VI. If only on the principle that bulk entitles to recognition, it would be wrong to omit, in an enumeration of the elements composing the present state of British philosophical opinion, a distinct reference to British Swedenborgianism and the widely-diffused forms of analogous belief represented in the so-called literature of Spiritualism or Spirit-manifestations. Without entering on a criticism of these peculiar creeds, or trying to distinguish their forms and degrees-from the mere Animal-Magnetism of Baron Reichenbach and others, which professed to be nothing more than an enlargement of the science of nerve in certain curious directions, up to the wildest recent imaginations of an interfusion of the ghostly with the normally-physical-it will be enough to note what seems to be the one common mode of thought which these creeds in all their forms seek to contribute to Philosophy, and the fact that they do contribute which, in spite of whatever exaggeration and whatever admixture of delusion and folly, is perhaps a sufficient reason why they should exist. The chief influence, then, of all these forms of speculative research or bewilderment, worth noting here, seems to be one of a cosmological kind. What they all inculcate, from the most moderate Animal Magnetism up to the most involved dreams of the Swedenborgians and Spiritrappers, is simply the idea that our familiar phænomenal world, or cosmos, may not be the total sphere of the phænomenal, or even of the phænomenal as it may possibly be brought within our apprehension by appropriate experimentation and artifice. The idea is old enough. Shakespeare has furnished us with an expression of it, which we are never tired of quoting, and which has been a godsend to the Spiritualists in particular. It is where Horatio and Hamlet compare their impressions after the disappearance of the Ghos:: Hor. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange ' There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, With or without a ghost at hand to enforce the lesson, all philosophers of mark have taken care to provide a similar protest against that "Horatio" spirit (f it be not maligning Hamlet's friend to call it such) which would identify the sphere of the hitherto known with the sphere of all phænomenal existence, or even of the knowable. It is an obvious corollary of the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge; and we have seen how both Mr. Mill and Sir William Hamilton recognise it as such. "The existing order of the Universe, or rather of the part of it known to us," is a phrase of Mr. Mill's which we have already quoted; and Mr. Mill is most careful always to speak in this manner, so as to foster, rather than discourage, in his readers, the habit of conceiving that our cosmos may be but that snatch of a measurelessly greater and more complex phænomencl totality which is possible to the present conditions (the perhaps not fixed, nor the same in all) of our sentient. So also Sir William Hamilton. We have quoted his striking illustration of his doctrine of Relativity by the supposition of the total universe of the phænomenal as "a polygon of a thousand, or a hundred thousand, sides 66 or facets," to only three or four of which we may be organically related by our senses or faculties. But, indeed, he went farther. He contended for "the recognition of occult causes" as a duty of Philosophy-that is, for the admission that there are credible and attested phænomena in our present experience which we are unable as yet "to refer to any known cause or class." He specially cited the "phænomena of Animal Magnetism" as an instance, expressing his surprise at the "difficult credence" accorded to these phænomena in Britain (he was writing in 1852) in contrast with the "facile credence” accorded to what he considered the baseless pretensions of Craniology.* Now, so far as Swedenborgianism and its cognate "Spiritualism" have had any appreciable influence on recent British Speculative Philosophy, that influence has consisted, I believe, in their having diffused through the philosophical mind (whether from any background of real facts or no is a different question) a stronger disposition than existed a little while ago to acknowledge the existence of occult causes a stronger form of the always philosophical notion that the phænomenal cosmos of our se: tiency is not necessarily the phænomenal cosmos of al contemporary sentiency. I am confirmed in this by oserving that this is the sort of representation of the lleged phænomena of spirit-rapping, clairvoyance, apparions, &c., given by that British believer in these phænoAppendix to Discussions, pp. 611, 612. * mena who has the greatest independent philosophical reputation, and whose name is always cited by the spiritualists as that of their weightiest supporter. "When "it comes to what is the cause of these phænomena," says this writer, in a remarkable preface to a recent book on spirit-manifestations, "I find I cannot adopt any "explanation which has yet been suggested. If I were "bound to choose among things which I can conceive, I "should say that there is some sort of action of some "combination of will, intellect, and physical power, "which is not that of any of the human beings present. "But, thinking it very likely that the universe may "contain a few agencies-say half a million—about "which no man knows anything, I cannot but suspect "that a small proportion of these agencies-say five "thousand-may be severally competent to the produc❝tion of all the phænomena, or may be quite up to the 66 task among them." This is precisely Hamlet's rebuke to Horatio over again, though in different language. It suggests simply that we may be under a mistake in our habit of conceiving of the cosmos orbed forth to us by our present science and experience as if it were the total cosmos of actual existence. It grounds this suggestion, however, on certain alleged facts, believed * "From Matter to Spirit: the Result of Ten Years' Experience in Spirit Manifestations by C. D.; wtth a Preface by A. B., 1863." The extract is from the Preface, the writer of which, though signing himself only "A. B.," was announced so generally at the time of the publication of the book to be Professor De Morgan that it would be an affectation of etiquette not to name him here. For ingenuity and sceptical suggestiveness, as well as wit, I know nothing in the "Literature of Spiritualism" comparable to this brief Essay. in by the author, which seem to him to prove that, even within the orb of our present cosmos, and intermingling with its affairs, there are hosts of occult agencies, of which, by momentary accidents, or by known artificial arrangements, we may be so far made cognisant as to hear, as it were, the rustle, and feel the touch, of their passing wings. Now observe that, in all this, there is no implication, respecting the alleged phænomena, that, were they true even to the utmost extent of the most openmouthed credulity, they would bring us a single inch nearer an Ontology, or knowledge of the central Absolute. This is, indeed, what the mob of ladies and gentlemen who amuse, excite, and stupefy themselves with "mediums" and "séances" do always assume; but the drift of the present critic's remarks is very different. The result at the very utmost, according to him, would only be an enlargement of our notions of the phænomenal, and by no means an acquaintance with noumena—a perception that there were more things in our "heaven and earth" than had usually been dreamt of in our philosophy; but by no means a vision of any Empyrean or Heaven of Heavens beyond the heaven and earth of the phænomenal. Our present conception of the Cosmos might be burst and honeycombed-which might be attended with useful soul-shaking and an overpowering flood of mystery; but, after all, it would be only a new Cosmology that we should have, and not in the least an Ontology. In short, if we inweave the whole substance of the speculation with that preceding philosophical doctrine of Relativity into which it seeks to fit itself, the matter shapes itself as follows:-It has been the general |