A new basis of belief in immortality / by John S. Farmer.

  • Farmer, John S.
Date:
1882
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new basis of belief in immortality / by John S. Farmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    was relegated to the obscure past or the obscurer future. “ The philo- sophy of the nineteenth century was being fast reduced to a mere state- ment of the contents of sensation, and the philosophers of the day were looking for an easy victory over the most respectable of traditions, when,lo ! up starts a mass of phenomena, not merely inexplicable by any known law, but incompatible with any hypothesis but that of spiritual agency. ” . t. i j . i. Against the gratuitous assumptions of science must be pla,ced the opinions of not a few, founded on fact and observation. Agassiz, Fara- day, Brewster, Spencer, Huxley and Tyndall, together with many of the “ greater or lesser lights ” of science, as the case may be, assert, without inventifjation, that the alleged facts do not occur. The testimony o| Crookes, Wallace, Mapes, Hare, He Morgan, Robert Chambers, et multorum aliorum, M'ho have examined and wit- nessed the phenomena, and who have, therefore, a right to express an opinion thereon, is that the facts do occur as stated.* The two classes of opinion are certainly conflicting, but the diffi- culty of choosing between them is not overwhelming. It is hardly necessary to point out how unreasonable and unjustifi- able such a standpoint is on the part of the former and those who follow their lead. The attitude of science in this respect is indefen- sible. The aim and purpose of scientific enquiry is, or should be, the study of facts, and the logical conclusions deducible therefrom. But, on the one hand, we have a class of men who declare that, in their re- searches, the conviction has been forced ixpon them that the present life is the goal and ultimate of human thought and action; and, on the other, a set of facts which claim to throw additional light upon the issu. involved. The whole tendency of the teaching of such men as Tyndall and Huxley is, that the materialistic view of the world utterly and exclusively ignores, nay, even renders impossible, the existence of the spiritual. Their doctrine sets forth that outside matter there is nothing. The new facts, however, have received no attention from them, and without examination their very existence as facts has been denied, notwithstanding their direct bearing upon the question they (say Tyndall, Huxley, and others) claim to have so completely settled. Opposition is to be expected and desired. Thereby error is elimi- • See Rnsearehes in the Plumomena of Spiritualism, by TV. Crookes; Miracles am! Modem Spiritualism, by Alfred Russell Wallace; From Matter to Spirit, by S. do Morgan, (to., &c. Others have spoken as follow:— But even in the most cloudless skies of scepticism I see a rain-cloud, it it be no bigger than a man's hand: it is modern Spiritualism.—Lord lirougham. The world at large ridicules that which it does not understand. . . . That spiritual phenomena exist, any man possessed of common sense can prove for him- self by experiment.—C'ramwe/f Varleij. I have tried to Ilnd out how they (phenomena) are done, but the more I studied them, the more satisDcd was I that they could not bo explained by more meohauicai trick. I have hod the fullest opportunity for investigation.—Loi'd Lindsay. And this fact of Spiritualism will yet bo grasped as with a death-bed clutch of tho delivering hand that reaches down to lift us into now life.—Cerofd Massey. I am perfectly convinced that I have both seen and hoard, in a manner which should make unbelief impossible, things called spiritual, which cannot bo taken by a rational being to bo capable of explanation by imposture, coincidence, or mistake.— Professor de Morgan,