576 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tboritative revelation the visions of a man of great intellectual ability 

 and strong religious spirit, but highly imaginative disposition, the 

 peculiar feature of whose mind it was to dwell upon his own imagin- 

 ings. These he seems to have so completely separated from his 

 worldly life, that the Sweden borg who believed himself to hold inter- 

 course with the spiritual world and Swedenborg the mechanician and 

 metallurgist may almost be regarded as two distinct personalities. 



If, then, the high scientific attainments of some of the prominent 

 advocates of " spiritualism," and our confidence in their honesty, be 

 held to require our assent to what they narrate as their experiences, 

 in regard to a class of phenomena which they declare that they have 

 witnessed, but which they cannot reproduce for the satisfaction of 

 other men of science who desire to submit them to the rigorous tests 

 which they regard as necessary to substantiate their validity, then we 

 must, in like manner, accept the records of Swedenborg's revelations 

 as binding on our belief. That they were trxie to him I cannot doubt ; 

 and, in the same manner, I do not question that Mr. Crookes is thor- 

 oughly honest when he says that he has repeatedly witnessed the 

 "levitation of the human body." But I can regard his statements in 

 no other light than as evidence of the degree in which certain minds 

 are led, by the influence of strong " prepossession," to believe in the 

 creations of their own visual imagination. 



All history shows that nothing is so potent as religious enthusifism, 

 in fostering this tendency ; the very state of enthusiasm, in fact, being 

 the " possession " of the mind by fixed ideas, which overbear the 

 teachings of objective experience. These, when directed to great and 

 noble ends, may overcome the obstacles which deter cooler judgments 

 from attempting them ; but, on the other hand, may also move not 

 only individuals but great masses of people to extravagances at which 

 sober common-sense revolts ; as the history of the Flagellants, the 

 Dancing Mania, and other religious ej^idemics of the middle ages, for- 

 cibly illustrates. And nothing is more remarkable, in the history of 

 these epidemics, than the vividness with which people who were not 

 asleep saw visions that were obviously inspired by the prevalent reli- 

 gious notions of their times. Thus, some of the dancers saw heaven 

 opened, and the Saviour enthroned with the Virgin Mary ; while 

 others saw^hell yawning before their feet, or felt as if bathed in blood ; 

 their frantic leaps being prompted by their eagerness to reach toward 

 the one or to escape from the other. 



In the next place, I would briefly direct attention to the influence 

 of prepossessions on those interpretations of our sensational expe- 

 I'iences which we are prone to substitute for the statement of the ex- 

 periences themselves. Of such misinterpretations, the records of sci- 

 ence are full ; the tendency is one which besets every observer, and to 

 which the most conscientious have frequently yielded ; but I do not 

 know any more striking illustrations of it than I coiild narrate from 



