on the table beside me: the book of a scholar
and a gentleman, a man deserving of respect.
But even here I find the most marvellous
acceptance of insufficient evidence, the most
wholesale system of uncritical belief. This
book—Footfalls on the Boundary of Another
World, published at Philadelphia, and written
by Mr. ROBERT DALE OWEN, formerly Member
of Congress, and American Minister to Naples
—deals only with the "natural," not "evoked"
phenomena of spiritualism; it has nothing in
it of table-turning, but it has a good deal about
ghosts; and among these natural spiritual
phenomena, and holding rather a prominent
position, I stumble over the familiar figure
of our old friend, the Dæmon of Tedworth
—Mr. Mompesson's unruly drummer! Now
I do not think that Mr. Owen could have
chosen a more unlucky subject for one of his
incontestable stories. Very loosely told by Glanvil
himself (and conceive Glanvil adopted as an
authority of fact, at this time of day!), it
is repeated with variation by Sinclair; and
in neither account is there the remotest hint
of cross-examination, or of any critical care
to probe the matter for the purpose of
conviction and discovery. On the contrary, every
one accepted the supernatural origin of the
disturbances as of course, and no one seems
to have planned or acted for the discovery
of the truth. Even that very material test,
of blood flowing after a shot had been fired in
the direction of the noises, does not seem to
have awakened suspicion; though to my mind
this one fact alone would be conclusive of human
agency. I do not believe that the most familiar
spiritualist—he who dwells for ever amidst
rappings, and luminous hands, and direct writings—
would grant the spirits all the material
properties of humanity, or expect to see blood on
the hearth and stairs, after he had fired into the
pile of wood which a "dæmon" was stirring.
Another very human trait in this demoniacal
business was, that during Mrs. Mompesson's
maternal troubles, all noises and annoyances
ceased, and the poor mother was suffered to go
through her "gissane" unmolested. If demons
have so much consideration and good feeling,
they are not so very objectionable after all.
But, supposing the agency in this case to have
been a simple human material agency; that the
disturbing creature was a creature with joints and
muscles and free flowing blood and a kind
heart at the bottom, the whole story resolves
itself into a perfectly coherent drama of trick
and delusion. And when we remember that
this precious story dates in 1661, at a time
when the witch mania was at its height; when
no monstrosity was too great for the public
credulity to swallow; when the laws of evidence
were not understood, and when the familiar
bodily presence of the devil and all his angels
was firmly believed in, I think we shall not be
inclined to give much value to Mr. Owen's
endorsement of Glanvil's tale of mystery, but
that even "believers" among us will quietly
relegate it to the place of the Impossible or
the Deceptive, and as utterly worthless in the
way of testimony.

Again: the story of Gaspar, communicated
to Mr. Owen, is an undeniable bit of family
mystification. Knocks are first heard, then
a voice (is there no such thing as ventriloquism,
and has this art never been employed
for even graver purposes than the playful
personation of a ghost?), then the smiling
man in a large cloak and broad-brimmed hat,
seen on the farthest side of the square, but
seen by the brother only, and finally the leave-
taking when the family quitted France: all
seems clearly enough to point to a trick by
some member of the family, which, begun
originally in innocence and fun, was carried on so
long that at last the person grew ashamed to
confess. Supernatural and ghostly things almost
always happen where there are young people.
This explains away two aspects of these
stories— their mere fun and frolicsomeness
when they are confessedly tricks, or their
nervous character when they pass out of the
domain of physical circumstance into that of
physiological condition. Gaspar's knockings,
good advice, appearance, and final leave-taking,
were palpable tricks, which will not bear the
weakest amount, of critical handling. It is a
mere assertion to say that they were
supernatural: an assertion destitute of every kind of
proof.

Mr. Owen refers to the Stockwell case, which
is always a stock part of these books, and will
probably remain so as long as such books are
written, notwithstanding that that imposture was
afterwards confessed by the servant-maid, in
whose presence always, the furniture was
knocked about, and the uproar raised. Mr.
Owen asks whether it is likely that, for the sake
of deception, any person would—supposing any
person could—play such tricks? The answer
is, that it is not only likely, but certain. It has
been done. It has been proved to have been
done. The commissioners at Woodstock had a
servant who played off such a deception, and
the Stockwell lady had a servant who did the
same. "We are not," says Mr. Owen, touching
this absurdest class of spirit stories, "in the
habit of denying such phenomena as an eruption
of Vesuvius, or a devastating earthquake, on
account of our inability to comprehend why
Providence ordains them." I say, on the other
hand, that we DO in our dim little way, comprehend
why Providence ordains those terrific
disasters. Little as we know in this short state of
existence, we are permitted to know enough of
natural laws, to be assured that an eruption of
Vesuvius, or a great earthquake, is the gigantic
action of pent-up forces within the earth; of the
existence of which forces we know beforehand,
and of the dangerous concentration of which
forces in every place where it is working, we
mostly (if not always) know beforehand through
natural evidence inseparable from those natural
laws. Which of two events does Mr. Owen
consider any moderately reasonable human being to
be the more logically prepared for: an earthquake