MR. WALLACE ANTD MODERN SPIRITUALISM.

MR. ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE certainly has as good a right to the attention of literary and scientific men, when he speaks with weight and earnestness, as any writer of the day. Ile has, we believe, a perfectly good claim to a share in the credit of;the great discovery made by Mr. Darwin as to the influ- ence of thelprocess of natural selection' on the modification of organic forms. His books on natural history are amongst the most delightful i-of modern times, and the evidence of his earnestness:as:a seeker of truth seems to us at least as good as any evidence could possibly be, if the class of facts which he wishes us to' believe are to be freely accepted. But what we are disposed to:complain of, in the interesting and very remarkable little book which he has just published, on "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism,"* is this,--that he does not at all see how completely revolutionary the new doctrines he holds are in their effects on the whole world of moral evidence, and how completely at/sea we shall be in relation to all questions of evidence, supposing we are compelled to admit, not simply that his OW11 testimony establishes the existence of some unex- plained order of facts,—which is possible,—but that the spiritual- istic theory of these, and of a large class of still more astounding, though similar facts, is the only possible one. We absolutely agree with his able and quite unanswerable reply to Hume's so-called refutation of the possibility of miracles, and we quite agree with him, moreover, that the fact that through the history of Europe has run a thread of occasional marvel, now taking the form of miracles which have conquered the most rigid scientific doubt, as in the case of the Port Royal miracles,—now, again, of animal magnetism or clairvoyance, or other marvels of that nature, which have resisted the attempts of sceptical analysis to explain them away,—is one which ought to afford a pre- sumption that the similar marvels of the present day have more or less foundation, and are not wholly due to the dreams of imagi- nation or superstition. We should therefore assign very great value to the strange facts for which he gives us his own personal attestation, and it seems to us simply irrational to call his facts "stale," as one of his sceptical reviewers, for instance, has done, "staleness" being of the very essence of the case. Scientific facts always are and ought to be "stale" before a theory is found for them. If they are not 'stale,' they are hardly worth considering at all, at least with a view to their explanation. Now Mr. Wallace gives us on his own personal evidence some very curious facts, as to which, if his own memory is to be trusted, he can hardly have been deceived. After mes- merising a pupil of his, for instance, he formed a chain of several persons, at one end of which he stood himself, while his patient was at the other, and when under these circumstances, "in per- fect silence," he himself was "pinched or pricked," the patient would immediately put his hand to the corresponding part of his own body, and "complain of being pinched or pricked too." That is a correspondence of sensations which we suppose Mr. Wallace was eminently competent to test and to affirm, and which we should certainly accept as implicitly on his evidence as we should accept the Speaker's testimony to a meeting of the House of Commons on any day on which he had specially noted it. For the same reason, we do not see any reasonable way of disputing the following testimony of Mr. Wallace's, without deny- ing either his good faith or his sanity, which would, in our opinion, be very unreasonable indeed,—certainly to the present writer, who happens to have personal experience of his apparent coolness and simplicity in discussing and reasoning on these matters :—

"A still more remarkable phenomenon, and one which I have observed with the greatest care and the most profound interest, is the exhibition of considerable force under conditions which preclude the muscular action of any of the party. We stand round a small work- table, whose leaf is about twenty bathes across, placing our hands all close together near the centre. After a short time the table rooks * James Burns, Southampton Bow.

about from side to side, and then, appearing to steady itself, rises verti- cally from six inches to a foot, and remains suspended often fifteen or twenty seconds. During this time any one or two of the party can strike it or press on it, as it resists a very considerable force. Of course, the first impression is that some one's foot is lifting up the table. To answer this objection, I prepared the table before our second trial without telling any ono, by stretching some thin 'tissue-paper between the feet an inch or two from the bottom of the pillar, in such a manner that any attempt to insert the foot must crush and tear the paper. The table rose up as before, resisted pressure downwards, as if it were resting on the back of some animal, sunk to the floor, and in a short time rose again, and then dropped suddenly down. I now with some anxiety turned up the table, and, to the surprise of all preeent, showed them the delicate tissue stretched across altogether uninjured! Finding that this test was troublesome, as the paper or threads had to be renewed every time, and were liable to be broken accidentally before the experiment began, I constructed a cylinder of hoops and laths, covered with canvas. The table was placed within this as in a well, and, as it was about eighteen inches high, it effec- tually kept foot and ladies' dresses from the table. This apparatus in no way checked its upward motion, and as the hands of the medium are always close under the eyes of all present, and simply resting on the top of the table, it would appear that there is some new and unknown power here at work. These experiments have been many times repeated by me, and I am satisfied of the correctness of my- statement of the facts. On two or three occasions only, when the con- ditions appear to have been unusually favourable, I have witnessed a still more marvellous phenomenon. While sitting at the large table in our usual manner, I placed the small table about four feet from it, on, the side next the medium and my sister. After some time, while- we were talking, we heard a alight sound from the table, and looking towards it found that it moved slightly at short intervals, and after a little time it moved suddenly up to the table by the side of the medium, as if it had gradually got within the sphere of a strong attractive force. Afterwards, at our request., it was thrown down on the floor without any person touching it, and it then movetb about in a strange, life-like manner, as if seeking some means of getting up again, turning its claws first on one side and then on the other. On another occasion, a very large leather arm-chair, which stood at least four or five feet from the medium, suddenly wheeled up to her after a few slight preliminary movements. It is, of course, easy to say that what I relate is impossible. I maintain that it is accurately true : and that no man, whatever be his attainments, has such an exhaustive knowledge of the powers of nature as to justify him in using the word impossible 'with regard to facts which land many others have repeatedly witnessed."

Now, it so happens that we have heard precisely equivalent statements as to the motion of a large object of this kind placed

at a distance from all the persons in a private room, from two. other witnesses, who seem to us as trustworthy as Mr. Wallace him- self,—one a near relative of the late Mr. Nassau Senior, a person, who took no interest in the fact, though asserting its reality, an& another an intimate friend of the present writer's. All these

three witnesses may, no doubt, have been subject to hallucina- tions, but is not that as strange an hypothesis as to admit their evidence? They have none of them ever betrayed any indication_ of heated or superstitions judgment except their affirmation on

this head, and it won't do both to explain away the evidence by assuming hallucination, and also to prove the hallucination by the

fact of their giving this evidence. Indeed, the difficulties into which we fall, if we are to assume that honourable persons, unconnected with each other, and cool and judicious in all the transactions of *ordinary life, are liable to see heavy objects moving when they don't move, though they are confirmed by a number of other witnesses in saying they do move, are not less, but rather greater than those which result from accepting the asserted facts, and admitting that a new explanation must be found for them. But the case is surely very different when we come to the following state- ment of Mr. Wallace's, as to a circumstance which occurred in a seanc3 with Miss Nichol (afterwards Mrs. Guppy, who is credited by certain wild spiritualists with having made a journey through the air from Highbury to Lamb's Conduit Street in a few seconds, . and having penetrated closed walls and doors under spiritualistic influence) :—

" The most remarkable feature of this lady's medinmship is the production of flowers and fruits in closed rooms. The first time this occurred was at my own house, at a very early stage of her developnient. All present were my own friends. Miss N. had come early to tea, it being mid-winter, and she had been with us in a very warm gas-lighted room four hours before the flowers appeared. The essential fact is, that upon a bare table in a small room closed and dark (the adjoining room and passage being well lighted), a quantity of flowers appeared, which were not there when we put out the gas a few minutes before. They consisted of anemones, tulips, chrysanthemums, Chinese primroses, and several ferns. All were absolutely fresh, as if just gathered from a conservatory. They were covered with a fine cold dew. Not a petal was crumpled or broken, not the most delicate point or pinnule of the ferns was out of place. I dried and preserved the whole, and have, attached to them, the attestation of all present that they had no share, as far as they knew, in bringing the flowers into the room. I believed at the time, and still believe, that it was absolutely impossible for Miss N. to have concealed them so long, to have kept them so perfect,. and, above all, to produce them covered throughout with a most beautiful coating of dew, just like that which collects on the outside of a tumbler when filled with very cold water on a hot day." Vow, of this circumstance several explanations much' more reasonable than the admission of its extraordinary character may be suggested, —all, no doubt, implying that some one er other was trying to play on the credulity. of the rest. We know nothing of Miss Nichol, though Mr. Wallace does, except that assertions have been made about her which would 'make the legal theory of alibi altogether irrelevant in any case of "eriminal evidence, and we submit that it does not in the least follow that because Mr. Wallace himself is clearly trustworthy, all Mr. Wallace's friends are So. His Observation of simple facts maybe excellent, and his observation of character very little to be trusted. The fact itself, too, if due to extraordinary causes at all, goes fur beyond the former one in the extraordinariness of its character.

l't implies that solid Walls and doors are wholly insignificant obstruc-

tions to the passage of material things like flowers; and indeed, there would be no reason that any physical philosopher could assign why, if flowers can be passed by any invisible power through closed _walls, .and. doors, a stouti woman herself should not ,li.ei carried flircingb them with equal ease,—and eTthenk Diris.""thiapp;srfamous

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. iaos ow. few seconds mieht be a fact , and not alb, ...q..A -,,,iv.) -Eczt tar r.3 . _ srh se.i 3-.1nurroailA . iitiftnia...w ..n1-' . this . _ .. o mutt Our mainQ w Sqe Admit the spiiitna4tficaliseiriry,190n/hirschypia-er ".-Til- ' I Ofio nyfersonab ' on the evidence he arrays or us not to w 115 arr4` wir4rVio a ' :, ' *11j,ii,;/,',,;'rh,,f,hatPtEIRVI# science or °ilia% "19 ill

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meseener .qa t; ...,.1.o... '983i 3 IT/ ITO , 1.0 flfieD.9J110aff&F 57yd 1 ,I, C/.e., ranatron ot ani.usicai rac wba v wo bet-TILSIQ .2.I. J.,_ ■ , , .1 avorma 180111 7 v) ^IlLa.65A,+4 ' gitilif 4 any longer =poem le, and no exp on orn ul . For Thg do.M.r. Walleee's_so- ed gacta impty4L'IVit ciPhaVlein lii.Viars thOselasilo ifithi 'be 'Mtn's% ' ' 114,1iii4 'az it it utPlie Wpcv 1r evideiiiii ae'ts 9 th ' '''.11" h,i1S 11' "b 'at- 1 . p . . They impixa ,a,.., ,v,tlin.vult , iin e en.ceia... e assumes can not only rrive (hints- sides t vistieWibiie ile .-,■ d, - ° — -- --) / t.-Al .0, fil I e ,c. ; apparitions, under given 'hilt 'Very la le contkinst oin,jtitna9t4 we‘yi can so transmute the various sir lafie'ealwf 0,U tifi"ivaff' ' . lo r ea. , m u our own bodies, is to produce- as" wild a confusion as 'any With

„- .. which magicians were ever credited in Arabian fables. If, at the will of an invisible intelligence, hot-house flowers can pass the walls and doors of a room, rain and snow could ,pass, thera. equally (and much more easily), and the art of Our builders mightle frus- trated by any malicious spirit who could find a medium to his mind.

% Imagine a suit against a builder for net haying made a house Water- -. tight, and the builder pleading in reply that it was.made-water-tight, but that at a séance in No. 7, the invisible agencies agreed to open the pores of the walls in No. 6 to the beating of the storm? Whit would a judge say to such a plea as that ? Or imagine 4is. Guppy accused of a murder, and the 'sitters in Lamb's 'Conduit Street swearing that she was with them virtually at the Same moment, as she easily might be, if the story of her " levitation " could be be- lieved by anybody, and the accuser replying that no doubt she was, but that she fell into a trance the moment after the murder and disappeared, through closed walla and doors ! What would juries and judges say to evidence of that kind? Yet according to Mr,

Wallace, it would be quite conceivably an honest reply. . . .

Nor do the wild follies of human credulity on this Subject limit

themselves even to such evidence-annihilating creeds as these. Take the following statement, made in the Spiritualist news- paper of the 25th January, by a certain Prince Emile de Sun- Wittgenstein,—his name is in the Gotha Almanach,—who appears to be a tremendous spiritualist residing at Vevey, in ,Switzerland, and who frequently communicates with the English spiritualistic journals. He gravely writes to the Revue Spirits the following letter, which the Spiritualist of the date mentioned thus translates :— " Vevey, Dec. 18, 1874. "Hero is a curious experience which has occurred through the mediumship of my second little son, aged three years. Some time before bia birth, spirits announced to me that the child would be gifted with powerful medial faculties ; and many very singular physical manifesta- tions which have occurred in his presence, at different times, have confirmed me in the faith that I had in their word. I was given to understand that, several ages ago, this child was incarnated in England, where he gave himself up to the practice of necromancy, alchemy, and astrology, by means of which much evil accrued, and which at length brought upon him a miserable death. His present incarnation, I am assured, is accorded in order to give him an opportunity of repairing the evil which he committed long ago, by contributing to the building up of the Spiritist temple at which we are working, by means of the medial powers which he has brought with him as a legacy from his last incarnation. All this is logical, and entirely in agreement with our notions respecting the object of reincarnation. Well, then, some weeks , back, the child was playing and prattling in my study, when I suddenly heard him talking about England, concerning which country nobody, to my knowledge, had ever spoken to him. This roused my attention,and I asked him if he know what England meant? He answered me : 'O1 yes : it is a country where I was a very, very long time ago.' Q. Were you a little boy then as you are now ?—A. Oh no ; I was tall, taller than you are, and! had a long beard! .. Q Were mamma and I with you then ?—A. No ; I had another papa and another mamma.

Q. And What Were you doing?-‘,-A. I played a, good deal with fire, andonce 1 krnt myself so, that 1 4ied,. . . .,. I think yottumet selolowled.ge toat it even ail this is no other than It Child's reverie, yet that the coincidence is sufficiently strange to Mitiii one believe that reminiscences may come even to a child in his play. - Some -weeks back, the same little bey went to his mother hi:the morniag, telling her that 13,4 grandmother, (whom, he had..eu4 seeu when a baby of Some months old, therefore of whom be could have .had no recollection) had come to -her and had passed the'nigliftalkingle her ; and that he Itad"seen ',her well -and . had heard-her. Now it so -happened, Plat .my wife had been Alroanaing Attach abet* her mother, who haFI died some jnoutbs previonisly. What think you of this? EMILE DE W * * k," Now, does! Mr. Wallace ihink)statements , of tiaiai Lind woxihy4 special examination T. ' Yet ,they seem to us to-4est4M4preoiseir the same itintilof, evidenceriegt ethe. stories otalsttniGupprbeing passed through brick walls6oirvalbeirin the L SpiaiStaittooielast -weeknthe- i editor, gravely Eitel* vest thatRs 7cosia.iniir.iNerretauk-i.so zaiied,ts isle QtAtathialferiginsiroDANNewtaitiatrAids ilsEaritrata* ,ixtily osenwfiyomi woirriketdcidithedikTo edzgtlitiffhq isentecloby "a band of spirits," ,. gir benevoleldeilplipeses,b,su!tca.of love to mankind." In fact, his name is "Legion." The visible and legal Dr. Newton is not an individual, but a class. Now, supposing the class ealleCKWArstrap,trishould be accused and ow -i,ca .0:- 1 -ot,t- saa. sifInirilNeliMAY) a °` ,LIILIV, HSI trial 731.318YRMS43.1;41 a 9 e t lust

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sonietmaeis'IT ongs to ,o e person and soumF otter:. *a asleatte; n iffewz en ,Y' vilurral s,,, -a -; Add latt, re s m voo eses win& put human wee& tzr. -Iv .ViiihtV • 'taw rraf) frieb 3 a theory or. Inc strange Jr we o r .dc anos-r- ill

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weir ITIt.70 5913 8 'T flank a m um Idr Jar _ma . sof zo Q701rvragoarr. 97/D arlo als mina* toatfrifp viii 'her ilogyriorkr 41 it.f, t Amnan some otner smut ahristk '1 or terdm fit ;s ,an withoul inn IRSW '761Y1I17.13 ylliii"! rt go to --t' . - gg. 9 .70 17.881 7IIIII4 i Vei C9 C.711a—e,8-i! or ow,. Re, , modes o te et er at or eo dm- (., f NV, , r Inn FIE.:1' '',. SI 1 Is a ' 1 1 ii Pi Z '1. 813 fl =7 IF. annear at once before this tremrous ma'am- -troll -- tEe-ri W 00-.1-0, - -, ',Li n of t.r s• a5e.a t sect. , And 7c, therefore, cannot, fipf;as ) it e really thinks the stories of chanAl icleilt; es,,,fio ifs k 'I _6 rna- tions, of flitting through stone wapa,.andYfrJ3.estAl de "7 vestOrtion as much as hi s alleged new facts ? An. .1 ET.fif,lv investigation Teen', . ici it iniestigation to asi,r.'ae/l'iin74 -de Sep.-Wittgenstein did, a baby of three years Old Wire e'ift lived before and how it died? Is it investigation to put I , 'is, as another foreign Spiritualist, " Baron Rirkup," is said ii-.;:eVO, behind :a picture in your library.,' and accept the replies asserted to be given by font spirits, who si,gn themselves "Regina," " Atmine," " Isacco," and "Dante " (!) as coming from a spiritual World? Is it investigation to listen to Mrs,. Taprinn's "trance Dilikerirses on the conditions of life in the spiritual -world, and to rittiohto them the sort of importance Which we ,attach to Mr. 'Wallace's 'description of the tropical birds or snakes ? It is Clear tliatif the class of hypotheses to which-Mr. Wallace gives credit tiSTO- plaiiiing some Of the facts he believes in, are in any senietb1e, the laws of human evidence must be !very nearly'rverthldiriMdlt becomes exceedingly difficult to understandwhat is ninairlArYlit- -vestigation at 'all. We can quite believe that deft* Metiairitir- explicable on ordinary principles -occur under gifen Circumiltkikiii. On adequate evidence; any reasonable 'being .would beliededrin apparitions of the dead ; and there is 'a good deal of adequate or all but adequate evidence in relation, at all events, to place at the moment of death. . But admit these new hypotheses, and all laws of evidence are thrown into confusion by them. If a physical body such as we all of us own can be passed through stone walls by a merely spiritual 'open sesame l' if a man may be dead whose body continues to live under the guidance of a group of spirits, if a baby of three years old may rehearse its doings hundreds of years ago,—and all these things, though not asserted by Mr. Wallace, are, we suppose, as capable or incapable of demonstration as many of the facts, to whieh he gives credit,—and the word " investigation " ceases —to have its old .meaning ; to prove that a thing is "here " is no longer to prove that it has not within a second or two been many miles distant ; to prove that A B says something, is not to identify the speaker, who may be one of a hundred spiritual intelligences ; to show that rt- child's age. is three, is quite consist- ent with its having had as long a life as that Irish changeling of a few months old, in the fairy legend called, "A Brewery of Egg-shells," which suddenly called out, "I have lived on this earth two thousand years, and I never saw a brewery of eggshells before." There is no fairy atm, too wild to be rivalled in the new spiritualistic literature. Rubies and pearls fall from the air into the hands of the sitters at a seance, unseen music ravishes them, and hands without arms or bodies, like those in the story of "The White Cat," conduct them from room to room. Now, is it reasonable in Mr. Wallace to expect any one to accept evidence which subverts the laws of evidence, on-easy terms? We have the greatest possible respect for. his personal, testimeny to any limited class of facts, however new. But the class of facts to which he introdu ces us teems with suppositions whioh render all approved laws of evidence worthless. And then, with few exceptions—remarka- ble exeeptionei in the case of Mr. Wallace and Mr. Crookes, and a few others, no doubt,—look at the sort of people who are the guarantees for 'moat of this stuff ;—men and women sf no culture, 'ignorant, superstitious, ungrammatical, 'gaining their livelihood by the belief of certain portions of the public in their remarkable powers. Is it on the faith of such a class as kehielhat'vie'•aiet to believe that-solid 'flesh 'tan permeate brick viallsounidisemb6d1edepirits playhide;and-seek with-human per- genuditieslik}thelfoltis of 'litimati organisms ?'• SnrolyAlr.. Wallace itnisitoliiied&thtiitreqtairer rine lind Of -evidenCeto establishrthe IfOlv Ilho`nornena-,: and quite ttnather tirrerliablish thief:existence-or phthiothena whichi.strike at the4ery itatiotetfuthei prbleiplerf,oh1ch hnmha lrtrie',.hitherto ',been :Analysed,ateismplitintelovsa,)diol ai onuir aid rtosl o .bniin.sor e.;CvoJ