We do not call you blindly to accept hypotheses, after
the example of bygone years, but to seek after knowledge; we do
not invite you to give up science, but to enlarge her regions... "
This was said about spiritualist phenomena. As to the rest of our
learned physiologists, this is, approximately, what they have the
right to say: "We know well certain phenomena of nature which we
have personally studied and investigated, under certain conditions,
which we call normal or abnormal, and we guarantee the accuracy of
our conclusions."
However, it would be very well if they added:
"But having no pretensions to assure the world that we are acquainted
with all the forces of nature, known and unknown, we do not claim
the right to hold back other people from bold investigations in
regions which we have not reached as yet, owing to our great
cautiousness and also to our moral timidity. Not being able to
maintain that the human organism is utterly incapable of developing
certain transcendental powers, which are rare, and observable only
under certain conditions, unknown to science, we by no means wish
to keep other explorers within the limits of our own scientific
discoveries."
By pronouncing this noble, and, at the same time, modest speech,
our physiologists would doubtless gain the undying gratitude
of posterity.
After this speech there would be no fear of mockery, no danger of
losing one's reputation for veracity and sound reason; and the
learned colleagues of these broad-minded physiologists would
investigate every phenomenon of nature seriously and openly. The
phenomena of spiritualism would then transmigrate from the region
of materialized "mothers-in-law" and half-witted fortune-telling
to the regions of the psycho-physiological sciences. The celebrated
"spirits" would probably evaporate, but in their stead the living
spirit, which "belongeth not to this world," would become better
known and better realized by humanity, because humanity will
comprehend the harmony of the whole only after learning how closely
the visible world is bound to the world invisible.
After this speech, Haeckel at the head of the evolutionists, and
Alfred Russel Wallace at the head of the spiritualists, would be
relieved from many anxieties, and would shake hands in brotherhood.
Seriously speaking, what is there to prevent humanity from
acknowledging two active forces within itself; one purely animal,
the other purely divine?
It does not behove even the greatest amongst scientists to try
to "bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades," even if they have
chosen "Arcturus with his sons" for their guides. Did it never
occur to them to apply to their own intellectual pride the questions
the "voice out of the whirlwind" once asked of long-suffering Job:
"where were they when were laid the foundations of the earth?
