Chapter III: Part 3

The new marvels were certainly not stimulated by literary knowledge of the ancient thaumaturgy. Modern spiritualism is an effort to organise and 'exploit' the traditional and popular phenomena of rapping spirits, and of ghosts. Belief in these had always lived an underground life in rural legend, quite unharmed by enlightenment and education. So far, it resembled the ordinary creeds of folklore. It is probable that, in addition to oral legend, there was another and more literary source of modern thaumaturgy. Books like Glanvil's, Baxter's, those of the Mathers and of Sinclair, were thumbed by the people after the literary class had forgotten them. Moreover, the Foxes, who started spiritualism, were Methodists, and may well have been familiar with 'old Jeffrey,' who haunted the Wesleys' house, and with some of the stories of apparitions in Wesley's Arminian Magazine.

If there were literary as well as legendary sources of nascent spiritualism, the sources were these. Porphyry, Iamblichus, Eusebius, and the life of Apollonius of Tyana, cannot have influenced the illiterate parents of the new thaumaturgy. This fact makes the repetition, in modern spiritualism, of Neoplatonic theories and Neoplatonic marvels all the more interesting and curious.

The shortest cut to knowledge of ancient spiritualism is through the letter of Porphyry to Anebo, and the reply attributed to Iamblichus. Porphyry, the disciple of Plotinus, was a seeker for truth in divine things. Prejudice, literary sentiment, and other considerations, prevented him from acquiescing in the Christian verity. The ordinary paganism shocked him, both by its obscene and undignified myths, and by many features of its ritual. He devised non-natural interpretations of its sacred legends, he looked for a visible or tangible 'sign,' and he did not shrink from investigating the thaumaturgy of his age. His letter of inquiry is preserved in fragments by Eusebius, and St. Augustine: Gale edited it, and, as he says, offers us an Absyrtus (the brother of Medea, who scattered his mutilated remains) rather than a Porphyry. {65a} Not all of Porphyry's questions interest us for our present purpose. He asks, among other things: How can gods, as in the evocations of gods, be made subject to necessity, and _compelled_ to manifest themselves? {65b}

How do you discriminate between demons, and gods, that are manifest, or not manifest? How does a demon differ from a hero, or from a mere soul of a dead man?

By what sign can we be sure that the manifesting agency present is that of a god, an angel, an archon, or a soul? For to boast, and to display phantasms, is common to all these varieties. {65c}

In these perplexities, Porphyry resembles the anxious spiritualistic inquirer. A 'materialised spirit' alleges himself to be Washington, or Franklin, or the lost wife, or friend, or child of him who seeks the mediums. How is the inquirer, how was Porphyry to know that the assertion is correct, that it is not the mere 'boasting' of some vulgar spirit? In the same way, when messages are given through a medium's mouth, or by raps, or movements of a table, or a planchette, or by automatic writing, how (even discounting imposture) is the source to be verified? How is the identity of the spirit to be established? This question of discerning spirits, of identifying them, of not taking an angel for a devil, or vice versa, was most important in the Middle Ages. On this turned the fate of Joan of Arc: Were her voices and visions of God or of Satan? They came, as in the cases mentioned by Iamblichus, with a light, a hallucination of brilliance. When Jean Brehal, Grand Inquisitor of France, in 1450-1456, held the process for rehabilitating Joan, condemned as a witch in 1431, he entered learnedly into the tests of 'spirit-identity'. {66a} St. Theresa was bidden to try to exorcise her visions, by the sign of the Cross. Saint or sorcerer? it was always a delicate inquiry.

Iamblichus, in his reply to Porphyry's doubts, first enters into theology pretty deeply, but, in book ii. chap. iii. he comes, as it were, to business. The nature of the spiritual agency present on any occasion may be ascertained from his manifestations or epiphanies. All these agencies show _in a light_, we are reminded inevitably of the light which accompanied the visions of Colonel Gardiner and of Pascal. Joan of Arc, too, in reply to her judges, averred that a light (claritas) usually accompanied the voices which came to her. {66b} These things, if we call them hallucinations, were, at least, hallucinations of the good and great, and must be regarded not without reverence. But modern spiritualistic and ghostly literature is full of lights which accompany 'manifestations,' or attend the nocturnal invasions of apparitions. Examples are so common that they can readily be found by any one who studies Mrs. Crowe's Night Side of Nature, or Home's Life, or Phantasms of the Living, or the Proceedings of the Psychical Society. Meantime Homer, and Theocritus in familiar passages, attest this belief in light attendant on the coming of the divine, while the Norse Sagas, and the well-known tale of Sir Charles Lee's daughter and the ghost of her mother (1662), speak for the same belief in the pre-Christian north, and in the society of the Restoration. {67a} A light always comes among the Eskimo, when the tornak, or familiar spirit, visits the Angekok or sorcerer. Here, then, is harmony enough in the psychical beliefs of all time, as when we learn that lights were flashed by the spirits who beset the late Rev. Stainton Moses. {67b} Unluckily, while we have this cloud of witnesses to the belief in a spiritual light, we are still uncertain as to whether the seeing of such a light is a physical symptom of hallucination. This is the opinion of M. Lelut, as given in his Amulette de Pascal (p. 301): 'This globe of fire . . . is a common constituent of hallucinations of sight, and may be regarded at once as their most elementary form, and their highest degree of intensity'. M. Lelut knew the phenomenon among mystics whom he had observed in his practice as an 'alienist'. He also quotes a story told of himself by Benvenuto Cellini. If we can admit that this hallucination of brilliant light may be produced in the conditions of a seance, whether modern, savage, or classical, we obtain a partial solution of the problem presented by the world-wide diffusion of this belief. Of course, once accepted as an element in spiritualism, a little phosphorus supplies the modern medium with a requisite of his trade. {68a}

Returning to Iamblichus, he classifies his phantasmogenetic agencies by the _kind_ of light they show; greater or less, more or less divided, more or less pure, steady or agitated (ii. 4). The arrival of demons is attended by disturbances. {68b} Heroes are usually very noisy in their manifestations: a hero is a polter-geist, 'sounds echo around' (ii. 8). There are also subjective moods diversely generated by diverse apparitions; souls of the dead, for example, prompt to lust (ii. 9). On the whole, a great deal of experience is needed by the thaumaturgist, if he is to distinguish between one kind of manifestation and another. Even Inquisitors have differed in opinion.

Iamblichus next tackles the difficult question of imposition and personation by spirits. Thus a soul, or a spirit, may give itself out for a god, and exhibit the appropriate phantasmagoria: may boast and deceive (ii. 10). This is the result of some error or blunder in the ceremony of evocation. {69} A bad or low spirit may thus enter, disguised as a demon or god, and may utter deceitful words. But all arts, says our guide, are liable to errors, and the 'sacred art' must not be judged by its occasional imperfections. We know the same kind of excuses in modern times.

Porphyry went on to ask questions about divination and clairvoyance. We often ascertain the future, he says, in dreams, when our bodies are lying still and peaceful: when we are in no convulsive ecstasy such as diviners use. Many persons prophesy 'in enthusiastic and divinely seized moments, awake, in a sense, yet not in their habitual state of consciousness'. Music of certain kinds, the water of certain holy wells, the vapours of Branchidae, produce such ecstatic effects. Some 'take darkness for an ally' (dark seances), some see visions in water, others on a wall, others in sun or moon. As an example of ancient visions in water, we may take one from the life of Isidorus, by Damascius. Isidorus, and his biographer, were acquainted with women who beheld in pure water in a glass vessel the phantasms of future events. {70a} This form of divination is still practised, though crystal balls are more commonly used than decanters of water. Ancient and modern superstition as in the familiar case of Dr. Dee, attributes the phantasms to spiritual agency

Is a divine being _compelled_, Porphyry asks, to aid in these efforts, or is it only the soul of the seer, as some believe, which hallucinates itself, by the aid of points de repere? {70b} Or is there a blending of the soul's operations with the divine inspiration? Or are demons in some way evolved out of something abstracted from living bodies? He seems to hint at some such theory of 'exuvious fumes' from the 'circle,' as more recent inquirers have imagined. The young appear to be peculiarly sensitive to vapours, invocations, and other magical methods, which affect the human constitution, and the young are usually engaged as seers. Hence visions are probably subjective. Ecstasy, madness, fasts and vigils seem particularly favourable to divination. Or are there certain mystic correspondences in the nature of things, which may be detected? Thus stones and herbs are used in evocations; 'sacred bonds' are tied (as in the Eskimo hypnotism and in Australia); closed doors are opened, the heavenly bodies are observed. Some suppose that there is a race of false and counterfeiting spirits, which, indeed, Iamblichus admits. These act the parts of gods, demons, and souls of the dead. Again, the conjurer plays on our expectant attention. Omitting some remarks no longer appropriate, Porphyry asks what use there is in chanting barbarous and meaningless words. He is inclined to think that the demon, or guardian spirit of each man is only part of his soul,--in fact his 'subliminal self'. And generally, he suspects that the whole affair is 'a mere imaginative deceit, played off on itself by the soul'.

Replying as to divination, Iamblichus says that the right kind of dreams are between sleeping and waking when we hear a voice giving directions. A modern example occurred in the trial of the Assynt murderer in 1831. One Kenneth Fraser, called 'the dreamer,' said in the trial: 'I was at home when I had the dream. It was said to me in my sleep by a voice like a man's voice, that the pack (of the murdered pedlar) was lying in sight of the place. I got a sight of the place just as if I had been awake. I never saw the place before, but the voice said in Gaelic, "the pack of the merchant is lying in a cairn of stones, in a hollow near to their house". The voice did not name Macleod's house.' The pack was, however, not found there, but in a place hard by, which Kenneth had _not_ seen in his dream. Oddly enough, the murderer had originally hidden the pack, or some of its contents, in a cairn of stones, but later removed it. In the 'willing game,' as played by Mr. Stuart Cumberland, the seeker usually goes first to the place where the hider had thought of concealing the object, though later he changed his mind. Macleod was hanged, he confessed his guilt. {71}

Iamblichus believed in dreams of this kind, and in voices heard by men wide awake, as in the case of Joan of Arc. When an invisible spirit is present, he makes a whirring noise, like the Cock Lane Ghost! {72} Lights also are exhibited; the medium then by some mystic sense knows what the spirit means. The soul has two lives, one animal, one intellectual; in sleep the latter is more free, and more clairvoyant. In trance, or somnambulism, many cannot feel pain even if they are burned, the god within does not let fire harm them (iii. 4). This, of course, suggests Home's experiments in handling live coals, as Mr. Crookes and Lord Crawford describe them. Compare the Berserk 'coal-biters' in the saga of Egil, and the Huron coal- biter in the preceding essay. 'They do not then live an animal life.' Sword points do not hurt them. Their actions are no longer human. 'Inaccessible places are accessible to them, when thus borne by the gods; and they tread on fire unharmed; they walk across rivers. . . . They are not themselves, they live a diviner life, with which they are inspired, and by which they are possessed.' Some are convulsed in one way, some in another, some are still. Harmonies are heard (as in Home's case and that of Mr. Stainton Moses). Their bodies are elongated (like Home's), or broadened, or float in mid-air, as in a hundred tales of mediums and saints. Sometimes the medium sees a light when the spirit takes possession of him, sometimes all present see it (iii. 6). Thus Wodrow says (as we have already shown), that Mrs. Carlyle's ancestor, Mr. Welsh, shone in a light as he meditated; and Patrick Walker tells the same tale about two of the fanatics called 'Sweet Singers'.

From all this it follows, Iamblichus holds, that spiritual possession is a genuine objective fact and that the mediums act under real spiritual control. Omitting local oracles, and practices apparently analogous to the use of planchette, Iamblichus regards the heavenly _light_ as the great source of and evidence for the _external_ and spiritual character and cause of divination (iii. 14). Iamblichus entirely rejects all Porphyry's psychological theories of hallucinations, of the demon or 'genius' as 'subliminal self,' and asserts the actual, objective, sensible action of spirits, divine or daemonic. What effect Iamblichus produced on the inquiring Porphyry is uncertain. In his De Abstinentia (ii. 39) he gives in to the notion of deceitful spirits.

In addition to the evidence of Porphyry, Iamblichus, Eusebius and other authors of the fourth century, some recently published papyri of the same period throw a little light on the late Greek thaumaturgy. {73} Thus Papyrus cxxv. verso (about the fifth century) 'contains elaborate instructions for a magical process, the effect of which is to evoke a goddess, to transform her into the appearance of an old woman, and to bind to her the service of the person using the spell. . . .'

Obviously we would much prefer a spell for turning an old woman into a goddess. The document is headed, [Greek], 'the old serving woman of Apollonius of Tyana,' and it ends, [Grrek], 'it is proved by practice'.

You take the head of an ibis, and write certain characters on it in the blood of a black ram, and go to a cross-road, or the sea-shore, or a river-bank at midnight: there you recite gibberish and then see a pretty lady riding a donkey, and she will put off her beauty like a mask and assume the appearance of old age, and will promise to obey you: and so forth.

Here is a 'constraint put on a god' as Porphyry complains. Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft (1584), has a very similar spell for alluring an airy sylph, and making her serve and be the mistress of the wizard! There is another papyrus (xlvi.), of the fourth century, with directions for divination by aid of a boy looking into a bowl, says the editor (p. 64). There is a long invocation full of 'barbarous words,' like the mediaeval nonsense rhymes used in magic. There is a dubious reading, [Grrek] or [Greek]; it is suggested that the boy is put into a pit, as it seems was occasionally done. {74} It is clear that a spirit is supposed to show the boy his visions. A spell follows for summoning a visible deity. Then we have a recipe for making a ring which will enable the owner to know the thoughts of men. The god is threatened if he does not serve the magicians. All manner of fumigations, plants, and stones are used in these idiotic ceremonies, and to these Porphyry refers. The papyri do not illustrate the phenomena described by Iamblichus, such as the 'light,' levitation, music of unknown origin, the resistance of the medium to fire and sword points, and all the rest of his list of prodigies. Iamblichus probably looked down on the believers in these spells written on papyri with extreme disdain. They are only interesting as folklore, like the rhymes of incantation preserved in Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft.

There were other analogies between modern, ancient, and savage spiritualism. The medium was swathed, or tied up, like the Davenport Brothers, like Eskimo and Australian conjurers, like the Highland seer in the bull's hide. {75a} The medium was understood to be a mere instrument like a flute, through which the 'control,' the god or spirit, spoke. {75b} This is still the spiritualistic explanation of automatic speech. Eusebius goes so far as to believe that 'earthbound spirits' do speak through the medium, but a much simpler theory is obvious. {75c} Indeed where automatic performances of any sort--by writing, by the kind of 'Ouija' or table pointing to letters, as described by Ammianus Marcellinus (xxix. 29)--or by speaking, are concerned, we have the aid of psychology, and the theory of 'unconscious cerebration' to help us. But when we are told the old tales of whirring noises, of 'bilocation,' of 'levitation,' of a mystic light, we are in contact with more difficult questions.

In brief, the problem of spiritualism in general presents itself to us thus: in ancient, modern, and savage thaumaturgy there are certain automatic phenomena. The conjurer, priest, or medium acts, or pretends to act, in various ways beyond his normal consciousness. Savages, ancient mystics, and spiritualists ascribe his automatic behaviour to the control of spirits, gods or demons. No such hypothesis is needed.

On the other side, however, are phenomena not automatic, 'spiritual' lights, and sounds; interferences with natural laws, as when bodies are lifted in the air, or are elongated, when fire does not fasten on them, and so on. These phenomena, in ancient times, followed on the performance of certain mystic rites. They are now said to occur without the aid of any such rites. Gods and spirits are said to cause them, but they are only attained in the presence of certain exceptional persons, mediums, saints, priests, conjurers. Clearly then, not the rites, but the peculiar constitution of these individuals is the cause (setting imposture aside) of the phenomena, of the hallucinations, of the impressions, or whatever they are to be styled. That is to say, witnesses, in other matters credible, aver that they receive these peculiar impressions in the society of certain persons and not in that of people in general. Now these impressions are, everywhere, in every age and stage of civilisation, essentially identical. Is it stretching probability almost beyond what it will bear, to allege that all the phenomena, in the Arctic circle as in Australia, in ancient Alexandria as in modern London, are, always, the result of an imposture modelled on savage ideas of the supernatural?

If so we are reduced to the choice between actual objective facts of unknown origin (frequently counterfeited of course), and the theory,--which really comes to much the same thing,--of identical and collective hallucinations in given conditions. On either hypothesis the topic is certainly not without interest for the student of human nature. Even if we could, at most, establish the fact that people like Iamblichus, Mr. Crookes, Lord Crawford, Jesuits in Canada, professional conjurers in Zululand, Spaniards in early Peru, Australian blacks, Maoris, Eskimo, cardinals, ambassadors, are similarly hallucinated, as they declare, in the presence of priests, diviners, Home, Zulu magicians, Biraarks, Jossakeeds, angakut, tohungas, and saints, and Mr. Stainton Moses, still the identity of the false impressions is a topic for psychological study. Or, if we disbelieve this cloud of witnesses, if they voluntarily fabled, we ask, why do they all fable in exactly the same fashion? Even setting aside the animistic hypothesis, the subject is full of curious neglected problems.

Once more, if we admit the theory of intentional imposture by saints, angakut, Zulu medicine-men, mediums, and the rest, we must grant that a trick which takes in a professional conjurer, like Mr. Kellar, is a trick well worthy of examination. How did his Zulu learn the method of Home, of the Egyptian diviners, of St. Joseph of Cupertino? {78a} Each solution has its difficulties, while practical investigation is rarely possible. We have no Home with us, at present, and the opportunity of studying his effects carefully was neglected. It was equally desirable to study them whether he caused collective hallucinations, or whether his effects were merely those of ordinary, though skilful, conjuring. For Home, whatever his moral character may have been, was a remarkable survival of a class of men familiar to the mystic Iamblichus, to the savage races of the past and present, and (as far as his marvels went) to the biographers of the saints. 'I am one of those,' says the Zulu medicine-man, in Mr. Rider Haggard's Allan's Wife, 'who can make men see what they do not see.' The class of persons who are said to have possessed this power appear, now and then, in all human history, and have at least bequeathed to us a puzzle in anthropology. This problem has recently been presented, in what may be called an acute form, by the publication of the 'Experiences of Mr. Stainton Moses'. {78b} Mr. Moses was a clergyman and schoolmaster; in both capacities he appears to have been industrious, conscientious, and honourable. He was not devoid of literature, and had contributed, it is said, to periodicals as remote from mysticism as Punch, and the Saturday Review. He was a sportsman, at least he was a disciple of our father, Izaak Walton. 'Most anglers are quiet men, and followers of peace, so simply wise as not to sell their consciences to buy riches, and with them vexation, and a fear to die,' says Izaak.

In early middle age, about 1874, Mr. Moses began to read such books as Dale Owen's, and to sit 'attentive of his trembling' table, by way of experiment. He soon found that tables bounded in his presence, untouched. Then he developed into a regular 'medium'. Inanimate objects came to him through stone walls. Scent of all sorts, and, as in the case of St. Joseph of Cupertino, of an unknown sort, was scattered on people in his company. He floated in the air. He wrote 'automatically'. Knocks resounded in his neighbourhood, in the open air. 'Lights' of all varieties hovered in his vicinity. He spoke 'automatically,' being the mouth-piece of a 'spirit,' and very dull were the spirit's sermons. After a struggle he believed in 'spirits,' who twanged musical notes out in his presence. He became editor of a journal named Light; he joined the Psychical Society, but left it when the society pushed materialism so far as to demonstrate that certain professional mediums were convicted swindlers.

The evidence for his marvels is the testimony of a family, perfectly respectable, named Speer, and of a few other witnesses whom nobody can suspect of conscious inaccuracy. There remain, as documents, his books, his MS. notes, and other corroborative notes kept by his friend Dr. Speer, a sceptic, and other observers.

It is admitted that Mr. Moses was not a cautious logician, his inferences are problematic, his generalisations hasty. As to the facts, it is equally difficult to believe in them, and to believe that Mr. Moses was a conscious impostor, and his friends easy dupes. He cannot have been an impostor _unconsciously_ in a hypnotic state, in a 'trance,' because his effects could not have been improvised. If they were done by jugglery, they required elaborate preparations of all sorts, which must have been made in full ordinary consciousness. If we fall back on collective hallucination, then that hallucination is something of world-wide diffusion, ancient and continuous, for the effects are those attributed by Iamblichus to his mystics, by the Church to her saints, by witnesses to the 'possessed,' by savages to medicine-men, and by Mr. Crookes and Lord Crawford to D. D. Home. Of course we may be told that all lookers- on, from Eskimo to Neoplatonists and men of science, know what to expect, and are hallucinated by their own expectant attention. But, when they expect nothing, and are disappointed by having to witness prodigies, the same old prodigies, what is the explanation?

The following tabular statement, altered from that given by Mr. Myers in his publication of Mr. Moses and Dr. Speer's MS. notes, will show the historical identity of the phenomena. Mr. Moses was the agent in all; those exhibited by other ancient and modern agents are marked with a cross.

Rev. D. D. Iamblichus St. Eskimo Australian
'Spontaneous

Stainton Home Joseph of
(Glanvil,

Moses Cupertino
Bovet,

Telfair,

Kirk)

1. X X ? X 2. X X X X X 3. X X X X X X X 4. X X 5. X 6. X X 7. X X 8. X X X X 9. X X X 10. X X X X X 11. X X 12. X X X

1. 'Intelligent Raps.' 2. 'Movement of objects untouched.' 3. 'Levitation' (floating in air of seer). 4. Disappearance and Reappearance of objects. The 'object' being the medium in some cases. 5. Passage of Matter through Matter. 6. Direct writing. That is, not by any detected human agency. 7. Sounds made on instruments supernormally. 8. Direct sounds. That is, by no detected human agency. 9. Scents. 10. Lights. 11. Objects 'materialised.' 12. Hands materialised, touched or seen.

There are here twelve miracles! Home and Iamblichus add to Mr. Moses's repertoire the alteration of the medium's height or bulk. This feat still leaves Mr. Moses 'one up,' as regards Home, in whose presence objects did not disappear, nor did they pass through stone walls. The questions are, to account for the continuity of collective hallucinations, if we accept that hypothesis, and to explain the procedure of Mr. Moses, if he were an impostor. He did not exhibit before more than seven or eight private friends, and he gained neither money nor dazzling social success by his performances.

This page in the chapter of 'demoniac affections' is thus still in the state of ebauche. 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. Moses's 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 a 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 Gentleman's 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'.

This Miraculous Conformist was the younger son of an Irish squire, and a person of some property. After the Restoration--_and not before_--Greatrakes felt 'a strong and powerful impulse in him to essay' the art of healing by touching, or stroking. He resisted the impulse, till one of his hands having become 'dead' or numb, he healed it by the strokes of the other hand. From that moment Greatrakes practised, and became celebrated; he cured some diseased persons, failed wholly with others, and had partial and temporary success with a third class. The descriptions given by Stubbe, in his letter to the celebrated Robert Boyle, and by Foxcroft, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, leave little doubt that 'The Irish Stroker' was most successful with hypochondriacal and hysterical patients. He used to chase the disease up and down their bodies, if it did not 'fly out through the interstices of his fingers,' and if he could drive it into an outlying part, and then forth into the wide world, the patient recovered. So Dr. Stubbe reports the method of Greatrakes. {86} He was brought over from Ireland, at a charge of about 155 pounds, to cure Lady Conway's headaches. In this it is confessed that he entirely failed; though he wrought a few miracles of healing among rural invalids. To meet this fragrant and miraculous Conformist, Lady Conway invited men worthy of the privilege, such as the Rev. Joseph Glanvill, F.R.S., the author of Sadducismus Triumphatus, his friend Dr. Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, and other persons interested in mystical studies. Thus at Ragley there was convened the nucleus of an unofficial but active Society for Psychical Research, as that study existed in the seventeenth century.

The object of this chapter is to compare the motives, methods, and results of Lady Conway's circle, with those of the modern Society for Psychical Research. Both have investigated the reports of abnormal phenomena. Both have collected and published narratives of eye-witnesses. The moderns, however, are much more strict on points of evidence than their predecessors. They are not content to watch, but they introduce 'tests,' generally with the most disenchanting results. The old researchers were animated by the desire to establish the tottering faith of the Restoration, which was endangered by the reaction against Puritanism. Among the fruits of Puritanism, and of that frenzied state of mind which accompanied the Civil War, was a furious persecution of 'witches'. In a rare little book, Select Cases of Conscience, touching Witches and Witchcraft, by John Gaule, 'preacher of the Word at Great Staughton in the county of Huntington' (London, 1646), we find the author not denying the existence of witchcraft, but pleading for calm, learned and judicial investigation. To do this was to take his life in his hand, for Matthew Hopkins, a fanatical miscreant, was ruling in a Reign of Terror through the country. The clergy of the Church of England, as Hutchinson proves in his Treatise of Witchcraft (second edition, London, 1720), had been comparatively cautious in their treatment of the subject. Their record is far from clean, but they had exposed some impostures, chiefly, it is fair to say, where Nonconformists, or Catholics, had detected the witch. With the Restoration the general laxity went so far as to scoff at witchcraft, to deny its existence, and even, in the works of Wagstaff and Webster, to minimise the leading case of the Witch of Endor. Against the 'drollery of Sadducism,' the Psychical Researchers within the English Church, like Glanvill and Henry More, or beyond its pale, like Richard Baxter and many Scotch divines, defended witchcraft and apparitions as outworks of faith in general. The modern Psychical Society, whatever the predisposition of some of its members may be, explores abnormal phenomena, not in the interests of faith, but of knowledge. Again, the old inquirers were dominated by a belief in the devil. They saw witchcraft and demoniacal possession, where the moderns see hysterics and hypnotic conditions.

For us the topic is rather akin to mythology, and 'folk-psychology,' as the Germans call it. We are interested, as will be shown, in a most curious question of evidence, and the value of evidence. It will again appear that the phenomena reported by Glanvill, More, Sinclair, Kirk, Telfair, Bovet, are identical with those examined by Messrs. Gurney, Myers, Kellar (the American professional conjurer), and many others. The differences, though interesting, are rather temporary and accidental than essential.

A few moments of attention to the table talk of the party assembled at Ragley will enable us to understand the aims, the methods, and the ideas of the old informal society. By a lucky accident, fragments of the conversation may be collected from Glanvill's Sadducismus Triumphatus, {88a} and from the correspondence of Glanvill, Henry More, and Robert Boyle. Mr. Boyle, among more tangible researches, devoted himself to collecting anecdotes, about the second sight. These manuscripts are not published in the six huge quarto volumes of Boyle's works; on the other hand, we possess Lord Tarbet's answer to his questions. {88b} Boyle, as his letters show, was a rather chary believer in witchcraft and possession. He referred Glanvill to his kinsman, Lord Orrery, who had enjoyed an experience not very familiar; he had seen a gentleman's butler float in the air!

Now, by a great piece of good fortune, Mr. Greatrakes the fragrant and miraculous, had also been an eye-witness of this miracle, and was able to give Lady Conway and her guests the fullest information. As commonly happened in the seventeenth century, though not in ours, the marvel of the butler was mixed up with ordinary folklore. In the records and researches of the existing Society for Psychical Research, folklore and fairies hold no place. The Conformist, however, had this tale to tell: the butler of a gentleman unnamed, who lived near Lord Orrery's seat in Ireland, fell in, one day, with the good people, or fairies, sitting at a feast. The fairies, therefore, endeavoured to spirit him away, as later they carried off Mr. Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, in 1692. Lord Orrery, most kindly, gave the butler the security of his castle, where the poor man was kept, 'under police protection,' and watched, in a large room. Among the spectators were Mr, Greatrakes himself, and two bishops, one of whom may have been Jeremy Taylor, an active member of the society. Late in the afternoon, the butler was 'perceived to rise from the ground, whereupon Mr. Greatrix and another lusty man clapt their hands over his shoulders, one of them before, and the other behind, and weighed him down with all their strength, but he was forcibly taken up from them; for a considerable time he was carried in the air to and fro, over their heads, several of the company still running under him, to prevent him receiving hurt if he should fall;' so says Glanvill. Faithorne illustrates this pleasing circumstance by a picture of the company standing out, ready to 'field the butler, whose features display great concern.' {90a}

Now we know that Mr. Greatrakes told this anecdote, at Ragley, first to Mrs. Foxcroft, and then to the company at dinner. Mr. Alfred Wallace, F.R.S., adduces Lord Orrery and Mr. Greatrakes as witnesses of this event in private life. Mr. Wallace, however, forgets to tell the world that the fairies, or good people, were, or were believed to be, the agents. {90b} Fairies still cause levitation in the Highlands. Campbell of Islay knew a doctor, one of whose patients had in vain tried to hold down a friend who was seized and carried to a distance of two miles by the sluagh, the fairy folk. {90c} Glanvill admits that Lord Orrery assured Lady Roydon, one of the party at Ragley, that the Irish tale was true: Henry More had it direct from Mr. Greatrakes.

Here is a palpably absurd legend, but the reader is requested to observe that the phenomenon is said to have occurred in all ages and countries. We can adduce the testimony of modern Australian blacks, of Greek philosophers, of Peruvians just after the conquest by Pizarro, of the authors of Lives of the Saints, of learned New England divines, of living observers in England, India, and America. The phenomenon is technically styled 'levitation,' and in England was regarded as a proof either of witchcraft or of 'possession'; in Italy was a note of sanctity; in modern times is a peculiarity of 'mediumship'; in Australia is a token of magical power; in Zululand of skill in the black art; and, in Ireland and the West Highlands, was attributed to the guile of the fairies. Here are four or five distinct hypotheses. Part of our business, therefore, is to examine and compare the forms of a fable current in many lands, and reported to the circle at Ragley by the Miraculous Conformist.

Mr. Greatrakes did not entertain Lady Conway and her friends with this marvel alone. He had been present at a trial for witchcraft, in Cork, on September 11, 1661. In this affair evidence was led to prove a story as common as that of 'levitation'--namely, the mysterious throwing or falling of stones in a haunted house, or around the person of a patient bewitched. Cardan is expansive about this manifestation. The patient was Mary Longdon, the witch was Florence Newton of Youghal. Glanvill prints the trial from a document which he regards as official, but he did not take the trouble to trace Mr. Aston, the recorder or clerk (as Glanvill surmises), who signed every page of the manuscript. Mr. Alfred Wallace quotes the tale, without citing his authority. The witnesses for the falling of stones round the bewitched girl were the maid herself, and her master, John Pyne, who deposed that she was 'much troubled with little stones that were thrown at her wherever she went, and that, after they had hit her, would fall on the ground, and then vanish, so that none of them could be found'. This peculiarity beset Mr. Stainton Moses, when he was fishing, and must have 'put down' the trout. Objects in the maid's presence, such as Bibles, would 'fly from her,' and she was bewitched, and carried off into odd places, like the butler at Lord Orrery's. Nicholas Pyne gave identical evidence. At Ragley, Mr. Greatrakes declared that he was present at the trial, and that an awl would not penetrate the stool on which the unlucky enchantress was made to stand: a clear proof of guilt.

Here, then, we have the second phenomenon which interested the circle at Ragley; the flying about of stones, of Bibles, and other movements of bodies. Though the whole affair may be called hysterical imposture by Mary Longdon (who vomited pins, and so forth, as was customary), we shall presently trace the reports of similar events, among people of widely remote ages and countries, 'from China to Peru'.

Among the guests at Ragley, as we said, was Dr. Joseph Glanvill, who could also tell strange tales at first hand, and from his own experience. He had investigated the case of the disturbances in Mr. Mompesson's house at Tedworth, which began in March, 1661. These events, so famous among our ancestors, were precisely identical with what is reported by modern newspapers, when there is a 'medium' in a family. The troubles began with rappings on the walls of the house, and on a drum taken by Mr. Mompesson from a vagrant musician. This man seems to have been as much vexed as Parolles by the loss of his drum, and the Psychical Society at Ragley believed him to be a magician, who had bewitched the house of his oppressor. While Mrs. Mompesson was adding an infant to her family the noise ceased, or nearly ceased, just as, at Epworth, in the house of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, it never vexed Mrs. Wesley at her devotions. Later, at Tedworth, 'it followed and vexed the younger children, beating their bedsteads with that violence, that all present expected when they would fall in pieces'. . . . It would lift the children up in their beds. Objects were moved: lights flitted around, and the Rev. Joseph Glanvill could assure Lady Conway that he had been a witness of some of these occurrences. He saw the 'little modest girls in the bed, between seven and eight years old, as I guessed'. He saw their hands outside the bed-clothes, and heard the scratchings above their heads, and felt 'the room and windows shake very sensibly'. When he tapped or scratched a certain number of times, the noise answered, and stopped at the same number. Many more things of this kind Glanvill tells. He denies the truth of a report that an imposture was discovered, but admits that when Charles II. sent gentlemen to stay in the house, nothing unusual occurred. But these researchers stayed only for a single night. He denied that any normal cause of the trouble was ever discovered. Glanvill told similar tales about a house at Welton, near Daventry, in 1658. Stones were thrown, and all the furniture joined in an irregular corroboree. Too late for Lady Conway's party was the similar disturbance at Gast's house of Little Burton June, 1677. Here the careful student will note that 'they saw a hand holding a hammer, which kept on knocking'. This _hand_ is as familiar to the research of the seventeenth as to that of the nineteenth century. We find it again in the celebrated Scotch cases of Rerrick (1695), and of Glenluce, while 'the Rev. James Sharp' (later Archbishop of St. Andrews), vouched for it, in 1659, in a tale told by him to Lauderdale, and by Lauderdale to the Rev. Richard Baxter. {94} Glanvill also contributes a narrative of the very same description about the haunting of Mr. Paschal's house in Soper Lane, London: the evidence is that of Mr. Andrew Paschal, Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge. In this case the trouble began with the arrival and coincided with the stay of a gentlewoman, unnamed, 'who seemed to be principally concerned'. As a rule, in these legends, it is easy to find out who the 'medium' was. The phenomena here were accompanied by 'a cold blast or puff of wind,' which blew on the hand of the Fellow of Queen's College, just as it has often blown, in similar circumstances, on the hands of Mr. Crookes, and of other modern amateurs. It would be tedious to analyse all Glanvill's tales of rappings, and of volatile furniture. We shall see that, before his time, as after it, precisely similar narratives attracted the notice of the curious. Glanvill generally tries to get his stories at first hand and signed by eye-witnesses.

Lady Conway was not behind her guests in personal experiences. Her ladyship was concerned with a good old-fashioned ghost. We say 'old-fashioned' of set purpose, because while modern tales of 'levitation' and flighty furniture, of flying stones, of rappings, of spectral hands, of cold psychical winds, are exactly like the tales of old, a change, an observed change, has come over the ghost of the nineteenth century. Readers of the Proceedings of the Psychical Society will see that the modern ghost is a purposeless creature. He appears nobody knows why; he has no message to deliver, no secret crime to reveal, no appointment to keep, no treasure to disclose, no commissions to be executed, and, as an almost invariable rule, he does not speak, even if you speak to him. The recent inquirers, notably Mr. Myers, remark with some severity on this vague and meaningless conduct of apparitions, and draw speculative conclusions to the effect that the ghost, as the Scotch say, 'is not all there'. But the ghosts of the seventeenth century were positively garrulous. One remarkable specimen indeed behaved, at Valogne, more like a ghost of our time than of his own. {95} But, as a common rule, the ghosts in whom Lady Conway's friends were interested had a purpose: some revealed the spot where a skeleton lay; some urged the payment of a debt, or the performance of a neglected duty. One modern spectre, reported by Mr. Myers, wandered disconsolate till a debt of three shillings and tenpence was defrayed. {96} This is, perhaps, the lowest figure cited as a pretext for appearing. The ghost vouched for by Lady Conway was disturbed about a larger sum, twenty-eight shillings. She, an elderly woman, persecuted by her visits David Hunter, 'neat-herd at the house of the Bishop of Down and Connor, at Portmore, in 1663'. Mr. Hunter did not even know the ghost when she was alive; but she made herself so much at home in his dwelling that 'his little dog would follow her as well as his master'. The ghost, however, was invisible to Mrs. Hunter. When Hunter had at last executed her commission, she asked him to lift her up in his arms. She was not substantial like fair Katie King, when embraced by Mr. Crookes, but 'felt just like a bag of feathers; so she vanished, and he heard most delicate music as she went off over his head'. Lady Conway cross-examined Hunter on the spot, and expressed her belief in his narrative in a letter, dated Lisburn, April 29, 1663. It is true that contemporary sceptics attributed the phenomena to potheen, but, as Lady Conway asks, how could potheen tell Hunter about the ghost's debt, and reveal that the money to discharge it was hidden under her hearthstone?

The scope of the Ragley inquiries may now be understood. It must not be forgotten that witchcraft was a topic of deep interest to these students. They solemnly quote the records of trials in which it is perfectly evident that girls and boys, either in a spirit of wicked mischief, or suffering from hysterical illusions, make grotesque charges against poor old women. The witches always prick, pinch, and torment their victims, being present to them, though invisible to the bystanders. This was called 'spectral evidence'; and the Mathers, during the fanatical outbreaks at Salem, admit that this 'spectral evidence,' unsupported, is of no legal value. Indeed, taken literally, Cotton Mather's cautions on the subject of evidence may almost be called sane and sensible. But the Protestant inquisitors always discovered evidence confirmatory. For example, a girl is screaming out against an invisible witch; a man, to please her, makes a snatch at the empty air where she points, and finds in his hand a fragment of stuff, which again is proved to be torn from the witch's dress. It is easy to see how this trick could be played. Again, a possessed girl cries that a witch is tormenting her with an iron spindle, grasps at the spindle (visible only to her), and, lo, it is in her hand, and is the property of the witch. Here is proof positive! Again, a girl at Stoke Trister, in Somerset, is bewitched by Elizabeth Style, of Bayford, widow. The rector of the parish, the Rev. William Parsons, deposes that the girl, in a fit, pointed to different parts of her body, 'and where she pointed, he perceived a red spot to arise, with a small black in the midst of it, like a small thorn'; and other evidence was given to the same effect. The phenomenon is akin to many which, according to medical and scientific testimony, occur to patients in the hypnotic state. The so-called stigmata of Louise Lateau, and of the shepherd boy put up by the Archbishop of Reims as a substitute for Joan of Arc, are cases in point. But Glanvill, who quotes the record of the trial (January, 1664), holds that witchcraft is proved by the coincidence of the witch's confession that she, the devil, and others made an image of the girl and pierced it with thorns! The confession is a piece of pure folklore: poor old Elizabeth Style merely copies the statements of French and Scotch witches. The devil appeared as a handsome man, and as a black dog! Glanvill denies that she was tortured, or 'watched'--that is, kept awake till her brain reeled. But his own account makes it plain that she was 'watched' after her confession at least, when the devil, under the form of a butterfly, appeared in her cell.

This rampant and mischievous nonsense was dear to the psychical inquirers of the Restoration; it was circulated by Glanvill, a Fellow of the Royal Society; by Henry More; by Sinclair, a professor in the University of Glasgow; by Richard Baxter, that glory of Nonconformity, who revels in the burning of an 'old reading parson'-- that is, a clergyman who read the Homilies, under the Commonwealth. This unlucky old parson was tortured into confession by being 'walked' and 'watched'--that is, kept from sleep till he was delirious. Archbishop Spottiswoode treated Father Ogilvie, S. J., in the same abominable manner, till delirium supervened. Church, Kirk, and Dissent have no right to throw the first stone at each other.

Taking levitation, haunting, disturbances and apparitions, and leaving 'telepathy' or second sight out of the list for the present, he who compares psychical research in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries finds himself confronted by the problem which everywhere meets the student of institutions and of mythology. The anthropologist knows that, if he takes up a new book of travels in the remotest lands, he will find mention of strange customs perfectly familiar to him in other parts of the ancient and modern world. The mythologist would be surprised if he encountered in Papua or Central Africa, or Sakhalin, a perfectly _new_ myth. These uniformities of myth and custom are explained by the identical workings of the uncivilised intelligence on the same materials, and, in some cases, by borrowing, transmission, imitation.

Now, some features in witchcraft admit of this explanation. Highland crofters, even now, perforate the image of an enemy with pins; broken bottle-ends or sharp stones are put, in Russia and in Australia, in the footprints of a foe, for the purpose of laming him; and there are dozens of such practices, all founded on the theory of sympathy. Like affects like. What harms the effigy hurts the person whose effigy is burned or pricked. All this is perfectly intelligible. But, when we find savage 'birraarks' in Australia, fakirs in India, saints in mediaeval Europe, a gentleman's butler in Ireland, boys in Somerset and Midlothian, a young warrior in Zululand, Miss Nancy Wesley at Epworth in 1716, and Mr. Daniel Home in London in 1856-70, all triumphing over the law of gravitation, all floating in the air, how are we to explain the uniformity of stories palpably ridiculous?