Page:Poet Lore, volume 3, 1891.djvu/100

86 the past under multitudinous forms, but there is a sense in which every age may be said to have its form of mysticism. Our age forms no exception, and spiritualism is one of the phases—not the only one—which this human tendency has taken on in our days.

The other reason of a special character, as applying more particularly to our age, is the strong reasoning spirit prevailing among us. It would not be exact to say that ours is a skeptical age. I, at least, will not admit this, but find it rather an age making for faith, but it is certainly an inquiring age. "We are all strong enough to doubt," says Ernest Renan, "but we are not all strong enough to overcome our doubts." Those who are not strong enough to overcome their doubts furnish the material for such movements as spiritualism and its numerous progeny, faith-cure, magnetism or hypnotism. Christian science, esoteric Buddhism, Indian theosophy, and what not. The larger number of spiritualists are not at all persons clinging to what are known as orthodox religious beliefs, but, on the contrary, are such as have broken away from the lines of tradition. The many other mystic movements of the day may be traced to the same special cause. They represent a reaction against the rational spirit of the present on the part of those who neither know how to believe nor how to doubt,—too weak for the one or the other, and hence at the mercy of their—nerves. If signs do not deceive, we shall have in the coming decades a still further growth of mysticism, just as in a former age at the very moment when the existence of the Greek and Roman gods was most strongly questioned, a mighty wave of mysticism swept over the cultured world.

As for the special phenomena of spiritualism, they must of course be left to the physiologist and psychologist. We, who stand outside of these lines, must be content to "watch and wait." Since it is only given to the few to fit themselves by thorough study and examination for forming a mature judgment in the phenomena with which spiritualism is concerned, it is manifestly the duty of the great majority to confess ignorance and stand aside. The prime objection against many, if not most of the followers of spiritualism, which makes argument with them futile, is that they