December" 6, T017 
LANU & WATER 
n 
Psychology of the Spiritualist 
By Dr. Charles Mercier 
/RA furor brevis. A man in a violent rage Vs not at ihc, 
top of his form in reasoning, ancF is apt to do things 
that appear at the time foolish to other people, and that 
in his own subsequent cooler moments he regrets. So 
it is if he is under tlie influence of terror, of panic, of 
jealousy, or of any otlier emotion. This, as we see from the 
J-atin quoted above, has long been recognised. It lias certain- 
ly been known for two thousand years ; it has probably been 
known for two hundred thousand. Xo doubt tiie aphorism was 
scratched upon their copy-books of reindeer horn by the child- 
ren of Mousterian and Aurignacian man in the early Pleistocene 
age. It holds good, not only of tlie \iolent emotions of anger, 
fear, jealousy, and so forth, but also of the milder emotions 
of amusement, awe, and wonder. Knwtion and reason are 
niutually antagonistic, and tend to exclude one another. \\'e 
could desire no better instance than the ludicrous inability 
of the Germans, in the intensity of their hatred for America, 
to recognise that Americans, in supplying munitions to England 
in the present war, are doing precisely wliat the Germans did 
in the Boer War. 
People who are emotional, tliat is to say,''whose emotions 
are easily aroused and under little control, are bad rjeasoners. 
Tlie vitiation of their reasoning by their emotions extends 
over a wide area of their tjioughts, and is readily brouglit 
about. They are swayed by moods and impulses, and as far 
as they reason, their reason is the servant rather than the 
master of their passions. In the presence of wjiat is unusual, 
for instance, tJiey give free rein to the emotions of wonder antl 
awe, and under the dominance of these emotions they become 
incapable of reasoning upon the matters that arouse the 
emotions. 
Contrasted with persons of emotional temperament arc those 
wliose feelings are under control, and are -the; servants or 
auxiliaries rather than the masters of their reason. Their 
procHvity is not to the passive indulgence in feeling but to 
the active exertion of intellect. In the presence of what is 
unusual and mysterious they do not surrender themselves to 
the passive enjoyment of awe and wonder, but rather seek 
actively to investigate, discover, and explain. Persons of 
emotional temperament arc by natme S)iiritualists - the 
investigators are the scientific. 
Desire for Explanation 
\\ hatever his temperament, whether emotional or scientific, 
man ardentlj' desires explanation; and especially in the presence 
of what is unusual, he is not content until he has an explanation 
of some kind Spiritualism is explanation by the short cut. 
It is the e.xplanation of those who are too inipatient to untie 
the knot, and prefer to cut it. To untie the knot, to seek the 
natural causes of events, is often a slow, Jaborious business. 
It is an intellectual exercise requiring thought, care, patience, 
and industry ; and during the exercise of these faculties 
emotion must be put on one side. . To ascribe events to the 
direct action of spirits is the easy exi)lanation of tlie lazy man : 
it is also the crude explanation of the unintellectual man. 
It needs nr* thought, no industrv. no care,' no .patience. 
Anyone can do it. It is within thecompetencp' of the idlest 
and most ignorant of men. 
In the earliest stage of the history of our race, every event 
was explained by the agency of spirits. Spirits caused 
rain and sunsliine, storm and flood. Spirits blighted the crojos 
or ensured their increase. Spirits gave or refused success 
or failure in huntmg and fishing and all other undertakings. 
Spirits Kuided^ the arrow or the spear to the mark, or caused 
it to miss. Spirit}; produced aches and i)ains, injuries and 
diseases. Spirits upset the canoe or guided it to its destina- 
tion ; gave victory- or defeat in battle : made the Irre Inirn or 
go out, and were the arbiters of good fortune and ill fortune 
in everything. The whole progress of mankind from ignorance 
to knowledge, from savagery to civilisation has been marked 
by, even if it has not consisted in. the gradual wresting of 
causation out of the hands of spirits and ascribing it to 
" natural," by which we mean non-spiritual, agency. The 
degree to which man has advanced in the intellectual scale 
may be measured by the magnitude of the fietd in whicii events 
are ascribed to natural causes, and the restriction of tin; domain 
of spiritual agency. Primd facie the ascription of anv event 
to the action of sjiirits is a relic (jf savagery, is tiie outcome 
. jf the impulsive, emotional, unregulated ignorance character- 
istic of primitive humanity. 
In the pliysical universe, friction, that is to say, interference 
with the free action of any mode of motion, always produces 
he.Tt. In Hie inent;'l wurld interference with the free plav <<i 
any emotion always produces anger. The analogy is so close 
that it is recognised in common speech. We speakof the inter- 
ference of one man with the action of another as friction, 
and we often speak of anger as heat. Questioning of our con- 
victions and opposition to our convictions arouses our anger 
in proportion to the lack of reasonable ground that we have 
for our con\iction. It would be very difhcult to arouse the 
wrath of a mathematician by disputing the accuracy of the 
multiplication table. He might be amused, but he would 
scarcely be angry. No astronomer would lose his temper 
if you contended that the earth is flat an'd that the sun circu- 
lates round it. His conviction is too securely rooted in reason. 
As a matter of fact, it is the flat-earth crank who loses his 
temper when his conviction is questioned ; and the reason is 
clear : he feels the. ground of his conviction insecure. Judged 
by this criteriqn, the conviction of the spiritualist that the 
marvels he ascribes to the spirits are really due to spiritual 
agency, is not very firm. He protests a "little too loudly ; 
he is too easily roused when his conviction is questioned. Xo 
doubt his emotional temperament is largely responsible for 
this. As with the rest of his emotions, his anger is easily 
evoked ; but still, even his anger would scarcely be evoked 
by questioning the accuracy of the multiplication table. Xo. 
He resents your doubts of the spirits because he is not quite 
sure of them himself. He would deny strenuously that he has 
any doubt of them, but if he has no doubts, whv do yotu-s 
make him so angry ? 
Spiritual Action 
The hy|X)thcsis of spiritual action is a rough and readv 
pseudo-explanation of occurrences that are for the time Ijeing 
and to the spiritualist, unaccotmtable by natural causes. As 
soon as the natural cause is discovered, as according to all 
precedent and all analogy it must be eventually, the spiritual 
hypothesis must give way and suffer abortion in these matters 
as it already has jiad to suffer abolition in numberless others. 
In the minds of rational persons, that is of persons whose 
imotions are well under control, a rational explanation is 
accepti'd as soon as it is shown to account for the facts ; but 
emotional persons arc not thus convinced. Their intellects 
are the servants of their emotions, and, instead of acting to 
reconcile the new and unusual occurrence with the general 
ordeu of nature, they are employed to show cause why the 
general order of nature should on this occasion be interrupted 
and falsified , and very curious and amusing some of these 
reasonings are. 
In I1SO4 the Davcnjwrt Brothers made a great commotion 
in this country by performing a number of tricks, which they 
declared were jJroduced by the aid of spirits, a declaration 
that found many fervent believers. Messrs. Maskelyne and 
Cooke were convinced that these tricks were produced by 
natural means, and after a little .^tudy and practice, succeeded 
in imitating them with complete accuracy, excepting only 
that they took a little longer. In these circumstances, what 
line were the true believers in spirits to take ? It was clear 
tliat if the one i)air could produce the effects by natural means, 
the other pair might ha^•e produced them iii the .same Way, 
and tliere was no call for spiritual intervention. The spirft- 
ualists did not hesitate. They declared that it Was not the 
Davenport Brothers but ilessrs. Maskelyne and Cooke who 
were lying, and that while the latter pretended to perform the 
tricks by natural means, they were, in fact, mediums, and per- 
formed their tricks by the aid -of spirits, whom they deceitfully 
refused to acknowledge. 
Ten ye^irs after, a photographer named Buguet' drove a roar- 
ing trade in spirit i)liotogra])lis. He was eventually prosecuted 
in the l^'rench Courts for fraud, and made a full confession. 
He used plates which had already suffered a brief exposure, 
the sitter to this preliminary exposure being at first one of his 
assistants, and subsequently, as tlie business increased, one of 
a numlx-r of dummy heads fitted on to a lay figure. Even 
so, however, his business was so large that the" same Lead had 
to do duty as the sister of one sitter, the mother of a second 
antl the wife of a third. Xotwithstanding this confession, in 
whicli Buguet revealed his whole modus operandi, and the 
production in court of his lay figure with a large assortment of 
heads, his victims refused to believe, or at any rate to confess 
that they had been imposed upon. M'itness after witness of 
good social jH)sitio!i. with, of course, some professors amongst 
them, testified that no trickery liad been practised. It was 
impossible. The portraits of theii" dead iriends and relatives 
were unmistakable. ' ' ' . " ' ' ' ' 
.Vt one time .1 pi)piil:n exliibition by spiritVialistic mediums 
