354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



MIDDLE-AGE SPIEITUALISM. 



THE doctrine of human intercourse with invisible beings or spirits 

 is as old as superstition, and has its fashions, or, rather, it takes 

 on different phases according to the degrees of ignorance and stu- 

 pidity that characterize society. It was one thing in Greece and 

 Rome, and a very different thing in the middle ages. In the former 

 there was a mythologic machinery of gods and goddesses, who med- 

 dled actively with terrestrial affairs, both in peace and war. This 

 was the dignified sort of spiritualism that is embalmed in classical 

 literature, and which continues to form the corner-stone of a " col- 

 lege education." 



The spiritualism of the middle ages took a very different shape. 

 It was more intense, realistic, practical, and vulgar — more earnest, 

 and, we are bound to say, more honest. The spirits were brought to 

 bear, so to speak, more intimately upon common life. The line be- 

 tween good and bad spirits was more sharply drawn ; they were 

 angels or demons, ever working mischief or benefit to mankind. 

 The art of evoking spirits became a kind of craft under the names of 

 divination, magic, sorcery, enchantment, necromancy, and witchcraft. 

 In the modern survival of these old practices of evoking spirits we get 

 very different results. The ghosts believed to be called up by ma- 

 nipulation are of a more harmless character ; and the object seems to 

 be rather to get the spirits out, than to get anything out of them. 

 They are summoned more as a matter of curiosity, and for the solemn 

 amusement of credulous and vacant minds. 



Science has worked a great change in relation to this subject. It 

 has drawn the teeth of mediaeval ghostology. Though it has not ex- 

 tirpated the belief in spirits, it has greatly transformed and subdued 

 it, so that it is no longer the scourge and curse of society that it was 

 in the pre-scientific ages. We are apt to forget what we owe to 

 science in this respect, and the horrors that modern society has 

 escaped by getting rid of the grosser and more malignant forms of 

 belief in ghostly supersensuous and diabolic agency. But fully to 

 appreciate our advantages it is necessary, once in a while, to turn 

 back and contemplate the condition of things in the ages of ignorance, 

 when men were given over to the terrors of vicious and cruel supersti- 

 tions. An admirable book has been lately published, which presents 

 a vivid picture of the general state of mind and society a few cen- 

 turies ago in Western Europe, resulting from the current belief in 

 supernatural agencies, and we propose to cull a few statements from 

 its pages in illustration of the subject.* 



* The Magic of the Middle Ages. By Yiktor Rydberg. Translated from the Swedish 

 by August Hjalmar Edgren. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 



