Essays in psychical research / by Miss X (A. Goodrich-Freer).

  • Goodrich-Freer, A. (Ada), 1865-1931.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays in psychical research / by Miss X (A. Goodrich-Freer). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    subject, though so immense and. far-reaching, is, in its superficial aspects, by no means difficult of access. Its more obvious lines are familiar to every one; they are in every ballad, in every old wife’s fable, in every village tale. There are few branches to which the Old Testament does not introduce us—to Joseph and his divining-cup, to Saul and the witch of Endor, to the ghost of Samuel, to the whispering in the tops of the mulberry-trees which summoned Israel to war, to witches that peep and that mutter, to the stars that fight in their courses, to dreams and their interpreta- tion, to trance utterances and prophecy, to astrology and its leadings, to the apparent extension or suspen- sion of the laws of nature which we call “ miracle.” Whether or no we are approaching a solution of this world-problem it would be difficult to say, but the student of history must admit that the rising con- sciousness of its importance is among the recognised features of the higher civilisation. Superstition has often paved the way for faith; inquiry is the root of all philosophy and of all science ; it is only what Macaulay called the “ Cocksure,” from which nothing is to be hoped. We shall find that, in all ages, the inquiry has taken the colour of the times—it has been in the hands of religion, or of science, or of the people, and has been important as one or other came uppermost; it has received its special direction from the individual force which treated of it at the moment. There were, no doubt, among Saul’s companions, some to whom the story of the ghost of Samuel seemed a mere visual hal- lucination, a telepathic impact from the witch herself, a hypnotic delusion, the trick of a fraudulent medium, or, in terms familiar in all ages, “ too much supper,” or