At one time, there was reason to hope that Russian scientists would have undertaken the task of giving the phenomena a careful and impartial study. A commission was appointed by the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, with Professor Mendeleyeff, the great physicist, at its head. The advertised programme provided for a series of forty seances to test mediums, and invitations were extended to all of this class who chose to come to the Russian capital and submit their powers to examination. As a rule they refused — doubtless from a prevision of the trap that had been laid for them. After eight sittings, upon a shallow pretext, and just when the manifestations were becoming interesting, the commission prejudged the case, and published a decision adverse to the claims of mediumism. Instead of pursuing dignified, scientific methods, they set spies to peep
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through the key-holes. Professor Mendeleyeff declared in a public lecture that spiritualism, or any such belief in our souls’ immortality, was a mixture of superstition, delusion, and fraud; adding that every “manifestation” of such nature — including mind-reading, trance, and other psychological phenomena, we must suppose — could be, and was produced by means of clever apparatus and machinery concealed under the clothing of mediums!
After such a public exhibition of ignorance and prejudice, Mr. Butlerof, Professor of Chemistry at the St. Petersburg University, and Mr. Aksakof, Counsellor of State in the same city, who had been invited to assist on the committee for mediums, became so disgusted that they withdrew. Having published their protests in the Russian papers, they were supported by the majority of the press, who did not spare either Mendeleyeff or his officious committee with their sarcasms. The public acted fairly in that case. One hundred and thirty names, of the most influential persons of the best society of St. Petersburg, many of them no spiritualists at all, but simply investigators, added their signatures to the well-deserved protest.
The inevitable result of such a procedure followed; universal attention was drawn to the question of spiritualism; private circles were organized throughout the empire; some of the most liberal journals began to discuss the subject; and, as we write, a new commission is being organized to finish the interrupted task.
But now — as a matter of course — they will do their duty less than ever. They have a better pretext than they ever had in the pretended expose of the medium Slade, by Professor Lankester, of London. True, to the evidence of one scientist and his friend, — Messrs. Lankester and Donkin — the accused opposed the testimony of Wallace, Crookes, and a host of others, which totally nullifies an accusation based merely on circumstantial evidence and prejudice. As the London Spectator very pertinently observes:
“It is really a pure superstition and nothing else to assume that we are so fully acquainted with the laws of nature, that even carefully examined facts, attested by an experienced observer, ought to be cast aside as utterly unworthy of credit, only because they do not, at first sight, seem to be in keeping with what is most clearly known already. To assume, as Professor Lankester appears to do, that because there are fraud and credulity in plenty to be found in connection with these facts — as there is, no doubt, in connection with all nervous diseases — fraud and credulity will account for all the carefully attested statements of accurate and conscientious observers, is to saw away at the very branch of the tree of knowledge on which inductive science necessarily rests, and to bring the whole structure toppling to the ground.”
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But what matters all this to scientists? The torrent of superstition, which, according to them, sweeps away millions of bright intellects in its impetuous course, cannot reach them. The modern deluge called spiritualism is unable to affect their strong minds; and the muddy waves of the flood must expend their raging fury without wetting even the soles of their boots. Surely it must be but traditional stubbornness on the part of the Creator that prevents him from confessing what a poor chance his miracles have in our day in blinding professed scientists. By this time even He ought to know and take notice that long ago they decided to write on the porticoes of their universities and colleges:
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
