THE LITERATURE OF SPIRITUALISM.* THE literature of spiritualism is becoming

a bigger and bigger chaos every day. Book after book comes out with alleged personal experiences, and almost every one of them with either a philosophy or theology of its own to account for them,—seldom two with the same. Now of course the great question that deserves examina- tion is whether there are any facts at all sui generis, and not ordinary results of either fraud, or illusion, or of the spontaneous operation of high nervous susceptibility, to be accounted for. We have always asserted this to be a question which no sensible man would foreclose, but which scarcely any book-testimony can answer for him, since nobody can tell how much an unconscious personal inclination to believe may aid in the production of evidence which, as related afterwards, sounds entirely con-

* 1. IL Biography of the Brothers Davenport. With Some Account of the Physical and Psychical Phenomena which have Occurred in their Presence in America aud Europe. By T. L. Niehols, M.D. London: Saunders and ()Bey.

2. Spiritualism, its Pacts and Phases. Illustrated with Personal Experiences, DJ J. H. Powell. Leaden: Pitman.

3. Christian Spiritualism. Wherein is Shown the Extension of the Human Snail by the Application of Modern Spiritual Phenomena according to the Doe Christ. By William Robert Bertolacci. London: Emily Faithfull, Victoria Pr of

vincing. Certainly the present writer has been exceedingly unfortunate in the attempt to discover even a germ of unquestion- able truth in the extraordinary facts alleged. In two cases at least he was convinced of the existence of fraud ; in a third, under Mr. Home's own auspices, the result was simple failure,—and in the last instance,—the public seance of the Brothers Davenport, —the reputed marvels shown were certainly more open to a very ordinary than to any extraordinary explanation, though the con- ditions would not admit of any thorough investigation. As to the performances in the cupboard, the investigating committee announced that after the untying and tying trick the hearts of both the performers were beating violently, and one of the com- mittee asserted that he heard the brothers rise and sit down quite distinctly during the operations in which they were said to be themselves quite passive. In the much more amusing episode of flying musical instruments after the brothers left the cupboard, the darkness was so total that anybody might have come into the room with bare or muffled feet, and cast about the instruments by means of elastic cords which they could slip off at pleasure. Nothing would be more childish than for any man to be con- vinced of a totally new agency by tricks which any conjurer might have arranged. And therefore, though we should be exceedingly sorry to prejudge secondary evidence so clear and so irreproachable as Professor De Morgan's to the existence of some class of facts as yet inexplicable by any known laws,— we are compelled to say that so far as our limited experience goes, the nearer we get to the facts the less they become ;—the more they either seem to disappear in a haze of credulity, or to be simply indecisive and capable of several solutions,—of which we ought of course to prefer the natural one.

Under such circumstances the extraordinary chaos in which we find the theoretic side of the question must have a great weight in supporting incredulity. Here is a life of the Davenport Brothers by Dr. Nichols, in which we are told that the brothers have a "mission," and that their spiritual advisers, variously called "George Brown," "John King," "Captain Henry Mor- gan, the buccaneer," have sent them on this mission, to inspire the world with belief in—some power of untying ropes and set- ting fiddles flying, not previously known. And the most curious fact of the case is that the Brothers Davenport do not apparently -consider that they are advised by spirits at all, though they address them as "John," "George," &a. "The Davenport Brothers do not attribute these wonders to spiritualism," says the New York Herald, quoted by the biographer without con- tradiction, "they say that the power to produce such manifesta- ions has been bestowed upon them, and that it is perhaps the same occult power differently developed as that shown in the tele- graph and the steam engine" (p. 176). So that these gentlemen are missionaries of their own "manifestation." It is " a manifesta- tion," not a person, called "John," "George," or "Henry," which sends them about with their cupboard to sit in and be tied or un- tied; and this comes as near receiving a mission from Zero to proclaim spiritual Chaos as we can well imagine,—a mission which, as far as we can see, they are fulfilling with considerable -effect on the minds of their converts. Dr. Nichols's account of the Davenports' career will do nothing to remove the impression that marvels always increase in direct proportion to the distance (or perhaps even the square of the distance) both in space and time. It seems that at the outbreak of the American civil war the Davenports always knew and announced each important event at a distance of hundreds of miles before the telegraph brought it, and when they contradicted the telegraph they were right and the telegraph wrong. If now they could do the same (with regard say to General Sherman's operations) we should have a much better test than the untying of knots in a cupboard whether they had certain extraordinary gifts or not. Still more remark- able stories are told of their earlier days at Buffalo, where Ira Davenport was carried by "a manifestation" (then called George Brown) across the Niagara River, half a mile wide, and brought back again in a state of unconsciousness ; and both the lads were, it is stated, taken in unconsciousness sixty miles to the home of a relative ;—only as it is admitted that their feet were much blistered after the occurrence (at least a mark of good faith in Dr. Nichols), and there is nothing to show that they may not have been travelling all night (with help from carriages or rail- way), the only very remarkable part of the story is their "Un- consciousness," and that of course depends on the young gentle- men's own evidence. This is the sort of legend related of the Davenport lads in early youth. It is a pity that the feats we are now challenged to investigate in the Hanover Square Rooms should show so very much diminished a.proportion of marvel :— " Another manifestation, to use a convenient word in describing what we have perhaps no proper name for, was on this wise :—The company was seated around two tables, and the room quite darkened. Why darkened ? it will be asked. Why not darkened? might be asked as readily. It is a mystery, no doubt; but the whole matter is equally mysterious. While every person in the room was sitting by the tables, in the darkness, the door of a pantry was flung violently open, and the entire stock of family crockery and glass-ware taken from the shelves and piled upon the tables. I say 'taken' and piled.' As I do not know how it was done, or who did it, it is better, perhaps, to saymorely that the whole stock was found to be heaped upon the tables, which had been placed together. Than the boys -were raised up and placed upon the dishes, and all the chairs heaped upon the whole, without the agency of any mortal hand that could be discovered. All this was done without the fracture of a single article, and in total darkness. Lights were struck, and with great care the boys and chairs were taken down. The lights were again extinguished, and every article was restored to its proper place in the pantry, without the slightest mishap or accident. I am free to confess' that if I were inventing facts, or manifestations, or phenomena, I should choose something more dignified than the displacement and placement of delf, china, and glass ; but a scene which was witnessed the next day, at a two o'clock mance, may perhaps be more satisfactory. The room was not darkened, only obscured to a pleasant twilight. After several of the usual phenomena were exhibited, the two boys were raised from their chairs, carried across the room, and held up with their heads downward before a window. We distinctly saw,' says an eye-witness, 'two gigantic hands, attached to about three-fifths of a monstrous arm, and those hands grasped the ancles of the two boys, and thus held the lads, heels up and heads downward, before the window, now raising, now lowering them, till their heads bade fair to make acquaintance with the carpet on the floor.' This curious, but assuredly not dignified, exhibition was several times repeated, and was plainly seen by every person present. Among these persons was an eminent physician, Dr. Blanchard, then of Buffalo, now of Chicago, Minois, who was sitting in a chair by the side of Elizabeth Davenport; and all present saw an immense arm, attached to no apparent body, growing, as it were, out of space, glide along near the floor, till it reached around Dr. Blanchard's chair, when the hand grasped the lower back round of Elizabeth's chair, raised it from the floor, with the child upon it balanced it, and then raised it to the ceil- ing. The chair and child remained in the air, without contact with any person or thing, for a space of time estimated to be a minute, and then descended gradually to the place it first occupied."

Dr. Nichols's book of course will be believed only by those who are already convinced that preternatural gifts belong to the Davenports. Its characteristic is that the legends lessen in marvel towards the conclusion ;—but we believe Dr. Nichols writes in good faith, or, perhaps we should say, good credulity.

The second book on our list is of a common-place kind, giving a few specimens of" spiritrwriting,"—instances of spiritual com- munications, all the value of which depends not merely on the good faith of the author, which there seems no reason to doubt, but on his accurate observation in recording fully all the inter- stices, if we may so say, between the facts, which if known would, as we can ourselves testify, sometimes rob them entirely of their ap- parent marvel. And that any acuteness of this kind has been ex- pended in interrogating the alleged facts by this author, we very much doubt, for his style is like the style of most of these books, full of platitude and twaddle. We will only give one specimen of the value of the spirit-communications here given—a commu- nication from a poetic impostor, who persists in calling himself "Bobby Burns" (not Robert Burns, a form of the name he denies vehemently, though he claims to be the great Scotch poet), and who raps out two new verses in this wise (tile spelling is that of the spirit) :— " 0-00TLAND THY LOSS AND THY MOUNTAINS THY WOODS AND HEATHER SO WILD- THY wwritias FROM NATURE'S PURE FOUNTAINS I HAVE DRANK FROM WHEN I WAS A CHILD.

ROBIN.

•

" Twr muarr BREATH OF raz MORNING, AS IT COXES UPON LIFE-GIVING WINGS,

WHEN THE LARK FROM HER NEST IS UP-SOARING, WHAT JOY TO THE HEART IT BRINGS."

Can there be a completer revelation of chaos than this,—an idiot, without the excuse for idiocy which a misformed skull or water on the brain gives, chattering in the name of Burns ?

Our third book is of a very different kind. Mr. Bertolacci is evi- dently a man of culture and refinement, though, as we should guess a priori, having no access to his evidence for the very extraordinary and exceedingly improbable facts he alleges, an enthu-iast of the most unrestrained order. His theory is in some respects more credible and consistent than that of most other spiritualists, for he maintains that the class of facts called supernatural have never really vanished entirely from the history of the world, and that they might become as frequent as they were in the first century of Christianity, or among the Port Royalists, or in any other age of intense religious excitement, if the conditions of earnest social communion for the purpose of eliciting them were observed. The peculiarity of Mr. Bertolacci's theory is that he

assigns that power of mind .matter which the phenomena of

spiritualism are said to indielle not to external spiritual influ- ences, but to the mere accession of power gained by the association of minds in a reverent attitude, beyond that which any of them could exert individually. His religious theory, earnest, almost ascetically earnest, as it is, is evidently peculiar. But first let us give some specimen of the strange and, we must say, not. very credible assertions which he makes as to the actual results of his domestic siances. And when we say "not very credible," let us not be understood to impeach Mr. Bertolacci's honesty, which would be quite untrue to the impression which his book has made upon us; but simply to express a prima facie opinion that in some Way or other, either by enthusiasm or some other cause, Mr. Bertolacci cannot have seen the events as they actually hap- pened :- "In the year 1857 the scarlet fever and scarlatina were creating great devastation where we were then living (in France). One day my eldest daughter was suddenly visited with all the symptoms in a very violent manner. At the end of eight seconds of concentration and communion together with myself and some members of the family, the headache, fever, and every other unpleasant feeling had totally vanished. Our 'Soul of Communion ' (or oracle, as it would hare been called in former times), having been consulted as to the actual state of the patient, assured us that she was at the time quite cured; but that in order to confirm the result, strengthen her faith, and give an extra degree of health to all the organs of her body, she might be submitted to half-an- hour's magnetic sleep. This was effected in the space of three seconds after she had laid herself down, and at the expiration of the half-hour, to the very second of the appointed time, she woke up perfectly refreshed, in perfect health, and more spritely even than usual. Many other contagions maladies hare, at various times, been instantaneously wrested in a similar manner, whenever any of the young people of our family have been attacked by them; and such has been the case with every one of them at different times. I was, myself, about the time above alluded to, violently attacked with the variolorde ' (a particular species of smallpox), which was very prevalent, and suffered much tough all the phases of the disease, for, although I had then effected a great part of the 'initiation' of my children, my own organs had not been brought to the same state of obedience as theirs, nor could it be expected that such should be the case at my age. During my illness, my children were, each in their turn, attacked. Not only did the first symptoms show themselves, but they were, from the very beginning, accompanied with just enough of the pimples to leave no doubt regard- ing the nature of their indisposition. Instead of keeping away from me, they, on the contrary, came to ray bedside to be cured, which was done in three cases out of four instantaneously. The fourth attack, that of my niece, occasioned her a little uncomfortable feeling, but nothing beyond, and during a couple of days only ; she, however, had not been submitted to the regular system of "initiation' which my daughters

• were going through."

• This is marvellous enough, but the following, as involving surgical facts which are less matters of fancy, is perhaps more so, if we admit the veracity and only question the intellectual accuracy of our enthusiast's judgment :— "When any of my girls cat themselves or meet with any other acci- dent, such as bruises, sprains, tkc. not only is all pain immediately taken away, but indeed the hetlind is almost as rapid. One day one of them, in cutting a loaf of bread, gave herself a deep gash across the left hand, an inch long. The blood was flowing very copiously and had quite wetted a towel, which she had wrapped round it, through and through many folds, by the time she came to me, though she lost no time, however, in so doing. The towel was taken off, and I held the lips of the wound together, while those present joined us, during eight or ten seconds, in communion, the name of Jesus Christ having been invoked. The blood ceased to flow, and the wound was closed. Not more than four hours afterwards' some friends having come to pass the evening with us, she played several long pieces on the pianoforte, and had totally forgotten that she had cut herself in the day. Nevertheless the wound was sufficiently severe to leave a scar still very plainly to be seen, although it is now somewhere about seven years since the accident occurred. On another occasion since that one of her sisters cut the top of her thumb from one side to the other, down to the very bone, and was cured in the same manner, as completely and as instantaneously. . . . Toothaches and caries are as effectually stopped, even to the destroying of the nerve in order to obviate any recurrence of the pain from extraneous causes. On one occasion, when the request was made that the nerve should be destroyed, the most complete insensibility immediately succeeded; but we were told, that as the tooth was only slightly attacked, if it were stopped within a few days in order to keep the air and moisture from it, it would be preserved ; but that, if that were not done, in ten days it would begin to fall to pieces. It was not done, and on the tenth day a large portion of the tooth fell off, and in a very few days more nothing but the bare root was left, which, however, was very easily extracted without occasioning the leastkpain."

Certainly a pleasant cure for the toothache!

But the oddest part of this book is its theory. Religious enthusiasm is usually strongly " personal " in its forms, but as far as we understand Mr. Bertolacci's theory, he believes both in God and Christ without believing in their personality. For instance, he tells us repeatedly that the "Soul of Camtnunion " who works these wonderful works is not a distinct being, but the collective power of associated human influences. "God," he says, "is not an extraneous, individual, isolated Being, but the internal, collective, and contiguous life anl constitution of all things ; not a heterogeneous force, bat the intrinsic strength ; not concrete, but abstract; not relative, but absolute as to the principle." Again,.

he calls God "the intimate constitution, action, life, and intelli- gence of all things." And in explaining himself further he says :—" It is, therefore, manifest that the souls of two or more

persons pan, during their life on earth, unite and form one Sout

Union is strength ; and when that strength is constituted upon the conditions laid down by the Christian Doctrine, it becomes divine power, omnipotent in its principles, and without any limi- tation in its effects other than that imposed upon it at the time by the degree of the faith of its constituents."

This almost seems as if it were written to verify the Bishop of Oxford's curious dictum that the modern spiritualism is a sort of .

physical equivalent for the Church's creed concerning the "com- munion of saints." Mr. Bertolacci's book breathes throughout the spirit of a reserved, sensitive, intensely pious Christian Pan-

theism, merging,—or as he says "fusing "—the souls of men together into God and Christ, or rather constituting God out of

the fused souls of men,—and defining distinct personality only by separateness of bodily form. And all this apparently—profoundly erroneous as it appears to us—Mr. Bertolacci has learned from his "Soul of Communion."

Mr. Bertolacci tells us that he does not wish to discourage scientific Studies, but only to warn science off the higher ground of our spiritual nature. But if', as he believes, it should prove possible to cure all diseases much more quickly by the spiritual method than the physiological and scientific, how long does he suppose physiological science would survive ? His book is a curious one, because evidently written in the deepest earnest, and by a man of culture, but it is quite useless to criticize premisses so far beyond the reach of anything but personal in- vestigation. The repeated outbreak of physical phenomena as- cribing themselves to spiritual causes which has' distinguished special eras for centuries back, and certainly distinguishes our own, should render thoughtful men willing to investigate any- thing that affects to be in earnest in this direction, and we should be glad enough to know a little more of Mr. Bertolacci's data. But though we should even expect to find that deep religious faiths do modify in some very Curious and recon- dite manner the physical conditions of our life, it would, we con- ceive, be very irrational to suppose, with Mr. Bertolacci, that we could arrive at results superseding physical laws and science altogether. As for the ordinary spirit-rapping and " levitation " and the rest of it, we are disposed to think the sooner society can clear away all that anarchy of sense and reason from its midst, the better it will be for society.