Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/597

Rh similar character, which have heretofore come to my knowledge, that it not only describes certain especially striking instances of the phenomena in question, but also considers the scientific and particularly the philosophical consequences, which must be drawn from the same, as soon as we should determine to acknowledge their reality. I remark that here and in the following pages I use the word reality in the sense which it has in your discussion, excluding from it only the production of the phenomena in a fraudulent manner. For merely subjective phantasms of the observers, these phenomena, as you justly remark, can not be held; their objectivity and reality in the ordinary sense of the word will in fact be questioned by no man, who may even have read only your short description. I must also agree with your assertion that these facts in and for themselves, their reality presupposed, are of a subordinate importance, compared with the consequences which follow them for our general view of the world. Whether, through conditions unknown to us, tables are occasionally lifted, accordions played, and bed-screens torn, or ghostly hands and feet appear—all this alone is quite indifferent, so long as things of the sort appear in a harmless form, as we may expect from previous observations, a form which clearly gives no fear of deeper disturbance of general natural laws. The more important, on the contrary, would be the philosophical consequences to which the reality of the spiritualistic phenomena would force us. I regard it, therefore, as a real service of your essay, that it not only points out these consequences in general, but that it also seeks to develop, by hints at least, the more particular conceptions which have been suggested to you, concerning the conditions of the phenomena in question, as well as their connection with the general order of the world, and their ethical and religious significance. You have thereby thrown light upon the subject from a side which appears to me more than all others worthy of attention.

Before entering more particularly upon this most original and important part of your essay I am compelled to answer your question concerning my own participation in spiritualistic observations and in regard to the convictions I have gained from them. Permit me, at the same time, by way of preface, a few remarks concerning my attitude toward such phenomena as I have not myself observed, but know only from the statements of others.

You, respected sir, sustain precisely the same relation to all of the so-called "manifestations" which I sustain to a great part of them: your knowledge is based upon the reports of credible witnesses. Therefore you found yourself until recently in the position of a distant, unconcerned spectator. You have chosen to give up this character. You have not only come forward with the greatest energy in favor of the reality of the manifestations, but you also urge others, who would