Part 16 (1/2)

Imposture would imitate the 'spiritual' feats of 'raps,' 'physical movements of objects,' and 'luminous forms'. All this would continue after savagery, after paganism, after 'Popery' among the peasants who were for so long, and in superst.i.tion are even now, a conservative cla.s.s.

All that 'expectancy,' hysterics, 'the dominant idea' and rude hypnotism, 'the sleep of the shadow,' could do, would be done, as witch trials show. All these elements in folklore, magic and belief would endure, in the peasant cla.s.s, under the veneer of civilisation. Now and again these elements of superst.i.tion would break through the veneer, would come to the surface among the educated cla.s.ses, and would 'carry silly women captive,' and silly men. They, too, though born in the educated cla.s.s, would attest impossible occurrences.

In all this, we might only see survival, wonderfully vivacious, and revival astonis.h.i.+ngly close to the ancient savage lines.

We are unable to state the case for survival and revival more strenuously, and the hypothesis is most attractive. This hypothesis appears to be Dr. Carpenter's, though he does not, in the limits of popular lectures, unfold it at any length. After stating (p. 1) that a continuous belief in 'occult agencies' has existed, he adds:--

'While this very continuity is maintained by some to be an evidence of the real existence of such [occult] agencies, it will be my purpose to show you that it proves nothing more than the wide-spread diffusion, alike amongst minds of the highest and lowest culture, of certain tendencies to thought, which have either created ideal marvels possessing no foundation whatever in fact, or have, by exaggeration and distortion, invested with a preternatural character occurrences which are perfectly capable of a natural explanation'.

Here Dr. Carpenter does not attempt to show cause why the 'manifestations' are always the same, for example, why spirits rap in the Australian Bush, among blacks not influenced by modern spiritualism: why tables moved, untouched, in Thibet and India, long before 'table-turning' was heard of in modern Europe. We have filled up the lacuna in the doctor's argument, by suggesting that the phenomena (which are not such as a civilised taste would desire) were invented by savages, and handed on in an unbroken catena, a chain of tradition.

But, in following Dr. Carpenter, we are brought up short at one of our old obstacles, we trip on one of our old stumbling-blocks.

Granting that an epileptic patient made strange bounds and springs, we can conceive savages going farther in fancy, and averring that he flew, or was levitated, or miraculously transported through s.p.a.ce.

Let this become matter of traditional belief, as a thing possible in epilepsy, i.e., in 'diabolical,' or 'angelical possession'. Add the honest but hallucinatory persuasion of the patient that he was so levitated, and let him be a person of honour and of sanct.i.ty, say St. Theresa, St. Francis, or St. Joseph of Cupertino. Granting the survival of a savage exaggeration, granting the hallucinated saint, we may, perhaps, explain the innumerable anecdotes about miraculous levitation of which a few are repeated in our paper on 'Comparative Psychical Research.' The witnesses in witch trials, and in ecclesiastical inquiries, and Lord Orrery, and Mr. Greatrakes, and the Cromwellian soldiery in Scotland, the Spanish in Peru, Cotton Mather in New England, saw what they expected to see, what tradition taught them to look for, in the case of a convulsionary, or a saint, or a catechumen. The consensus in illusion was wonderful, but let us grant, for the sake of argument, that it was possible. Let us add another example, from Cochin China.

The witness and narrator is Delacourt, a French missionary. The source is a letter of his of November 25, 1738, to Winslow the anatomist, Membre de l'Academie des Sciences a Paris. It is printed in the Inst.i.tutiones Theologicae of Collet, who attests the probity of the missionary. {324}

In May or June, 1733, Delacourt was asked to view a young native Christian, said by his friends to be 'possessed'.

'Rather incredulous,' as he says, Delacourt went to the lad, who had communicated, as he believed, unworthily, and was therefore a prey to religious excitement, which, as Bishop Callaway found among his Zulu converts, and as Wodrow attests among 'savoury Christians,'

begets precisely such hallucinations as annoyed the early hermits like St. Anthony. Delacourt addressed the youth in Latin: he replied, Ego nescio loqui Latine, a tag which he might easily have picked up, let us say. Delacourt led him into church, where the patient was violently convulsed. Delacourt then (remembering the example set by the Bishop of Tilopolis) ordered the demon _in Latin_, to carry the boy to the ceiling. 'His body became stiff, he was dragged from the middle of the church to a pillar, and there, his feet joined, his back fixed (colle) against the pillar, he was transported in the twinkling of an eye to the ceiling, like a weight rapidly drawn up, without any apparent action on his part. I kept him in the air for half an hour, and then bade him drop without hurting himself,' when he fell 'like a packet of dirty linen'.

While he was up aloft, Delacourt preached at him in Latin, and he became, 'perhaps the best Christian in Cochin China'.

Dr. Carpenter's explanation must either be that Delacourt lied; or that a tradition, surviving from savagery, and enforced by the example of the Bishop of Tilopolis, made a missionary, un peu incredule, as he says, believe that he saw, and watched for half an hour, a phenomenon which he never saw at all. But then Dr.

Carpenter also dismisses, with none but the general theory already quoted, the experience of 'a n.o.bleman of high scientific attainments,' who 'seriously a.s.sures us' that he saw Home 'sail in the air, by moonlight, out of one window and in at another, at the height of seventy feet from the ground.' {326}

Here is the stumbling-block. A n.o.bleman of high scientific attainment, in company with another n.o.bleman, and a captain in the army, all vouched for this performance of Home. Now could the savage tradition, which attributes flight to convulsive and entranced persons, exercise such an influence on these three educated modern witnesses; could an old piece of folklore, in company with 'expectancy,' so wildly delude them? Can 'high scientific attainments' leave their possessor with such humble powers of observation? But, to be sure, Dr. Carpenter does not tell his readers that there were _three_ witnesses. Dr. Carpenter says that, if we believe Lord Crawford (and his friends), we can 'have no reason for refusing credit to the historical evidence of the demoniacal elevation of Simon Magus'. Let us point out that we have no contemporary evidence at all about Simon's feat, while for Home's, we have the evidence of three living and honourable men, whom Dr. Carpenter might have cross-examined. The doings of Home and of Simon were parallel, but nothing can be more different than the nature of the evidence for what they are said to have done.

This, perhaps, might have been patent to a man like Dr. Carpenter of 'early scientific training'. But he ill.u.s.trated his own doctrine of 'the dominant idea'; he did not see that he was guilty of a fallacy, because his 'idea' dominated him. Stumbling into as deep a gulf, Dr. Carpenter put Lord Crawford's evidence (he omitted that of his friends) on a level with, or below, the depositions of witnesses as to 'the aerial transport of witches to attend their demoniacal festivities'. But who ever swore that he _saw_ witches so transported? The evidence was not to witnessed facts, but only to a current belief, backed by confessions under torture. No testimony could be less on a par with that of a living 'n.o.bleman of high scientific attainments,' to his own experience.

In three pages Dr. Carpenter has shown that 'early scientific training' in physiology and pathology, does not necessarily enable its possessor to state a case fully. Nor does it prompt him to discriminate between rumours coming, a hundred and fifty years after the date of the alleged occurrences, from a remote, credulous, and unscientific age: and the statements of witnesses all living, all honourable, and, in one case, of 'high scientific attainments.'

{327}

It is this solemn belief in his own infallibility as a judge of evidence combined with his almost incredible ignorance of what evidence is, that makes Dr. Carpenter such an amusing controversialist.

If any piece of fact is to be proved, it is plain that the concurrent testimony of three living and honourable men is worth more than a bit of gossip, which, after filtering through a century or two, is reported by an early Christian Father. In matters wholly marvellous, like Home's flight in the air, the evidence of three living and honourable men need not, of course, convince us of the fact. But this evidence is in itself a fact to be considered--'Why do these gentlemen tell this tale?' we ask; but Dr. Carpenter puts the testimony on the level of patristic tattle many centuries old, written down, on no authority, long after the event. Yet the worthy doctor calmly talks about 'want of scientific culture preventing people from appreciating the force of scientific reasoning,' and that after giving such examples of 'scientific reasoning' as we have examined. {328} It is in this way that Science makes herself disliked. By aid of ordinary intelligence, and of an ordinary cla.s.sical education, every one (however uncultivated in 'science') can satisfy himself that Dr. Carpenter argued at random. Yet we do not a.s.sert that 'early scientific training' _prevents_ people from understanding the nature of evidence. Dr. Carpenter had the training, but he was impetuous, and under a dominant idea, so he blundered along.

Dr. Carpenter frequently invoked for the explanation of marvels, a cause which is vera causa, expectancy. 'The expectation of a certain result is often enough to produce it' (p. 12). This he proves by cases of hypnotised patients who did, or suffered, what they expected to be ordered to suffer or do, though no such order was really given to them. Again (p. 40) he urges that imaginative people, who sit for a couple of hours, 'especially if in the dark,'

believing or hoping to see a human body, or a table, rise in the air, probably 'pa.s.s into a state which is neither sleeping nor waking, but between the two, in which they see, hear, or feel by touch, anything they have been led to expect will present itself.'

This is, indeed, highly probable. But we must suppose that _all_ present fall into this ambiguous state, described of old by Porphyry. One waking spectator who sees nothing would make the statements of the others even more worthless than usual. And it is certain that it is not even pretended that all, always, see the same phenomena.

'One saw an arm, and one a hand, and one the waving of a gown,' in that seance at Branxholme, where only William of Deloraine beheld all,

And knew, but how it mattered not, It was the wizard, Michael Scott. {329}

Granting the ambiguous state, granting darkness, and expectancy, anything may seem to happen. But Dr. Carpenter wholly omits such cases as that of Mr. Hamilton Aide, and of M. Alphonse Karr. Both were absolutely sceptical. Both disliked Home very much, and thought him an underbred Yankee quack and charlatan. Both were in the 'expectancy' of seeing no marvels, were under 'the dominant idea' that nothing unusual would occur. Both, in a brilliantly lighted room of a villa near Nice, saw a chair make a rush from the wall into the middle of the room, and saw a very large and heavy table, untouched, rise majestically in the air. M. Karr at once got under the table, and hunted, vainly, for mechanical appliances.

Then he and Mr. Aide went home, disconcerted, and in very bad humour. How do 'expectancy' and the 'dominant idea' explain this experience, which Mr. Aide has published in the Nineteenth Century?

The expectancy and dominant ideas of these gentlemen should have made them see the table and chair sit tight, while believers observed them in active motion. Again, how could Mr. Crookes's lack of 'a special training in the bodily and mental const.i.tution, abnormal as well as normal,' of 'mediums,' affect his power of observing whether a plank of wood did, or did not, move to a certain extent untouched, or slightly touched, and whether the difference of position was, or was not, registered mechanically? (p. 70). It was a pure matter of skilled and trained observation in mechanics. Dr.

Huggins was also present at this experiment in a mode of motion.