752 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and therefore to make it a part of Ma- 

 ture, which we hold is simply to con- 

 fuse all distinctions and confound the 

 natural with the supernatural. Dr. Bu- 

 chanan cannot do this in the name of 

 science, for science itself has only come 

 into existence hy marking off the nat- 

 ural from the supernatural, and it be- 

 longs by its very essence and origin to 

 one term of this contrasted relation. 

 "We cannot undo the great work of sci- 

 ence, and cancel all that has been gained 

 in the intellectual progress of mankind, 

 by going back to primitive times when 

 the natural and the supernatural were 

 all mixed up, and nothing was known or 

 suspected of such things as the laws of 

 Nature. It was then believ.ed that, 

 there exists an upper sphere inhabited 

 by gods who interfered as they chose 

 with earthly matters; the spiritualists 

 now believe in a corresponding ghost- 

 realm, inhabited by disembodied spirits, 

 who have still the power of meddling 

 with the course of terrestrial affairs. 



This ultra - material realm, it is 

 claimed, is manifested by material ef- 

 fects. But it is not by those effects 

 which occur regularly and uniformly, 

 and to which we give the name of 

 laws, that it is the office of science to 

 trace out. These are not attributed to 

 spiritual agencies. The spirits are nev- 

 er alleged to be the causes of cohesion, 

 refraction, digestion, gravity, or any 

 of the matter-of-course operations that 

 go on around us. They are only dis- 

 closed to us by striking, wonderful, 

 exceptional, or miraculous manifesta- 

 tions; that is, the common order of 

 Nature gets along without them, and 

 they are only known by breaking 

 through it. In Nature we see with our 

 eyes; in the "psychic realm" men are 

 said to see with the backs of their 

 heads. In Nature tables remain at rest 

 upon the floor' forever unless some 

 definite terrestrial force is applied to 

 move them ; in the " psychic realm " 

 they travel about or rise to the ceiling 

 without the intervention of any earth- 



ly cause. In Nature a bouquet will not 

 pass through the woody barrier of a 

 door, or the resisting masonry of a 

 wall ; in the " psychic realm " " a large 

 bunch of hollyhocks, asters, laurels, 

 and other shrubs and flowers," is mys- 

 teriously spirited into a house without 

 coming through the usual openings in 

 the usual way by which material bodies 

 are transferred. In Nature, if a man 

 unguardedly loses his balance in a win- 

 dow, he falls to the earth ; but in the 

 "psychic realm" Mr. Home "floats in 

 tlie air by moonlight out of one win- 

 dow and in at another at a height of 

 seventy feet from the ground." In Na- 

 ture, if we wish to go to a house, we 

 must walk there or get a conveyance 

 to be carried, and then can only get in- 

 side by the opening of some passage of 

 entrance ; but in the " psychic realm " 

 buxom Mrs. Guppy " sails through the 

 air all the way from Highbury Park to 

 Lamb's Conduit Street, and is brought 

 by invisible agency into a room of which 

 the doors and windows were closed and 

 fastened, coming plump down in the 

 midst of a circle of eleven persons who 

 were sitting in the dark shoulder to 

 shoulder." 



Can those who believe these things 

 be said to maintain the laws of Nature ? 

 Certainly not, in any such sense as that 

 which science affirms. The spiritual- 

 ists say that these apparently miracu- 

 lous effects are not really miraculous, 

 but are simply the consequences of 

 higher laws of Nature by which the 

 lower ordinances of the iiiaterial sphere 

 are overcome. But it is clear that be- 

 fore the man of science can accept such 

 astounding propositions he must give 

 to the winds all those laws of the natu- 

 ral world which he has been accustomed 

 to regard as of demonstrated constancy. 

 In life, by all his resources, the most 

 gifted riian cannot suspend the opera- 

 tion of gravity upon a single particle 

 of matter by an infinitesimal fraction. 

 But when he dies we are taught that 

 his ghost can come back, and suspend 



