On the Coppermine River the medicine-man, according to Hearne, prophesies of travellers, like the Highland second-sighted man, ere they appear. The Finns and Lapps boast of similar powers. Scheffer is copious on the clairvoyant feats of Lapps in trance. The Eskimo Angakut, when bound with their heads between their legs, cause luminous apparitions, just as was done by Mr. Stainton Moses, and by the mediums known to Porphyry and Iamblichus; the Angakut also send their souls on voyages, and behold distant lands. One of the oddest Angekok stories in Rinks Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo (p. 324) tells how some children played at magic, making a dark cabinet, by hanging jackets over the door, to exclude the light. The slabs of the floor were lifted and rushed after them: a case of movement of objects without physical contact. This phenomenon in future attended the young mediums possessions, even when he was away from home. This particular kind of manifestation, so very common in trials for witchcraft, and in modern spiritualistic literature, does not appear to prevail much among savages. Persons otherwise credible and sane tell the authorities of the Psychical Society that, with only three amateurs present, things are thrown about, and objects are brought from places many miles distant, and tossed on the table. These are technically termed apports. The writer knows a case in which this was attested by a witness of the most unimpeachable character. But savages hardly go so far. Bishop Callaway has an instance in which spirits tossed objects into the midst of a Zulu circle, but such things are not usual. Savages also set out food for the dead, but they scarcely attain to the credulity, or are granted the experience, of a writer in the Medium. 30 This astonishing person knew a familiar spirit. At dinner, one day, an empty chair began to move, and in answer to the question whether it would have some dinner, said Yes. It chose croquets de pomme de terre, which were placed on the chair in a spoon, lest the spirit, whose manners were rustic, should break a plate. In a few seconds I was told that it was eaten, and looking, found the half of it gone, with the marks showing the teeth. Perhaps few savages would have told such a tale to a journal which ought to have a large circulation among believers.
The examples of savage spiritualism which have been adduced might probably receive many additions; those are but gleanings from a large field carelessly harvested. The phenomena have been but casually studied; the civilised mind is apt to see, in savage séances, nothing but noisy buffoonery. We have shown that there is a more serious belief involved, and we have adduced cases in which white men were not unconscious of the barbarian spell. It also appears that the now recognised phenomena of hypnotism are the basis of the more serious savage magic. The production of hypnotic trances, perhaps of hypnotic hallucinations, is a piece of knowledge which savages possessed (as they were acquainted with quinine), while European physicians and philosophers ignored or laughed at it. Tobacco and quinine were more acceptable gifts from the barbarian. His magic has now and then been examined by a competent anthropologist, like Mr. Im Thurn, and Castren closely observed the proceedings of the bound and bounding Shamans among the Samoyeds. But we need the evidence both of anthropologists and of adepts in conjuring. They might detect some of the tricks, though Mr. Kellar, a professional conjurer and exposer of spiritualistic imposture, has been fairly baffled (he says) by Zulus and Hindus, while educated Americans are puzzled by the Pawnees. Mr. Kellars plan of displaying a few of his own tricks was excellent: the dusky professionals were stimulated to show theirs, which, as described, were miracles. The Pakeha Maori, already quoted, saw a Maori Tohunga perform a very good miracle as times go, but he does not give any particulars. The late Mr. Davey, who started as a Spiritualist catechumen, managed, by conjuring, to produce answers to questions on a locked slate, which is as near a miracle as anything. But Mr. Davey is dead, though we know his secret, while it is improbable that Mr. Maskelyne will enrich his répertoire by travelling among Zulus, Hindus, and Pawnees. As savages cease to be savages, our opportunities of learning their mystic lore must decrease.
To one point in this research the notice of students in folklore may be specially directed. In the attempt to account for the diffusion of popular tales, such as Cinderella, we are told to observe that the countries most closely adjacent to each other have the most closely similar variants of the story. This is true, as a rule, but it is also true that, while Scandinavian regions have a form of Cinderella with certain peculiarities not shared by Southern Europe, those crop up sporadically, far away, among Kaffirs and the Indian aboriginal tribe of Santhals. The same phenomenon of diffusion occurs when we find savage mediums tied up in their trances, all over the North, among Canadian Hareskins, among Samoyed and Eskimo, while the practice ceases at a given point in Labrador, and gives place to Medicine Lodges. The binding then reappears if not in Australia, certainly in the ancient Greek ceremonial. The writer is not acquainted with the bound and bounding young man in the intervening regions and it would be very interesting to find connecting cases, stepping-stones, as it were, by which the rite passed from the Levant to the frozen North.
ANCIENT SPIRITUALISM
M. Littré on demoniac affections, a subject, in his opinion, worthy of closer study. Outbreak of Modern Spiritualism. Its relations to Greek and Egyptian Spiritualism recognised. Popular and literary sources of Modern Spiritualism. Neoplatonic thaumaturgy not among these. Porphyry and Iamblichus. The discerning of Spirits. The ancient attempts to prove spirit identity. The test of spirit lights in the ancient world. Perplexities of Porphyry. Dreams. The Assynt Murder. Eusebius on Ancient Spiritualism. The evidence of Texts from the Papyri. Evocations. Lights, levitation, airy music, anæsthesia of Mediums, ancient and modern. Alternative hypotheses: conjuring, suggestion and collectivehallucination, actual fact. Strange case of the Rev. Stainton Moses. Tabular statement showing historical continuity of alleged phenomena.
In the Revue des Deux Mondes, for 1856, tome i., M. Littré published an article on table-turning and rapping spirits. M. Littré was a savant whom nobody accused of superstition, and France possessed no clearer intellect. Yet his attitude towards the popular marvels of the day, an attitude at once singular and natural, shows how easily the greatest minds can pay themselves with words. A curious reader, in that period of excitement about spiritualism, would turn to the Revue, attracted by M. Littrés name. He would ask: Does M. Littré accept the alleged facts; if so, how does he explain them? And he would find that this guide of human thought did not, at least, reject the facts; that he did not (as he well might have done) offer imposture as the general explanation; that he regarded the topic as very obscure, and eminently worthy of study, and that he pooh-poohed the whole affair!
This is not very consistent or helpful counsel. Like the rest of us, who are so far beneath M. Littré in grasp and in weight of authority, he was subject to the idola fori, the illusions of the market-place. It would never do for a great scientific sceptic to say, Here are strange and important facts of human nature, let us examine them as we do all other natural phenomena, it would never do for such a man to say that without qualification. So he concluded his essay in the pooh-pooh tone of voice. He first gives a sketch of abnormalities in mortal experience, as in the case of mental epidemics, of witchcraft, of the so-called prophets in the Cevennes, of the Jansenist marvels. He mentions a nunnery where, in the sixteenth century, there occurred, among other phenomena, movements of inanimate objects, pottery specially distinguishing itself, as in the famous Stockwell mystery. Unluckily he supplies no references for these adventures. 31 The Revue, being written for men and women of the world, may discuss such topics, but need not offer exact citations. M. Littré, on the strength of his historical sketch, decides, most correctly, that there is rien de nouveau, nothing new, in the spirit-rapping epidemic. These maladies never desert our race. But this fact hardly explains why vessels were dragged from the hands of his nuns in the sixteenth century.
In search of a cause, he turns to hallucinations. In certain or uncertain physical conditions, the mind can project and objectify, its own creations. Thus Gleditch saw the dead Maupertuis, with perfect distinctness, in the salle of the Academy at Berlin. Had he not known that Maupertuis was dead, he could have sworn to his presence (p. 866). Yes: but how does that explain volatile pots and pans? Well, there are collective hallucinations, as when the persecuted in the Cevennes, like the Covenanters, heard non-existent psalmody. And all witches told much the same tale; apparently because they were collectively hallucinated. Then were the spectators of the agile crockery collectively hallucinated? M. Littré does not say so explicitly, though this is a conceivable theory. He alleges after all his scientific statements about sensory troubles, that the whole chapter, a chapter most deserving of study, which contains the series of demoniac affections (affections démoniaques), has hardly been sketched out.
Among accounts of demoniac affections, descriptions of objects moved without contact are of frequent occurrence. As M. Littré says, it is always the same old story. But why is it always the same old story? There were two theories before the world in 1856. First there was the animistic-hypothesis, spirits move the objects, spirits raise the medium in the air, spirits are the performers of the airy music. Then there was the hypothesis of a force or fluid, or faculty, inherent in mankind, and notable in some rare examples of humanity. This force, fluid, agency, or what you will, counteracts the laws of gravitation, and compels tables, or pots, to move untouched.
To the spiritualists M. Littré says, Bah! to the partisans of a force or fluid, he says, Pooh! If your spirits are spirits, why do they let the world wag on in its old way, why do they confine themselves to trivial effects?
The spiritualist would probably answer that he did not understand the nature and limits of spiritual powers.
To the friends of a force or faculty in our nature, M. Littré remarks, in effect, Why dont you use your force? why dont you supply a new motor for locomotives? Pooh! The answer would be that it was not the volume and market value of the force, but the existence of the force, which interested the inquirer. When amber, being rubbed, attracted straws, the force was as much a force, as worthy of scientific study, as when electricity is employed to bring bad news more rapidly from the ends of the earth.
These answers are obvious: M. Littrés satire was not the weapon of science, but the familiar test of the bourgeois and the Philistine. Still, he admitted, nay, asserted strongly, that the whole series of demoniac affections was most worthy of investigation, and was hardly sketched out. In a similar manner, Brierre de Boismont, in his work on hallucinations, explains a number of clairvoyant dreams, by ordinary causes. But, coming to a vision which he knew at first hand, he breaks down: We must confess that these explanations do not satisfy us, and that these events seem rather to belong to some of the deepest mysteries of our being. 32 There is a point at which the explanations of common-sense arouse scepticism.
Much has been done, since 1856, towards producing a finished picture, in place of an ébauche. The accepted belief in the phenomena of hypnotism, and of unconscious mental and bodily actions automatisms has expelled the old belief in spirits from many a dusty nook. But we still ask: Do objects move untouched? why do they move, or if they move not at all (as is most probable) why is it always the same story, from the Arctic circle to the tales of witches, and of mediums?
There is little said about this particular phenomena (though something is said), but there is much about other marvels, equally widely rumoured of, in the brief and dim Greek records of thaumaturgy. To examine these historically is to put a touch or two on the picture of demoniac affections, which M. Littré desired to see executed. The Greek mystics, at least, believed that the airy music, the movements of untouched objects, the triumph over gravitation, and other natural laws, for which they vouch, were caused by demons, were demoniac affections. To compare the statements of Eusebius and Iamblichus with those of modern men of science and other modern witnesses, can, therefore, only be called superfluous and superstitious by those who think M. Littré superstitious, and his desired investigation superfluous.
When the epidemic of spiritualism broke out in the United States (1848-1852) students of classical literature perceived that spiritualism was no new thing, but a recrudescence of practices familiar to the ancient world. Even readers who had confined their attention to the central masterpieces of Greek literature recognised some of the revived phenomena. The Trance Medium, the Inspirational Speaker was a reproduction of the maiden with a spirit of divination, of the Delphic Pythia. In the old belief, the god dominated her, and spoke from her lips, just as the control, or directing spirit, dominates the medium. But there were still more striking resemblances between ancient and modern thaumaturgy, which were only to be recognised by readers of the late Neoplatonists, such as Porphyry, and of the Christian Fathers, such as Eusebius, who argued against the apologists of heathenism. The central classical writers, from Homer to Tacitus, are not superstitious; they accept the orthodox state magic of omens, of augurs, of prodigies, of oracles, but anything like private necromancy is alien and distasteful to them. We need not doubt that sorcery and the consultation of the dead were being practised all through the classical period, indeed we know that it was so. Plato legislates against sorcery in a practical manner; whether it does harm or not, men are persuaded that it does harm; it is vain to argue with them, therefore the wizard and witch are to be punished for their bad intentions. 33