SPIRITUALISM.

Southland Times, Issue 1525, 16 January 1872, Page 3

SPIRITUALISM.

The Dialectical Society of London, hitherto kno'.vu to fame only as the scene of Lord Amberley's teaching on the subject of the limitation of families, ( n-centiv appointed a committee to " invest ijnte the phenomena all 'god to he spiritual manifestations, and to report thereon." The reports are now presented in a thick octavo volume. The names of the cnvnittee are prefixed, and we have seen the committee described as including | five well known physicians ami other I em-nent persons. Looking over the I names, it is right to say that the names of the medical gentlemen seeni to us only too well known in connection M-ith the Ladies 1 Medical Society and the Contagious Diseases Society ; and with tho exception of Mr Bradlau^h and of an | eminent naturalist, an avowed devotee of spiritualism, we find no others known to ■ fame. Bat that is a small mutter. The tree is known by its fruit, and a j committee may he known by its reports, j The first mystery investigated was that of table-turning and Lible-rnpping. Table-turning was inquired into some years since by Faraday — not, as he told one of hi 3 friends, without a deep sense of humiliation. The application of the first and simplest test dispelled the illusion. An apparatus indicating the physical pressure on the surface of the table arrested the movement in it ; the table never turned while the indicator was in view. The " spiritual manifestations" of table-turning recorded in this book were carried out without the application of this or any other similar test ; and we learn nothing more than that tables of various size and shape moved about. This part of the inquiry is a mere failure as inquiry. In the matter also of the rappings, on one occasion ouly a gentleman took the precaution of interposing a screen ! between the " medium" and the person entrusted with spelling out the alphabet, and whenever this was done the spirits I were dumb or utterly failed in their | guesses. Dr Edmunds, the chairman of the general committee (who appends a verbose but sensible protest against the tricks and delusions practised upon the committees from first to last), declares that he distinctly on two occasions detected the medium in producing the raps with her foot, and that after each such detection the raps ceased. If this part of the report is vapid as well as worthless, the hearsay evidence reported to the sub-committees on the inner arcana of spiritualism is really amußing, though, equally uninstruetive. But for the solemnity of the witnesses and their tediousness, their stories would read like chapters out of a handbook of natural magic. The TJrsuline uuns of Loudun were not more convinced of their " possession by the devil" at the wicked instance of the unhappy Urban G-randier, who was burned at the stake, than was Mr Ham Friswell of the possession of some persons assembled around the table of Mrs Marshall, who afterwards confessed they were playing a practical joke. This part of the performances seems drawn from the suggestions of a dark seance at the Polytechnic with Mr Pepper. It includes, as the ceminittee gravely tells us, accounts of " trancespeaking, of automatic writing, of the introduction of flowers and fruits into closed rooms, of voices in the air, of visions in crystals and glasses, and of the elongation of the human body." The account given of the " spirits" is equally amusing. We find that they are luminous and transparent, so that the wall can be seen through them, but nevertheless they throw shadows on the wall as if opaque. Their hands, tested by a delicate thermometer, are of a temperature usually identical with that of the room ; nevertheless, on waving their hands the atmosphere becomes intensely cold. They dissolve and reappear like the views of the magic lantern, but they have actual vocal organs, and nineteen of them at a time laugh with joy : those who have attended the veutriloquial performances at a country fair will perhaps hardly require to be told " that the sound was indescribably strange, and it appeared aa if it came from the ground." Notwithstanding their impalpable luminosity, their clothes rustle like silk, and when they walk they made the floor vibrate with, a heavy footstep. Usually, however, they glide, which is unquestionably more orthodox. The chief performer on these occasions is Mr Home ; but the wonders he displays were not seen by the committee, but by Miss Honeywood and Lord Lindsay, whose evidence is printed at length. Lord Lindsay had previously seen a crystal ball placed on the top of Mr Home's head, present a very pretty dissolving view of a seascape, with the setting sun, which seems to have been quite equal to the best effects of a 5s camera ; " suddenly the whole thing vanished, like shutting the slide of a magic lantern, and the crystal was dead." Impressed as he was by " these really beautiful effects," he was still more startled by a performance in imitation of the late M. Vidocq. Mr Home was " elongated llin." His lordship was particular to mark the height on the wall, and is not troubled by any reflections as to the inconvenience which the inelastics and rigid fibrous discs of the vertebrae must have suffered, or the effect on Mr Home's inextensible spinal cord ; he is satisfied that this elongation took place in the small part of the back comprised between the lower edge of the chest and the hips. He did not observe whether Mr Home's clothes were elongated too, but another gentleman thinks he saw a space between the waistcoat and trousers. Mr Home was subsequently shortened. That evening Lord Lindsay missed the train, and ! accepted a shakedown in the same room with Mr Home, not, we should imagine, without trepidation. He passed an eventful night. First, "just as he was going to sleep," a fist pulled his pillow away ; then be saw a female apparition ; i then, looking at Home, he saw his eyes

glowing with fire. This made Lord Lindsay " very uncomfortable ;" aud after making himself disagreeable in a variety of way's, Mr Home turned away, and they both 'went to sleep. It is remarkable that in another part of the book Lord Lindsay confesses that in his youth he was troubled with the apparition a? a black dog, which used to glide about with him ; he used to go up to it and pxit his stick through it, but that did not disturb the animal." He gave up the excessive mental exertion he was then undergoing in or. lor, as ho says, to qualify himself for the army, and the dog eea.so.l to trouble him. There are so many instances on record in medical books of similar apparitious being yot rid of by appropriate medical treatment that we would venture to recommend in the present instance a brief perusal, say, of Abercriimbie's well-known bo:>k on the intellectual powers, or Sir David Brewster's Letters to Sir Walter Scott on Natural Mag-'c, as suggesting appropriate instances in point, and the probable method of cure. It is difficult to speak or think with anything else than contemptuous pain of proceedings such as those described in this report. — P cell Hall Gazette.