Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/730

710 mind than to the record of occasional floods, transient eddies, and doubtful whirlpools. His method in this respect, we think, is somewhat defective, and method in such a matter is of the very essence of the investigation.

One noteworthy whirlpool of deception and credulity, namely, spiritualism. Dr. Carpenter has investigated here and elsewhere with great care—not, perhaps, so much in reference to the wild turmoil itself, as to the manner in which innocent chips and straws are whirled round on its surface, or engulfed in its depths. He has shown how much and how far persons of a certain constitution may, by automatic action of muscle, nerve, and brain, be the dupes of their own imperfect organization, and the puppets of stronger and more vulgar minds. We could have wished that the peculiarities of extra-automatic people could have been investigated by themselves, and in a strictly scientific manner, and without according the undeserved honor of inquiry to those who travesty the wholesome laws of Nature, convert a fit into a heavenly trance, an hysterical girl into a prophetess, an automatic movement into a communication with the spirits of the dead. We scarcely think that the one grain, of truth was worth sifting from all those bushels of chaff and rubbish. Perhaps no one who was not thought to be open to conviction in these matters would have been permitted to look behind the foot-lights, and if Carpenter had spoken sharply and bluntly, as Faraday did of the table-turners, his opportunities for investigation might have been greatly curtailed. As it is. Dr. Carpenter has done rare service in this cause now and aforetime.

Dr. Carpenter states that the number of persons capable of being biologized is "from one in twelve to one in twenty; so that, in a company of fifty or sixty persons, there are pretty sure to be two or three who will prove good biological subjects." We apprehend that a very wide margin must be left for the effects of deception and credulity even in the simple process of biologizing. We never saw a lunatic biologized, and we have seen a hundred experimented upon by professors of the art. In as many school-girls probably a large proportion would be found susceptible, especially if they had been ill supplied with good food and fresh air, and had imbibed an undue amount of sensational poetry and fiction. One lady Dr. Carpenter has himself biologized into so deep a sleep that she could not be awakened by any ordinary means, even by being roughly shaken. "Her slumber appeared likely to be of undefined duration; but it was instantly terminated by the operator's voice calling the lady by her name in a gentle tone." What assurance, however, can the doctor have that this young lady was not playing a trick upon him, or simply indulging a caprice? It is always wise to try the simplest explanation first, and in women the capricious is certainly more common than the biological temperament, even if the author's statistics of the latter be correct.