PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SKEPTICISM. 



231 



did against windmills, and with equally preju- j 

 dicial results to himself, as a curious example 

 of fossilized skepticism. Thus Sergeant Cox, 

 who often quotes Dr. Carpenter, and is now 

 quoted by him with approval, speaks of the 

 learned doctor, in his recent address to the Psy- 

 chological Society, as being " enslaved and blind- 

 ed " by " prepossession," adding : 



" There is not a more notable instance of this 

 than Dr. Carpenter himself, whose emphatic warn- 

 ings to beware of it are doubtless the result of self- 

 consciousness. An apter illustration of this human 

 weakness there could not be. The characteristic 

 feature of his mind is prepossession. This weak- 

 ness is apparent in all his works. It matters not 

 what the subject, if once he has formed an opinion 

 upon it, that opinion so prepossesses his whole 

 mind that nothing adverse to it can find admission 

 there. It affects alike his senses and his judgment." 



I propose, therefore, as a companion picture 

 to that of Messrs. Crookes and "Wallace, the vic- 

 tims of an epidemic delusion, to exhibit Dr. Car- 

 penter as an example of what prepossession and 

 blind skepticism can do for a man. I shall show 

 how it makes a scientific man unscientific, a wise 

 man foolish, an honest man unjust. To refuse 

 belief to unsupported rumors of improbable 

 events, is enlightened skepticism ; to reject all 

 second-hand or anonymous tales to the injury or 

 depreciation of any one, is charitable skepticism ; 

 to doubt your own prepossessions when opposed 

 to facts observed and reobserved by honest and 

 capable men, is a noble skepticism. But the 

 skepticism of Dr. Carpenter is none of these. It 

 is a blind, unreasoning, arrogant disbelief, that 

 marches on from youth to age with its eyes shut 

 to all that opposes its own pet theories ; that 

 believes its own judgment to be infallible ; that 

 never acknowledges its errors. It is a skepticism 

 that clings to its refuted theories, and refuses to 

 accept new truths. 



Near the commencement of his article Dr. 

 Carpenter tells us that he recurs to this subject 

 as a duty to the public and to assist in curing a 

 dangerous mental disease ; and that he would 

 gladly lay it aside for the scientific investigations 

 which afford him the purest enjoyment. But he 

 also tells us that he honestly believes that he 

 possesses " unusual power of dealing with this 

 subject ; " and as Dr. Carpenter is not one to hide 

 the light of his " unusual powers " under a bushel, 

 we may infer that it is not pure duty which has 

 caused him, in addition to writing long letters to 

 Nature and announcing a " full answer " to my- 

 self and Mr. Crookes in the forthcoming new edi- 



tion of his " Lectures," to expend his valuable 

 time and energy on an article of forty-eight col- 

 umns, founded mainly on such a very shaky and 

 wn-scientific foundation as American newspaper 

 extracts and the unsupported statements of Mr. 

 Home, the medium ; ' while it is full of personal 

 animosity and the most unmeaning ridicule. With 

 extreme bad taste he compares a gentleman, who, 

 as a scholar, a thinker, and a writer, is Dr. Car- 



1 Mr. Home has always been treated by Dr. Carpen- 

 ter as an impostor: yet now he quotes him as an 

 authority, although Mr. Home's accusations against 

 other mediums are never authenticated in any way, 

 and appear to be in many cases pure imagination. 

 Dr. Carpenter will no doubt now disclaim any imputa- 

 tion against Mr. Home, and pretend to consider him 

 only as the victim of delusion. But this is absurd. 

 For does he not maintain that Mr. Home was never 

 " levitated," although in several cases the fact was 

 proved by his name being found written in pencil on 

 the ceiling, where it remained ? This must have been 

 imposture if the levitation were not, as claimed, a 

 reality. Do not the hands, other than those of any 

 persons present, which have often appeared at Mr. 

 Home's seances and have been visible and even tangi- 

 ble to all present, prove (in Dr. Carpenter's opinion) 

 imposture? Do not the red-hot coals carried about 

 the room in his hands prove chemical preparation, and 

 therefore imposture ? Is not the increase or decrease 

 of the weight of a table, as ascertained by a spring- 

 balance, which I have myself witnessed in Mr. Home's 

 presence, a trick, according to Dr. Carpenter ? Is not 

 the playing of the accordion in one hand, or when 

 both Mr. Home's hands are on the table, a clever im- 

 posture in Dr. Carpenter's opinion? But if any one 

 of these things ia admitted to be, not an imposture, 

 but a reality, then the whole foundation of the learned 

 but most illogical doctor's skepticism is undermined, 

 and he practically admits himself a convert to the/acts 

 of modern spiritualism. But he does not admit this ; 

 and as Mr. Home has carried on these alleged impost- 

 ures during his whole life, and has imbued thousands 

 of persons with a belief in their genuineness, Dr. Car- 

 penter must inevitably believe Mr. Home to be the 

 vilest of impostors and utterly untrustworthy. Yet 

 he quotes him as an authority, accepts as true all the 

 malicious stories retailed by this alleged impostor 

 against rival impostors, and believes every vague and 

 entirely unsupported statement to a like effect in Mr. 

 Home's last book ! This from an ex-professor of medi- 

 cal jurisprudence, who ought to have some rudiment- 

 ary notions of the value of evidence, is truly surprising. 

 It may be said that, although Dr. Carpenter thinks 

 Home an impostor, xoe believe in him, and therefore 

 ought to accept his evidence against other mediums. 

 But this is a fallacy. We believe that he is a medium, 

 that is, a machine or organization through whom cer- 

 tain abnormal and marvelous phenomena occur ; but 

 this implies no belief in his integrity or in his judg- 

 ment, any more than the extraordinary phenomenon 

 of double individuality exhibited in the case of the 

 French sergeant (which formed the subject of such an 

 interesting article by Prof. Huxley some time ago) im- 

 plies that the sergeant was a man of high moral char- 

 acter and superior judgment. 



