This page in the chapter of demoniac affections is thus still in the state of ébauche. Mr. Moses believed his experiences to be demoniac affections, in the Neoplatonic sense. Could his phenomena have been investigated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Parker, Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook, and Professor Huxley, the public mind might have arrived at some conclusion on the subject. But Mr. Mosess chief spirit, known in society as Imperator, declined to let strangers look on. He testified his indignation in a manner so bruyant, he so banged on tables, that Mr. Moses and his friends thought it wiser to avoid an altercation.
This exclusiveness of Imperator certainly donne furieusement à penser. If spirits are spirits they may just as well take it for understood that performances done in a corner are of no scientific value. But we are still at a loss for a round and satisfactory hypothesis which will colligate all the alleged facts, and explain their historical continuity. We merely state that continuity as a historical fact. Marvels of savages, Neoplatonists, saints of Church or Covenant, spontaneous phenomena, Mediumistic phenomena, all hang together in some ways. Of this the Church has her own explanation.
COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
A Party at Ragley Castle. The Miraculous Conformist. The Restoration and Scepticism. Experimental Proof of Spiritual Existence. Glanvill. Boyle. More. The Gentlemans Butler. Levitation. Witchcraft. Movements of Objects. The Drummer of Tedworth. Haunted Houses. Rerrick. Glenluce. Ghosts. Spectral Evidence. Continuity and Uniformity of Stories. St. Joseph of Cupertino, his Flights. Modern Instances. Theory of Induced Hallucination. Ibn Batuta. Animated Furniture. From China to Peru. Rapping Spirit at Lyons. The Imposture at Orleans. The Stockwell Mystery. The Demon of Spraiton. Modern Instances. The Wesleys. Theory of Imposture. Conclusion.
In the month of February, 1665, there was assembled at Ragley Castle as curious a party as ever met in an English country-house. The hostess was the Lady Conway, a woman of remarkable talent and character, but wholly devoted to mystical speculations. In the end, unrestrained by the arguments of her clerical allies, she joined the Society of Friends, by the world called Quakers. Lady Conway at the time when her guests gathered at Ragley, as through all her later life, was suffering from violent chronic headache. The party at Ragley was invited to meet her latest medical attendant, an unlicensed practitioner, Mr. Valentine Greatrakes, or Greatorex; his name is spelled in a variety of ways. Mr. Greatrakes was called The Irish Stroker and The Miraculous Conformist by his admirers, for, while it was admitted that Dissenters might frequently possess, or might claim, powers of miracle, the gift, or the pretension, was rare among members of the Established Church. The person of Mr. Greatrakes, if we may believe Dr. Henry Stubbe, physician at Stratford-on-Avon, diffused a pleasing fragrance as of violets. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, it will be remembered, tells the same story about himself in his memoirs. Mr. Greatrakes is a man of graceful personage and presence, and if my phantasy betrayed not my judgement, says Dr. Stubbe, I observed in his eyes and meene a vivacitie and spritelinesse that is nothing common.
15
Teutonic Mythology, English translation, vol. ii. p. 514. He cites Pertz, i. 372.
16
A very early turning table, of 1170, is quoted from Giraldus Cambrensis by Dean Stanley in his Canterbury Memorials, p. 103. The table threw off the weapons of Beckets murderers. This was at South Malling. See the original in Whartons Anglia Sacra, ii. 425.
17
See Mr. Tylors Primitive Culture, chap, xi., for the best statement of the theory.
18
Petitot, Traditions Indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest, p. 434.
19
Very possibly the whirring roar of the turndun, or ρομβος, in Greek, Zuñi, Yoruba, Australian, Maori and South African mysteries is connected with this belief in a whirring sound caused by spirits. See Custom and Myth.
20
Proc. S. P. R., xix. 180.
21
Brough Smyth, i. 475.
22
Auckland, 1863, ch. x.
23
εν τινι στερεω χωριω, ωστε μη επιπολυ διαχεισθαι. Iamblichus.
24
Kohl, Kitchi-Gami, p. 278.
25
Hinds Explorations in Labrador, ii. 102.
26
Rowley, Universities Mission to Central Africa, p. 217: cited by Mr. Tylor.
27
Quoted in La Table Parlante, a French serial, No. I, p. 6.
28
Colonel A. B. Ellis, in his work on the Yorubas (1894), reports singular motions of a large wooden cylinder. It is used in ordeals.
29
The Natural and Morall History of the East and West Indies, p. 566, London, 1604.
30
February 9, 1872. Quoted by Mr. Tylor, in Primitive Culture, ii. 39, 1873.
31
Revue des Deux Mondes, 1856, tome i. p. 853.
32
Hallucinations, English translation, p. 182, London, 1859.
33
Laws, xi.
34
Records of the Past, iv. 134-136.
35
The references are to Partheys edition, Berlin, 1857.
36
και λεyομεναι αναyκαι θεων, 4, 3.
37
All are, for Porphyry, phantasmogenetic agencies.
38
Jean Bréhal, par P.P. Bélon et Balme, Paris, s. a., p. 105.
39
Procès de Condemnation, i. 75.
40
Appended to Beaumonts work on Spirits, 1705.
41
See Mr. Lillies Modern Mystics, and, better, Mr. Myers, in Proceedings S. P. R., Jan., 1894.
42
Origen, or whoever wrote the Philosophoumena, gives a recipe for producing a luminous figure on a wall. For moving lights, he suggests attaching lighted tow to a bird, and letting it loose. Maury translates the passages in La Magie, pp. 58-59. Spiritualists, of course, will allege that the world-wide theory of spectral lights is based on fact, and that the hallucinations are not begotten by subjective conditions, but by a genuine phantasmogenetic agency. Two men of science, Baron Schrenk-Notzing, and Dr. Gibotteau, vouch for illusions of light accompanying attempts by living agents to transfer a hallucinatory vision of themselves to persons at a distance (Journal S. P. R., iii. 307; Proceedings, viii. 467). It will be asserted by spiritualists that disembodied agencies produce the same effect in a higher degree.
43
θορυβωδη μεν φερομενα τα ενυλα.
44
ηνικα αν αμαρτημα τι συμβαινη περι την θεουρyικην τεχνην.
45
Damascius, ap. Photium.
46
παθη εκ μικρων αιθυyματων εyειρομενα.
47
Life of Hugh Macleod (Noble, Inverness). As an example of the growth of myth, see the version of these facts in Frasers Magazine for 1856. Even in a sermon preached immediately after the event, it was said that the dreamer found the pack by revelation of his dream!
48
iii. 2. δοιζομενου εν τω εισιεναι.
49
Greek Papyri in the British Museum; edited by F. G. Kenyon, M.A., London, 1893.
50
See notice in Classical Review, February, 1894.
51
See oracles in Eusebius, Praep. Evang., v. 9. The medium was tied up in some way, he had to be unloosed and raised from the ground. The inspiring agency, in a hurry to be gone, gave directions for the unbinding. παυεο δη προφρων οαρων, αναπαυε δε φωτα ραμνων εκλυων πολιον τυπον, ηδ απο yυιων Νειλωην οθονην χερσιν στιβαραις απαειρας. The binding of the Highland seer in a bulls hide is described by Scott in the Lady of the Lake. A modern Highland seer has ensconced himself in a boiler! The purpose is to concentrate the force.
52
Praep. Evang., v. 8.
53
Ibid., v. 15, 3.
54
Dr. Hodgson, in Proceedings S. P. R., Jan., 1894, makes Mr. Kellars evidence as to Indian levitation seem far from convincing! As a professional conjurer, and exposer of spiritualistic imposture, Mr. Kellar has made statements about his own experiences which are not easily to be harmonised.
55
Proceedings S. P. R. Jan., 1894.