Abstract
IN a letter bearing this title (NATURE, vol. xxi. p. 323) your correspondent, “M.,” while indulging in a most extraordinary “speculation,” observes that it is “not without some encouragement in actual fact.” He then adds: “The ascertained facts of clairvoyance and mesmerism are what I have more especially in view,” &c. Now, whatever may be the case with clairvoyants, I think, to quote from “M.,” that it must certainly “require some peculiar state of mental calm” to enable a man, when writing in a journal professedly scientific, thus quietly to assume the truth of all the astounding class of phenomena to which he alludes as “ascertained facts.” Clairvoyants, spiritualists, et hoc genus omne, often complain that scientific men are arrogant in their treatment of, or allusions to, the alleged marvels of the modern séance; and if we have regard to the jaunty manner in which Dr. Carpenter rides his favourite hobby along “the high priori road,” I do not deny that the spiritualists have sufficiently good ground for complaint. But let them not meet arrogance with arrogance, or speak about facts which, at the best, are highly doubtful as facts which have been “ascertained.”
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S., F. “A Speculation Regarding the Senses”. Nature 21, 348 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021348b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021348b0
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