,” said Mr. Merton, “I doubt not, proves
the truth of the old saying, the devil always, sooner or later, leaves
his followers in the lurch. You remember, probably, I called the morning
after my introduction to you, to give you and Priscilla a warning as to
what awaited you. You were then too elated, too full of hope, to listen
to any thing I could say; at least, so it seemed to me at the time.”
“Yet you were mistaken. The few words you said interested me much, and I
wished at the time to hear more.”
“Alas! it is one of the miseries of the world, that the wicked are much
more active for mischief, than the virtuous are for good. Would to God
that the followers of Christ had a tithe of the industry and energy of
the followers of Satan. If I had been more earnest, more ready to
sacrifice my own ease and my own pride, perhaps——. But that is idle. You
will, I presume, readily concede now that you were then laboring under a
delusion, and indulged hopes which have not been realized?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“So it is. Satan never keeps his promises.”
“I wish you to explain,” said Jack, who that moment entered the room,—“I
wish you to explain how it is, if Satan is as powerful, and does as many
marvellous things as you pretend, that they who give themselves up soul
and body to him, always fail at last. Your mighty sorcerers and
magicians always find their master failing them when it comes to the
pinch. Ninety-nine times the devil enables the sorcerer to open the
prison doors, to become invisible to the sight or impervious to the
sword of his enemies, to overwhelm them, or to escape them by flying
away through the keyhole; but the hundredth time fails him, and leaves
him to be captured, to confess his crimes, and to be burnt alive.
According to all accounts, your witches are the most miserable old hags
one ever meets—wretched old crones, living in the most abject poverty,
and hardly able to procure the food necessary to keep soul and body
together. The devil never comes when wanted, never makes his appearance
before competent and credible witnesses. He performs his wonders in the
dark; and when one would really prove the fact of his presence, he is
away, and nobody can get a glimpse of him.”
“And what else,” replied Mr. Merton, “should be expected of the devil?
And yet I would not treat your objection lightly, for it is one which
has at times raised doubts in my own mind, and it makes me rather
sceptical as to most of the tales of witchcraft, ghosts, and hobgoblins
I hear or read of. But you should bear in mind that the devils are
capricious as well as malicious, or rather, their malice itself is full
of caprice. The devil, in all his invasions, seeks only to get himself
worshipped, and to ruin souls. When he has made a soul his slave, made
sure of its destruction in hell, his end is answered. He is a liar from
the beginning, and the father of lies. He is the inveterate enemy of
truth, and if he sometimes tells it, it is because compelled by a higher
power; or if now and then, of his own accord, it is only because it
serves his purpose of deception better than falsehood. If he sometimes
keeps his promises, and seems to do the best he can for his slaves, it
is for the same reason. Then, again, he is not omnipotent, he is not the
supreme Lord; and however powerful he may be, there is One mightier than
he, who can thwart him when he pleases. He can, as I often say, go only
the length of his chain. It may comport with the purposes of God to
suffer him to do many marvellous deeds, but never to suffer him to do
them so uniformly or in such a manner that his victims shall not be able
to detect the impostor, and know, if they will, that it is a foul and
lying spirit they follow. Satan’s delight is in deceiving, and he
delights as much in deceiving those already his slaves, as those he
would make such; and God so orders it, that his deceptions shall be
discoverable by all not wilfully blind.
“The devil is called the prince of this world, but he is not its
absolute lord. He can even here do only what he is, for the purposes of
love or justice, permitted to do. It may turn out, then, that he is
forbidden to come to the assistance of his servants in the nick of time,
even when he himself is disposed to do so. He may raise the storm, but
there is One asleep in the bark, who can at any instant awake, and say
to the winds and the waves, Peace, be still. It is not fitting that
Satan should be able to keep his promises in the great majority of cases
to the last, for that would leave too little chance of detecting his
delusions, and would confirm his worship. His failures prove his malice,
and also that his power is not his own, therefore that he is not God.
They serve, too, as punishments to his dupes, for it is fitting that
they who, through evil inclination and undue love of the world or of
pleasure, trust to him, should ultimately fail in the very goods
promised.
“The principles of God’s providence are always and everywhere the same,
and there is a close analogy between the natural and the supernatural.
God has given to the universe its law. He has placed before man a real,
substantial, and desirable good; but he has made this good attainable
only in one way, by obedience to his law, which is not an arbitrary law,
but a law founded in his own eternal reason, in his own infinite,
eternal, and immutable justice. He who attempts to attain his good, his
beatitude, by any other means, invariably and inevitably fails. It is as
our Lord said,—‘I am the door;’ and ‘he that entereth not by the door,
but climbeth up another way, the same is a thief and a robber.’ Whoever
seeks entrance into the fold of happiness by another than the
God-appointed way, whatever that way may be, is predoomed to
disappointment. All experience proves it. The departure by the ancient
Gentiles from the patriarchal or primitive religion, led to the
confusion of their understandings, and to the adoption and practice of
the grossest and most abominable superstitions—the extreme of moral or
spiritual misery. The man who seeks happiness, even in this life, from
acquiring or possessing riches and honor, always fails, even when he
apparently succeeds. The most miserable of men are they who make
pleasure their sole pursuit. The reason is, that beatitude is not
promised to those pursuits, lies not on their plane, and is not
attainable by following them. He who attempts to attain it in any of
those ways is no wiser than those philosophers of Laputa who sought to
extract sunbeams from cucumbers. It is only in accordance with the same
principle, that they who seek worldly felicity, by consorting with
devils, should in like manner be disappointed.”
“All that is very wise, and would do very well for a sermon,” said Jack.
“It may, for aught I know, be very true. I have no knowledge on the
subject, and no acquaintance with the devil or his angels. But I wish
you would tell me how it happens that the witnesses to these marvellous
phenomena are seldom if ever men of real science, well known, and of
name in the scientific world?”
“I thought you were one of those who would not admit authority even in
matters of faith, and yet you demand authority in matters of science,”
replied Mr. Merton, in a tone slightly sarcastic. “You would have the
French Academy, for instance, in science what Rome claims to be in
religion, and admit a historical fact or a scientific conclusion only on
academic authority.”
“But you know,” replied Jack, “that scientific commissions appointed to
investigate and report on particular cases in France, never succeed in
getting a sight of those marvellous facts which are so readily exhibited
to others. Is not this a suspicious circumstance?”
“Not in my mind,” replied Mr. Merton. “Your learned academicians
generally commence their investigations with the persuasion that all
facts of the kind alleged are impossible, and they seldom pay attention
to the actual phenomena passing before them. They are busy only with
their scepticism, and do not see what really takes place. Their study is
simply how to explain away the phenomena they do see, without admitting
their supernatural or superhuman character. Lawyers are said to be the
worst witnesses in the world. Academicians are the very worst people in
the world to observe facts. I would trust, in what depends on the
senses, a plain, honest, unscientific peasant, much quicker than I would
an Arago or a Babinet, for he has no theory to disturb him, no
conclusion to establish or refute. The science of all your learned
academies is infidel in regard to religion. Babinet, of the Institute,
has just written an Essay in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, in which he
pronounces the phenomena alleged by our recent spiritists impossible,
because they contradict the laws of gravitation. Poor man! he reasons as
if the phenomena repugnant to the laws of gravitation are supposed to be
produced by it, or at least without a power that overcomes it. Why, the
very marvellousness of the phenomenon is that it is contrary to the law
of gravitation; and because it is contrary to the law of gravitation, we
infer that it is preternatural. The learned member of the Institute
argues that the fact is impossible, because it would be preternatural,
and the preternatural is impossible, because the preternatural would be
preternatural! When I see a man raised, without any visible means, to
the ceiling, and held there by his feet with his head downwards for half
an hour or more without a visible support, I do not pretend that it is
in accordance with the law of gravitation, but the essence of the fact
is precisely in that it is not. Now, to deny the fact for that reason,
is to say that the law of gravitation cannot be overcome or suspended,
and precisely to beg the question. When I throw a stone into the air, my
force, in some sense, overcomes that of gravitation. How does M. Babinet
know that there are not invisible powers who can take a man and hold him
up with his feet to the ceiling, or a table, as easily as I can a little
child? The fact of the rising of a table or a man to the ceiling is one
that is easily verified by the senses, and if attested by witnesses of
ordinary capacity and credibility, must be admitted. That it is contrary
to the law of gravitation, proves not that it is impossible, but that it
is possible only preternaturally. It would be a real relief to find a
distinguished academician who had learned practically the elements of
logic.
“The devils, again,” continued Mr. Merton, “may not choose to exhibit
their superhuman powers before your scientific commissions. It might be
against their interest. He is sure of the commissioners as long as he
can keep them in their scepticism; but were he to suffer them to escape
it, he might lose them. Compelled to acknowledge the existence of Satan,
they might go further and acknowledge that of Christ, and become
Christians, and labor to harmonize science with faith. Even God himself
may choose to let them remain in their scepticism as a just punishment
of their intellectual pride, their indocility, and their preferring
their own darkness to his light. They take pleasure in sin, and he gives
them up to their own delusions, and permits them to believe a lie, that
they may be damned, as they deserve, for their sins. The malice, the
cunning, the astuteness, the caprice of the devils, the prepossessions
of the scientific, and the purposes of God are amply sufficient to
account for the fact that these commissions never succeed in witnessing
the preternatural or superhuman phenomena said to be witnessed by
others.”
“But how am I,” asked Jack, “to believe that a poor old crone, who is
half dying of starvation, is in league with the devil? Why does she not
make use of her power to procure decent clothing and maintenance?”
“The devil is by no means a trustworthy or a kind and generous friend.
He is a philanthropist, and never relieves the suffering under his nose,
or cares for that of individuals.”
“I have read,” Jack went on, “a great many witch stories, and
descriptions of witch feasts, and I cannot discover what there is in
them to attach these hell-cats to their alleged orgies. I came across,
yesterday, an account of the witches’ sabbath. I can conceive nothing
more absurd, ridiculous, or rather disgusting. The acquaintances of the
devil generally represent him as respectable at least for his intellect,
and many insist that he is a gentleman. But if all accounts are true, he
is very low and vulgar in his tastes, has very little sense of dignity,
and is in fact a very shabby fellow. In these orgies he appears, it is
said, sometimes in the form of a big negro, more generally under the
form of a black ram with immense horns, and in that form is very
indecently kissed and worshipped by Mesdames the witches. We know from
Tam O’Shanter that on these occasions there is much fiddling and
dancing, but I cannot conceive how there can be much pleasure. The whole
scene is fitted only to turn one’s stomach.”
“There is no doubt of that,” replied Mr. Merton. “The devil and his
worshippers certainly cut a very sorry figure in these nocturnal orgies,
as they are represented; but I am not certain that that should be
regarded as good ground of scepticism. I never understood that the devil
was a _clean_ spirit, and I should naturally expect some degree of
filthiness in his worshippers. You must know something of the sins or
moral diseases of mankind. Has it not sometimes occurred to you that
some apparently very respectable people,—people who go well dressed and
wear clean linen,—under the influence of their passions, acting out
their natures, cut, to an impartial spectator, about as sorry a figure
as Master Leonard and his witches? In the eyes of Infinite Holiness, I
am inclined to think there is much that passes in refined and cultivated
society that does not appear at all more clean and respectable than do
these nocturnal orgies in yours. I do not vouch for the correctness of
the popular descriptions of these orgies, but they are in accordance
with the well known principles of depraved nature. The indulgence of any
of our morbid passions degrades us; and in following our lusts, there is
no beastliness which is not for the moment charming to us. How much
more, then, when to our natural passions, rendered morbid by indulgence,
is added the superhuman influence of unclean spirits! The sensualist
lives constantly in a state as disgusting as ever the nocturnal orgies
of witches were represented to be. It is the law of all vice to descend,
and consequently, the more intimate we are with the devil, only the more
rapid and deep is our descent. The moral of the witches’ orgies is true,
whether the particular descriptions be or not. He who takes the devil
for God, must expect to have hell for his heaven.”
“The academicians are right,” I remarked, “in telling us that the whole
of the alleged _diablerie_ is all a delusion or an imposition.”
“Not precisely in their sense, however,” interrupted Mr. Merton. “The
whole is unquestionably a delusion, a sheer imposture, but of the devil,
not always of man. The devil promises according to the respective
inclinations of his servants—to some riches and honors, to some sensual
pleasures, to others power, dominion over men, and the secrets of
nature. I doubt not that he knows more than men, but he can never be
relied on, for he so mingles his lies with the truth, that we cannot
separate the one from the other.”
“That is true,” I remarked; “and those secrets he promises we never
gain. We grow proud, we assume airs, we feel that we are making
marvellous discoveries; we talk large, use big swelling words, and seem
to penetrate the secret of the universe; but we have only clutched at
the air, and when we open our hand, it is empty. We had made no advance,
we had found no vein of knowledge; and when the spell was broken, we
found ourselves weaker and more ignorant than ever. The fairy gold was
chips and stubble. The palace of wisdom we saw before us, and in which
we proposed to live with the Sultan’s fair daughter, disappears, carries
her away in it, and leaves us only empty space. I well remember some of
my early aspirations. I thought I was illumined by a more than natural
light. The clouds rolled back before my searching glance; the darkness
disappeared; there was no dread Unknown to confront me; I rose to the
empyrean; I was all intelligence; I looked, as a lady of my acquaintance
expressed it, ‘into the very abyss of Being.’ Yet it was all illusion—a
devilish illusion—and my understanding was all the time darkened, and my
eyes closed to the plainest and most obvious truths before me.”
“It was a deception practised upon you—a deception practised alike upon
all who would attain to a forbidden knowledge, or to knowledge by ways
not permitted by the Supreme Intelligence—upon the Neoplatonists, the
Gnostics, the Transcendentalists, and false mystics of every age,” added
Mr. Merton. “The light we hail in those forbidden ways or aspirations,
is the light which we see when our eyes are shut. It is a preternatural
hallucination, and he who follows it is sure not only to go astray, but
to fall into the greatest absurdities, and to utter the most ridiculous
nonsense.”
“The same principle,” I added, “is true with regard to the promised
power over men. These Satanic revolutions, and the terrible doings of
our revolutionary Berserkirs, all prove failures in the end. Cromwell
supplants Hampden, and Napoleon Lafayette. The devil always leaves us in
the lurch.”
“This fact should be borne in mind,” added Mr. Merton, “and if so, might
save the world from much superstition. The superstition is not in
believing in the reality of demonic invasions, or in believing that the
devil sometimes exhibits a superhuman power, tells us, in dreams,
visions, necromancy, or other forms of divination, facts of which we
were ignorant; but in practising these forms, in confiding in the
communications, and in seeking to avail ourselves of the power
displayed. No reliance can ever be placed upon them, for supposing the
demonic presence real, we have still only a lying spirit on which to
depend. The dream of yesternight has come true, that of to-night will
prove false. The _medium_ you consulted the other day foretold correctly
what was to happen; to-day her familiar spirit is a lying spirit, and
her tale is false in all its parts. The predictions of the
fortune-teller last year have been fulfilled; his predictions of to-day
are a tissue of lies. If Ahab goes up to battle, he shall not die; yet
is shot by a bow drawn at a venture. To trust in these things is gross
superstition, and tends only to degrade, to render immoral, weak, timid,
and miserable. The way of wisdom is to let them alone, turn your back on
them, and never suffer your mind or imagination to run on them.”
“It is worthy of remark, that the men who declaim the most against
superstition are unbelievers in Christianity, and who, under pretext of
making war on superstition, attack religion itself. And yet the Church
has always forbidden all superstitious practices, and she commands her
children to have no dealings with the devil, to forbear all resort to
fortune-tellers or divination, and to pay no attention to dreams, omens,
&c. Of course all such things are wrong, are sin, are treason against
God; but they are also, and because treason against God, and a dealing
with the enemy, unwise and degrading. There is no saying to what depths
he may fall who gives way to them, or the misery and wretchedness he may
bring upon himself, and even upon those dear to him. I could, were I
disposed, draw proofs enough from my own experience, while I was a prey
to the superstitions still so rife in our country; but I will not
trouble you with them. But of this be sure, that you will never root out
that superstition by denying the existence and influence of demons. The
remedy is in religious faith, in cultivating a firm trust in God, in
obedience to his commands,—and in the firm persuasion that all dealings
with devils is unlawful, and that all regard paid to signs, dreams, and
omens is superstitious and sinful, and, what will weigh perhaps still
more with our age, wholly unprofitable. No good can come from seeking
knowledge by forbidden paths, and much evil is sure to come.”
“I am glad,” said Jack, “that Mr. Merton has the grace to admit so much.
It would have been a blessed thing for me, if I had been taught to
regard mesmerism as unlawful; better still, if it had never been
recommended to me as a legitimate science. I do not believe in Satanic
invasions; but I do believe little good comes from departing from the
old ways, and attempting to be wiser than our fathers were.”
CHAPTER XXV.
CONCLUSIONS.
Our conversations were continued, but they threw no additional light on
the main subject of our investigations, and I may well dispense myself
from the labor of recording them. I found my early suspicion confirmed,
and finally adopted Mr. Merton’s conclusion, that the class of phenomena
which had for several years occupied my attention, and to which,
according to the spiritists themselves, the recent spirit-manifestations
belong, are real, are facts which actually take place, and are, under
certain relations and to a certain extent, superhuman in their origin
and character. As these phenomena cannot be ascribed to God or to good
angels, they must be ascribed to Satan, to evil spirits, the enemies of
God and man.
I am well aware that this conclusion will be received by my brother
savans with great derision, and that they will look upon me as having
lost my wits. Even many who are not savans, who are sincere and firm
believers in Christianity, and who, in a general way, admit the fact of
Satanic invasion, will laugh at the supposition that the phenomena of
spirit-rapping, table-turning, &c., are any thing more than very
bungling pieces of humbuggery and sleight-of-hand. Be it so. Their good
or bad opinion, their esteem or contempt, is of very little importance
to me, who have not many days to live, and who have so soon to face
another and a far different Judge. He who fears God, cannot fear man. My
conclusion has not been hastily adopted, and it is, as far as I can see,
the only conclusion to which a Christian philosopher can come.
Mr. Cotton had preserved, what so many have lost, the Christian
tradition as to evil spirits, and was right in the main. His error was
in ascribing _all_ the phenomena exhibited by the practice of mesmerism
to the devil and his angels. Mesmerism, though abnormal, is to a certain
extent susceptible of a satisfactory explanation on natural principles.
Man, as Mr. Merton, after the elder Görres, maintained, has a twofold
development, the one normal, in which he rises to spiritual freedom by
union with God, the other abnormal, in which he descends to spiritual
slavery by descending to union with created nature. In the former he
tends continually to escape from the fatalism of nature, and to ascend
to the pure and serene atmosphere of spiritual freedom, in which the
spirit becomes supreme over the body. In the latter he follows the laws
of fatal or unfree nature, loses his spiritual dominion, becomes, or
tends to become, subject in his soul to his body, while the body falls
under the operation of the general forces of necessary nature, and
responds fatally, or without freedom, to the pulses of the external
universe.
In the ascending development, by the aid of grace and good angels, the
man, the Christian mystic, like St. Catharine, St. Theresa, or St.
Bernardine of Sienna, and so many others of the saints of the Church,
rises to spiritual freedom, and even to a certain extent, liberates the
body from the fatalism of nature. The body itself seems to enter into
the freedom of the spirit, and, through the free soul informing it, to
be able to resist the action of necessary or unfree nature, as the vital
principle enables the living body to resist and overcome the action of
chemical affinity. The body is as it were spiritualized, not absolutely
indeed, but partially, as if in anticipation of the resurrection, or
rather, as pointing to a resurrection and its glorious transformation
hereafter. It is baptized, participates, if I may so say, in the
sanctifying grace infused into the soul, becomes pure, and even when the
soul leaves it, emits a fragrant odor.[7]
-----
Footnote 7:
I do not forget here, nor do I intend to assert any thing against the
doctrine of the Holy Council of Trent, that concupiscence remains
after baptism, for the combat, or that the _fomes_ of sin remain, and
that as long as one lives there is the possibility of sin. The body,
in this life, is never wholly liberated and restored to its integral
state; but that it is liberated in some measure, and that it in the
saints, (in some saints at least,) in a degree participates, even this
side the grave, in the freedom of the soul, I think is undeniable.
-----
In the descending development, that is, in the abnormal development, in
which we turn our backs on our Maker, who is at once our Original and
End, our Creator and our Supreme Good, and tend in the direction from
him, our soul lets go its mastery, and our body falls under the dominion
of unfree nature, enters into the series of its laws, and is exposed to
all its necessary and invincible forces. We become not merely sensual,
but, in some sense, physical men, and act under and with the great
physical agents of the universe. We become feeble and strong as the
lightning whose bolt rends the oak, and is turned aside by a silken
thread. Now to this abnormal development, mesmerism, in my judgment,
belongs; and therefore, though abnormal, it is not necessarily
preternatural. It belongs not to healthy but unhealthy nature, and its
phenomena are never exhibited except in a subject naturally or
artificially diseased. I have never known a person of vigorous
constitution and robust health mesmerized. The experiments of Baron
Reichenbach were all made on persons in ill health, for the most part on
patients under medical treatment. The seeress of Provost was sickly, and
suffering from an incurable malady; and it may be asserted as a general
rule, that no one is a _subject_ of mesmerism whose constitution,
especially the nervous constitution, is in its normal state.
I have no doubt that many of the phenomena regarded by the vulgar as the
effect of Satanic invasion, are to be explained by reference to this
abnormal development, without the supposition of any direct agency of
evil spirits. The precise limits of the power of this abnormal
development we do not know, and therefore we are always to be
exceedingly slow to assume the direct invasion of the devil to explain
this or that extraordinary phenomenon, as Mr. Merton has already
explained. The error of Mr. Cotton was in not distinguishing between
abnormal phenomena artificially produced, and the phenomena of real
demonic presence. He asked too much of us, and we gave him nothing. He
failed to command from us the respect he deserved, and I am sorry for
it. He was a worthy man in his way, and far less superstitious, and far
more philosophical than those who thought it a mark of their superiority
to ridicule him. But he is gone, and has in his own denomination left
few behind who are worthy to step into his shoes.
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to infer, from the fact that the proper
mesmeric phenomena are explicable on natural principles, that the
practice of mesmerism is lawful or not dangerous. It is an artificial
disease, and injurious to the physical constitution. It moreover
facilitates the Satanic invasion. Satan has no creative power, and can
operate only on a nature created to his hands, and in accordance with
conditions of which he has not the sovereign control. Ordinarily, he can
invade our bodies only as they are in an abnormal state, and by availing
himself of some natural force, it may be some fluid, or some invisible
and imponderable agent like electricity, or what Baron Reichenbach calls
od, and Mesmer animal magnetism, and the older magnetists called spirit
of the world. The practice of mesmerism brings into play this force, and
thus gives occasion to the devil, or exposes us to his malice and
invasions.
But, though it is unwise, as well as unscientific, to ascribe to Satan
what is explicable on natural principles, the contrary error is the one
which in our times is the most necessary to be guarded against. Nothing
is more unphilosophical than to treat the dark facts of human history as
unreal, or to attempt to explain them all without resort to demonic
influence. Many of the facts recorded, no doubt, never took place. Many
were the result of fraud, imposture, jugglery, and many are explicable
by reference to the abnormal development of human nature; but after
making all reasonable deductions for these, there remains a residuum, as
Mr. Merton has said, which it is as absurd to attempt to explain without
the action of evil spirits, as to explain the light of day without the
sun, or the existence and preservation of the universe without God. Not
otherwise can you ever succeed in explaining the introduction,
establishment, persistence, and power of the various cruel, filthy, and
revolting superstitions of the ancient heathen world, or of pagan
nations in modern times. No genuine philosopher will attempt to explain
them on natural principles alone.
They reveal a more than human power, and we have no alternative but to
ascribe them either to God or to the devil. We cannot ascribe them to
God, for they were too foul and filthy, too deleterious in their
effects, too debasing and enslaving in their influence, to be ascribed
to a good source. They were, then, from Satan, operating upon man’s
morbid nature, and permitted by Infinite Justice as a deserved
punishment upon the Gentiles for their hatred of truth, and their
apostasy from the primitive religion. Men left to themselves, to human
nature alone, however low they might be prone to descend, never could
descend so low as to worship wood and stone, four-footed beasts, and
creeping things. To do this needs Satanic delusion.
The same must be said of Mahometanism. The old theory, which made
Mahomet an out-and-out impostor, who said, deliberately, “with malice
aforethought,” “Go to now, let us make a new religion and impose it upon
the world,” no man, accustomed to philosophize, can for a moment
entertain. No man ever yet went to work deliberately to devise and
impose a false religion, or if any one ever did, he never succeeded. He
who founds a new religion is never an impostor in his own eyes. He works
“in a sad sincerity,” and imposes on himself before imposing on others.
Mahomet evidently believed in himself, in the sanctity of his own
mission, and worked from an earnest conviction, not from simple craft or
calculation. I am pleased to find the author of that admirable poem,
_Mohammed, a Tragedy in Five Acts_, a work of rare sagacity and true
poetic genius, rejecting the old theory of downright imposture. The
estimable author maintains that he was sincere in part, and in part
insincere. He was sincere in his assertion of the unity of God, and in
his hostility to idolatry, but insincere in the assertion of his
prophetic mission. I am not, however, satisfied with this. I do not deny
that men may be half sincere, and half knavish, or that they be sincere
and earnest as to the end, and wholly unscrupulous as to the means. But
in nothing was Mahomet more sincere than in his belief in his own
mission, and in the supernatural origin of the Koran. Never, without
that conviction, could he have inspired his followers with it, or have
himself persevered for so many years, amid the ill success and
discouragements that he experienced. His gratitude, evidently unfeigned,
to Cadijah, his first consort, and to Medina, which received him on his
flight from Mecca, cherished to the last moment of his life, proves that
he believed in his own mission.
The same thing is proved by his open vice and profligacy after his
success. A man conscious that he is playing a part, that he has a
character to sustain, that he is acting the prophet, would have been
more circumspect, more wary in the indulgence of his lusts, and affected
a life of more rigid asceticism. He would have been on his guard against
scandalizing his followers, and would never have dared insert in his
Koran those scandalous provisions which specially exempt him from
obedience to the laws which he professed, by Divine authority, to impose
upon his followers. Imposture can never afford to abandon itself openly
to the empire of the passions. Heretics are usually more careful than
the orthodox in regard to appearances. They usually affect great purity
of life, a decorous exterior, and a grave and sanctimonious face and
tone. Hypocrisy is austere, maintains in its look and tone an awful
gravity, and never relaxes in public. It is only innocence that dares be
light and frolicsome, and yield to its varying impulses. Nobody is so
shocked with the imaginary impurities of Convents and Nunneries as your
debauched old sinners, steeped in corruption, and the miserable slaves
of their own morbid passions and prurient imagination.
What deceives the excellent and gifted author of the Tragedy, is the
fact that so far as Mahomet asserted the unity of God against the
polytheism of the unconverted Arabs, and opposed idolatry, he was on the
side of truth and religion, and consequently was so far opposed to
Satan. He thinks that thus far he could not have been under the
influence of an evil spirit. Has he forgotten the demon of Socrates? Has
he forgotten that the devil can disguise himself as an angel of light?
Paganism, in its old form, was doomed. Christianity had silenced the
oracles and driven the devils back to hell. How was the devil to
reëstablish his worship on earth, and carry on his war against the son
of God? Evidently only by changing his tactics, and turning the truth
into a lie. There is nothing to hinder us from believing that Satan
himself taught Mahomet the unity of God, and inspired him with horror of
the prevailing forms of idolatry. The strong keeps the house, as our
Lord says, till a stronger binds him and enters into possession. The
devil would expel polytheism and the grosser forms of idolatry, no
longer in harmony with the spirit of the times, that he might make the
last state worse than the first; and whoever has studied history knows
that Mahometanism has proved a far more formidable enemy to Christianity
than was the paganism braved by the Apostles. The truths of the Koran
are introduced only to sanction its errors, and its moral precepts, many
of which are good, only to give countenance to its immorality, to its
Satanic abominations.
Mahomet in his life was subject to what we call in these days the
mesmeric trance, as was Socrates. He would often be suddenly arrested,
fall prostrate upon the earth, and in this attitude and in these trances
he professed to receive his revelations. Here are evidently the mesmeric
phenomena which in some form always accompany the presence and invasion
of demons. Mr. Miles has introduced these, and described them with great
spirit, truth, and propriety, in the opening scene of his tragedy. The
time is the night of Al Kadir, the place is the Cave of Hara, three
miles from Mecca, where Mahomet was accustomed to resort and spend much
time alone. Mahomet is seen prostrate upon the slope of a rock,
resembling a rude pedestal, his face concealed by his turban. He is
visited by Cadijah, his affectionate and beloved wife. To her he seems
asleep. She calls him, she approaches him, she embraces him, and tries
to awaken him. All in vain. Finding her efforts fruitless, she exclaims,
“Alas, this is not sleep! Some evil spirit
O’ershadows thee.”
When finally the vision departs, and Mahomet awakes, he breaks out,
“Gone! gone! celestial messenger,
Angel of light!
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . Yes—’twas there—’twas there
The angel stood, in more than mortal splendor,
Before my dazzled vision!—I have heard thee,
Ambassador from Allah to my soul,
Have heard and will obey.”
To the question of Cadijah, “What mystery is this?” he answers,
“Ah! the tremendous recollection bursts
So vividly upon me, that my tongue
Grows cold and speechless. I was here alone,
Expecting thee, when, suddenly, I heard
My name pronounced, with voice more musical
Than Peri warbling in my ear.
Ravish’d, I turned, and saw upon that rock,
Resplendent hovering there, an angel form;
I knew ’twas Gabriel, Allah’s messenger.
Celestial glories compassed him around;
Arched o’er his splendid head, his glistening wings
Shed light, and musk, and melody. No more
I saw—no more my mortal eye could bear.
_Prone on my face I fell_, and, from the dust,
Besought him quench his superhuman radiance.
‘Look up,’ he said; I stole a trembling glance;
And then, a beauteous youth, he stood and smiled.
Then, as his ruby lips unclosed, I heard—‘Go
teach what mortals know not yet,—THERE IS
NO GOD BUT ONE—MOHAMMED IS HIS PROPHET!’
E’en as he spoke, his mantling glories burst
With such transporting brightness, that, o’erawed,
I sunk in dizzy trance, which still might thrall
My inmost soul, had not those impious names,
Breathing of hell, dispelled it.”[8]
-----
Footnote 8:
_Mohammed_, a Tragedy in Five Acts. By George H. Miles. Boston, 1850,
pp. 1-6.
-----
Here are presented, very clearly, the phenomena which precede or
accompany the demonic approach and invasion. When the false god took
possession of Balaam, he threw him to the earth; and it was in a sort of
somnambulic state that he prophesied, or rather that the demon in him
was compelled, against his will, to bless instead of cursing Israel, and
to prophesy his glory. “There is no God but one,” in the sense intended
by Mahomet, and understood by his followers, is by no means a truth, for
in that sense, it denies not merely polytheism, but was intended more
especially to deny the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The Koran
repeatedly so explains it, and therefore the unity of God, as taught by
the false prophet, is not a truth but a lie, and the Mahometans worship
not the true God, but a false god, as do all who deny that God is at
once three distinct persons in one Divine Essence or Being.
Nothing is less philosophical than the tendency in modern times,
especially since the time of Voltaire, to explain great effects by petty
causes, as the peace of Utrecht by Mrs. Masham’s spilling a little water
on the Duchess of Marlborough’s dress. The stream cannot rise higher
than the fountain, or the effect exceed the cause. A little fire can
kindle a great matter, but that little fire is the occasion, not the
cause of the wide-spread conflagration. Nothing more surely indicates a
narrow, superficial, and unphilosophical spirit than the attempt, as is
the case with most writers, to explain the origin, progress, and power
of Mahometanism by the fanaticism, the cunning, the craft, or the
superior genius and ability of Mahomet, even though we suppose him aided
by a Jew and a Nestorian monk. There were fraud, craft, trickery, and
all the means of imposition employed; yet never can they suffice alone
to account for the terrible phenomena of Islamism, which, for twelve
hundred years has waged battle with the cross, and possessed itself of
the fairest regions of the globe. Whoever studies it calmly and
profoundly must come to the conclusion that there has been at work in it
a more than human power, and that, if not, as the Moslems believe, from
God, it must be from the devil.
Do not ascribe so much to mere human power, wisdom, craft, fraud,
dexterity, or skill. These are far feebler than it is customary in our
days to regard them. In general men are duped themselves before they
undertake to dupe others. Never yet was there a noted heresiarch who did
not believe in his own heresy, and hence there is no instance on record
of a real heresiarch, the originator and founder of a new heresy, being
reclaimed to the orthodox faith, unless we except the doubtful case of
Berengarius. I have never been able to sympathize with those Catholic
writers who would persuade us that the Protestant Reformation originated
in petty jealousies and rivalries between the Dominican and Augustinian
monks. That view is too narrow and superficial; nor can we ascribe it to
the pride, the vanity, and the ambition, or the intelligence, the
virtue, the wisdom, and the sanctity of the monk Luther. Luther was a
man terribly in earnest, a genuine man, and no sham, as Carlyle would
say; and so were all the prominent chiefs in that terrible movement of
the sixteenth century. The cool, subtle, dark, persevering Calvin, the
fiery, energetic, and ferocious John Knox and their compeers were no
petty tricksters, no _dilettanti_, no shrewd calculating hypocrites.
They were terribly in earnest; they believed in themselves; they
believed in the spirit that moved them, that spoke in their words, and
struck in their blows against the old Papal edifice. It is nonsense to
repeat, age after age, that the denial by the Holy See of the divorce
solicited by Henry the Eighth, caused the separation of England from
Catholic unity. That wily and lustful monarch, who must live in history
as the “wife-slayer,” found in that denial only an occasion of
withdrawing his kingdom from its spiritual subjection to Rome, and of
uniting in the crown the pontifical with the royal authority. Whoever
looks beneath the surface of things, whoever studies, in a truly
philosophical spirit, that fearful Protestant movement, must recognize
in it a superhuman power, and say that either the finger of God, or the
hand of the devil is here, and that its chiefs must have been inspired
by the Holy Ghost, or driven onward by infuriated demons.
So, it seems to me, we must reason with regard to Cromwell and the stern
old Puritans, fierce and terrible as the old Berserkirs from the North.
There was something superhuman in the English rebellion and revolution
of the seventeenth century; and if Cromwell and his party were not
specially moved by the Holy Spirit, as they believed, they must have
been animated and driven on by the old Norse demon. So also of the old
French Revolution, and of all those terrible convulsions which have
ruined nations and shaken the world. Men are indeed in them, with their
wisdom and their folly, their beliefs and their doubts, their virtues
and their vices, but there is more in them than these. There is in them
the fierce conflict of invisible powers, ever renewing and carrying on
that fierce and unrelenting war which Lucifer and his rebel host dared
wage against the Most High, and which must continue till time be no
more. All history, if we did but understand it, is little else but the
history of the conflict between these invisible powers; and till we
learn this fact, in vain shall we pride ourselves on our philosophies of
History.
Carlyle has well exposed the shallow philosophy and absurd theories of
our popular historians. Would he had himself gone deeper, and recognized
the demonic and also the providential element in history, and not have
attempted to explain its philosophy on human nature alone. Your Odins,
Thors, Socrateses, Mahomets, Cromwells, Bonapartes, are not simply
exponents of true, living, energetic manhood, and owe not their success,
or their place in history to their clear perception and their
instinctive adherence to the laws of true and genuine nature, as Carlyle
would have us believe. The nature he bids us worship is the devil, the
dark, subterranean Demon, that seizes us, blinds our eyes, and carries
us onward, whither we know not, and by a power which we are not. It is
the demon of the storm, the whirlwind, and the tempest, the volcano and
the earthquake, and the Carlylean heroes are energumenes, Berserkirs,
who spread devastation around them, who quaff the blood of their
enemies, from human skulls, in the orgies of Valhalla, and leave as
their monuments the ruins of nations. Carlyle has himself been touched
with a German devil, and received a slight manipulation from the old
Norse demon. But he has done well to say, “No sham can live;” he might
have added, No sham is or can be productive. It is not by petty passions
and petty tricks that nations are shaken to their centre, and fearful
revolutions, which change the face of the world, are effected. Only what
is real is, and only what is, can do. Under all the heavings and
tossings of nature, there is a reality of some sort; and only by means
of that reality can you explain the historical phenomena that arrest
your attention.
I have just been reading, in order to relieve my weariness, Sir Walter
Scott’s _Woodstock_, not surely one of his best, but one of his most
serious novels, in which he has endeavored to be something of the
philosopher, as well as the unrivalled romancer. Poor man! wizard of the
north, as he has been called, his magician’s wand fails him here. How
was he, with the shallow philosophy of the eighteenth century, to
explain such a phenomenon as Cromwell and his Major Generals, those
furious Berserkirs, true descendants of the old Vikings of the North? To
say that Oliver and the Independents were mere long-faced, psalm-singing
hypocrites, moved only by the ordinary motives and passions of human
beings, is a libel on history. Long-faced, sanctimonious, and
long-winded, famous for their dark cloaks and steeple-crowned hats,
their psalm-singing, their Biblical phraseology, their speaking through
the nose, and turning up the white of the eye, they certainly were; but
whoso supposes they were so by virtue of subtle, calculating hypocrisy,
knows them not. Whatever else Cromwell and the Puritans were, they were
no hypocrites; their manners, their dress, and address, however
objectionable we may choose to regard them, were not affected to cloak
conscious vice or iniquity, or to deceive either their friends or their
enemies. Never were men more serious, more deeply in earnest; and it was
in obedience to what they held to be the voice of God that they
preached, fasted, sung psalms, prayed, and—kept their powder dry. It was
not by their snivel, their nasal twang, their Biblical phraseology, nor
by an affectation of piety and dependence on the Lord, nor by any form
of hypocrisy or cant, that they made mincemeat of the drinking, swearing
rakehell, but brave and loyal cavaliers at Marston Moor, Edgehill, and
Worcester. A chorus of spirits, black or white, joined in their
psalm-singing, and invisible powers sped their balls to the hearts of
their enemies, and gave force to the well-aimed strokes of their swords.
Certainly the hand of Providence in the affairs of nations is not to be
denied, and certain it is that God visits nations in mercy and in
judgment. A sound theology, an enlightened piety sees the providence of
God in the growth of the infant colony, in the prosperity of states, and
the revolutions and fall of empires. But he works by ministries; and the
most terrible exhibitions of his wrath, the most fearful of his
judgments are those in which he lets loose the demons, and permits a
people to fall under their power. These demons work their own will, but
are at the same time the executors of his vengeance—of his justice. The
good, even in the greatest national calamities, are never injured, for
nothing but sin ever injures; but the wicked are punished. They had
chosen the devil for their master, and it is fitting that he whom they
had falsely worshipped as God, who is no God, should be made the
instrument of their punishment. The national sins of England were great;
her kings had betrayed their trust—had led the people into error, and
forgotten what they owed to the King of kings and Lord of lords. The
Lord had a controversy with them, and he permitted the old Puritans to
triumph over them; and whether they did so by simple human strength, or
by the willing assistance of evil spirits, inflaming them with a
preternatural courage, and driving them on by a preternatural fury, the
principle is one and the same. So also of France, in her terrible
revolution of 1789, and of Europe in 1848.
I read with sorrow the puny attempts of the author of _Woodstock_ to
explain away, as mere jugglery or trickery, the strange phenomena which
disturbed the sequestrators of the Royal Lodge. He would, on the
strength of an anonymous pamphlet, explain them as a trick played off
upon the parliamentary commissioners by Dr. Rochecliff, Albert,
Tompkins, Joceline, and Phebe. It may have been so; but the machinery he
supposes is clearly inadequate to explain all the mysterious phenomena
he acknowledges. The trick could hardly have failed, if trick there was,
to be detected either by Colonel Everard or the Commissioners. But even,
if his explanation of that particular case is to be accepted, or if a
thousand instances are to be referred to trickery, it says nothing as to
the general fact of demonic vexations and invasions. As Christians, we
know that we are constantly beset by evil spirits, and the mysterious
occurrences at the Royal Lodge of Woodstock, even if real, are only a
step beyond ordinary Satanic temptations, as possession is only a
further extension of obsession.
If much harm is done by superstition, perhaps even more is done by the
denial of all demonic influence and invasion, and the attempt to explain
all the so-called Satanic phenomena on natural principles. It generates
a sceptical turn of mind, and the rationalism resorted to will in the
end be turned against the supernatural facts of religion, and the same
process which is adopted to explain away the Satanic prodigies, will be
made use of to explain away the miracles of the Old and New Testaments.
In fact it has been so done, and we have seen grave commentators
laboring, as they believed, to explain these very miracles on natural
principles; thus reducing Christianity from its high character of a
supernatural religion to a system of mere naturalism, at best a simple
human philosophy, perhaps inferior to many other systems. Jefferson,
writing to Priestley, speaks, as he supposes, very well of our Lord, but
disputes his merits as a philosopher, and says, in substance, “Jesus was
a spiritualist, I am a materialist.” How many men in our days regard
themselves as very commendable Christians because they recognize the
beauty and worth of certain moral precepts of the Gospel, precepts which
are only the universal dictates of reason, and recognized by the common
sense of all nations—heathen as well as Christian! Thomas Paine was more
honest, for though he could say Jesus taught very pure morals, which
have never been excelled, he refused to call himself a Christian. I have
met many a professed minister of the Gospel who would find Tom Paine’s
creed, meagre as it was, too big for him: “I believe in one God and no
more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe that
religious duties consist in justice and mercy, and endeavoring to make
our fellow-creatures happy.” The Gospel, as it is preached by some
“godly” ministers in New England, is too meagre to have satisfied a
Rousseau, or even a Voltaire.
In the case of the Spiritists of our own times, much harm is done by
telling them the spirit-manifestations are all humbuggery, imagination,
fraud, or trickery. These people know that it is not so. They know that
they are not knaves, that they practise no trickery, and have no wish to
deceive or be deceived. They are not conscious of any dishonest
intentions, and they have no reason to think that they are less
intelligent or less sharp-sighted than they who abuse them as impostors,
or ridicule them as dupes. The worst way in the world to convert a man
from his errors is to begin by abusing him, and denying what he knows to
be true. Except in the teachings of God, or what is the same thing, the
teachings of men appointed, instructed, and supernaturally assisted by
him to teach, we never find unmixed truth, for to err is human; and on
the other hand, we never find pure, unmixed falsehood. Unmixed falsehood
is universal negation, and no negation is possible but by an
affirmation. Error is the misapplication of the true. These Spiritists
are deceived, are deluded, I grant, for they are the sport of a lying
and deceiving spirit; but they are not deceived or deluded as to the
phenomena to which they testify, nor, as a general thing, do they wish
to deceive others. Among them there may be knaves and fools, there may
be quacks and impostors, but I have no reason to suppose that the mass
of them are not as intelligent and as honest as the common run of men,
as the world goes. Their error is in their explication of the phenomena,
not in asserting the reality of the phenomena; and to begin by telling
them that no such phenomena have ever occurred, that the
spirit-manifestations are all humbug, is, to say the least, a very
unwise proceeding. If you are a minister of religion, by doing so you
are only playing into the hands of the devil, for you outrage the
natural sense of justice and truth which these people still retain, and
dispose them in turn to look upon religion itself, as held by the
Christian Church, as a humbug.
I have known many apparently sincere and pious persons driven to
apostasy by the scepticism with regard to the phenomena they have
themselves seen. The very worst way in the world to deliver ourselves or
others from the power of Satan, is to deny his existence. Resist the
devil, and he will flee from you; laugh at him, if you will, and he will
hie himself back to hell, for he cannot endure contempt; but deny his
existence, persuade yourselves that there exists no devil, and he in
turn will laugh at you, and take quiet possession of you. Oppose the
Spiritists we certainly should, but not where they are strong and we are
weak. The true way is to concede the facts, concede all that they really
and honestly observe, concede even their mysterious and superhuman
character, and then explain to them their principle and origin, and show
them that they proceed not from good angels, even when apparently they
are pure and unobjectionable, but from the enemies of Christ, from Satan
and his angels carrying on, with devilish malice, their never-ending war
against Heaven.
Such at least are the conclusions which I have been forced in my own
mind to adopt, and such, it seems to me, all must adopt who study the
question in the light of Christian theology. I am at least honest in
these conclusions, and, though I may err now, as I have so often erred
before, yet I am not more likely to err than others. Err indeed I may,
but, if I must err at all, I would rather err on the side of
superstition, than on the side of scepticism and irreligion.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CONVERSION.
My story, like my life, draws to its close. The change which my
religious views have undergone has been more than once hinted. On
religion, as on most other subjects, I no longer think or feel as I did
in the day when I fancied I possessed more than human science, and
wielded a more than human power.
I grew up without any decided religious doctrines, though inclining to
what was called Liberal Christianity, that is, a Christianity kept up
with the times, and conformed to the ever-changing spirit of the age. I
was not an avowed unbeliever; I was not an open scoffer; I even thought
it well to pay a decent external respect to religion, to attend church
when convenient, and to patronize the Gospel, providing it was not
preached with too much earnestness and devotedness, and not promulgated
as a law which must govern all my thoughts, words, and deeds, but was
proposed simply as a speculation, as a theory, or as an opinion, which I
was at liberty to accept, modify, or reject, as seemed to me good.
Before my mesmeric experiments and acquaintance with Priscilla, I was a
sort of Rationalist, accepting Christianity in name, and explaining its
miracles and mysteries on purely natural principles. Afterwards, after
my philanthropic schemes had miscarried, my worship of humanity as God
had proved a failure, and my belief in progress had expired in the
crucible of experience, I fell into a sort of despair, and would fain
have persuaded myself that I believed in nothing. If I did not
absolutely deny God, my belief in him became so obscured by the mists of
my speculations and the corruptions of my heart, that I was in reality
no better than an atheist. The devil was a bugbear invented by the
priests, and men were mere motes in the sunbeam. I have already
described the state into which I fell—a state from which I would risk my
life to save my bitterest enemy.
Prior to the absolute crushing of all my hopes, which followed my having
finished all the work I had marked out for myself to do, and found it
nought, I regarded myself as a Free-Thinker, because I had either
allowed myself to think, or had made myself acquainted with the thoughts
of others, against religion. My freedom and independence of mind were in
denying, not in believing. I was not free to think in favor of religion,
nor sufficiently independent to believe Christianity, and labor in
earnest to serve God and save my own soul. To have done so would have
been sheer superstition, would have been sinking myself to the level of
the vulgar, and to have exposed myself to the gibes and sneers of my
scientific associates.
Nevertheless, my unbelief, my scepticism, and my radicalism, were a sort
of violence done to my own better feelings and graver judgment. They
never came natural to me, and I am sure I was never cut out for a
philanthropist or a world-reformer. There was always something in the
views and practices of my associates that disgusted me, and often was I
obliged to hold my nose when they were discussed, as it is said Satan
does when he encounters a confirmed sensualist. I had no natural relish
for “the Newness,” and when at worst retained a secret reverence for the
past, and dwelt with pleasure on the time-hallowed, over which for ages
had flowed the stream of human affection, human joy, and human sorrow. I
stood in awe before the shadow of the hoary Eld, and wished always to
find myself bound by indissoluble ties to what had gone before me, as
well as to what might come after me. Half in spite, and half under the
charm of Priscilla, I embraced philanthropy, but not inwardly, for her
sophistry never for a moment deceived me. Never was there a moment when
I did not see through the philanthropists, radicals, and revolutionists
with whom I associated, or when with a breath I could not have swept
away their cobweb theories; never for a moment was I deceived as to the
actual character of the devilish movements I myself set on foot.
It may be thought strange, such being the fact, that I could or would
have played the part I did. It might be enough to say Satan had power
over me; but I associated with the prophets of “the Newness,” and led on
the movement, partly because I did not know what else to do, and partly
because I could not endure absolute idleness. I saw indeed the
destructive character of my movements, but I cherished a hope that by
making things worse, I should prepare the way for making them better.
You must demolish, I said, the old edifice, and clear away its rubbish,
before you can erect a new, a more beautiful, or a more convenient
structure on its site. I accepted, after a manner, the opinions and
theories of the Neologists, not because they satisfied me, but because I
knew not what else to accept; and, though not true, they might conduct
me to truth. The road to the temple of Purity runs through the Bower of
Bliss, the path to heaven crosses the devil’s territory, and error is
the prodrome of truth. Such were the maxims I adopted, not indeed
because I believed them, but because they were convenient, and because I
saw not otherwise how to justify myself, or solve the problem of
experience. I adhered to my philanthropy, infidelity, and radicalism,
not because I loved or believed them, but because I saw nothing true in
the principles and reasonings I was accustomed to hear opposed to them.
The religious and conservative people I knew, and I supposed them the
most enlightened and the least irrational of their class, seemed to
believe and retain either too much or too little. On one side they
seemed to accept and act on the principles which I and my party
professed, and on the other to insist on conclusions which could be
logically obtained only from a contradictory set of principles, and
which they with one voice condemned as false, mischievous, and leading
only to superstition, idolatry, and spiritual thraldom. Their denials
struck me as too sweeping for their affirmations, and their affirmations
as quite too broad for their denials. I found myself in the unpleasant
predicament, either of divinizing humanity, or of embracing a religion
which they held to be worse than the rankest infidelity.
For a time, while I was in good health, while I possessed and wielded a
more than human power, and had not yet exhausted the world in which I
did believe, or despaired of recasting it after my own image, I got
along without much difficulty; but when I no longer saw any object in
life, when there was from my own point of view no longer any work for me
to do, and I was thrown back on my own failing godship, and left to
devour my own heart, I became wretched, more wretched than I can
express. The blow which prostrated me, and the disease which it
developed, and brought me to handgrips with Death, changed the current
of my thoughts, but unhappily only to render them for the time still
more painful. “You know, O Socrates,” says Cephalus in Plato’s
_Republic_, “that when a man thinks that he is drawing near to death,
certain things, as to which he had previously been very tranquil, awaken
in his bosom anxiety and alarm. What has been told him of hell and the
punishment of the wicked, the stories at which he had formerly laughed
or mocked, now fill his soul with trouble. He fears that they may prove
true. Enfeebled by age, or brought nearer to the frightful abodes, he
seems to perceive them with greater clearness and force, and is
therefore disturbed by doubts and apprehensions. He reviews his past
life, and seeks what evil he may have done. If he finds, on examination,
that his life has been iniquitous, he awakes often in the night,
agitated and shuddering, as a child, with sudden terrors, trembles and
lives in fearful expectation;” or, as I may add with St. Paul, “a
certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.” As I
found myself on my dying bed, things began to wear to me a very
different aspect from what they did when I was in the heyday of youth,
in the full flow of my animal spirits, or filled with the vain and
delusive hope of subjecting all nature to my will. The lessons which I
had heard in my childhood, and which I had ridiculed or forgotten, came
back with startling power; and in my lonely reflections I was forced to
ask what, if that which they tell us of death and judgment, of heaven
and hell, the rewards of the good and the punishment of the wicked,
should turn out to be true?
My trouble, my anxiety, and my alarm increased in proportion as Mr.
Merton forced upon me, by his conversations, the full conviction that I
had really been dealing with devils, that Satan is really a personal
existence, and that I had made a covenant with him, and had acted under
his influence. My rationalism had led me to question his personal
existence, and to attempt to explain the demonic phenomena without the
supposition of his interposition. Denying Satan, I had denied Christ;
and being now forced to recognize Satan, I was forced to confess Christ,
and all the Christian mysteries. By the same process by which I had
explained away the demonic phenomena, I had explained away the miracles
and the supernatural character of Christianity. By that same process of
reasoning by which Mr. Merton compelled me to admit the false miracles,
the lying signs and wonders of Satan, I was forced to admit the true
miracles, therefore the Divine commission, and therefore the Divinity of
Christ, because Christ claimed to be the Son of God.
Here is, I apprehend, the principal source of that difficulty which so
many people find in admitting the reality of the demonic phenomena. They
cannot admit Satan and his works, without admitting Christ and
redemption, purchased with his own blood on the cross,—in a word,
without admitting all the Christian mysteries and dogmas,—Christianity
itself, and that not as an opinion, not as a speculation, but as the law
of God for conscience. Most men have, at least, a dim perception of this
fact; and as they do not like to admit Christianity in a Christian
sense, they will not suffer themselves to believe that there is any
thing Satanic in the dark phenomena of human history. For, whatever may
be the professions we hear, whatever the apparent zeal displayed in the
cause of a bastard Christianity, our age is an unbelieving age, and
hates, I may say, with a perfect hatred, Christ and his Church. The age
is blind to the perception of Christian truth, but sharp-sighted to
whatever is requisite to prevent that truth from making its way to the
heart. It sees very clearly what it must concede, if it accepts Mr.
Merton’s doctrine; and therefore, with all its energy and astuteness, it
insists on explaining the demonic phenomena on natural principles, or on
denying them outright.
But detached from the world by experience of its hollowness, and by my
mortal illness, I became less disposed to resist the grace of God, and
in some measure prepared to listen with candor to Mr. Merton’s
reasoning. I very soon became convinced that I had really fallen into
the error of calling good evil, and evil good. I had really substituted
Satan for God, and in doing so had committed the precise error the
Christian clergy had always laid to my charge. I saw that they had been
right in advocating what I called, with Priscilla, the system of
repression, and I wrong in advocating the contrary system. I saw that,
as a reasonable man, I must abandon the whole order of ideas which I had
cherished in my Satanic pride and lust, and embrace that order of ideas
which I had hitherto rejected as false and mischievous. There was no
room for compromise. I must say decidedly either “Good Lord” or “Good
Devil,” and as I could no longer say the latter, I must say the former.
Many people, knowing my order of thinking when I was well and in the
world, may blame a change so complete and so universal; but only because
they are people of confused, incomplete, and disjointed thought, whose
views are always dim, obscure, and incoherent, and who can never
understand the operations of a mind that reduces all its views to their
fundamental principle, to a clear, well-defined, and self-coherent
whole, so that any change at all must be change of principle, and
involve an entire change of system. Philosophical and logical minds may
err, but in their premises, not in their conclusions from them. No
question with them is ever a question of detail, and none ever turns on
a collateral issue. If they start from infidel premises, they will come
to the conclusion that Satan is God, and adjust their theory of the
universe accordingly. If they assume, as their point of departure, that
liberty is in the absence of all restraint, and that liberty in this
sense is good, they must come to the conclusion so earnestly insisted
upon by my instructress Priscilla, and of course reject that whole order
of ideas which asserts the need of law, the utility of government, or
the necessity of restraint. That, in doing so, they go against common
sense, they are as well aware as are their opponents; but that fact
cannot move them, for the legitimate conclusion from it, if their
premises are right, is that so-called common sense is wrong, and needs
to be corrected. If the common opinions, doctrines, or judgments of
mankind are against them, they are indemnified by finding a common
feeling, a secret but real feeling, of all men in their favor; for the
very fact that restraint is necessary, proves that perverse nature
demands, when left to itself, universal liberty or unbounded license.
They have but to adopt the doctrine of the innate purity and sanctity of
nature, to call this natural feeling a pure and holy instinct, and bid
us follow nature, in order to make out their complete logical
justification. They are simply consequent, to use a logical term; and
their opponents, who accept their premises but deny their conclusions,
are inconsequent.
The common run of men, who oppose this class of thinkers and
speculators, not by a complete and coherent system constructed on the
principle of law and authority, and who are constantly saying Good Lord
and Good Devil, Good Devil and Good Lord, trying forever to conciliate
both at the same time, and endeavoring with all their might to serve
both God and Mammon, which He who “spake as never man spake” declares to
be impossible, whenever they are hard pushed, cry out against them as
logic-choppers, hair-splitters, narrow-minded system-mongers, and
represent them as wanting in broad and comprehensive views, in liberal
and generous feelings, as mere theorists, destitute of plain, practical
common sense. What is really a merit in them, is denounced as folly or
crime, and the whole pack,
“Tray, Blanche, Sweetheart, little dogs and all,”
are let loose against them. This is wrong. Either our feeling, our
sensitive and affective nature, is to be made subordinate and
subservient to our reason, or our reason is to be subordinated and made
subservient to feeling. To attempt to maintain them as two equal,
coördinate, and mutually independent powers, after the manner of the
Gallicans in relation to Church and State, is only to prepare the way
for internal anarchy and disorder. The fool makes reason subservient to
his feelings, emotions, affections, or passions, and as to his proper
manhood, lives as a slave; the wise man subjects these to his reason,
that is, to understanding and will, and lives, moves, and acts as a
freeman.
Now I had one of those minds which reduce their views to system, or to
their fundamental principle. My starting-point, my fundamental principle
was false, and therefore my whole system or theory of the universe was
false. This once discovered, I necessarily embraced the opposing
principle, and as necessarily embraced it in all its legitimate
consequences. I never was so constituted as to be able to strike a
balance between truth and falsehood, or to accept a principle and deny
its consequences. In matters of practice, I can understand, where no
principle is sacrificed, what are called compromises, and I have never
needed to be told that true prudence usually forbids us to push matters
to extremes. When we act, we must consider the practicable, and the
expedient, as far as principle leaves us any discretionary power; but in
asserting principles, in the question between truth and falsehood, right
and wrong, I have always felt it necessary to be on one side or the
other. It ought not therefore to be considered strange that, forced by
Mr. Merton and my own serious reflections to deny that Satan is God, I
should swing round to the other extreme, and assert that God is God; or
that, starting from this bold proposition as a first principle, I should
adjust, or endeavor to adjust my whole order of thought to it. I am
aware that my having done so will, with the mass of my countrymen, bring
reproach upon my memory, and induce some who may cherish a regard for me
to attempt to apologize for my want of inconsistency and incoherency;
but, happily, the praises or the censures of men cannot affect me any
longer, and I shall soon be where they cannot reach me.
Brought back to an intellectual conviction of the truth of Christianity,
my trouble increased; for if Christianity be true, it is not simply the
revelation of a truth to be believed, but also of a truth to be
practised—of a law to be obeyed. I had not obeyed that law; I had
deliberately, systematically violated all its precepts for years, and
had taught others to do the same. I had fallen under its condemnation,
and had incurred its severest penalties. The prospect that now opened
before me was not pleasing. There was a vision of blackness and despair.
The judgment I derided, the heaven I had scorned, the hell I had braved
or treated as a fiction, were all realities. I must soon appear before
my Judge, loaded with crimes and sins innumerable, and of the blackest
dye. It was impossible to imagine one more wicked or guilty than myself.
I could plead nothing in excuse or extenuation of my guilt. I had proved
myself the enemy of my race, a foul-mouthed and black-hearted rebel
against God, my sovereign, who had done nothing to me but load me with
benefits. It was no pleasant thought. I had consorted with devils. I had
chosen them for my associates, and what more fitting than that I should
be left to my own choice, to reap the fruits of my own doings, and be
doomed to dwell eternally with them in hell? It was what I deserved,
what immaculate Justice might well inflict. The thought was not to be
endured.
I had made a covenant with death. I had entered into an agreement with
hell, and had by a solemn pact given myself to the devil, and who had
ever heard that such a one had ever received grace to repent? Had I not
blasphemed the Holy Ghost, committed the unpardonable sin? My accomplice
had been rescued, it was true, but she had been less guilty than I. She
had been deceived, seduced by the wiles of the serpent, and struggled to
break the meshes he had cast around her as soon as she fully understood
their real character. Guilty she certainly had been, but there was some
limit to her guilt. I can hardly say that I was deceived. From the first
I suspected the truth, and when I remained blind, I remained so
wilfully. I had acted deliberately;—not from the strength of feeling, or
the heat of passion, but coolly, from calculation, with full assent.
There was a great difference between us. What hope, then, remained for
me?
The world will laugh at me for all this, and wag their heads at the
mighty magician starting back with fear of death and dread of hell. The
world has no faith. If it can make sure of this life, it thinks we may
jump, as Macbeth proposed, that which is to come. But the world is
nothing to me now, and I am not moved by its mockeries. I am not ashamed
to own my fears. I fear not dying. I fear what may come after death. I
fear the last judgment. I fear hell. I fear being condemned to dwell
forever with the damned. The salvation of my soul to me now is the
great, the all-absorbing question—the question of questions.
Mr. Merton continued to visit me, and to unfold to me the scheme of
Christian Redemption, and assured me that, if I willed it, there was
salvation even for me, for Christ had died for all, had made ample
satisfaction on the cross for the sins of the whole world, and that
great as my sins were, they were surpassed by the Divine Mercy. He
instructed me in what I had to believe, and in what I had to do. The
baptismal waters were poured over me, and I was confirmed by the Holy
Chrism, and I hope that my pact with Satan is broken, and my soul
delivered. But I know not whether it be so or not; I know not whether I
deserve love or hatred. I still fear and tremble, but will not despair.
I am trying, as far as in my power, to undo the wrong I have done, and
have dictated with that view these my confessions, which will see the
light as soon as may be after I am no more.
All are kind to me. My friends, those who have known me in my pride and
wickedness, strange to say, do not desert me; and those I love best are
constantly near me, and do all they can to relieve my pain, and to
strengthen my good resolutions. Priscilla is not unfrequently my nurse,
and James is most kind and affectionate to me. If human aid or sympathy
could avail me, I should have nothing to fear. But here I lie waiting my
departure. How it will fare with me hereafter, God only knows. His will
be done.
My story is told. My confessions, as far as I can make them to the
public, are made. Let no man see in me an example to be followed, or
regard me otherwise than as a miserable wretch who, in manhood and
health, abused all God’s gifts, and has nothing to relieve his character
from utter detestation but a late death-bed repentance. My life can
serve as a beacon; let it so serve. Yet I beg all whom I have wronged to
forgive me, for I would, as far as possible, die in peace with all the
world. I have nothing to forgive, for I have received no wrongs. I have
done wrong to the world, but I have suffered no wrong from it. I cannot
ask that my memory should be cherished, for it deserves only to be
execrated. Yet is it pleasant to feel that there are some who, bad as I
have been, still love me, and will drop a tear of sincere grief over my
lifeless remains. There are, too, some who, from the abundance of their
charity, will, as they pass by my final resting-place, breathe the
prayer, so consoling to the living at least,—“May his soul rest in
peace.” After all, good is greater than evil, and love stronger than
hell.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.
19.25 that [“/‘]occult power,[”/’] as an earlier Replaced.
philosophy
20.17 [“]There is something fearful Added.
103.27 endeavoring to look killing.[”] Added.
144.8 More[o]ver, I did not wish Inserted.
156.25 per Deum sanctum,[”] Added.
161.25 would expla[i]n all this Inserted.
185.13 the _stat[u]s quo_ Inserted.
202.21 author[r]ity may modify without danger Removed.
209.13 république d[e/é]mocratique Replaced.
251.2 sitt[t]ing-room Removed.
269.11 [“]was one of the most learned Added.
286.21 is the prin[ci]ple of all things Inserted.
308.18 Then a flint[s t/ st]one Space
shifted.
401.30 from utter detesta[ta]tion Removed.
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