Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania Part 28

Although I have been thus thwarted at every turn in my investigations of Spiritualism, and found fraud where I had looked for honesty, and emptiness where I had hoped for fulness, I cannot think it right to pa.s.s a verdict, universal in its application, where far less than the universe of Spiritualism has been observed. My field of examination has been limited. There is an outlying region claimed by Spiritualists which I have not touched, and into which I would gladly enter, were there any prospect that I should meet with more success. I am too deeply imbued with the belief that we are such stuff as dreams are made on, to be unwilling to accept a few more shadows in my sleep. Unfortunately, in my experience, Dante's motto must be inscribed over an investigation of Spiritualism, and all hope must be abandoned by those who enter on it.

If the performances which I have witnessed are, after all, in their essence Spiritual, their mode of manifestation certainly places them only on the margin, the very outskirts of that realm of mystery which Spiritualism claims as its own. Spiritualism, pure and undefiled, if it mean anything at all, must be something far better than Slate Writing and Raps. These grosser physical manifestations can be but the mere ooze and sc.u.m cast up by the waves on the idle pebble, the waters of a heaven-lit sea, if it exist, must lie far out beyond.

The time is not far distant, I cannot but think, when the more elevated cla.s.s of Spiritualists will cast loose from all these physical manifestations, which, even if they be proved genuine, are but little removed from Materialism, and eventually Materializing Seances, held on recurrent days, and at fixed hours, will become unknown.

HORACE HOWARD FURNESS.