New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1859-12-09
FRIDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 9, 1859.
SpirItun nIfstic.


and Miss Emma Hardinge having announced that
she was going to lecture last night on 20 What is
Spirit" we thought we would step in, find out
Hidt is spirit and tell our readers some of whom
may have the same curiosity which we felt. We
shall boil down the LADY, lengthy, beautifully and
ornate!y rhetorical, and eloqnently delivered lee
ture and give the gstof it in few words, which
will be its quintessence, and define what spirit is
The theory set forth by Miss Hardinge, and
which is about the same with which Baron
D'Ohlbach and other old German n,ateralists and
transcendentalists, with their talk about the laws
OF the material and imfnateria forces,n befogged
their own brains and muddied those of their dis
ciplcs, is not based or built upon what ordinary
people receive as the facts of revelation and laws
OF matter, and all recognized standards being thus
discarded no countervailing arguments can be sug-
gested to destroy the sequence and harmony of the
logic by which it is followed out in smooth and
beautiful stream to the desired deduction Having
very arily, if not conclusiyely, demonstrated the
Scriptural account of the origin of animate and
inanimate matter to be all wrong the lecturer
gave the practice of her theory beginning ssmil
lions and millions Of ages ago" when all matter
was but crude, chaotic mass which in some
unexplained manner possessed undeveloped
electrical principle of vitality. This principle Of
vitality, this "imponderable prime force" this
essential heat, in fact this esprit u starting up
with a self-genefated action, began to work upon
crude matter, disentegrating it and forming soil,
finally vegetables and trees, and all the physical
aspects of inanimate nature by its own integral
force, gradually exercised through the millions
of ages"
Finally this refining process became so advanced
rat priu1 form MA
in matter, and particles of it became animated and
shaped into creatures having feeling. These were
the first rude forms of animal lfe something of the
worm or slug sort: and the ''imponderable spirit
force" keeping up the refining process, more
shapely animals in the course of time took FORM
something in the same way-thougl in vastly
more gradual process from generation to genera
tion-as tadpole sheds his tail and comes forth
genteely-shaped and proper preliminary bull frog.
Finally the refining process reached its climax, and
the highest grade of animal shape was attained in
the human form divine. Thus it is that man
came from dust' through all the gradations OF
slug, worm reptile and brute.
And now for what spirit is for we are approach
ing that grand climacteric development of the
theory of spirltualistc faith: The imponderable
spirit force existing in original matter was not idle
ing process to which matter was being subjected
was in progress. The first slug which had the inti-
atory shape of animal life also had in its msshapen
carcass the element of an intellect and this intel
lect or SPIRIT attained higher grade in each
step which matter progressed towards its ultima
tum in the human form. But though the material
progression portion of the spritualstc theory ends
with the human form, which it acknowledges can
he oyad tha
does not, and Miss H. argues that the refining pro-
cess is still going on and what supernatural to
past generations is not to this f all people would
only believe it as Spirtuasts do) and what is super
natural in this generation will not be so few gen
erations hence. "Spirit," them is subtler, more
etleriazed essence of the mmaterial forces than
now makes up the mind, the intellect, the soul, of
the mass of men, a few of whom have gone
through further stage of the great refining pro-
cess-and these are the demonstrative spirituasts
(snch as Hume and other rapping practitioners
with the mmaterial forces) to whom things are
natural which are merely supernatural to the ma
jority of ordinary mortals, who are not yet sufi-
cently refined.
By the way, we would give the nsorceau
of argument by which Miss Hardinge proved that
intellect is possessed by brutes, reptiles, yermin.
and the even lower forms of animal life. Taking
memory as the highest quality of intellect she
showed that the coral worm had memory, as it
proved that it remembered the sea waves had de-
stroyed its stone work when built up in an ilnpro
per shape, and so built up its walls in form
which would resist the elements and prevent re-
currence of like disaster! A very pretty theory
is spirualsm when yon look at it rightly and with
strong faith, having first taken the precaution to
discard as unworthy of the entertainment of
rational being all that you ever knew BEFORE ever
learned from Revelation or any other source