The Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers. Catherine Crowe

independently and courageously; and, in the second, that they never shrink from promulgating the opinions they have been led to form, however new, strange, heterodox, or even absurd, they may appear to others. They do not succumb, as people do in this country, to the fear of ridicule; nor are they in danger of the odium that here pursues those who deviate from established notions; and the consequence is, that, though many fallacious theories and untenable propositions may be advanced, a great deal of new truth is struck out from the collision; and in the result, as must always be the case, what is true lives and is established, and what is false dies and is forgotten. But here, in Britain, our critics and colleges are in such haste to strangle and put down every new discovery that does not emanate from themselves, or which is not a fulfilling of the ideas of the day, but which, being somewhat opposed to them, promises to be troublesome from requiring new thought to render it intelligible, that one might be induced to suppose them divested of all confidence in this inviolable law; while the more important and the higher the results involved may be, the more angry they are with those who advocate them. They do not quarrel with a new metal or a new plant, and even a new comet or a new island stands a fair chance of being well received; the introduction of a planet appears, from late events, to be more difficult; while phrenology and mesmerism testify that any discovery tending to throw light on what most deeply concerns us, namely, our own being, must be prepared to encounter a storm of angry persecution. And one of the evils of this hasty and precipitate opposition is, that the passions and interests of the opposers become involved in the dispute: instead of investigators, they become partisans; having declared against it in the outset, it is important to their petty interests that the thing shall not be true; and they determine that it shall not, if they can help it. Hence, these hasty, angry investigations of new facts, and the triumph with which failures are recorded; and hence the wilful overlooking of the axiom that a thousand negatives can not overthrow the evidence of one affirmative experiment. I always distrust those who have declared themselves strongly in the beginning of a controversy. Opinions which, however rashly avowed, may have been honest at first, may have been changed for many a long day before they are retracted. In the meantime, the march of truth is obstructed, and its triumph is delayed; timid minds are alarmed; those who dare not or can not think for themselves, are subdued; there is much needless suffering incurred, and much good lost; but the truth goes quietly on its way, and reaches the goal at last.

      With respect to the subjects I am here going to treat of, it is not simply the result of my own reflections and convictions that I am about to offer. On the contrary, I intend to fortify my position by the opinions of many other writers; the chief of whom will, for the reasons above given, namely, that it is they who have principally attended to the question, be Germans. I am fully aware that in this country a very considerable number of persons lean to some of these opinions, and I think I might venture to assert that I have the majority on my side, as far as regards ghosts—for it is beyond a doubt that many more are disposed to believe than to confess—and those who do confess, are not few. The deep interest with which any narration of spiritual appearances bearing the stamp, or apparent stamp, of authenticity is listened to in every society, is one proof that, though the fear of ridicule may suppress, it can not extinguish that intuitive persuasion, of which almost every one is more or less conscious.

      I avow, that in writing this book, I have a higher aim than merely to afford amusement. I wish to engage the earnest attention of my readers; because I am satisfied that the opinions I am about to advocate, seriously entertained, would produce very beneficial results. We are all educated in the belief of a future state, but how vague and ineffective this belief is with the majority of persons, we too well know; for although, as I have said above, the number of those who are what is called believers in ghosts and similar phenomena is very large, it is a belief that they allow to sit extremely lightly on their minds. Although they feel that the evidence from within and from without is too strong to be altogether set aside, they have never permitted themselves to weigh the significance of the facts. They are afraid of that bugbear, Superstition—a title of opprobrium which it is very convenient to attach to whatever we do not believe ourselves. They forget that nobody has a right to call any belief superstitious, till he can prove that it is unfounded. Now, no one that lives can assert that the reappearance of the dead is impossible; all he has a right to say is, that he does not believe it; and the interrogation that should immediately follow this declaration is, “Have you devoted your life to sifting all the evidence that has been adduced on the other side, from the earliest periods of history and tradition?” and even though the answer were in the affirmative, and that the investigation had been conscientiously pursued, it would be still a bold inquirer that would think himself entitled to say, the question was no longer open. But the rashness and levity with which mankind make professions of believing and disbelieving, are, all things considered, phenomena much more extraordinary than the most extraordinary ghost-story that ever was related. The truth is, that not one person in a thousand, in the proper sense of the word, believes anything; they only fancy they believe, because they have never seriously considered the meaning of the word and all that it involves. That which the human mind can not conceive of, is apt to slip from its grasp like water from the hand; and life out of the flesh falls under this category. The observation of any phenomena, therefore, which enabled us to master the idea, must necessarily be extremely beneficial; and it must be remembered, that one single thoroughly well-established instance of the reappearance of a deceased person, would not only have this effect, but that it would afford a demonstrative proof of the deepest of all our intuitions, namely, that a future life awaits us.

      Not to mention the modern Germans of eminence, who have devoted themselves to this investigation, there have been men remarkable for intellect in all countries, who have considered the subject worthy of inquiry. Among the rest, Plato, Pliny, and Lucien; and in our own country, that good old divine, Dr. Henry Moore, Dr. Johnson, Addison, Isaac Taylor, and many others. It may be objected that the eternally-quoted case of Nicolai, the bookseller at Berlin, and Dr. Ferriar’s “Theory of Apparitions,” had not then settled the question; but nobody doubts that Nicolai’s was a case of disease; and he was well aware of it himself, as it appears to me, everybody so afflicted, is. I was acquainted with a poor woman, in Edinburgh, who suffered from this malady, brought on, I believe, by drinking; but she was perfectly conscious of the nature of the illusions; and that temperance and a doctor were the proper exorcists to lay the spirits. With respect to Dr. Ferriar’s book, a more shallow one was assuredly never allowed to settle any question; and his own theory can not, without the most violent straining, and the assistance of what he calls coincidences, meet even half the cases he himself adduces. That such a disease, as he describes, exists, nobody doubts; but I maintain that there are hundreds of cases on record, for which the explanation does not suffice; and if they have been instances of spectral illusion, all that remains to be said, is, that a fundamental reconstruction of the theory on that subject is demanded.

      La Place says, in his “Essay on Probabilities,” that “any case, however apparently incredible, if it be a recurrent case, is as much entitled, under the laws of induction, to a fair valuation, as if it had been more probable beforehand.” Now, no one will deny that the case in question possesses this claim to investigation. Determined skeptics may, indeed, deny that there exists any well-authenticated instance of an apparition; but that, at present, can only be a mere matter of opinion; since many persons, as competent to judge as themselves, maintain the contrary; and in the meantime, I arraign their right to make this objection till they have qualified themselves to do so, by a long course of patient and honest inquiry; always remembering that every instance of error or imposition discovered and adduced, has no positive value whatever in the argument, but as regards that single instance; though it may enforce upon us the necessity of strong evidence and careful investigation. With respect to the evidence, past and present, I must be allowed here to remark on the extreme difficulty of producing it. Not to mention the acknowledged carelessness of observers and the alleged incapacity of persons to distinguish between reality and illusion, there is an exceeding shyness in most people, who, either have seen, or fancied they have seen, an apparition, to speak of it at all, except to some intimate friend; so that one gets most of the stories second-hand; while even those who are less chary of their communications, are imperative against their name and authority being given to the public. Besides this, there is a great tendency in most people, after the impression is over, to think they may have been deceived; and where there is no communication