THE PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 729 



infamous and consigned to the mercies of antiquated laws), embodies 

 all the impulses of stolid ignorance and malignity which have in past 

 ages warred against science and innovation by prisons and by death- 

 penalties. 



Every great discoverer introduces something to human knowledge 

 different from the usual understanding of Nature, and is, therefore, by 

 the Carpenterian rule, a fit subject for persecution. The rigorous ap- 

 plication of this principle would check progress by a war upon the 

 greatest benefactors of mankind those who lead them into essentially 

 new ideas of Nature. The rule is therefore thoroughly satanic in its 

 moral aspect, while in its intellectual character it is thoroughly stolid, 

 being a declaration of war against the increase of knowledge in certain 

 directions forbidden by the bull of the materialistic pope. 



Considered as an appeal to that great tribunal, the public, this little 

 volume is an extraordinary piece of insolence what would be called 

 at any judicial tribunal a flagrant contempt of court, entitling the aj)- 

 plicant to summary dismissal and punishment. Dr. Carpenter not only 

 pronounces the public, to whom his book is an appeal, incompetent to 

 decide, virtually telling every reader that he has no right to an opinion 

 on what he has seen until Dr. Carpenter (or some one whom he recog- 

 nizes as a colleague) has told him what to think ; but he assumes, like 

 a " border-ruffian," to expel every witness from court who testifies 

 differently from himself. No matter how jjure the character, or how 

 lofty the intelligence, if they disagree with him they are falsifiers ; but, 

 as to all who agree, their testimony is valuable, no matter how con- 

 temptible its source. 



It is pitiable to see a gentleman of Dr. Carpenter's standing repro- 

 ducing the obsolete trash which public intelligence had buried in 

 oblivion. The toe-joint and knee-joint theory of rappings was speedily 

 exploded in America, and has scarcely been heard of for twenty years. 

 Rappings have occurred in thousands of families, in spite of their in- 

 credulity, and compelled them to recognize an invisible power which* 

 acts sometimes with force sufficient to break furniture, and to be heard 

 at considerable distances. As Dr. Carpenter manifests a remarkable 

 ignorance of the progress and present status of spiritualism, it is 

 probable he does not know that the joint-rapping certificate to which 

 Mrs. Culver's name was attached was refuted immediately after its pub- 

 lication. The seances she describes never occurred at all, Catharine 

 Fox being at that time seventy miles distant at Auburn. How un- 

 manly, how much like a malignant village gossip, in Dr. Carpenter to 

 dig up decomposed slanders, when the lady concerned, now Mrs. 

 Jencken, was in London, and he might at any time have satisfied 

 himself in an hour of the reality of true spirit-sounds and other 

 phenomena ! 



Throughout his long career. Dr. Carpenter has kept himself Avillfully 

 ignorant of mesmeric and spiritual facts, which are easier of access 



