Spiritualism

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Title:     Spiritualism
Author: Arthur C. Benson [More Titles by Benson]

I was sitting the other day in a vicarage garden with my friend the vicar. It was a pretty, well-kept place, with old shrubberies and umbrageous trees; to the right, the tower of the church rose among its elms. We sate out of the wind, looking over a rough pasture field, apparently a common, divided from the garden by a little ha- ha of brick. The surface of the field was very irregular, as though there had been excavations made in it for gravel at some time or other; in certain parts of the field there appeared fragments of a stone wall, just showing above the ground.

The vicar pointed to the field. "Do you see that wall?" he said; "I will tell you a very curious story about that. When I came here, forty years ago, I asked the old gardener what the field was, as I never saw any one in it, or any beasts grazing there; and yet it was unfenced, and appeared to be common land--it was full of little thickets and thorn-bushes then. He was not very willing to tell me, I thought, but by dint of questions I discovered that it was a common, and that it was known locally by the curious name of Heaven's Walls. He went on to say that it was considered unlucky to set foot in it; and that, as a matter of fact, no villager would ever dream of going there; he would not say why, but at last it came out that it was supposed to be haunted by a spirit. No one, it seemed, had ever seen anything there, but it was an unlucky place.

"Well, I thought no more of it at the time, though I often went into the field. It was a quiet and pretty place enough; full of thickets, as I have said, where the birds built unmolested--there was generally a goldfinch's nest there.

"It became necessary to lay a drain across it, and a big trench was dug. One day they came and told me that the workmen had found something--would I go and look at it? I went out and found that they had unearthed a large Roman cinerary urn, containing some calcined bones. I told the lord of the manor, who is a squire in the next parish, and he and I after that kept a look-out over the workmen. We found another urn, and another, both full of bones. Then we found a big glass vessel, also containing bones. The squire got interested in the thing, and eventually had the whole place dug out. We found a large enclosure, once surrounded by a stone wall, of which you see the remains; in two of the corners there was an enormous deposit of wood ashes, in deep pits, which looked as if great fires had burnt there; and the walls in those two corners were all calcined and smoke-stained. We found fifty or sixty urns, all full of bones; and in another corner there was a deep shaft, like a well, dug in the chalk, with handholds down the sides, also full of calcined bones. We found a few coins, and in one place a conglomeration of rust that looked as if it might have been a heap of tools or weapons. We set the antiquaries to work, and they pronounced it to be what is called a Roman Ustrinum--that is to say, a public crematorium, where people who could not afford a separate funeral might bring a corpse to be burnt. If they had no place to deposit the urn, in which the bones were enclosed, they were allowed, it seems, to bury the urn there, until such time as they cared to remove it. There was a big Roman settlement here, you know. There was a fort on the hill there, and the sites of several large Roman villas have been discovered in the neighbourhood. This place must have stood rather lonely, away from the town, probably in the wood which then covered the whole of this county; but it is curious, is it not?" said the vicar, "that the tradition should have been handed down through all these centuries of its being an ill-omened place, long after any tradition of what the uses of the spot were!"

It was curious indeed! The vicar was presently called away, and I sate musing over the strange old story. I could fancy the place as it must have been, standing with its high blank walls in a clearing of the forest, with perhaps a great column of evil-smelling smoke drifting in oily waves over the corner of the wall, telling of the sad rites that were going on within. I could fancy heavy-eyed mourners dragging a bier up to the gates, with a silent form lying upon it, waiting in pale dismay until the great doors were flung open by the sombre rough attendants of the place; until they could see the ugly enclosure, with the wood piled high in the pit for the last sad service. Then would follow the burning and the drenching of the ashes, the gathering of the bones--all that was left of one so dear, father or mother, boy or maiden--the enclosing of them in the urn, and the final burial. What agonies of simple grief the place must have witnessed! Then, I suppose, the place was deserted by the Romans, the walls crumbled down into ruin, grass and bushes grew over the place. Then perhaps the forest was gradually felled and stubbed up, as the area of cultivation widened; but still the sad tradition of the spot left it desolate, until all recollection of its purpose was gone. No doubt, in Saxon days, it was thought to be haunted by the old wailing, restless spirits of those who had suffered the last rites there; so that still the place was condemned to a sinister solitude.

I went on to reflect over the strange and obstinate tradition that lingers still with such vitality among the human race, that certain places are haunted by the spirits of the dead. It is hard to believe that such tradition, so widespread, so universal, should have no kind of justification in fact. And yet there appears to be no justification for the idea, unless the spiritual conditions of the world have altered, unless there were real phenomena, which have for some cause ceased to manifest themselves, which originated the tradition. But there is certainly no scientific evidence of the fact. The Psychical Society, which has faced some ridicule for its serious attempt to find out the truth about these matters, have announced that investigations of so-called haunted houses have produced no evidence whatever. They seem to be a wholly unreliable type of stories, which always break down under careful inquiry. I am inclined myself to believe that such stories arose in a perfectly natural way. It is perfectly natural to simple people to believe that the spirit which animated a mortal body would, on leaving it, tend to linger about the scene of suffering and death. Indeed, it is impossible not to feel that, if the spirit has any conscious identity, it would be sure to desire to remain in the neighbourhood of those whom it loved so well. But the unsatisfactory element in these stories is that it generally appears to be the victim of some heinous deed, and not the perpetrator, who is condemned to make its sad presence known, by wailing and by sorrowful gestures, on the scene of its passion. But once given the belief that a spirit might tend to remain for a time in the place where its earthly life was lived, the terrors of man, his swift imagination, his power of self-delusion, would do the rest.

The only class of stories, say the investigators, which appear to be proved beyond the possibility of reasonable doubt, is the class of stories dealing with apparitions at the time of death; and this they explain by supposing a species of telepathy, which is indeed an obscure force, but obviously an existing one, though its conditions and limitations are not clearly understood. Telepathy is the power of communication between mind and mind without the medium of speech, and indeed in certain cases exercised at an immense distance. The theory is that the thought of the dying person is so potently exercised on some particular living person, as to cause the recipient to project a figure of the other upon the air. That power of visualization is not a very uncommon one; indeed, we all possess it more or less; we can all remember what we believe we have seen in our dreams, and we remember the figures of our dreams as optical images, though they have been purely mental conceptions, translated into the terms of actual sight. The impression of a dream-figure, indeed, appears to us to be as much the impression of an image received upon the retina of the eye, as our impressions of images actually so received. The whole thing is strange, of course, but not stranger than wireless telegraphy. It may be that the conditions of telepathy may some day be scientifically defined; and in that case it will probably make a clear and coherent connection between a number of phenomena which we do not connect together, just as the discovery of electricity connected together phenomena which all had observed, like the adhering of substances to charged amber, as well as the lightning-flash which breaks from the thunder-cloud. No one in former days traced any connection between these two phenomena, but we now know that they are only two manifestations of the same force. In the same way we may find that phenomena of which we are all conscious, but of which we do not know the reason, may prove to be manifestations of some central telepathic force--such phenomena, I mean, as the bravery of armies in action, or the excitement which may seize upon a large gathering of men.

We ought, I think, to admire and praise the patient work of the Psychical Society,--though is common enough to hear quite sensible people deride it,--because it is an attempt to treat a subject scientifically. What we have every right to deride is the dabbling in spiritualistic things by credulous and feeble-minded persons. These practices open to our view one of the most lamentable and deplorable provinces of the human mind, its power of convincing itself of anything which it desires to believe, its debility, its childishness. If the professions of so-called mediums were true, why cannot they exhibit their powers in some open and incontestable way, not surrounding themselves with all the conditions of darkness and excitability, in which the human power of self-delusion finds its richest field?

A friend of mine told me the other day what he evidently felt to be an extremely impressive story about a dignitary of the Church. This clergyman was overcome one day by an intense mental conviction that he was wanted at Bristol. He accordingly went there by train, wandered about aimlessly, and finally put up at a hotel for the night. In the morning he found a friend in the coffee-room, to whom he confided the cause of his presence in Bristol, and announced his intention of going away by the next train. The friend then told him that an Australian was dying in the hotel, and that his wife was very anxious to find a clergyman. The dignitary went to see the lady, with the intention of offering her his services, when he discovered that he had met her when travelling in Australia, and that her husband had been deeply impressed by a sermon which he had then delivered, and had been entreating for some days that he might be summoned to administer the last consolations of religion. The clergyman went in to see the patient, administered the last rites, comforted and encouraged him, and was with him when he died. He afterwards told the widow the story of his mysterious summons to Bristol, and she replied that she had been praying night and day that he might come and that he had no doubt come in answer to her prayers.

But the unsatisfactory part of the story is that one is asked to condone the extremely unbusinesslike, sloppy, and troublesome methods employed by this spiritual agency. The lady knew the name and position of the clergyman perfectly well, and might have written or wired to him. He could thus have been spared his aimless and mysterious journey, the expense of spending a night at the hotel; and moreover it was only the fortuitous meeting with a third person, not closely connected with the story, which prevented the clergyman from leaving the place, his mission unfulfilled. One cannot help feeling that, if a spiritual agency was at work, it was working either in a very clumsy way, or with a relish for mystery which reminds one of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes; if one is expected to accept the story as a manifestation of supernatural power, one can only conceive of it as the work of a very tricksy spirit, like Ariel in the "Tempest"; it seems like a very elaborate and melodramatic attempt to bring about a result, that could have been far more satisfactorily achieved by a little common sense. If instead of inspiring the lady to earnest prayer--which appears too to have been very slow in its action--why could not the supernatural power at work have inspired her with the much simpler idea of looking at the Clergy List? And yet the story no doubt produces on the ordinary mind an impressive effect, when as a matter of fact, if it is fairly considered, it can only be regarded, if true, as the work of an amiable and rather dilettante power, with a strong relish for the elaborately marvellous.

The truth is that what the ordinary human being desires, in matters of this kind, is not scientific knowledge but picturesqueness. As long as people frankly confess that it is the latter element of which they are in search, that, like the fat boy in Pickwick, they merely want to make their flesh creep, no harm is done. The harm is done by people who are really in search of sensation, who yet profess to be approaching the question in a scientific spirit of inquiry. I enjoy a good ghost story as much as any one; and I am interested, too, in hearing the philosophical conclusions of earnest-minded people; but to hear the question discussed, as one so often hears it, with a pretentious attempt to treat it scientifically, by people who, like the White Queen in Through the Looking-glass, find it pleasant to train themselves to believe a dozen impossible things before breakfast, afflicts me with a deep mental and moral nausea.

One, at least, of the patient investigators of this accumulated mass of human delusion, took up the quest in the hope that he might receive scientific evidence of the continued existence of identity. He was forced to confess that the evidence went all the other way, and that all the tales which appeared to substantiate the fact, were hopelessly discredited. The only thing, as I have said, that the investigations seem to have substantiated, is evidence which none but a determinedly sceptical mind would disallow, that there does exist, in certain abnormal cases, a possibility of direct communication between two or more living minds.

But, as I pondered thus, the day began to darken over the rough pasture with its ruined wall, and I felt creeping upon me that old inheritance of humanity, that terror in the presence of the unseen, which sets the mind at work, distorting and exaggerating the impressions of eye and ear. How easy, in such a mood, to grow tense and expectant--

"Till sight and hearing ache
For something that may keep
The awful inner sense
Unroused, lest it should mark
The life that haunts the emptiness
And horror of the dark."

Face to face with the impenetrable mystery, with the thought of those whom we have loved, who have slipped without a word or a sign over the dark threshold, what wonder if we beat with unavailing hands against the closed door? It would be strange if we did not, for we too must some day enter in; well, the souls of all those who have died, alike those whom we have loved, and the spirits of those old Romans whose mortal bodies melted into smoke year after year in the little enclosure into which I look, know whatever there is to know. That is a stern and dreadful truth; the secret is impenetrably sealed from us; but, "though the heart ache to contemplate it, it is there."

[The end]
Arthur C. Benson's essay: Spiritualism

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