Part 2

Thus learned men seeking to unravel mysteries, for want of sagacity and full knowledge, may become the apologists of sorcery and witchcraft. Bacon was obliged to be a philosopher for the whole enlightened world; but, in our day, so vast has each branch of science become, that any one of them would be full enough for a Bacon's grasp, and philosophers hardly dare to venture outside of their own boundaries, lest they become, or be considered _philosophists_. We hear men of science abused because they take such obstinate, inexorable positions against these "_fooleries_." This they are bound to do. Familiar with the laws of nature, all real phenomena are alike marvellous to their minds, and those which claim to be miraculous, supernatural, and, _par excellence_, the MARVELLOUS, they repudiate summarily as absurdities, knowing that if they cannot disabuse the popular mind, they can prove their irrationality to their own entire satisfaction, at least. Formerly fortune-tellers were sometimes styled Philomaths, but we think that as fortune-telling has degenerated into such disrepute, the name is unworthily applied, and we propose to transfer it to that class of learned writers of the present day, who seek to trace these tricks of raps and tips to the direct agency of the devil, or evil or good spirits;--supposing these spirits to make the sounds or movements, and to give the communications;--and to that class specially who attribute these phenomena to electricity, magnetism, or to the action of some power or fluid hitherto unknown; in short, to all, who look upon these things as any thing else than impostures and illusions. These are the philomaths of the present day, and while they thus stand in the way of advancement in true knowledge, they are, in effect, fostering error, superstition, and sorcery. We boast in our day of the enlightenment of the masses, the spread of education and the diffusion of knowledge; but for all this, necromancy is not dead nor stifled; and is now like a baleful poison running rife through our land, upon the most preposterous foundations and pretexts. Spirits, rapping upon doors, floors, and tables, upsetting tables and swinging them about the room? Spirits, do you say? Has a "spirit flesh and blood?" Has a spirit _bones, muscles, fingers, heels, toes, and sticks_? DO SPIRITS WEAR PETTICOATS _and long dresses_? A "_new fluid_," says another philomath. A new fluid, forsooth? None other than that old fluid of credulity or gullibity, if we may be allowed the latter term. An "old fluid," says another. "Electricity or magnetism in some shape." This is insufferable. Since the first discoveries in electricity and magnetism, these agents have had to take the paternity of every rare and inexplicable phenomenon. This is much more the case now than when Sir Walter Scott wrote his letters on witchcraft, though he says that the divining-rod, and other remarkable and misconceived phenomena, were assigned to the agency of electricity and magnetism. At the present times these subtle agents are the common _scape-goats_ for mesmeric, electro-biological, psychological, and every other kind of phenomenon, the cause of which eludes the senses, and the new-fangled farce of "rappings and tippings" must fain take advantage of the same subterfuge in order to make its way to popular credence. Unfortunately, in this case an accurate knowledge of the laws of electricity is possessed by comparatively few persons; and the electric fluid, or power of magnetism, becomes a very clever instrument in the hands of charlatans and empirics, through which to enforce upon the popular mind the reality of their tricks and impostures. To one who has an adequate knowledge of the laws of electricity and magnetism, it is more than amusing to see with what pedantic gravity these latter philomaths descant upon electricity and magnetism, contorting and butchering their established laws all the while, to explain some vile juggle, or unravel the psychomancy of rappers and tippers; and also to see with what avidity their inflated arguments are gulped by gaping crowds, who apparently are unwilling or unable to swallow a single _naked truth_. It is often said that "men love to be deceived." This is true to some extent, and it is sometimes the case that a quack will draw crowds around him where a truly learned man could not get a foothold. The truth however is mighty, and will prevail, and the power of learning always has been, and will be felt, though it may be somewhat slow to assert and maintain its supremacy. In verity, there is not one property, condition, or law of electricity or magnetism, so far as they have been established by experiment and science, that would explain rappings and tippings without doing violence to philosophy. A few years ago, a medical friend and brother came to our house late at night, in considerable trepidation, and wished us to go and see a woman who was bewitched in an extraordinary manner. At intervals she would be seized with convulsions, and while the fit was on her she pulled pins out of the hands, arms, and legs of bystanders, and tossing the pins into her mouth, swallowed them. We remonstrated with him, but though highly intelligent, and excelling in his profession, our friend the Doctor would not give it up. He had seen it, believed it, but could not account for it, and came to us specially to ascertain if "ELECTRICITY had not something to do with it." Knowing that the witches of old had a special fancy for pins, and fully prepared to see nothing more than a dexterous feat of legerdemain, we consented to go, late as it was, and as soon as the pretty little elf, who was lying upon a pallet upon the floor, had become convulsed, and pulled a pin from our person, and swallowed it, we discovered the _quomodò_, and the next day, with a little practice, we were able to go into very fair convulsions, and could draw out pins and swallow them as skilfully as the witch herself. Our good friend, the doctor, had not even noticed that the convulsive movements were all confined to the voluntary actions upon the muscles, so engrossed was he with the idea of the supernatural character of this performance. It is remarkable to notice how the scrutinizing powers of the most astute, fail as soon as they entertain the remotest idea of the supernatural in these cases. This girl was visited by hundreds of respectable and intelligent persons in our community, and notwithstanding a publication which was made exposing the trick, but few were able to discover it for themselves, and the greater portion believed it to be a genuine performance, and alms were freely given in sympathy for her unfortunate condition. Our sympathies were enlisted for those whom _she bewitched_, and we must give the _enchantress_ credit for more shrewdness than her customers, and we believe she reaped quite a rich harvest for her skill in legerdemain. We cite this case to show what violence is done to science to account for modern sorceries. _Remember_, we are called on to decide if _electricity_ played any part in this extraordinary exhibition.

Many years ago a person of the name of Hannington came to Salem, Massachusetts, then the place of our residence, to exhibit the so-called _mysterious lady_. This lady had the power of naming and describing various things which she could not see, declare names written upon bits of paper handed to persons promiscuously in the audience, and a variety of performances, which completely astounded her visitors. Their programme announced that they had visited the principal cities in this country and Europe, and that her extraordinary gift of divination had baffled the ablest researches. We were invited to see this great modern Pythoness, and specially for the purpose of judging whether it was an _auricular_ illusion. In a word, whether it might not be an extraordinary case of ventriloquism, for this seems to have been the last resort for a solution of the problem, with those who repudiated witchery. Electricity would not answer this time, and the science of sound had to be mutilated for the occasion. Being ourselves expert in the performance of ventriloquism, and familiar with the laws of acoustics, it needed but a moment to decide that ventriloquism was utterly inadequate to the solution of the puzzle, and before we left the room we discerned the whole trick, disconcerted the performers very essentially, and the next day published a full exposure, after which the whereabouts of the _mysterious lady_ was a greater mystery than her performances had been.

A few years since, an account was published throughout this country and Europe, of a prodigy in the shape of an _electrical girl_ in Paris, who was indued with an extraordinary power--_electrical_ of course--by which, when she attempted to sit down in a chair, it was thrown from her with great violence. This was one of the wonders of the day, and after having deceived multitudes, and become an object of universal interest and sympathy, she fell into the hands of a select committee of the Academy of Sciences, with Arago at their head. Does any one suppose that Arago ever entertained for a moment the idea of electrical action in this connection? Not at all! Arago immediately set himself to the examination of the girls heels, and soon found that she moved the chairs by muscular effort. By long practice she had acquired such skill and power of kicking, or thrusting the chair away from herself, that it was always done without exhibiting any motion exterior to her dress, or the slightest disturbance of her person. So much for electricity or the "_new fluid_" in this case. This kicking girl was styled the _Electrical girl_, or the _Electrical wonder_. Of course she belonged to the _new fluid class_, for no one acquainted with the laws of electricity, would have entertained a suspicion that electricity had any thing to do with the phenomenon.

We may be accused of being somewhat dogmatical in this treatise, and perhaps we are so, while we have to deal with so many fanatics and pragmatical philomaths. For the superstitious and ignorant, we have some charity, but we confess that we have little or no patience for those among educated men, who are wearers of the _amulets_ of electricity, magnetism, or _new fluids_. They evince more pedantry than penetration, and are inexcusable disseminators of sophistry and error. They are exactly in the category of the believers in perpetual motion, and, in fact, the ascription of such phenomena as table-tippings to electricity, magnetism, or some new fluid, goes a step beyond perpetual motion, if that is possible. Most of the plodders after perpetual motion expect to get, by some new adjustment, a machine that will barely move of itself without any great surplus of power; but according to this new table-tipping philosophy, we certainly should look for any amount of horse power, without any consumption of material, and no other expense than that of keeping a clever medium at hand. On the principle of touching a heavy table _lightly_ (for the touch must be light according to rule), and thus causing by incantations the table to tip, rise up, whirl about, etc., it would cost but little to move a church or a mountain, and mediums should be in great demand for mechanical purposes, as being cheaper and safer than steam engines. How strange it does appear, that these pseudo-philosophers have entirely lost sight of the one great radical principle of all dynamic science, viz., that action and reaction are equal, and never have attached the least value to the fact, that when persons put their hands _lightly_ upon tables, _their hands always follow the motion of the table, whichever way the table moves_. It certainly appeared to us a very _significant_ fact, when we first saw the performance, and if considered in connection with electricity, or the _new fluid_, is sufficiently anomalous to require a careful analysis. But more of this anon, as we propose to examine the rappings first. This imposture originated with two girls, by the name of Fox, from Rochester, New-York, who are now, with their mother, travelling through the country, and exhibiting their art for money. A few weeks ago, the Fox-mother gave us an account of this wonderful development of noises or rappings about the two daughters, and from her we learned that the noises were kept up for a long time before they discovered the cause. At first they were annoyed by them, but, _after a while_, they became so familiar with the sounds, that they took but little notice of them, until they discovered the mode of communicating with their authors, and ascertained that the sounds were made by spirits of the departed. According to her account, the spirits then rapped at points remote from the girls, but it seems that the spiritual habit has changed somewhat, for since the girls have been on exhibition,[2] the spirits rap nowhere except directly _under the girls, and about their feet_, or upon something with which their persons or dresses are in contact. We had no desire to see these creatures, except to discover the precise means by which they made the raps, and although fully prepared to condemn them before we paid them a visit, we preferred not to condemn them unseen, lest, on that ground, the clique of rappers should have some advantage over our argument.

It amuses us greatly at times, when discussing these matters with our friends, to be told that our "opinions are all made up beforehand," "that we are prejudiced," &c. We admit the charge, and say frankly we _are_ prejudiced, and mean to prejudge any effort to make black appear to be white, and white, black; and declare the pretensions of these rappers and tippers to be as grossly absurd and silly, as any monstrosity in the shape of a proposition, that ever emanated from a crazy or evil designing brain. When we are told that a table is moved by the mere effort of the will, that it moves about when it is not touched, we deny the statement _flatly_ at once, and challenge the reproduction of the miracle, and when we are told that spirits rap upon tables, floors, doors, walls, or any thing else, we deny the statement, and challenge the production of any kind of rap or sound in these cases, which is not clearly traceable to human agency. Perhaps it will be inferred that we either do or should take ground against supernatural interference and miracles altogether, seeing that we are prepared to condemn _à priori_, these manifestations, claiming for themselves supernatural origin. We confess that one of the greatest obstacles we have to encounter in the course of this exposition, is the deep-rooted belief in the existence, at the present day, of miraculous powers, agencies and deeds, and the readiness with which many persons ascribe every thing which eludes their judgment or senses, and especially whatever savors in the least of religion, to superhuman agency. We do not mean to draw upon Holy Writ for arguments in support of our decision, upon these _rappings_ and _tippings_, but anticipating the reception we shall meet, with this class of persons, we must advert briefly to the grounds of their belief and objection, and at the same time define our own position. We here find ourselves arrayed against learned divines of the present day, who, failing to account for these strange doings upon the supposition of human agency, resort to their belief in the superhuman, and consistently with their professional calling, must evidently found their views upon scripture. Failing to discern the "_finger of God_," they have come to their last resort, "that these manifestations are the work of the devil, or of evil spirits." Without claiming any depth in biblical lore, we ask them where is the authority for any such conclusion in the Bible? The Bible teaches plainly of the devil's agency, of his operations upon the heart of man, and so far would such a construction be justifiable, but no farther. There is not one instance recorded, in which Satanic agency was recognizable by man as _immediate_. "By their fruits ye shall know them," is a sufficient rule of judgment for any deeds, pretensions, or manifestations whatsoever; and here they should rest content, and instead of going beyond the record, might safely administer the general caution, that these "lies are of their father, the devil," without introducing the whole Pandemonium into our houses, to overturn our tables and upset the laws of gravity and mechanical philosophy. We believe that miracles were performed of old, for holy purposes, and no other; that they were necessary to enforce the truth of revelation; that the day of miracles has gone by, and that they ceased when their necessity ceased. We have our own mode of fixing that period, but the discussion would be too far from our present purpose, and we have digressed too much already. We take the ground that every witch, wizard, magician, astrologer, sorcerer, necromancer, and fortune-teller, from the earliest, down to the present time, has had no more power over matter, or the laws of nature, than any other person, and that whoever lays claim to familiar spirits, foresight, or any direct communication with the invisible world, through raps and tips, is either witch, wizard, conjurer, or sorcerer _de facto_.[3] The prime movers in all these marvels are _impostors_, and their disciples, _dupes_. While the former are filling their coffers at the expense of the latter, they must often indulge in secret merriment at the credulity of their adherents; and particularly at the grave discussions of the learned clergy and others upon electricity, magnetism, the new fluid, the nervous fluid, or the devil's immediate agency, as probable causes of these strange phenomena. Surely the "children of this world are wiser than the children of light." The juggler with his legerdemain far outstrips any thing that has ever been accomplished by rappers and tippers, but then he tells you that he performs by sleight of hand, and that unless your eyes are quicker than his hands, you will be deceived. If certain of his performances were to be introduced with some religious jargon and pretext, his success in infatuating the mass of the people, would put the rappers and tippers entirely in the shade, for the tricks of these latter are clumsy and poorly done at the best. Mr. Anderson, the professed juggler, known as the Wizard of the North, has, to his great credit, published a series of communications, in which he boldly avers that these rappers are all impostors, and has contrived a system of rapping and spiritual communications, quite as successful as those of the original fraternity. He has failed, however, to elucidate the whole subject, from the fact that he has been contented with a mere imitation, which the rappers will of course pronounce a counterfeit. Our first visit to the rappers, was in company with a gentleman of high eminence in science, of keen discernment, and very fruitful in expedients. We had formed no particular plan of procedure, except that we had agreed to feign belief in these performances, lest incredulity might prove an obstacle to investigation, and keep the rappers too much on their guard. Repudiating all idea of the supernatural, we were not liable to any distraction on that account, and our attention was directed entirely to the scrutiny of the performances, with reference to their solution upon established principles of evidence and natural laws. If the advocates of this new "spiritual philosophy" should object to this prejudication, our answer is, that aside from our prior experience in unravelling many such pretended wonders, we hold our position to be entirely justifiable, on the ground of probabilities, and that hitherto we have never known an instance in which so much of presumption was not in such cases, legitimated in the conclusion of facts.

Be this as it may, we had resolved to follow up these rappings and tippings to see whether they were impostures, delusions, or illusions, one or all. After the mother of the Fox girls had given us an account of the spiritual visitation of her daughters, they three took seats at a large circular table, and we joined the circle sitting opposite to them. We were directed to ask if there were any spirits present. This done, BANG, BANG upon the table announced the presence of the spirits. The table was evidently struck underneath by something _hard_, _solid_, _material_, and so as to jar the table perceptibly to the hand resting upon it. Our coadjutor feigned surprise and alarm, and stooped to look under the table, when the raps immediately ceased. This he repeated several times and each time the raps ceased. We asked again if there were any spirits present, but no answer came while he had his eyes below the level of the table top, but as soon as he sat up, the raps upon the table commenced again. He however was so persevering in his scrutiny about the table as to give us a good opportunity to say--for mere effect--"Why do you look under there, you cannot _see_ a spirit?" The rappers finding themselves baffled in making their demonstrations through the table, were forced to retreat from it, and taking their seats a short distance from the table, the rappings then commenced upon the floor immediately under the girls, or about their feet. Both the girls were rappers, but one conspicuously so, she rapping much louder than the other, and did most of the rapping for the occasion. Both the girls wore long dresses sweeping the floor, but the principal rapper ought to have been attended by a train bearer. "Are there any spirits present?" was again asked, and the raps came promptly and so thick and fast that the spirits seemed anxious to make some communications, so we proceeded to this part of the ceremony. The instructions being given to us how to proceed, we commenced by asking several questions, but to these we received either no answers, or incorrect ones. The programme was this: We were to write down three names[4] of spirits, one of which was to be the name of the spirit we intended to invoke. We were then to put down the names of three diseases, one of which was to be the disease of which the person had died. We were then to put down three places, one of which was to be the place where the person died. We were then to point _seriatim_ to the names of the persons, and that when we pointed to the name of the person intended, the spirit would signify his presence and approbation, by two raps, which mean YES. Names of others, or those not intended, would be answered by one rap, which meant NO. We made no progress, however, and, although there was an abundance of rapping, there was no communication, no intelligence, no confirmation to us, of what we already knew (in the imperfection of human knowledge), and we appealed with an air and tone of assumed _naïveté_ to the rappers to know if perhaps our failures were not owing to our great wickedness? "Oh, no!" said the Mother Fox, "it will happen so sometimes." Just then a gentleman entered who, it appears, was a devotee of Rappism, and a daily worshipper at the Fox shrine, for the purpose of holding communication with the spirit of a departed wife. As we had failed, entirely, to elicit even a respectable _guess_ in answer to our inquiries of the spirits, and this gentleman had been more highly favored, his visit was rather fortunate at this juncture, for it gave us an opportunity to observe more closely than when our minds were occupied with the manipulation of the _spiritual telegraph_.