“But Spiritualism, whatever may be thought of it, must be
recognized as a fact. It is one of the characteristic intellectual
or emotional phenomena of the times, and as such, it is deserving
of a more serious examination than it has yet received. There are
those who say it is all humbug, and that everything outside of the
ordinary course which takes place at the so-called séances, is the
direct result of fraudulent and deliberative imposture; in short,
that every Spiritualist must be either a fool or a knave. The
serious objection to this hypothesis is that the explanation is
almost as difficult of belief as the occurrences which it
explains. There must certainly be some Spiritualists who are both
honest and intelligent; and if the manifestations at the séances
were altogether and invariably fraudulent, surely the whole thing
must have collapsed long before this; and the Seybert Commission,
which finds it necessary to extend its investigations over an
indefinite period, which will certainly not be less than a year,
would have been able to sweep the delusion away in short order.”
The phenomena are so well known, that it is unnecessary to recount them
here. Among them may be mentioned such achievements as these: Various
articles have been transported from place to place, without human hands,
but by the agency of so-called spirits only; beautiful music has been
produced independently of human agency, with and without the aid of
visible instruments; many well-attested cases of healing have been
presented; persons have been carried through the air by the spirits in the
presence of many witnesses; tables have been suspended in the air with
several persons upon them; purported spirits have presented themselves in
bodily form and talked with an audible voice; and all this not once or
twice merely, but times without number, as may be gathered from the
records of Spiritualism, all through its history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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