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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    PSYCHICAL RESEARCH IN THE VICTORIAN ERA The history of Psychical Research in the present reign is by no means conterminous, as some would have us think, with the history of the Society for Psychical Research. As a matter of fact, we have just passed the Jubilee of Modem Spiritualism, dating from the phenomena of the Fox sisters at Hydeville in 1848. Whether the phenomena were trickery or were genuine manifestations does not concern us in a chapter which deals with the history of opinions, rather than with the opinions themselves, and criticism of their authenticity is no part of our business at the moment. From the Fox episode we date the rise of Modem Spiritualism, and the whole consequent literature of its investigation. That this should have so happened is one of the curious coincidences, the apparent accidents, which meet one in history and biography at every turn. There have been sporadic episodes of psychical pheno- mena and inquiry in England ever since England has been a nation. The followers of St. Columba must have brought stories of his second sight when they came, as Bede tells us, “ to the Middle Angles, Mer- cians, and East Saxons, whose chief city was London, and instructed them in the liberal arts.” Merlin, at the court of King Arthur, the Specularii of the Middle Ages, Cornelius Agrippa in the sixteenth century, Dr. Dee at the court of Elizabeth, Lilly and Aubrey towards the end of the seventeenth century, are all landmarks in the history of Psychical Research in England. The