Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/221

Rh APPARITIONS 207 in a time, as was supposed, of profound peace. The next news from India brought tidings of the mutiny, and that the lady s father had gone out in full uniform to address his native troops, and had been shot down by them. Now granting, for the sake of argument, that the evidence for this story is sufficient, believers in apparitions would be justified in saying that a coincidence so odd must have some unexplained cause. Two explanations of appear ances of this kind suggest themselves to the savage and the scientific spiritualist respectively. The former believes that all real objects have their shadowy doubles in the next world ; the weapons buried with the dead chief send their doubles to join him in the happy hunting-grounds. The latter holds that the seer is subjectively affected in the manner desired by the person whose apparition he be holds, who naturally assumes some familiar raiment, &quot; his habit as he lived.&quot; To take another example. The writer once met, as he believed, a well-known and learned member of an English university who was really dying at a place more than a hundred miles distant from that in which he was seen. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that the writer did not mistake some other individual for the extremely noticeable person whom he seemed to see, the coincidence between the subjective impression and the death of the learned professor is, to say the least, curious. Pursuing this line of thought, the whole question becomes one of evidence. Does the number of well-attested coincidences between the time of death and the moment of apparition exceed the limits that the laws of chance allow ? Till people who have seen such spectres can give up the habit of adorning their stories with fanciful additions, and can make up their minds to attest them with their names, the balance of argument is on the side of the sceptics. These reasoners seem, however, to lay too much stress on the effect of &quot; expectant attention.&quot; It is not as a rule the anxious mourner who beholds the spectre of the be loved dead. No sorrow is more common than the afflic tion of Margaret as described by Wordsworth : &quot; Tis falsely said That there was ever intercourse Betwixt the living and the dead, For surely then I should have sight Of him I wait for day and night With love and longings infinite.&quot; It may be added that hallucinations, or whatever we are to call the impression of beholding objects of supernatural horror, are not confined to the human race. A remarkable example of superstitious horror shown by a dog, at the moment of a supposed apparition to his owner, is given in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. Ixiv., pp. 186-187. In the same way, during the mysterious disturbances at the house of the &quot;Wesleys, &quot; the mastiff was more afraid than any of the children.&quot; Popular superstition has used this belief. When the dogs howl, in the Danish ballad, or in its Provenjal counterpart, the cruel stepmother is afraid of the apparition of the dead mother, and treats the children kindly. In the same way, when Athene, in the Odyssey, appears to Odysseus, Telemachus cannot see her, but the dogs crouch and whine in fear. The case of Balaam s ass is sufficiently well known. The latest and the most important development of the belief in apparitions is that known as spiritualism. The believers in a religion based on pretended communications from the dead are numbered in America by millions. Their opponents say that their faith and practice help to fill the lunatic asylums, to Avhich they easily reply that theirs is not the only creed that gives occasion to religious madness. Men of sense and experience are numbered in their ranks, and even in England it would be easy to name persons of eminence in art and Literature, and some branches of science, who are puzzled by the phenomena they suppose themselves to have witnessed. Thus the late Augustus de Morgan writes in the preface of From Matter to Spirit &quot; I am perfectly convinced, in a manner which should make unbelief impossible, that I have seen things called spiritual which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake.&quot; Modern spiritualism arose from one of the commonest superstitions in the world the belief in haunted houses. What the Germans call the Poltergeist (the noisy spirit that raps and throws about furniture) is not peculiar to any country. We find it in Japan (see Tales of Old Japan), in Russia, in Egypt. Pliny tells of the haunted house of Athenodorus, the philosopher, in Athens. In Iceland the ghost of the dead thrall Glam raps on the roofs in the Gretti s saga; and &quot;the Dyaks, Singhalese, and Siamese agree with the Esths as to such routing and rapping being caused by spirits.&quot; Such disturbances, accompanied with apparitions, haunted the house inhabited by Mrs Ricketts, a sister of Earl St Vincent. Scott says in reference to this case that &quot;no one has seen an authentic account from the earl ; &quot; but his sister s report has recently been published (see the Gentleman s Magazine for May 1872). Every one has heard of the rappings in the house of the elder Wesley. Glanvil, in his Saddu- dsmus Triumphatus, has left well-authenticated reports of many cases, notably that of the drummer of Tedworth. The house of Mr Mompesson of Tedworth, in 1651, was disturbed by continual noises furniture moving of its own accord, raps that could be guided by raps given by tlie spectators. Precisely the same phenomena occurred in the house of a Mr Fox, in West New York, in 1847-48. It was discovered by his daughter, Miss Kate Fox, a child of nine years old, that the raps replied to hers. An alpha bet was then brought, the raps spelled out words by knock ing when certain letters were pointed to, and modern spiritualism was born. It has again and again attracted notice in England ; medium after medium has crossed the Atlantic; impostures have been exposed and defended; and opinion continues to be divided on the subject. The views of a believer, though not a fanatical one, may be quoted from Mr Dale Owen s book, The Debatable Land: &quot;1. There exists in the presence of certain sensitives of higlily nervous organisation a mysterious force, capable of moving ponder- able bodies, and which exhibits intelligence. Temporary form- tions, material in structure and cognisable by the senses, are pro duced by the same influence for example, hands which grasp with living power. &quot;2. This force and the resulting phenomena are developed in a greater or less degree according to the conditions of the sensitive, and in a measure by atmospherical conditions. &quot; 3. The intelligence which governs this force is independent of, and external to, the minds of the investigator and of the medium. For example, questions unknown to either (sic), and in language unknown to either, are duly answered. &quot; 4. The origin of these phenomena is an open question.&quot; Now, as a rule, these phenomena are exhibited in the presence of &quot; sensitives,&quot; who are paid for exercising their profession, and who prefer to do so in a dark room. Men of science who have attended these exhibitions have not always met with interesting results, and the conclusions at which some of them have arrived may be stated thus : 1. As a rule, nothing worth notice has occurred at seances where competent observers have been present. Spiritualists reply that the spiritual kingdom can only be entered after long and patient attendance at many seances, and that the presence of the sceptic destroys the force of the spiritvial influences. 2. When strange phenomena have been witnessed, they have often been traced to conscious imposture and leger-