Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/594

576 revelation the visions of a man of great intellectual ability and strong religious spirit, but highly imaginative disposition, the peculiar feature of whose mind it was to dwell upon his own imaginings. These he seems to have so completely separated from his worldly life, that the Swedenborg who believed himself to hold intercourse with the spiritual world and Swedenborg the mechanician and metallurgist may almost be regarded as two distinct personalities.

If, then, the high scientific attainments of some of the prominent advocates of "spiritualism," and our confidence in their honesty, be held to require our assent to what they narrate as their experiences, in regard to a class of phenomena which they declare that they have witnessed, but which they cannot reproduce for the satisfaction of other men of science who desire to submit them to the rigorous tests which they regard as necessary to substantiate their validity, then we must, in like manner, accept the records of Swedenborg's revelations as binding on our belief. That they were true to him I cannot doubt; and, in the same manner, I do not question that Mr. Crookes is thoroughly honest when he says that he has repeatedly witnessed the "levitation of the human body." But I can regard his statements in no other light than as evidence of the degree in which certain minds are led, by the influence of strong "prepossession," to believe in the creations of their own visual imagination.

All history shows that nothing is so potent as religious enthusiasm, in fostering this tendency; the very state of enthusiasm, in fact, being the "possession" of the mind by fixed ideas, which overbear the teachings of objective experience. These, when directed to great and noble ends, may overcome the obstacles which deter cooler judgments from attempting them; but, on the other hand, may also move not only individuals but great masses of people to extravagances at which sober common-sense revolts; as the history of the Flagellants, the Dancing Mania, and other religious epidemics of the middle ages, forcibly illustrates. And nothing is more remarkable, in the history of these epidemics, than the vividness with which people who were not asleep saw visions that were obviously inspired by the prevalent religious notions of their times. Thus, some of the dancers saw heaven opened, and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary; while others saw hell yawning before their feet, or felt as if bathed in blood; their frantic leaps being prompted by their eagerness to reach toward the one or to escape from the other.

In the next place, I would briefly direct attention to the influence of prepossessions on those interpretations of our sensational experiences which we are prone to substitute for the statement of the experiences themselves. Of such misinterpretations, the records of science are full; the tendency is one which besets every observer, and to which the most conscientious have frequently yielded; but I do not know any more striking illustrations of it than I could narrate from