The Missing Link in Modern SpiritualismUnderhill, A. Leah (Ann Leah)
Religion
The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism
Underhill, A. Leah (Ann Leah)
Fox family; Spiritualism
I may say, with specific reference to the part of the "two Fox sisters,"
that in spite of the bad influences upon us of the bitterly hostile
spirit which ruled the so-called "investigation," and the contemptuous
ill-temper often manifested by some of the committee, I had no reason to
be dissatisfied with the part played by our Spirit friends. Our rappings
came, if not as profusely as usual, yet abundantly, both low and loud,
in spite of our being moved to different parts of the room, of our being
placed standing on cushions and on the stuffed spring seat of a sofa,
etc. Their demonstrative effect was broken by Agassiz's assurances that
he could show how these could be produced by natural physiological
means, and his pledge that he would do so, a pledge given in the
collective form of "we," and therefore binding on the body whose silence
was assent to them. And yet on the last day, after he had in haste
left the room, and when Dr. Gardner called for the fulfilment of this
engagement, Prof. Pierce, who had presided, wriggled out of it by the
plea that that was only an individual promise by Prof. Agassiz, and _not
one by the committee_. Of course it would have been easy to recall
Agassiz, or to hold another meeting for the purpose. Nor was that pledge
ever after redeemed, in spite of the calls of the Spiritualist press.
Nor could the great Agassiz have more eloquently admitted the
impossibility of its fulfilment, than he did by such silence under such
circumstances.
On the 10th of July, 1857, Mr. Allan Putnam, of Roxbury, published a
statement from which I extract the following:
"Mrs. Brown and her sister, Miss C. Fox, were present as mediums. A
conversation was started which was carried on mostly, but not entirely,
by Mr. Lunt, the representative of _The Courier_, and Major Rains, of
Newburg, N. Y., a graduate of West Point, once assistant professor
there, and who, in connection with Judge Edmonds and others, made a
long-continued investigation of Spiritual powers scientifically. This
conversation related to the instrumentality and processes by which
Spirits work, and Major Rains expressed some of his views as to the
proper processes for a scientific investigation of this particular
subject.
"Also, there was conversation, mostly between Professor Agassiz and
Mrs. Brown, as to when and how the Fox family first learned that they
possessed this mediumistic susceptibility. The substance of this
harmonized with what has often been published.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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