The scientific basis of spiritualism

Front matter

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CHAPTER I. The Basis : — Clairvoyance ; Direct Writing

page Typical Facts — Meaning of Spirit — Theory of Leibnitz — Proved Phenomena — Medial Frauds — Transfiguration — So-called Exposures — Testimony of a Jurist — Fairbairn

— Hopps — Herbert Spencer — Form-Manifestations among Indians — Personal Experience in Pneumatography — Joseph Cook's Statement — Watkins, the Medium — Hiram Sibley's Testimony — J. Edwin Hunt's — Phillips, the Medium — A. E. Wallace's Testimony — Zollner, Ulrici, Fichte, and Wundt

— Experiences of Baron Guldenstubbe — Demonphobia — Testimony of Storer, Hayward, Beals, Wetherbee, Timayenis, Stebbins — Platform Proofs — Mrs. Simpson — Bellachini, the Conjurer — Stainton-Moses — Dr. Wyld — Slade . 13-66

CHAPTER II. Facts against Theories

The Materialistic Theory insufficient — Prof. Denslow's Statement— His Experiences with Slade and Mrs. Simpson — Samuel Watson, Wesley, Priestley, Oberlin — List of Phenomena — Theory of Mundane Agency — Significance of the Phenomena— Zbllner's Experiments — Knots in an Endless Cord — Testimony of T. L. Nichols — Opinions of Plutarch, Cicero, St. Augustine — The " Scientific American " — Clairvoyance and Direct Writing as a Scientific Basis — Cognate Phenomena analogically proved 67-

CHAPTER III. Eeplt to Objections oe Wundt

Open Letter to Ulrici — Slade in Leipsic — Wundt contradicts Himself — Objections to a Scientific Recognition — No Violation of Nature's Laws — Objections answered — Youmans —

10 CONTENTS.

A Common Fallacy — Universal Causality — Frivolous Charges against Slade — Wundt's Ignorance of the Subject — Ulrici and Fichte on the Phenomena — Prayer of the Prince Imperial — Witchcraft explained by Spiritualism — Quotation from "Planchette " — Blackstone — Lecky — The Phelps Phenomena — Cook on the Spiritual Body — Materialization — Baden Powell

— Animism — Leibnitz and Kant — Notions of the Uncivilized

— Jugglery refuted by the Jugglers .... 87-13o

CHAPTER IV. Clairvoyance a Spiritual Faculty

More Objections — A. K. Wallace — Dr. Elliotson — William White — Our Visit to Dr. Ashburner — J. F. Deleuze — Dr. Georget's Posthumous Testimony — Analysis of Clairvoyance — Importance of Objective Phenomena — Trance- Speaking often at Fault — Deceptive Spirits — Mrs. Eichmond against the Scientific Basis — Gross Contradictions — Science the only Safeguard — Tyndall's Investigations — William Crookes — T. W. Higginson — Darius Lyman on Scientific Specialists — John Fiske — Clairvoyance again — Alexis Didier — Houdin's Letter — Alexis explains — Hudson Tuttle — Testimony of Dr. Carpenter's Brother 131-162

CHAPTER V. Is Spiritual Science Hostile to Religion?

The Argument from Tradition — John Stuart Mill's Admission

— System of I. H. Fichte — Theodore Parker on Spiritualism

— Henry Thomas Buckle — What is Religion? — Coleridge — Primitive Christianity — Science and Religion — Howells — Phenomenon of Christ's Reappearance — Reply to Weiss — Form-Manifestations — Dr. Gully — Author's Experience in Spirit-Identity — Materialization — Holyoake — Thackeray — Our Basis unassailable 163-195

CHAPTER VI. Phenomenal Proofs. — The Spirit-Body

The Spirk-Hand — Full-Form Manifestations — Testimony of Dr. Gardner, Dr. Wilkinson, &c. — Burnham describes Formation of Spirit- Hand— Calmet's Remarkable Testimony — Willis's Account of the Stabbing of a Spirit-Hand — Early Egyptian Testimony — What is Matter? — Levitation — St. Theresa— William Fishbough — Charles Bonnet — Dr. J. W. Draper — The German Physicists — Assertions of Clairvoy-

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12 CONTENTS.

Clifford — Tiedemann's Theory — Admiral Beaufort on Drowning — The Mind a Multiplex Unity — Reply to Lewes

— Case of Rev. Mr. Tennant — Tacts of Idiocy — Agassiz and Dr. Brown-Sequard — Abererombie -— Swedenborg on the Inner Memory — J. Le Conte — Maudsley — No Unconscious Cerebration — Jacobi, Schelling, Plotinus, Lessing— Discrete States — Tbe Theory applied to Spirits — Philosophy of the Unconscious — Hartmann — His Unconscious Deity conscious

— Kirchman's Analysis . . . . . . 270-294

CHAPTER X.

The Unseen World a Reality.

Undiscriminating Antagonism — More Danger from ignoring than from investigating — Objections of David Swing — Facts in Confutation — Biblical Testimony — Swedenborgian Objections — What Rev. Mr. Mercer has to say — Theism of Spiritualism compared — Desire for Continuous Life — Temperamental Differences — Spurious Phenomena as related to Genuine — Kant's Prediction of Intercommunication — He anticipates our Proofs — Shelley a Spiritualist — His Letter to Godwin — George Eliot — Reply to Leslie Stephen . 295-321

CHAPTER XI.

The Sentiment of Immortality.

Indifference to Life's Continuance — Effects of a False Psychology — The Will and the Temperament — Author's Acquaintance with Miss Martineau — Her Idiosyncrasies — Wm. Humboldt on a Future Life — Bradlaugh — His Discussion with Burns — Bigotry in Secularism — Genesis of Belief in Spirits — David F. Strauss — His Dismay at Life's Continuance — The Alarm superfluous — Felix Adler on Immortality — Not too much, but too little — The " Lust " for a Future Life — Fallacies of Adler and Emerson — Goethe's Demoniac Men — Buckle — Hortense Bonaparte — Col. R. G. Ingersol on his Brother's Death— Clifford . . . 322-333

CHAPTER XII.

The Great Generalization.

Theism in the Light of Spiritualism — The Divine Personality — Prayer — Doctrine of Spheres — Psychometry — Illustrative Facts — Dangerous Assumptions — Object-Souls — Incautious Investigations — Concluding Reflections . . 334-349

THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS

SPIEITUALISM

Chapter I

THE BASIS. CLAIRVOYANCE AND DIRECT WRITING.

The great facts of clairvoyance, and direct, independent writing, have been so widely demonstrated, and are so clearly demonstrable, under proper conditions, that no thorough, sincere investigator now disputes their occurrence. The conditions under which the}T have taken place have been such as to rule out all possibility of fraud. New testimony in respect to them is offered every day, from every quarter of the globe. Representing, as they do, both the physical and the mental sides of many analogous phenomena, they may be fairly selected as typical facts, now placed beyond dispute, and affording a basis of certainty for a psycho-plrysical science, warranting an implicit belief in immortality.

"It is a question, in the first instance, of evidence; it then follows, to explain, so far as we can, such facts as may have been established." So wrote the eminent English civilian and prime minister, William E. Gladstone, October 16, 1878, in respect to these phenomena.

This is the rational view of the subject. There are certain specialists, however, in sciences quite distinct from that of psj^cho-physical phenomena, who assert that no amount of human evidence could make credible to them facts like clairvoyance and direct writing. Dr. William B. Carpenter, of England, disregarding the testimoi^ of his brother, the late Philip Pearsall Carpenter, an eminent naturalist, who satisfied himself while in America of the basic truths of Spiritualism,* tells us that our common sense ought to contradict our senses when these testify to such marvels. And there are grave doctors of medicine, such as Richet, Hammond, and Beard, who declare persistently, through the " Popular Science Monthly," one, that " no well-demonstrated fact has ever permitted us to conclude that such a thing as double sight, or clairvoyance, exists ; " the other two, that there never was a case of clairvoyance in the world's history. When men start with the declaration that no amount of human testimony shall prove to them the occurrence of a natural phenomenon, the general conclusion will be, that their concurrence in regard to any fact is not important to the interests of science.

Modern Spiritualism has its reason-for-being in well-established facts j not onfy of the past, as far back as history extends, but of the present. For these, throughout the ages, but one explanation, accounting for them in their aggregate, has yet been found : it is that which refers them to high preterhuman or supra-material powers, exerted either unconsciously and abnormally by a so-called human subject, or put forth by invisible beings, manifesting intelligence and the ability to overcome material impediments, not superable b}^ any plrysical means known to science.

The word spiritual is not here erupted as a sufficient solution of the mystery, or as intimating a distinction between tiling and nothing. The very etj'mology of the word

* See "Memoirs of P. P. Carpenter, by his brother, Russell Laut Carpenter. London: C. Keagan Paul, 1880."

spirit (spiritus, breath) shows that something occupying space, though attenuated perhaps to invisibility, is intended. But there is a confusion still in the use of the word ; for it is applied by different thinkers to signify not only the organic spirit-form and its constituents, but its inner essence, — that which knows and thinks and is the synonyme of mind, or what the French call esprit.

According to Leibnitz, the essence of all being, whether mind or matter, is force. The whole universe, bodies as well as minds, is made up of monads, or ultimate atoms, homogeneous in essence, but endowed by the Creator with certain powers, and developed in degrees infinitely diverse. Thus the changes which the monad undergoes are only the gradual and successive evolutions of its own internal powers. Every monad having both body and soul, but being in itself a simple, indestructible essence, the whole material world, even in its inorganic parts, is animated throughout. Thus matter is but an expression of force, and force is the mode of action of that which exists and is alone persistent. Material forms have no stability. An organism is a temporary form, from which there is a continual efflux of particles. It is like the flame of a lamp, being ceaselessly fed as it ceaselessly wastes away. The something underlying all phenomenal existence is persistent. Matter, as we know it, is incapable of acting of itself ; it must be acted upon ; but this energy underlying and fashioning all forms is the same to-day as yesterday. The matter passes indifferently from mould to mould, retaining no character of individuality. Spirit alone can act ; matter is but the result of the act.

Thus in the system of Leibnitz the substantial does not belong to organs, but to their original elements. Matter, in the vulgar sense, as something conceived to be without mind, does not exist. There is no death. That which is called death is only the soul losing a part of the monads which compose the mechanism of its earthly body, the living elements of which go back to a condition similar to that in which they were before they came upon the theatre of the world. Thus the immortality of the individual is secure. In giving the monad a body, Leibnitz departs from the traditional conception of corporeality. The body of the monad is not bod}7 in the ordinary sense of the word, but a force.

Thus nothing really dies ; all exists, and is only transformed. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. He is the Primitive Monad, the Primitive Substance ; all other monads are its figurations.

Are the souls of the lower animals immortal ? Yes ; they have sensation and memory. Every soul is a monad, for the power possessed by every soul to act on itself proves its substantiality , and all substances are monads. That which appears to us as a body is in reality and substantially an aggregate of many monads. The materiality through which they express themselves being but a transient phenomenon, it is only in consequence of the confusion in our sensuous perceptions that this plurality presents itself to us as a continuous whole, v Plants and minerals are, as it were, sleeping monads with unconscious ideas ; in plants these ideas are formative vital forces.

" I am filled with astonishment," saj^s Leibnitz, l' at the nature of the human mind, of whose powers and capabilities we have no adequate conception." There is much in Spiritualism that is in harmony with his views. The fundamental idea of his philosophical s}rstem is, that the spiritual or theologico-teleological conception of the world should not exclude the plrysico-mechanical conception, but that the two should be united. Thus he seems to have anticipated the attempt of the pseudo-science, represented b}r Haeckel, Huxlej^, Clifford, and others, to find in matter and mechanism an explanation of all mental phenomena. He argues that particular phenomena can and must be mechanically explained ; but that we should not, at the same time, be unmindful of their designs, which Providence is able to accomplish by the very use of mechanical means; that the principles of physics and mechanics themselves depend on the direction of a Supreme Intelligence, and can only be explained ivhen we take that intelligence into consideration.

This is one of the strong points in Leibnitz's s}'stem. Reason is not individual ; it is universal and absolute, and consequently infallible. There are sophists who dispute this, and who say they know only by experience that a whole is greater than a part ; and that, in a world of which they have no experience, two and two may make five. Not all are free who scoff at fetters ; and the sophists here stultify their own proposition. The human effort to reason may, according to Leibnitz, often be a failure, but the eternal principle of human reason must be nothing less than divine reason. Every serious conviction must cover a concealed faith in thought, in reason, in God. Experience cannot account for innate principles ; on the contrary, innate principles are required to account for the treasures of experience.

The proved phenomena, indicative of the operation of an intelligent force outside of any visible organism, have been discredited, on various pretences, by the mnny who have not had leisure or inclination to carry out a faithful investigation. The truly marvellous character of some of the phenomena has provoked incredulity ; the apparent frauds with which mediums, supposed to be genuine, have been frequently charged, have excited a proper distrust ; the extraordinary feats sometimes performed b}^ individuals claiming to be "exposers" of Spiritualism, and the audacity of their assertions, have confounded not a few whose knowledge of the subject was limited.

The idea that because of the marvellousness of an occur- 2 rence the laws of nature have been violated is, when analyzed, a mere superstition. A medium is lifted to the ceiling, but the law of gravitation is no more violated in the act than it is when we jump a ditch. Admit the theory of a spirit-force not subject to the law, and the fact becomes credible. The frauds charged upon approved mediums, like Florence Cook, Miss Wood, Mr. Williams, and others, raise questions, the answer to which will be naturally scouted by those not intimately acquainted with the history of the phenomena. I will here only intimate what intelligent investigators accept as the solution of some, at least, of the cases in which mediums, previously and subsequently known to be genuine, have been caught in what seemed prima facie frauds.

The influences affecting the phenomena are extremely subtile and imperfectly known. But I have repeatedly learned this from practical study and experience : ^The unuttered thoughts, the will, the animus, of persons promiscuously present at a sitting for phenomena, have an effect upon their character and facility of production, which is none the less pjotent because occult and incredible to the unprepared mind"; I have known a medium — whose honesty was never questioned, and in whose presence the most indubitable phenomena would readily occur under the severest test conditions — to be medially paralyzed by the presence of two or three persons, each bringing perhaps an adverse spiritual environment, all vehemently opposed to the success of the experiment, and not only intent on the detection of fraud, but earnestly hoping to find it. Admitting the Spiritual theory, is it unreasonable to suppose that such persons may have brought influences which, if the medium had not intuitively resisted them, would have so affected her as to confirm their own unbelief and suspicions of trick? That this has been often done where the transfigured body of the medium has been put forward as a spirit-form, is more than probable.* If we can believe the testimony of careful investigators both in Europe and America, the trick is not an uncommon one. The best way, however, for the novice, when absolute tests are wanted, is to trust neither spirit nor medium, but to exact conditions, if he can get them, which will be a guaranty against misconstruction or deception, whether from the supposed spirit-world or this.

That genuine mediums may sometimes purposety resort ! to fraud in cases where the supersensual power producing the phenomena is not readily available, is highly probable. There is, first, the temptation of exciting an exaggerated estimate of one's ready mediumship ; and there is, secondly, the temptation of getting money which might be refused in the event of failure. Most mediums are dependent on the exhibition of their powers for a support ; and if they sometimes supplement real phenomena by devices of their own, it must not be taken always as verif}'- ing the maxim, False in one thing, false in all.-f That the charge of fraud is often the result of sheer ignorance on the part of the accuser, has been repeatedly proved. He has jumped to conclusions, sincere enough, but which a little

* Allan Kardec (the nom de plume of L. D. H. Rivail) relates, in his " Book on Mediums," a case of transfiguration, or change of aspect, of a living body. In the suburbs of St. Etienne (1R58-9), a young girl of fifteen had the faculty of taking on, at certain times, all the appearances of certain persons dead. The phenomenon was renewed hundreds of times. On several occasions she took the appearance of her deceased brother, presenting not only his face, but the height, size, and weight of his body.

t An English Spiritualist, well versed in the phenomena, writes (November, 1878) : " I go so far as to say that a sensitive medium may, in his normal state, be impelled to trick through the agency of his surroundings. He is more to be pitied than condemned. I have sat at public dark seances with Williams, Home, Eglinton, Bastian, and Taylor; and I have also seen what I consider real manifestations. Hundreds of others have seen the same in their own private residences, with the same mediums, and under circumstances where trick was impossible. Such being the case, I do not think a person who is a real susceptible would risk his livelihood knowingly by a trick palpable and easy of detection. The higher the susceptibility, the more room is there for trick. Often, if the sitting is too long, and the medium exhausted, low influences will rush in."

20 IMMOETAL LIFE

more knowledge on his part would have shown to be doubtful or fallacious.

With regard to the so-called " exposers " of Spiritualism, it has occasionally happened that a person with some little medial power, not being able to get a living by the display of it, or becoming disaffected towards Spiritualists as neglectful of his claims, has done his best to get the patronage of the opponents of the phenomena. If he has a glib tongue, a plenty of what the profane call cheek, and some little skill in sleight-of-hand, he may easily persuade the inexperienced that some of his tricks are real duplicates of medial phenomena. In regard to those that are inexplicable as human tricks, he ma}^ with the aid of a cabinet or a curtain, do things in which the co-operation of a low order of spirits may be the real explanation. In such cases he always has an excuse ready for not exhibiting in the light to an audience his modus operandi. He will sa}r that he will explain it at some future time ; or that he cannot afford to disclose his secret, so long as he can make money by it. Several of these impostors have succeeded in attracting large audiences and getting from the enemies of Spiritualism the pecuniar}" aid which the}' could not get from the friends.

Any " exposer" who professes to know that clairvoyance ^-nd pneumatography are demonstrable tricks, may be safely set down as either self-deceived or wantonly a deceiver. His pretence that the}" are accomplished by sleight-of-hand is a mere assumption, and he generally knows it to be untrue. Repeatedly during the last thirty-three years I have had letters of caution from friendly persons, who had great confidence in their own sagacity, informing me that certain phenomena I had proclaimed as genuine had been proved by some itinerant "exposer" to be tricks. In every instance the " exposer" turned out to be either an impostor or a mere "joker" and pretender; and up to this time no one of the phenomena generally accredited by careful and experienced investigators all over the world has been shaken from its basis of actual truth.

The fact that many persons calling themselves Spiritualists have prejudiced their cause by seeking medial light on business or domestic matters, properly under the jurisdiction of their own reason and sense of right, has given rise to a great amount of prejudice among those who have not patiently investigated the various phenomena for themselves. If the inquirer really wants the truth, he will soon divest himself of the objections which the eager credulity of novices, or the frauds of mercenarj7 mediums, ma}^ have provoked. He will learn that there are genuine phenomena, justifying the belief in a force preterhuman and spiritual. If the great subject has been abused, it is the fault of those who have kept aloof from it.

An eminent jurist, occupying one of the highest judicial positions within the gift of the people of his State, writes as follows, under date of July 10, 1880 :

"My first attempts at investigation ended in a consciousness of having been imposed upon by fraud ; and the dangerous and immoral principles avowed b}T those seeming to be leaders in the cause, prevented me for 3rears from having anything more to do with it. But within the last six years, the cause having been purified of some of its excrescences, the light has come to me unsought. Having been accustomed for thirty years to deal with, and the last twelve 3'ears to weigh evidence, I have given to the subject my best faculties, always under the dominion of an inborn skeptical nature, and have become thoroughly satisfied as to the two great elementary facts, viz. : a continued existence after death, and that those who have gone before may communicate with persons in the flesh. In being brought to that conclusion, I have yielded only to that which, being scanned as evidence, would bear the most rigid and skeptical scrutiny from the solitary standpoint of reason, unswayed b}T credulity or superstition."

The Spiritualist's theory is, that life is continuous ; that the word immortal must be taken in its etymological sense as not-dying. Continuity of being must then be a natural effect of present causes. Thus the inquiry into the grounds for a belief in the existence of spiritual organs and powers in our human complex, alreadj' manifesting their operation in the earth-life, and forming the basis of life common to this state of being and the next, becomes a strictly scientific and experimental process, dealing with the finer and more recondite parts of the science of physiology, or with the ps37cho-physiological developments of our mixed nature. It is because the fact of a future life has been confounded with speculative theological or religious questions, that it has shared their reputation as something transcending the verification of science.

There are pious persons who declare that but for the authority of the Bible, they should have no ground for belief either in God or in a future life. On this point, John Page Hopps eloquently remarks :

" What can at present be said to people whose conception of a future life is the rising again of an exterminated body ? — or who, without reflection, and as by a coarse animal instinct, laugh to scorn the assertion that a spirit is a greater reality than a body? — or who tell us they must give up belief in immortality altogether, if the texts of Scripture the}7 rely upon are in a book that is not infallible. It does not matter how good, or devout, or otherwise cultivated these people are ; their ideas concerning spirit and spirit-life show that in relation to this tremendous subject they are only children. . . . The first thing to do is to take the whole subject out of the realm of mysteiy, unreality, fantasy, and awe, and to make it the object of cool thought, and, if possible, of scientific experiment."

And this is precisely what the intelligence manifesting itself through these so-called spiritual phenomena seems to be trying to make us do.

" Spiritualism," says the late Dr. Hallock, "is no new problem that ought to have taken the disciples of science by surprise : it has rapped at the door of every thinker throughout the ages for a solution. Wanting it, the popular thought, misdirected by a theology that was stoneblind and remains so, has invested the immortality of its own faith with grave-clothes, and converted it into a scarecrow, transforming the most beautiful and sublime process whereby humanity is glorified, into a ghastly skeleton, which its ignorance has named death, and converted it into an object of the profoundest horror. It was for science to strip these rags from the immortal spirit. Why has it not been done?"

The facts which have been conclusively substantiated by the somnambulic, mesmeric, and spiritualistic phenomena, all forming a related group, of the last hundred }Tears, are regarded as accounting for and corroborating the persistent belief among all races of men, in all ages, that, notwithstanding the dissolution of his physical husk, the individual man, with all the faculties pertaining to his mental, moral, and emotional nature, survives, and, under right conditions, can give proofs of this survival to those whom he left behind on earth. All theories of the genesis of the belief in immortality, which do not admit, as the important original factor, a knowledge, got by the experimental method, of actual phenomena, objective and subjective, are defective and delusive.

"The immortality of the soul," says Mr. A. M. Fairbairn, " though a primary, can hardly be considered a primitive religious belief. It involves conceptions at once too abstract and positive to be intelligible to primitive man, and what he cannot conceive he cannot believe."

Spiritualism contradicts this assumption. A life hereafter was conceivable to the primitive man because he had objective proofs of the existence of his departed relatives and friends in organisms of new and enlarged power. It required no metaph3Tsical reasoning to convince him of this fact, any more than of any equally mysterious fact in nature, confirmed by the evidence of his senses and by his limited reasoning powers.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the Fortnightly Review, May 1, 1870, expresses his opinion that the belief in a double personality may have originated among savages from seeing their moving shadows, or the reflection of their faces in the water ; and for a corroboration of this fantastic notion, he refers to the reluctance which certain savages have evinced to having their portraits taken. That there are fools among savages as well as among civilized races is not to be doubted ; but it is an arbitrary assumption to suppose that savages generally are so unobservant of cause and effect as to entertain false notions in regard to the cause of a shadow, whether moving or stationary. The large collection of portraits of eminent chiefs of Indian tribes, in possession of the United States government, is a proof that their representative men do not object to having their likenesses taken.

All such far-fetched attempts at explanation proceed from an ignorance of the fact that nearly all the savage races have had frequent experience in objective spiritual phenomena, and that this is the reason why so few of them disbelieve in a dual personalhry. The phenomenon of palpable form-manifestations by supposed spirits is well known to the North American Indians. Of this I am assured by my correspondent, Mr. Granville T. Sproat, a government agent long resident among the Indians of Lake Superior, and who has testified publicly to the fact. Intelligent Indians were fully persuaded that their deceased friends had reappeared palpably, and at times joined in their dances.

As far back as history goes, the power of divination and clairvoyance has been regarded by faithful investigators either as a faculty of the human soul developed in some of its states, under peculiar conditions, or else an indication of independent spirit action. From Pythagoras to Plato, from Plato to Plutarch, and from Plutarch to tens of thousands of competent witnesses in the nineteenth century, the phenomena have been admitted. " Si divlnatio est dii sunt" (if there is divination, there are gods, or spirits), is an old Latin proverb. The deduction is legitimate.

But there are physical phenomena supplementing and confirming those indicating transcendent faculties of perception. Consider the one stupendous fact of pneumatography,* or independent writing. I hold out a clean slate, or I put a sheet of blank paper in a drawer, which I lock, and in a few seconds the slate, or the paper, is covered with intelligible writing. Do you say it is a physical impossibilhVy ? That may be. But as it takes place, — our senses and our common sense testifying to the fact, — then it may be a spiritual or psycho-physical possibility ; that is, it is not to be explained by any purely physical, or mechanical, or material process known to the most advanced science, or conceivable as independent of mind.

"What pretence have I," says John Wesley, "to deny well-attested facts because I cannot comprehend them?" One of the capital objections is this: "Did you ever see an apparition yourself?" "No; nor did I ever see a murder, yet I believe there is such a thing." Wesley lived to see what he believed to be an apparition, on three occasions.