SCIENCE.-SUPPLEMENT. 



FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1886. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM. 



The history of thought, says Dr. Bastian, has a 

 double aspect. Its'main object is to record the ad- 

 vance steps in the progress of civilization, to trace 

 the normal, psychological growth of racial culture, 

 and set forth the evolution of rationality. But it is 

 hardly less instructive to regard the shadowy side 

 of the picture, and study the mental movements of 

 that ever-present and vast portion of mankind who 

 by occult and mystic proceedings attempt to short- 

 circuit the roads to knowledge and immortality. 

 Weird notions and strange theories find a ready 

 home in the disordered brains of such semi-morbid 

 fanatics ; and, when once they gain hold on the 

 popular imagination and belief, such inhuman 

 pages of history as those that record the horrors 

 of witchcraft, the follies of alchemists and search- 

 ers for the philosopher's stone or the fountain of 

 eternal youth, the wide-spread misery of mental 

 epidemics or the bestial self-tortures of crazed 

 ascetics, must be written. These deviations from 

 the normal lines of progress — back-slidings, as 

 the Hebrew prophets termed them — present close 

 analogies in the mind of the evolutionist to 

 atavistic reversions in some ways, and to useless 

 rudimentary organs in others. They appear as 

 reversions to more primitive modes of thought in 

 the light of wiiat anthropology has told us of the 

 psychic life of savage tribes. 



Hardly a page in the story of the vagaries that have 

 turned aside the minds of our ancestors from the 

 straight path of knowledge but can find its paral- 

 lel in the fancies built up by untutored savages 

 to satisfy their dearest longings and quiet their 

 most constant fears. In brief, it is in the statistics 

 of thought that our author finds the material for 

 the complete study of intellectual evolution, and 

 quite as much of those modes of thought that are 

 reversions or survivals as of those that are in the 

 direct line of advance. Modern science has de- 

 cided to accept as its logic that system of princi- 

 ples most conveniently described as Baconian ; but 

 this process seems slow and insipid to those who 

 have the final goal of all revealed to their ecstatic 

 insight, and the logic on which they stake their 

 faith is such as can only be fully appreciated 

 when the eyes are calmed in dimly lit chambers, 



In sachen des spiritisrnus und einer naturioissenschaft- 

 lichen psychologie. Vou A. Bastian. Berlin, Strieker, 1886. 

 12°. 



the brain flushed with excitement, and the judg- 

 ment unsettled by intense expectancy. 



Spiritualism, theosophic lore, occult science, 

 and all the mysteries that follow in their train, 

 are simply the expression which this atavistic 

 tendency of human thought has taken in our 

 scientific century. When introspection, medita- 

 tion, revelation, or dogma were the current modes 

 of discovering truth, the occultists, mystics, and 

 the rest claimed them as the foundations of their 

 creed. To-day we experiment, observe with the 

 senses, photograph, and so on ; accordingly the 

 ' vital influence ' and ' telepathic impact ' has been 

 forced to leave its record in childish scribblings ; 

 our ghosts have been weighed and smelled and 

 photographed ; yes, even the methods of scien- 

 tific psychology (reaction-times) have been em- 

 ployed to discover the most beneficial kind of 

 ' smell-pills ' and the clothing in which our 

 soul can most conveniently disport itself. The 

 Hipp chronoscope is pictured on the frontispiece 

 of Jager's 'Entdeckung der seele.' Every insane- 

 asylum is a microcosmus of the world without. 

 Formerly our paranoics heard voices in the air : 

 now they hear them through the telephone. So, 

 too, this morbid pseudo-scientific spirit apes the 

 manners of the true goddess, and by such disguises 

 sues the favor of the world. \^ 



It is in some such strain as this that Dr. Bastian 

 as an antlnropologist not alone familiar with the 

 culture-history in which we form a link, but 

 thoroughly at home in the mind-habits of 'natu- 

 ral ' savage tribes not uncivilized but with a pecul- 

 iar civilization of their own, calls up the proces- 

 sion of modern spiritualists, theosophists, and their 

 like, and sits in judgment upon them. He shows 

 them how they are simply repeating, with new 

 costumes and improved scenic effects, the tragic 

 comedy of former times, and falling back upon 

 the play-tricks of the childish savages whom they 

 profess to despise. 



It would be a vain attempt to fill out, however 

 roughly, this sketch of Dr. Bastian's point of 

 view. For that, the reader must (though not 

 without misgivings on the part of the reviewer) 

 be referred to the original. The author is no 

 stylist. There is no attempt at any classification or 

 subdivision ; no index ; a preface that reads like 

 part of the text ; no chapters, simply 216 pages of 

 tersely written paragraphs. Add to this, constant 

 quotations from seven or eight languages (in one 

 passage five languages occur in four lines) and a 



