Andrew Lang - Cock Lane and Common-Sense

However, Professor Huxley lost nothing by not joining the committee of the Dialectical Society. Mr. G. H. Lewes, for his part, hoped that with Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace to aid (for he joined the committee) and with Mr. Crookes (who apparently did not) ‘we have a right to expect some definite result’. Any expectation of that kind was doomed to disappointment. In Mr. Lewes’s own experience, which was large, ‘the means have always been proved to be either deliberate imposture.. or the well-known effects of expectant attention’. That is, when Lord Adare, the Master of Lindsay, and a cloud of other witnesses, thought they saw heavy bodies moving about of their own free will, either somebody cheated, or the spectators beheld what they did behold, because they expected to do so, even when, like M. Alphonse Karr, and Mr. Hamilton Aide, they expected nothing of the kind. This would be Mr. Lewes’s natural explanation of the circumstances, suggested by his own large experience.

The results of the Dialectical Society’s inquiry were somewhat comic. The committee reported that marvels were alleged, by the experimental subcommittees, to have occurred. Sub-committee No. 1 averred that ‘motion may be produced in solid bodies without material contact, by some hitherto unrecognised force’. Sub-committees 2 and 3 had many communications with mysterious intelligences to vouch for, and much erratic behaviour on the part of tables to record. No. 4 had nothing to report at all, and No. 5 which sat four times with Home had mere trifles of raps. Home was ill, and the séances were given up.

So far, many curious phenomena were alleged to have occurred, but now Dr. Edmunds, who started the whole inquiry, sent in a separate report. He complained that convinced spiritualists had ‘captured’ the editing sub-committee, as people say, and had issued a report practically spiritualistic. He himself had met nothing more remarkable than impudent frauds or total failure. ‘Raps, noises, and movements of various kinds,’ he had indeed witnessed, and he heard wondrous tales from truthful people, ‘but I have never been able to see anything worthy of consideration, as not being accounted for by unconscious action, delusion, or imposture’. Then the editors of the Report contradicted Dr. Edmunds on points of fact, and Mr. A. R. Wallace disabled his logic, 12 12 Mr. Wallace may be credited with scoring a point in argument. Dr. Edmunds had maintained that no amount of evidence would make him believe in certain obvious absurdities, say the lions in Trafalgar Square drinking out of the fountains. Mr. Wallace replied: ‘The asserted fact is either possible or not possible. If possible, such evidence as we have been considering would prove it; if not possible, such evidence could not exist.’ No such evidence exists for the lions; for the phenomena of so-called spiritualism, we have consentient testimony in every land, period and stage of culture. That certainly makes a difference, whatever the weight and value of the difference may be. and Mr. Geary dissented from the Report , and the editors said that his statements were incorrect, and that he was a rare attendant at séances , and Serjeant Cox vouched for more miracles, and a great many statements of the most astounding description were made by Mr. Varley, an electrician, by D. D. Home, by the Master of Lindsay (Lord Crawford) and by other witnesses who had seen Home grow eight inches longer and also shorter than his average height; fly in the air; handle burning coals unharmed, cause fragrance of various sweet scents to fill a room, and, in short, rival St. Joseph of Cupertino in all his most characteristic performances. Unluckily Mr. Home, not being in the vein, did not one of these feats in presence of Mr. Bradlaugh and sub-committee No. 5. These results are clearly not of a convincing and harmonious description, and thus ended the attempt of the Dialectical Society. Nobody can do otherwise than congratulate Professor Huxley and Mr. Lewes, on their discreet reserve. The inquiry of the Dialectical Society was a failure; the members of the committees remained at variance; and it is natural to side with the sceptics rather than with those who believed from the first, or were converted (as many are said to have been) during the experiments. Perhaps all such inquiries may end in no more than diversity of opinion. These practical researches ought not to be attempted by the majority of people, if by any. On many nervous systems, the mere sitting idly round a table, and calling the process a séance , produces evil effects.

As to the idea of purposely evoking the dead, it is at least as impious, as absurd, as odious to taste and sentiment, as it is insane in the eyes of reason. This protest the writer feels obliged to make, for while he regards the traditional, historical and anthropological curiosities here collected as matters of some interest, in various aspects, he has nothing but abhorrence and contempt for modern efforts to converse with the manes, and for all the profane impostures of ‘spiritualism’.

On the question of the real existence of the reported phenomena hereafter chronicled, and on the question of the portée of the facts, if genuine, the writer has been unable to reach any conclusion, negative or affirmative. Even the testimony of his senses, if they ever bore witness to any of the speciosa miracula , would fail to convince him on the affirmative side. There seems to be no good reason why one observer should set so much store by his own impressions of sense, while he regards those of all other witnesses as fallible. On the other hand, the writer feels unable to set wholly aside the concurrent testimony of the most diverse people, in times, lands and conditions of opinion the most various. The reported phenomena fall into regular groups, like the symptoms of a disease. Is it a disease of observation? If so, the topic is one of undeniable psychological interest. To urge this truth, to produce such examples as his reading affords, is the purpose of the author.

The topic has an historical aspect. In what sorts of periods, in what conditions of general thought and belief, are the alleged abnormal phenomena most current? Every one will answer: In ages and lands of ignorance and superstitions; or, again: In periods of religious, or, so to say, of irreligious crisis. As Mr. Lecky insists, belief in all such matters, from fairies to the miracles of the Gospel, declines as rationalism or enlightenment advances. Yet it is not as Mr. Lecky says, before reason that they vanish, not before learned argument and examination, but just before a kind of sentiment, or instinct, or feeling, that events contradictory of normal experience seem ridiculous, and incredible.

Now, if we set aside, for the present, ecclesiastical miracles, and judicial witchcraft, and fix our attention on such minor and useless marvels as clairvoyance, ‘ghosts,’ unexplained noises, unexplained movements of objects, one doubts whether the general opinion as to the ratio of marvels and ignorance is correct. The truth is that we have often very scanty evidence. If we take Athens in her lustre, we are, undeniably, in an age of enlightenment, of the Aufklärung . No rationalistic, philosophical, cool-headed contemporary of Middleton, of Hume, of Voltaire, could speak more contemptuously about ghosts, and about the immortality of the soul, than some of the Athenian gentlemen who converse with Socrates in the Dialogues. Yet we find that Socrates and Plato, men as well educated, as familiar with the refined enlightenment of Athens as the others, take to some extent the side of the old wives with their fables, and believe in earth-bound spirits of the dead. Again, the clear-headed Socrates, one of the pioneers of logic, credits himself with ‘premonitions,’ apparently with clairvoyance, and assuredly with warnings which, in the then existing state of psychology, he could only regard as ‘spiritual’. Hence we must infer that belief, or disbelief, does not depend on education, enlightenment, pure reason, but on personal character and genius. The same proportionate distribution of these is likely to recur in any age.