Its Members Differed On Many Points, Much As Do The
Members Of Any Other Society, Geographical Or Archeological, Which
Fights For Years Over The Sources Of The Nile, Or The Hieroglyphs
Of Egypt.
But everyone is unanimously agreed that, as long as
there is water in the Nile, its sources must exist somewhere.
So
much about the phenomena of spiritualism and mesmerism. These
phenomena were still waiting their Champollion - but the Rosetta
stone was to be searched for neither in Europe nor in America,
but in the far-away countries where they still believe in magic,
where wonders are performed daily by the native priesthood, and
where the cold materialism of science has never yet reached - in
one word, in the East.
The Council of the Society knew that the Lama-Buddhists, for instance,
though not believing in God, and denying the personal immortality
of the soul, are yet celebrated for their "phenomena," and that
mesmerism was known and daily practised in China from time immemorial
under the name of "gina." In India they fear and hate the very
name of the spirits whom the Spiritualists venerate so deeply, yet
many an ignorant fakir can perform "miracles" calculated to turn
upside-down all the notions of a scientist and to be the despair
of the most celebrated of European prestidigitateurs. Many members
of the Society have visited India - many were born there and have
themselves witnessed the "sorceries" of the Brahmans. The founders
of the Club, well aware of the depth of modern ignorance in regard
to the spiritual man, were most anxious that Cuvier's method of
comparative anatomy should acquire rights of citizenship among
metaphysicians, and, so, progress from regions physical to regions
psychological on its own inductive and deductive foundation.
"Otherwise," they thought, "psychology will be unable to move
forward a single step, and may even obstruct every other branch
of Natural History." Instances have not been wanting of physiology
poaching on the preserves of purely metaphysical and abstract knowledge,
all the time feigning to ignore the latter absolutely, and seeking
to class psychology with the positive sciences, having first bound
it to a Bed of Procrustes, where it refuses to yield its secret
to its clumsy tormentors.
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