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

  • Farmer, John S.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    of Galileo, Harvey, and Jenner. The great discoveries they mads were, as we know, violently opposed by all their scientific contempo- raries, to whom they appeared absurd and incredible; but we have equally striking examples much nearer to our own day. When Ben- jamin Franklin brought the subject of lightning conductors before the Koyal Society, he was laughed at as a dreamer, and his paper was not admitted to the Fftilosophical Transactions. When Young put forth his wonderful proofs of the undulatory theory of light, he was equally hooted at as absurd by the popular scientific writers of the day.* The JEdinburgh Review called upon the public to put Thomas Gray into a strait jacket for maintaining the practicability of railroads. Sir Humphrey Davy laughed at the idea of London ever being lighted with gas. When Stephenson proposed to use locomotives on the Liver- pool and Manchester Railway, learned men gave evidence that it was impossible that they could go even twelve miles an hour. Another great scientific authority declared it to be equally impossible for ocean steamers to cross the Atlantic. The French Academy of Sciences ridiculed the great astronomer (Arago) when he wanted even to discuss the subject of the electric telegraph. Medical men ridiculed the stethescope when it was first discovered. “How are the modern observers of some phenomena usually termed supernatural and incredible, less worthy of attention than those already quoted ? Let us take, first, the reality of what is called clairvoyance. The men who have observed this phenomenon, who have carefully tested it through long years, or through their whole lives, will rank in scientific knowledge and in intellectual ability as quite equal to the observers in any other branch of discovery. We have no less than seven competent medical men—Drs Elliotson, Gregory, Ashburner, Lee, Herbert Mayo, Esdaile, and Haddock, be- sides persons of such high ability as Miss Martineau, Air H. G. Atkin- son, Mr Charles Bray, and Baron Reichenbach. With the history of previous discoverers before us, is it more likely that these eleven educated persons, knowing all the arguments against the facts, and in- vestigating them carefully, should be all wrong, and those who say, d priori, that the thing is impossible, should be all right, or the contrary ? If we are to learn anything by history and experience, then we may safely prognosticate, that in this case, as in so many others, those who disbdieve other men’s observations without inquiry will be found to be in the wrong.” II.—Spiritualism is a morbid craving for hidden mysteries. It is difficult to see in this objection, which is put forward by not . a * The following are choice specinieus from Edinburgh Rcriew articles in 1803 and 1804:— “Another Bakorian lecture, containing more fancies, more blunders, more un- founded hypotheses, more gratuitous Actions, all upon the same field, and from the fertile yet fruitless brain of the same olomal Dr. Young. And again— “It teaches no truths, reconciles no contradiction, arranges no anomalous facta, suggests no now exijoriments, and leads to no new inquiries. One might almost suppose it to bo a moderu scientific writer hurling scorn at Bpidtaalism.