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Fictitious Relationship a Poor Thing.

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foster-parents could never really supply the affection which the supposed labourer and his wife ought to give to their own children. Fictitious relationships are poor things at best; and the boarding out of pauper orphans in the most careful cottage home is merely the provision of a palliative for some of the worst evils of an orphan's position, and can never be the creation of an ideal state of life, although it may be the means of saving hundreds of children from absolute ruin.

ART. VI.-Modern Necromancy.

(1.) Spiritualism Viewed by the Light of Modern Science. By WILLIAM CROOKES, F.R.S. Reprinted from the 'Quarterly 'Journal of Science,' July, 1870.

(2.) Psychic Force and Modern Spiritualism. By W. CROOKES, F.R.S. (Fourth Thousand.) Longmans: 1872.

(3.) Notes of an Inquiry into the Phenomena called Spiritual, during the years 1870-1873. By W. CROOKES, F.R.S. Reprinted from the Quarterly Journal of Science,' January, 1874.

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(4.) The Phenomena of Spiritualism Scientifically Explained and Exposed. By ASA MAHAN, D.D. Hodder and Stoughton. (5.) Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. By ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE. Burns: 1875.

(6.) Hints for the Evidences of Spiritualism (2nd Edition). Trübner: 1875.

(7.) Prophecies and the Prophetic Spirit in the Christian Era. By IGN. VON DÖLLINGER. Translated by A. PLUMMER. Rivingtons: 1874.

(8.) The History of the Supernatural in all Ages and Nations. By W. HOWITT.

THE revival, in the nineteenth century, of the long disused practices of Necromancy, is a startling fact. Since the year 1848 the number of persons who have betaken themselves, to use the language of the Pentateuch, to seeking after the dead,' is stated to amount to three millions in the United States. In this country they may be estimated at many thousands. Under the inappropriate name of Spiritualism this pursuit

has been promoted by an active Propaganda. A special literature has sprung up, and various periodicals have been established, devoted to that subject alone. Grotesque and imbecile as are the bulk of these productions, they are, none the less, highly significant.

Nor is the aid of literature alone sought for the re-establishment of the practices of ancient sorcery. Art has been appealed to for the same purpose: photographs are sold which purport to be the actual portraits of the spirits of the departed. These aerial forms, invisible to the human eye, are said to emit actinic rays, which have power to affect the sensitive surface exposed in the camera. In the majority of these productions an expert in photography can readily detect the palpable signs of imposture. In an extremely small number, the circumstances of their preparation have been so special, or the skill employed has been so perfect, as to betray no mark of dishonest fabrication.

Becoming prevalent in this country at a time when the first ardour of the impulse given in America had considerably diminished, the development of the asserted phenomena has been more rapid in England than in the United States. The earliest observers told of muffled knocks, or sharp electric crackles, which by their number gave signs of assent or dissent to a question, or indicated the letters of the alphabet. Tables and other articles of furniture were endowed with motion, in most cases under the hands of the experimenters, but in other instances, it was said, when untouched. Musical instruments sounded in the dark. To these indications of spiritual force, now reported for more than twenty-five years, have succeeded, it is asserted, in this country, more direct appeals to the senses. Faces, hands, and figures, resembling those of departed friends, have become visible in the subdued light provided for the practice of the circle. Articulate sounds have been breathed through flexible tubes; mediums, and persons not themselves mediums, have been floated in the air; bunches of lovely and delicate flowers have been rained down through the darkness; fiery embers have been placed, without injury, on the hands and on the hair of the head; and at last every attribute of life, form, voice, tangible substance, manufactured (and dishonestly

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manufactured) clothing, and vigorous resistance to attempted violence, have been displayed by what is said to be a disembodied spirit.

With regard to this last, the most marvellous and most convincing of demonstrations, it has, indeed, been carried too far. Experiences said to have taken place in London have been repeated in Philadelphia, in the presence of one of the oldest and most cautious writers on the subject of Spiritualism. As far as any one, who was not an expert in legerdemain, could be a judge of the real, the apparent, or the fictitious nature of any unexplained phenomenon, Mr. Owen was eminently to be relied on. Yet all his experience and all his caution were in fault in presence of that last and most imposing of manifestations. After repeated séances, visited by the materialised spirit of Kate King, Mr. Owen has published a card to admit that he was the victim of a deception. A widow with two children has confessed that she was paid to play the part, and to personate the materialised spirit. We sink from the supernatural to the ghost scene in Don Juan.

The dim and shadowy border-land of the invisible world has always been a region that fascinated the human mind. There lies the cradle of Religion. There extends the paradise of Poetry. Children, women, all the finer natures of our race, snatch a fearful joy from lingering in the half-forbidden precincts. The grave man, wearied with the toil and din of the battle of life, becomes a child again when his thoughts flit to that unforgotten wonderland. The faint twilight, through which shadowy forms glint like angels, and seen by which all that is undefined is pregnant with wonder, may some day yield to the pure bright light of day. But to replace its tender glimmering haze by the dense dull fog that weighs upon the necromancer, is not to confer a boon on mankind. The man who argues that, because he knows nothing of a spiritual world, nothing can be known regarding it, may be a pedant, but he is not a philosopher. The greatest names in history are those of the men whose glances have penetrated the farthest into a vista closed to duller vision. For a man fed upon the printed wisdom, and pale with the city life, of the nineteenth century, to think that he can weigh, in his tiny balance, the giants of olden times-that he can prove that

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Mohammed was a lunatic and Moses an impostor-is only for the owl to declare his disbelief that the eagle can gaze full at the sun. But the man who is ready to accept any wonder, so only that it be a wonder, is no better than a fool.

Two very different branches of investigation must be pursued, in order to obtain any comprehensive acquaintance with this great subject. They may be termed the historic, or literary, and the philosophical. Under the latter head ranks the physiological investigation of the phenomena of life, and the scientific inquiry into any alleged phenomena which may show that life is not the consequence, but the cause of organization. Into this inquiry we are by no means unprepared to enter. The brilliant physiological discoveries of the present century are such as to furnish a new field for the patient analyst; and the more exact habit of observation, which the advance of knowledge and the improvement of instruments have aided, is as yet almost entirely unapplied to the investigation of pneumatology.

A research of this nature, however, is chiefly interesting to those to whom physiology is not altogether unfamiliar; and it is beset by the singular disadvantage of being discouraged by some of the very men to whom the world would most naturally look for its prosecution. Our own belief, that an enforced study of the morbid side of physiology has often had the effect of leading the anatomist to confound condition with causation, will not be admitted without a struggle. In a word, the reconnaissance may at any moment become a contest.

An impartial glance at the literature of pneumatology can lead to conflict only on the ground of incompetence, whether in the investigator, or in those who condemn him. The great phenomena of the existence of definite human beliefs, and of the influence which, for good or for evil, they have exerted upon mankind, can be inquired into apart from the consideration of the amount of truth and of error which may mingle to form each creed. The physiological inquiry would be incomplete without some reference to the literature of the subject. A precis of the latter, or rather an indication of the sources from which such a precis may be drawn up, would be both in itself useful and interesting, and also of

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further value as an introductory chapter to the philosophy of pneumatology.

We believe that the best mode of bringing this obscure and important subject before our readers, that is possible within our limits, will be to give a brief notice of two or three of those works which, from the known high character of their authors, stand apart from the general low level of the 'spiritualistic literature of the day. We shall thus present the views of men who are eminent in science, in theology, or in literature, which are, to a certain extent, accordant in their admission of facts, although widely differing in the inferences to be drawn from these facts. We shall glance at the extreme positions held by those who deny all occurrences of the nature commonly called supernatural, and by those who, with openmouthed fatuity, attribute all ordinary events to extraordinary causes. We shall point out that while there is ample testimony as to the occurrence of phenomena inexplicable according to the general order and limitation of organic life, the study of these phenomena has not advanced a single step beyond the establishment of their objective reality. We shall show that, on the admission of those best qualified to judge, the study is attended not only with disadvantage, but with danger; that its results are, both practically and of necessity, vague, contradictory, and absolutely unreliable. Lastly we shall show, from literary evidence, that the spiritualism of the nineteenth century is identical with ancient necromancy; and that thus, so far from being a new source of positive information as to the unseen world, it is a perplexed and illicit curiosity, which has obtained no useful result during a history of more than three thousand years, and from which, neither from theory nor from experience, does it appear probable that any important knowledge can ever be ascertained. We commence with the testimony of a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Mr. Crookes' statement of the temper and method in which the investigation of any obscure phenomena should be approached breathes the true spirit of philosophic inquiry. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on the first proposal, while yet a young man, as the discoverer of a new metal, Mr. Crookes is known for his researches in chemical analysis, photography, metallurgy, physical optics, astronomy, and

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