Confessions and Criticisms

The magicians of old knew that truth and conducted themselves accordingly. But our modern wonder-workers fail of their due influence, because,

al side: it must remember that man is all heart, all hope, all fear, and all foolishness, quite as much as he is all brains. Otherwise, science can never expect to take the place of superstition, much less of

paralyze your strength with a look, heal your wound with a touch, or cause your bullet to rebound harmless from my unprotected flesh? How shall I walk on the air, sink through the earth, pass through stone walls, or walk, dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean? How shall I visit the other side of the moon, jump through the ring of Saturn, and gather sunflowers in Sirius? There are persons now living who

into a little girl, I should call that supernatural; and nothing should convince me that my senses had not been grossly deceived. But were the magician to leave the room by passing through the solid wall, or "go out" like an exploding soap-bubble,-I might think what I please, but I should not venture to dogmatically pronounce the thing supernatural; because the phenomenon known as "matter" is scientifically unknown, and therefore no one can tell what modifications it may not be susceptible of:-no one, that is to say, e

the entire realm of actual and conceivable knowledge. Whatever contradicts both experience and intuition may, therefore, be pronounced illusion. But this neutral ground is the home of phenomena which intuition does not deny, and which experience has not confirmed. It is still a wide zone, though not so wide as it was a hundred years ago, or fifty, or even ten. It narrows every day, as s

t and diameter, hard, solid, and enduring, which shall furthermore possess the power of extending and multiplying itself until it covers the whole earth, and even all the earths in the universe, if it could reach them. Is such a profession as this credible? It is entirely credible, as soon as I paraphrase it by saying that I propose to plant an acorn. And yet all magic has no mystery which is so wonderful as this universal mystery of growth: and the only reason we are

man: a finite conundrum, not an Infinite enigma. If there has ever been a magician since the world began, then all mankind may become magicians, if they will give the necessary time and trouble. And yet, magic is not simply an advanced region of the path which science is pursuing. Science is concerned with results,-with material phenomena; whereas magic is, primarily, the stu

because, being spiritual, it is not sensible, or cognizable in sense. Science admits only material causes, or the changes wrought in matter by itself. If we

us existence, and are always on the alert to examine any plausible hypothesis pointing in that direction: and secondly, there exists a vast amount of testimony (we need not call it evidence) tending to show that the supersensuous world has been discovered, and that it endows its discoverers with sundry notable advantages. Of course, we are not obliged to credit t

bject; and we are able to get along with them only because we have found their misinformation to be sufficiently uniform for most practical purposes. But once admit that the origin of these phenomena is not on the physical plane, and then, if we are to give any weight at all to them, it can be only from a spiritual standpoint. In other words, unless we can approach such questions by an a priori route, we might as well let them alone. We can reason from spirit to body-from mind to matter-but we can never reverse that process, and from matter evolve mind. The reason is that matter is not found to contain mind, but is only acted upon by it, as inferior by superior; and we cannot get out of the bag more than has been put into it. The acorn (to use our former figure) can never explain the oak; but the oak readily accounts for the acorn. It may be doubted, therefore, whether the Psychical Research Society can succeed in doing more than to give a respectable endorsement to a perplexing possibility,-so long as they adhere to the inductive method. Should they, however, abandon the inductive method for the deduct

be the effect of which his soul is the cause; but no one can reach that conviction by the most refined dissection of the bodily tissues. How, then, does the spiritists' Positive Revelation help the matter? Their answer is that the physical universe is a permanent and orderly phenomenon which (setting aside the problem of its First Cause) fully accounts for itself; whereas the phenomena of Spiritism, such as rapping, table-tipping, materializing, and so forth, are, if not supernatural, at any rate

other sounds: the tilting table is simply a material body displaced by an adequate agency; the materialized hand or face is nothing but physical substance assuming form. Plainly, therefore, we have as much right to ascribe a spiritual source to such phenomena as we have to ascribe a spiritual source to the ordinary phenomena of nature, such as a tree or a man's body,-just as much right-and no more! Consequently, we are no nearer converting our sceptic than we were at the outset. He admits the physical manifestation: there is no intrinsic novelty about that: but when we proceed to argue that the

back from their cold emptiness, and try to warm themselves in the borrowed flesh and blood, and with the purblind selfishness and curiosity of us who still remain here. "Have faith: be not impatient: the conditions are unfavorable: but we are working for you!"-such is the constant burden of the communications. But, if there be a God, why must our relations with him be complicated by the interference of such forlorn prevaricators and amateur Paracletes as these? we do not wish to be "worked for,"-to be carried heavenward on some one else's shoulders: but to climb thither by God's help and our own will, or to stay where we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we test the veracity of the

refore, there seems to be little real worth in Spiritism, even accepting it at its own valuation. The nourishment it yields the soul is too meagre; and-save on

ieves and obeys the operator. If he be told that he cannot step across a chalk mark on the floor, he cannot step across it. He dissolves in tears or explodes with laughter, according as

believes, at the word of command, that the thing which all the rest of the world calls a chair is a horse. How is such misapprehension on his part possible? our senses are our sole means of knowing external objects: and this man's se

ng their suggestions for realities: while in dreams, the dreamer's fancy alone is active; the bodily faculties are not in action. In trance, however, the subject may appear to be, to all intents and purposes, awake. Yet this state, unlike the others, is abnormal. The brain seems to be in a passive, or, at any rate, in a detached condition; it

, the entranced brain cannot spontaneously control the body, yet if we can apply an independent stimulus to it, the body will make a fitting and apparently intelligent response. The reader has doubtless seen those ingenious pieces of mechanism which are set

s of his senses) is this idea to be insinuated? The man is magneti

se can approach by that route. It is true that, if the magnetizer speaks to him, he knows what is said: but he does not hear physically; because he perceives the unspoken thought just as readily. But since whatever does not belong to h

ing through them any tidings from the external world. He is not, however, wholly withdrawn from his body, for, in that case, the body would be dead; whereas, in fact, its organic or animal life continues almost unimpaired. He is therefore neither ou

o that of the magnetized. Let us note, further, that the former is not, like the latter, in a semi-disembodied state, but is in the normal exercise of his bodily functions and faculties. He possesses, consequently, his normal ability to originate ideas and to impart th

e. Some fundamental link is wanting; and this link is manifestly a knowledge of the true relations between mind and matter: of the laws to which the mental or spiritual world is subject: of

the prism, nature, or the material universe. Now, if we remove the light, the ray vanishes: it vanishes, also, if we take away the prism: but so long as the sun and the prism-God and man-remain in their mutual relation, so long must the rainbow nature appear. Nature, in short, is not God; neither is it man; but it is the inevitable concomitant or expression of the creative attitude of God towards man. It is the shadow of the elements of which humanity or human nature is compo

nd nature, the shadow which the Infinite causes the finite to project, is just that medium. Man, looking upon this shadow, mistakes it for real substance, serving him for foothold and background, and assisting him to attain self-consciousness. God, on the other hand, finds in nature the means of revealing Himself to His creature wi

t logical abstraction upon which we have bestowed the name of matter? scientific analysis finds matter only as forms, never as itself: until, in despair, it invents an

o love and consider his Creator; but that can only be after a reactionary or regenerative process has begun in him. Meanwhile, he must love and consider the only other available object-that is, himself. Manifestly, however, in order to bestow this attention upon himself, he must first be made aware of his own existence. In order to effect this, something must be added to man as spirit, enabling him to discriminate between the subjec

ion finds its incarnation or correspondence in substance; and thought, in form. The mind, in short, realizes itself in terms of its reflection in the body, much as the body reali

one side and material on the other: but it is only on the material side that it gathers its reports: on the spiritual side it only delivers them. Every one of the five messengers whereby we are apprised of external existence brings us an earthly message only. And since these messengers act spontaneou

tself, let us descend from the general to the specific, and investigate the philosophical elements of a pebble, for instance. A pebble is two things: it is a mineral: and it is a particular concrete example of mineral. In its mineral aspect, it is out of space and time, and is-not a fact, but-a truth; a perception of the mind. In so far as it is mineral, therefore, it has no relation to sense, but only to thought: and on the other hand, in so far as it is a particular concrete pebble, it is cognizable by sense but not by thought; for what is

er magically to control matter, we must apply our efforts not to matter itself, but to our own minds. The natural world affects us from without inwards: the magical world affects us from within outwards: instead of objects suggesting ideas, ideas are made to suggest objects. And as, in the fo

ther to the second or to the last of these categories,-or, perhaps, to an impartial mingling of all three. They import a cumbrous machinery of auras, astral bodies, and elemental spirits; they divide man into seven principles, nature into seven kingdoms; they regard spirit as a refined form of matter, and matter as the one absolute fact of the universe,-the alpha and omega of all things. They deny a supreme Deity, but hold out hopes

ife, our means are exquisitely adapted to our ends; and that we can gain no solid comfort or advantage by striving to elbow our way a few inches further into the region of the occult and abnormal. Magic, however specious its achievements, is only a mockery of the Creative power, and exposes its unlikeness to it. "It is the attribute of natural existen

s. Life need not be barren of mystery and miracle to any one of us; but they shall be such tender mysteries and instructive miracles as the devotion of motherhood, and the bl