Mary Everest Boole

“ The then almost new theory of Evolution on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the marvellous tales which were being told of spirits appearing at stances, seemed to be considered by the critics of the day so contrary, both to each other and to all that had hitherto been considered sacred or reasonable, that these ladies almost felt as though the thought-world were reverting to chaos. ”

“ My father, T. R. Everest, was a learned occultist in days when occultists were few. He did everything in his power to call attention to the dangerous reaction which must come if the clerical and medical professions persisted in ignoring the phenomena of Mesmerism, Trance and Clairvoyance.
Frederick Maurice was a fanatical opponent of all investigation of such phenomena from the experimental or scientific side. Can any good come except from Nazareth?
But Maurice believed that the Church of England system made possible an indefinite expansion of liberality. ”

“ More than twenty years ago a few ladies, alarmed at the tempest of discussion about all things human and divine which threatened to sweep them from their accustomed anchorage, asked me to help them to find out whether anything was left which we might still venture to believe without finding ourselves in antagonism with something else which seemed to have equal claims to be considered true. ”

“ Medical men of all the different "pathies" have been kindly willing to help me in calming the minds of perplexed women by leading them to see that the most important part of any new truth is not always that which at first excites the most discussion ; that a force which was spiritual when we were ignorant of the laws of its operation does not become unspiritual because we have discovered a few of those laws ”

“ A society has lately been formed, called the Society for Psychical Research, which announces itself as willing to receive and examine, and as far as possible to classify, evidence on such subjects as thought-reading, clairvoyance, apparitions, and haunted houses. It is not difficult to foresee that the future history af this new movement will in mahy respects repeat the experience of the past. ”

“ But it seems simpler and better to give to the public the original work suppressed by Maurice's friend, as a fair sample of the kind of knowledge which, half a century ago, was being driven out of England in deference to the whims of an Ecclesiastical Trades Union.
We think that we have progressed since that day. Instead of not believing in ghosts and mediums, we believe in them perhaps rather too much ; we perhaps attach too little weight to the special experience of the parochial clergy. But are we outgrowing our slavery to the tyranny of / cliques ? ”

“ Are we not in some danger of sacrificing much that is valuable to the general intellectual Trades Unionism of the Middle Classes, who decree that what they know not is not knowledge ; that nothing can be of any use except what they can see the use of without taking any trouble to in- vestigate ? ”