Wilhelm Wundt

“ But upon what is this assumption of superstition founded? Simply upon the fact that we have hitherto held the things in question to be impossible. Now you maintain not only the possibility but also the actuality of phenomena equally astonishing, and, moreover, very similar. By all rules of scientific investigation, we are logically bound to assume that those earlier phenomena also may, indeed, in many instances have rested upon deception, but that they were scarcely altogether without foundation. ”

“ You, of course, immediately admit that scientific authority is not a property which could be set down in the description of a person. You also agree with me that a person, who passes for authority in some particular science, can not transfer this quality at his pleasure to other provinces. The apocalyptic studies of Isaac Newton were not saved from quick forgetfulness by the authority of the discoverer of gravitation, and the high esteem which Ernst von Baer enjoys as a naturalist scarcely serves as a bill of protection for his Homeric investigations. ”

“ Even he who may have the hope that such an order will perhaps some day be discovered, can not deny that hitherto all hopes of this sort have been shipwrecked, that spiritualistic observation and natural science stand directly opposed to each other. As little can you deny, on the other hand, that that absolute confidence in the positiveness of the object (truthfulness of the medium) would not be in place in a province where the cardinal question, with which we first of all have to do, is precisely whether the phenomena possess reality or whether they rest upon deception. ”

“ At the same time it aims to give the wider circle of scientific scholars who are interested in psychology, either for its own sake or for the sake of its applications, a systematic survey of the fundamentally important results and doctrines of modern psychology. ”

“ Usually, indeed, the best passport which a discoverer gives to his new observation consists precisely in his indication of its agreement with other facts. I have looked in vain through the whole history of science for a case in which a scientific authority came forward with the assertion of having discovered a new fact, at the same time adding to this assertion the assurance that all natural laws were overthrown by the fact, and that in the fact itself no kind of law or order was to be perceived. ”

“ The “Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie” [1] aims to bring the means employed by the natural sciences, especially by physiology, into the service of psychology, and to give a critical presentation of the experimental methods of psychology, which have developed in the last few decades, together with their chief results. ”

“ I will not speak of how, even in the most favorable case of your example finding no further following, the science which concerns us both most nearly, philosophy, can not be without danger of having its reputation severely damaged, when one of its distinguished representatives, who has treated almost all of its departments and has especially occupied himself earnestly with logical studies, now suddenly throws overboard all principles of scientific investigation, in order to find in the revelations of rapping spirits the means of supplementing our insight into the order of the world. ”

“ I should believe, indeed, that only scientific occupation can produce absolute trustworthiness in theoretical questions, because it alone makes a correct estimate of such questions possible. That in this regard the authorities whom you name have, as well on account of their high scientific position as on account of their universally acknowledged personal character, a credibility above every doubt, is a matter of course. But the highest degree of credibility is not sufficient to make any man a scientific authority ”

“ Since the process referred to by “Perception” is so entirely different from that indicated by the English word perception, it seemed best to employ a word whose signification is not so fixed. Apprehension was, accordingly, used, and the danger of confusing it with the translation of “Auffassung” was for the most part avoided by using other equivalents for the latter. ”

“ In view of this double purpose, I have limited myself in detailing facts to that which is most important, or to the examples that serve most directly the ends of illustration, and have omitted entirely those aids to demonstration and experiment which are properly made use of in the lecture-room. ”

“ For, as you very justly remark, natural science and philosophy are so actively interested in the question concerning the reality or non-reality of the spiritualistic phenomena that we must take some sort of attitude toward it. I confess that, after all I have observed, this question would be for me an extremely painful one if, with you and the eminent men whose authority you follow, I had to regard as excluded every possible explanation of the phenomena in a natural way—in a way which leaves the universal law of causation untouched. ”

“ The specialist in scientific investigation has the prerogative of a certain one-sidedness; we justify many a freak in his narrower field which can not abide the test of criticism. But what is to become of philosophy, if it abandons the general principles of knowledge, whose authority it is its office to establish for the special sciences? ”

“ I can not, therefore, respected sir, acknowledge the authorities in natural science so highly valued by you and by me, as authorities in this province. In order to be able to speak with authority concerning any phenomena, one must possess a thorough critical knowledge of the same. Authorities in the present case, therefore, are only such persons as either possess mediumistic powers or, without claiming to be bearers of such properties, are able to produce phenomena of the same nature. ”

“ I see in spiritualism, on the contrary, a sign of the materialism and the barbarism of our time. From early times, as you well know, materialism has had two forms; the one denies the spiritual, the other transforms it into matter. The latter form is the older. From the animism of the popular mythologies, it passes into philosophy, in order to be by the latter gradually overcome. As civilized barbarism can experience relapses into all forms of primitive conditions, so it is not spared from this also. ”

“ By a ghost we understand an intelligent being that can suddenly appear in the world of our senses and as suddenly disappear from it again, leaving no traces behind, but we understand precisely the same by an intelligent being of four dimensions. ”

“ I remark that here and in the following pages I use the word reality in the sense which it has in your discussion, excluding from it only the production of the phenomena in a fraudulent manner. For merely subjective phantasms of the observers, these phenomena, as you justly remark, can not be held; their objectivity and reality in the ordinary sense of the word will in fact be questioned by no man, who may even have read only your short description. ”

“ Spiritualism in Germany, as in England, presents certain phenomena almost precisely opposite to what is seen in America. With us, while the belief has obtained a great popular following, affecting almost all classes of society, becoming a kind of religion as it were, it has not succeeded in making converts of really scientific men, numbering almost no eminent scholars in its ranks—being simply neglected, for the most part, by whatever properly calls itself science. ”

“ An authority which asserts this demands more than a scientific authority has ever demanded; it demands that natural Science shall abandon the presupposition of a universal causality, the presupposition upon which all the methods of her investigation rest, and without which an establishment of facts or even of laws of occurrence could never be spoken of. ”

“ The moral condition of the souls seems to be relatively the most favorable. According to all the evidence, the character of harmlessness can not be denied them. It shows itself particularly in the fact that they hold it to be necessary to make excuses for proceedings of a somewhat brutal nature, in case of becoming guilty of such—as, for instance, the destruction of a bed-screen, with a politeness which, in a ghost, is certainly deserving of acknowledgment. ”

“ Whence is the scientific investigator to get courage and perseverance for his work, if the laws of nature, according to the prospect which you open, are approaching a point where they shall be done away with? ”

“ We can content ourselves with considering the question, whether the objects of your belief show the characteristic signs which we find in those objects of belief which, according to the testimony of history and of social psychology, we must call prejudicial to the moral development of man. This question, after the intimate relation which we have shown to exist between spiritualism and the most corrupt forms of so-called superstition, can only be answered in the affirmative. ”

“ To-day, when faith has become tottering, when, at the same time, there are no youthful races (like the Celts, the Teutons, the Slavs) able, as at the time of the decay of ancient civilization, "to take up the broken thread of civilization and, upon the ideal loom which Christianity offered, to spin further”—to-day it may please Divine Providence to interfere with the course of nature in this way, in order to call back into the thoughts of men their moral nature and end. ”

“ The danger of estrangement from earnest work, devoted to the service of science or of a practical calling, which I have already touched, is to be included here, if indeed in a subordinate place. Of far greater importance are the unworthy conceptions of the condition of the spirit after death, which these phenomena awaken, and which find their analogy only in the so-called animism of the most degraded races. ”

“ Slade's experiments; but he only professes to be an amateur in a field which Mr. Slade cultivates professionally.
I come to my second question: What influence may we concede to outside authority upon our own knowledge? In the immensely preponderant majority of the things which we hold for certain, we all follow the authority of other men; we know only a proportionally small number of facts from our own investigation. Yet all that we owe to foreign authority passes for the more certain the more it agrees with our observation. ”

“ This might pass, however, if that moral and religious awakening which you hope from the spiritualistic manifestations were really to be expected from them, according to the teachings of history and the laws of human nature. I almost hesitate to say to you that the moral deepening of religion has continually kept pace with the doing away of rude representations of the divine in forms of sense, and that, alongside weak-minded unbelief, the worst enemy of morality has always been superstition. ”

“ Whether, through conditions unknown to us, tables are occasionally lifted, accordions played, and bed-screens torn, or ghostly hands and feet appear—all this alone is quite indifferent, so long as things of the sort appear in a harmless form, as we may expect from previous observations, a form which clearly gives no fear of deeper disturbance of general natural laws. The more important, on the contrary, would be the philosophical consequences to which the reality of the spiritualistic phenomena would force us. ”

“ Indeed, various spiritualistic authors have not failed to adduce a multitude of instances from the history of science, in which a fact was at first rejected as false or even impossible, and was yet at last proved to be true. ”