States or in the Irish States, are as a rule above the average of the States in this respect; while the peculiarly Irish counties, whether in Irish States or in German States, are with equal uniformity below the average. The result of these comparisons is, therefore, not only to heighten the effect of Table I. by exhibiting the fact of German increase more strongly, because more relieved from the embarrassment of extraneous elements, but also to indicate almost unmistakably the cause of such increase; viz., qualities of stock independent of, or additional to, effects of location or occupation. Am I entitled to write? Quod erat demonstrandum. He A SÉANCE WITH FOSTER, THE SPIRITUALIST. among them the name of the person whose I had never seen him. "You look incredulous," he added, "but I will tell you some things more surprising still. Come to my room.' We followed and sat down at a small plain table, covered with an ordinary cloth, and furnished with pencils, paper, and a card about four inches square containing the alphabet and numerals; the paper in long slips such as are used for newspaper copy. When fairly seated, Foster asked me to write the names of a number of persons, and The question written and the paper folded as before, I was directed to take the card and read the letters slowly, for the purpose of spelling out the answer. The spirit rapped at each letter as needed, but perhaps not more than two or three letters had been so designated, when Foster exclaimed, “Ah! it comes to me," and seizing his pencil wrote rapidly as an answer, "Too vacillating." "But that, Mr. Foster, is answer to half the question only." "Ah! yes! You want to know his greatest wickedness. The spirit declines to answer that." Again the paper had not been opened, and it may be said here that seldom more than two or three letters were rapped; the answer being anticipated-very frequently without resort to the card, and oftentimes before the folded paper had fairly left the hand. A slight rapping, that seemed to come from the center of the table, accompanied the giving of each answer, whether resort had been made to the card or not. This and the other commissions attended to, I came to the main test, and wrote three names with especial care that Foster should not see so much as the motion of my hand, and as he was at the same time answering a question for the lady, it seems certain that he had not seen my writing. His first selection from the folded slips was wrong; the second, right. The presence assured, I then wrote with equal caution, "How did you die?" "Suddenly." “But that, Mr. Foster, is not a sufficient answer. By what means did this person die?" At this I was directed to write several ways of meeting death, and include the particular way in this instance. I wrote poisoned, murdered, drowned. The answer was correct, drowned. "Where are you buried?" I gave the usual list, mentioning the place. It was at this point of the sitting that I experienced an unusual feeling, not of awe altogether, but that fairly extorted an exclamation of wonder. It is easy to see now, in the light of reflection, that there was no more real occasion for astonishment than at preceding points of the sitting; but then the answer came with startling suddenness and accuracy. Before two letters had been fully rapped, the paper pellet fell from its position against Foster's forehead. "This is very singular," he said; and with his pencil in a few nervous dashes struck the crude outlines of a wonderful scene. "My mind is drawn towards the west, to California. Here is water, here a noble road and gateway;" and at each phrase a new line was added to the sketch. "Here a place where bodies are received, and here a mountain,Lone Mountain, Lone Mountain Cemetery, San Francisco, California. Is it right?" The raps said yes, and he had truthfully answered. A little effort of the imagination in aid of his rough sketch, served to bring vividly to mind the vision of this same solemn mountain which bears its city of the dead in ominous silence over the city of the living below, and whose lone round top overlooks the bay and measures its days in the ebbing of the tides, as they sweep in majestic flow through the Golden Gate into the vast expanse of the Pacific beyond. In its essentials the sitting here ended, and I was left to reflect over what had been certainly a most remarkable exhibition. Wholly unaccompanied by any of the extraordinary spiritual manifestations,-thunderous knockings and ghostly presences, with accounts of which all are more or less familiar,-it yet presented the extraordinary spectacle of a man, an entire stranger to me, telling me events in the history of a third party of whom also he knew nothing. How did he get the knowledge? Foster claimed a supernatural agency, invoked and addressed it as a spirit, and in reply to my direct question stated definitely that he conversed with spirit forms visible to him but invisible to me. The claim is not conceded, yet how was he able to truthfully tell that this person whose spirit he professed to call up, had died suddenly, was drowned, and lay buried in a remote cemetery of peculiar and unusual name? It was just such abstract statements of myste rious disclosures by Foster that had led me to see for myself,-the only satisfactory course to those who desire to investigate. The statements of others are from our very prejudices taken with the largest grain of allowance, if not with entire disbelief, whatever be the usual credibility of the witnesses. This Desiring to give Foster's power full range, my questions were so worded, in the test case more especially, as to give no clue to the answers; and my first disappointment after all the marvelous statements made me, and the first damaging blow to the spiritual clain set up by Foster, was the requirement, as a condition precedent to an answer of the spirit, that the answer should first be written. sine qua non, which had not been mentioned in the previous accounts of Foster's modus, at once removed a large element of the marvelous from his doings. had not thought otherwise than that my agency in answering a question ceased when I had asked it. The difference is about this; whether, if A. asks what number he is thinking of, the number be at once given, or he is first asked to multiply by six, then by three, to cut off the right-hand figure of the product and give the remainder,-a puzzle familiar to most school-boys. In one instance there is a clue, in the other none. I Another point: If a question admitted an answer of more or less general application, I was not required to write the answer, but if the question admitted specific answer only, the answer must first be written. The answers to several questions, as in the case of Mr. A. first given, were general and such as might have applied with equal pertinence to any other man. What judgment is more in the mouths of the people than that "he is too vacillating?" or of what man, when the final moment of dissolution comes, may it not be said, "he died suddenly?" The answers to these questions were given by the spirit without having been first written down. But when a specific means of death, or a particular place of burial was asked for, the answer must first be written. If the spirit could without my mediation tell Foster my name, could not the same spirit without my mediation tell him the burial-place of its own body? This singular inability of the spirit to answer test questions unless the answers had first been written, once noted, another peculiarity was observed; namely, that the answer of the spirit came in the exact language of the answer as written. The spirit's answer "drowned," for instance, was identical with the written answer-nothing more, nothing less, even to the form of the verb; and "Lone Mountain Cemetery, San Francisco, California," was a literal reproduction in form and arrangement. In short, when the medium was puzzled, the spirit was puzzled, and wherein the written answer failed, the spirit failed; an excellent test of infringement of copy-right. For instance, let it be said the name of the spirit invoked was George Kant Jones. The a in Kant was so written as to be indistinguishable from an e. Foster slurred Kant in announcing the spirit and could not give it correctly. There is confirmation of this spiritual weakness in the report given me by a gentleman who had a sitting with Foster a few weeks since in St. Louis. He had written, the ground, sow the seed, and cause it to sprout and mature into fruit; all within the space of a few minutes and before one's eyes that have been strained in vain to discover some sleight. It cannot be said that Foster's discovery of the contents of the folded papers was not a trick to be classed with these of legerdemain, for it was impossible to know that some preconcertment had not existed. The visible surroundings seemed against the possibility of jugglery, however. The room was a large one, in a much frequented part of the hotel, its occupants changing day by day; the table a common one, almost bare of furniture, and a third party in the room, a close and interested observer of all passing. Besides, my own eyes were attentive, and, in the preparation of the questions, every precaution that occurred had been taken, even to the provision of my own pencils and paper. Still, distrust of the senses and a feeling as of imposition remained clear and distinct above these usual evidences of fairness. But, avoiding the extreme of spiritualism on the one hand, and belief in trickery, which we so readily make the scape-goat of our prejudices, on the other, might there not be some intermediate means of explanation? This question I sought to answer-with what degree of satisfactoriness will be seen. Let those who wish, investigate for themselves. I have formed no opinion, express none. One of the first steps after the sitting was to call on a lady whom I knew to have been. an excellent medium in years gone by, and to have ceased to sit because of her entire disbelief in the canons of spiritualism, and the disagreeable association of her name in that connection. With much reluctance she yielded to my request for a sitting, but having discontinued for so long, she expressed doubt whether It would write. This unconscious use of the pronoun of the third person was odd, and plainly shadowed her inner idea of the agency about to be called into play, as a strange and unwonted force, if not one essentially of the non ego. We sat down entire "Will it pay to speculate in lard ?” The ar in lard was indistinct, and the spirit mistaking the word for lead, answered in keeping with the state of the lead market. Summing up the results, it may be said in brief, that Foster told nothing of a specific nature that had not been by written answers first told him. But with this conclusion, the ground of inquiry is narrowed and shifted only, and there remains a certain something to be explained. True, the answers of the spirit were reproductions of the written answers, yet these must have been known to Foster to have been used by him. How did he get the knowledge? The first theory of explanation, and that which most naturally occurs, was that of sleight of hand-magic in the more restricted sense of the term. Many tricks of the peripatetic wizard seem equally inexplicable. Take as an illustration the fish trick of Herrmann, who comes in tight-fittingly alone, and remained perhaps five minutes dress-coat to the front of the stage. Without without any manifestation. Presently there assistance and standing alone, he shakes out was a slight motion of the fingers; the lady a large handkerchief, spreads it over the spoke of a sensation of pain extending from left hand and arm, which is bent and extended the wrist to the shoulder, and of swelling of the before him, and then with the empty right hand. In an instant more, the hand was hand reaches under the handkerchief and seized with quick and violent motions that brings out half a dozen goldfish swimming in brushed the paper from the writing-desk and a glass dish, with the water streaming over threw the pencil to the opposite side of the the sides and splashing on the stage. Or take room. Twice I recovered it, and twice the same again the trick of the oriental fakirs, who dig thing was repeated, except that the last time two words were legibly written. Once more, and two verses were given, in good meter and including the original two words. Again another two, and so on, the pencil each time taking up the thread where it had been before laid down, until two stanzas had been written. The subject-matter was singularly definite and applicable, but wholly out of belief. Dale Owen says that during a sitting with Foster in 1861, he saw the letter F appear in pink script stroke on Foster's wrist. The circumstances as given by Owen are very strange, but the test of blood-writing as made by Foster is too arbitrary, and offered with too great frequency and readiness to be taken as convincing proof of spiritual interposition. Let each one be convinced by signs about which he can have no doubt. The royal commission appointed by the French Government in 1784 to examine into the doctrine of animal magnetism, as stated by Mesmer, reported adversely; but the pronunciamiento, while it put out Mesmer's before bright light, bore against the truth of the theory, not against the facts of Mesmer's practice, as demonstrated over and over again by Mesmer himself and by D'Elson before the commissioners of whom our Dr. Franklin was one. The facts were admitted, and attributed not to animal magnetism, but to over-wrought imagination. Why quibble over a name? The strange power producing the phenomena of the magnetic state will be known quite as well if called imagination as if called animal magnetism. It is singular that Dunglison, while referring to this French commission and its condemnation of Mesmer's theory, should make no allusion to the subsequent French commission brought about by Foissac in 1826, which five years later gave the unanimous report of its nine members that animal magnetism is a force, not of the imagination, and capable of exerting a powerful influence over the whole human system. A similar English commission, appointed long anterior to pronounce on the practices of Dr. Greatrake, whose remarkable cures seem to come well attested, reported that a "sanative contagion existed in Dr. Greatrake's body that had an antipathy to some particular diseases and not to others." Mesmer's theory is the existence of "A fluid universally diffused, and filling all space; being the medium of a reciprocal influence between the celestial bodies, the earth and living beings; insinuating itself into the substance of the nerves, upon which it has direct effect; capable of being com municated from one body to another, animate or inanimate, and at considerable distance, without the assistance of any intermediate substance," etc., etc. The condition of those fully under the influence of animal magnetism he termed "animal magnetic sleep." The phenomena of the state of magnetic sleep are too familiar to need mention here; but it is desirable in this connection that the idea of an operator and a subject, so prominent in Mesmer's doings and teachings, be not lost sight of. On what usually received natural premises are we to account for these phenomena, or those of somnambulism? Shall it be said, after the manner of the royal commission in Greatrake's case, that there is an inherent antagonism of the mind to its usual relations to the body, under certain conditions of the latter? or that the mind or body, or both, are in abnormal condition? What have we, then, but a meaningless general term, serving now as a cloak to ignorance, just as in former times the abhorrence of nature to a vacuum was given as the explanation of the watercolumn in vacuo? "I do not pretend," says Deleuze, "in any manner to discover the causes of the phenomena of which I have spoken. The wisest way is not to search for an explanation. For in our waking state we can very well recognize, by the effects, the existence of a new faculty in somnambulists, but we can no more determine the nature of it than they who are blind from birth can conceive the phenomena of vision." The facts of mesmerism and somnambulism are indisputable. Call the two agencies what we will, it still stands out in the broad light of frequent observation that they are two of several avenues leading to a possible condition of the human organism, in which peculiar powers and tendencies are exhibited. And these two avenues, one natural, the other artificial, seem parallel if they are not coincident. Why not lay aside the fallacy of disbelief in all that cannot be explained by usually received formulas, and seek more thorough and definite knowledge of a province bordering so closely on that of every-day life, yet given over wholly to the barbarians in almost every scientific chart. "How is it," says Haven, "that the sleepwalker, in utter darkness, reads, writes, paints, runs, etc., better even than others can do, or even than he himself can do at other times and with open eyes? How can he do these things without seeing? and how see in the dark with the organs of vision fast * * * locked? The facts are manifest; not so the explanation. Is there an inner consciousness, a hidden soul life, not dependent on the bodily organization, which at times comes forth into development and manifests itself when the usual relations of body and soul are disturbed and suspended? ** Whatever theory we adopt, or even if we adopt none, we must admit that in certain disordered and highly-excited states of the nervous system, as when weakened by disease so that ordinary causes effect it more powerfully than usual, it can and does sometimes perceive what at ordinary times is not perceptible to the eye or to the ear; nay, even dispenses with the use of eye and ear, and the several organs of special sense. This occurs, as we have seen, in somnambulism, or natural magnetic sleep. We meet with the same thing also in even stranger forms, in the mesmeric state, and in some species of insanity." One of the instances quoted by Haven, who is not original in his suggestion of the inner sense and higher soul life, is that of a young girl of inferior ability, in a school for young ladies in France, who competed with her classmates for the prize in painting. After a time she saw, as she resumed her work in the mornings, that additions had been made by a hand far more skillful than her own. Her companions denying all knowledge of the matter, she blockaded her door; but still the mysterious additions continued to be made, and remained unexplained until her companions, setting watch on her movements, saw her rise in her sleep, light her lamp, dress and paint. The picture took the prize, the young girl protesting that it was not her own. Ennemoser speaks of an apothecary who read his prescriptions through the ends of his fingers, and always made them up best when in the somnambulic state. Illustration of the strange power exhibited in somnambulism is also found in dreams. Mrs. Howitt, in the preface to her translation of Ennemoser's work, Der Magnetismus, gives the following: "The printing of this Ennemoser translation had commenced, and to a certain extent my mind was imbued with the views and speculations of the author, when on the night of the 12th of March, 1853, I dreamed that I received a letter from my eldest son. In my dream I eagerly broke open the seal and saw a closely written sheet of paper, but my eye caught only these words in the middle of the first page, written larger than the rest and under-drawn, My father is very ill! The utmost distress seized me, and I awoke to find it only a dream; yet the painful im pression of reality was so vivid, that it was long before I could compose myself. *** Six days afterward, on the 18th, an Australian mail came in and brought me a letter, the only letter I received by that mail, and not from any of my family, but from a gentleman in Australia with whom we were acquainted. This letter was addressed on the outside, Immediate,' and with trembling hand I opened it, and true enough the first words I saw, and these written larger than the rest, in the middle of the page and underdrawn, were, 'Mr. Howitt is very ill.' The context of these terrible words was, however, that,' If you hear that Mr. Howitt is very ill, let this assure you that he is better.' But the only emphatic words were those which I saw in my dream." 6 So of presentiments: A physician of this city tells me that a gentleman who had only a short time before left, to be gone several weeks, suddenly returned, having been strangely impelled by a feeling of trouble at home. The physician was at the time in attendance on the gentleman's child, which had fallen dangerously ill during his short absence. And of apparitions: It is related of Goethe that, riding along a lonely portion of the way, he saw himself coming, on a queer-looking horse, and clad in costume much like that of Petruchio "in an old hat and a new jerkin." Horse and costume were singularly unlike his own. The incident had passed out of his mind when, years afterwards, passing the same spot, he remembered his vision and recognized it in the horse he rode and the costume he was then wearing. Petetin speaks of a cataleptic person unable to see or hear, but he observed that she could hear when he spoke close to the pit of her stomach. Soon afterwards she was able to see and smell in the same manner, and had the power to read a book even when something lay between. If a non-conducting substance lay between, she took no notice of it. Van Helmont says that after partaking of a certain preparation "he felt movement and sensation spreading themselves from the head over the whole body, yet the whole power of thought was really and unmistakably in the pit of the stomach; always excepting a sensation that the soul was in the brain as the governing power." The accounts of the convulsionnaires are incredible, and instances of prophetic vision on the approach of death, and under the influence of narcotic stimulants, are numerous. |