Τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ, καὶ τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ ἀκούεις, LONDON: LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, & GREEN. 1863. M.8m PREFACE. IT T is but now and then that a preface is contributed by one who is not the author: and only now and not then, or else then and not now, that the writer of the preface declares he will not stand committed either for or against the conclusions of the book. But this happens in the present case. I am satisfied, by the evidence of my own senses, of some of the facts narrated: of some others I have evidence as good as testimony can give. I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen, and heard in a manner which should make unbelief impossible, things called spiritual which cannot be taken by a rational being to be capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake. So far I feel the ground firm under me. But when it comes to what is the cause of these phenomena, I find I cannot adopt any explanation which has yet been suggested. If I were bound to choose among things which I can conceive, I should say that there is some sort of action of some combination of will, intellect, and physical power, which is not that of any of the human beings present. But, thinking it very likely that the universe may contain a few agencies-say half a million-about which no man knows anything, I cannot but suspect that a small proportion of these agencies say five thousand- may be severally competent to the production of all the phenomena, or may be quite up to the task among them. The physical explanations which I have seen are easy, but miserably insufficient: the spiritual hypothesis is sufficient, but ponderously difficult. Time and thought will decide, the second asking the first for more results of trial. ?' and woe to him who, We, respectable decemnovenarians as we are, have been so nourished on theories, hypotheses, and other things to be desired to make us wise, that most of us cannot live with an unexplained fact in our heads. If we knew that omniscience would reveal the secret in a quarter of an hour, we should in one minute have contrived something on which to last through the other fourteen. The commonest of all questions is, 'How do you account for not having an answer of his own, shall refuse to accept that of the querist. So habitual is this propensity that even irony fails to tell upon it: what is the use of quizzing the action of the lungs or the circulation of the blood? In one instance a joke about explanations has been taken for fact, and explanations given of it. Bacon, or Selden, or some such dry humorist, put forth the sarcasm of the old man who took Tenterden steeple to be the cause of the Goodwin sands, because he never heard of the sands until after the steeple was built. Those who should have been hit by this, but were not, accepted the fact, and proceeded to account for it. They put forth that some funds destined for lights or other warnings were diverted to build the steeple; whence of course increase of wrecks. So it would seem that any sarcasm aimed at universal expositors may be but a missionary to the cannibals, one dinner more. All who have studied the history of opinions will feel satisfied that the matter is in a right train. Try to balance a level on the palm of the hand with the bubble in the middle : who can do it? Not one in a hundred. The little air-drop is always in extremes: it may stay in the interval for a few seconds, and then comes a tiny unconscious motion which sends it right up to one end or the other. This is a true picture of the mode by which human intelligence deals with conclusions: and this is the way in which we come by all we know in most things. If, being in all other respects what we now are, we had been a cautious, logical, self-knowing set of improved gorillas, content to wait for a decision until we had got what your way-feelers call ground enough, we should have made what we knew four thousand years ago ground enough to sleep upon. But, being what we are, we hunt our arguments, not to arrive at opinions, but to support them. Of the book of nature, and of the book of experience, may be said* what was said long ago of another book, that we search for what we want to find, and take good care to find it. This is our character, and we must not quarrel with it: we have got a great deal by allowing it to have its way, and we may expect more; one side or the other, or both together, catch a truth and cut its wings; a hundred years hence it will matter little which. Those who affirm that they have seen faith-staggering occurrences, are of course supposed to be impostors or dupes. * Hic liber est in quo quærit sua dogmata quisque, Which has been translated, and more, as follows:-- One day at least in every week, The sects of every kind, Their doctrines here are sure to seek. And just as sure to find. |