The weekly echo. [volume] (Lake Charles, Parish of Calcasieu, La.) 1868-1876, 1876-04-27
THROyOPHICAL.
spIrisuaIIsEa Is he Systematically Ezam
fmed ~ Experts.

says Henry S. Olcott il stubborn be-
lever and investigator. He Is also presi-
dent of the TheOsOphical society. But,
unlike most of his precursors in spiritism,
he Is ineligible and means business.
For this reason, if for no other, he is en-
titled to be heard, now that the gibbeT-
ish of the rest of them has subsidized.
And subsidized it certainly has. The
swiftest glance ever American ''SpiEitu-
alism" reveals curious and complete
decline. What, one asks, has become Of
the multiloquent crowd of seers and
sOothsayers who seemed to have been
raped into life by the toes and knuckles
of Kate Fox Where are the weird peO-
pie who held conventions, who proclaimed
the new Evangelium OF an immOrtalbed-
lam, and ierked, pounded, iabbeTed and
otherwise demonstrated the indestTucti-
bility OF the soul, by table-legs and hired
costumes? Their apostles are gone, their
Sunday-night temples are desOlate. An
drew Jackson Davis has settled peTma-
nently into the superior condition of 81
lence. Judge Edmonds' book is out of
print. Robert Dale Owen, the most pa
tient, the most CredulOus, the most sim
cere of their Damphleteers, is dumb on
the other side of disaster. Katie King
was dissipated by her own confession
and the Eddy family, the Fay brothers
and the Petty boys, who had mission
to establish the Immortality of the soul
with ropes and side-shOWs, have failed
and been exposed so often that there Is
no longer any money in that lighter
branch of business. Even Home has le-
waited out of the reach of the senses !;
and as for the sibyls, lecturers, dream
ers, fakirs, trance drivellers, pTOgnOstica-
tors and .clairvOyant women, whose chief
claim to be Oracles and WOnder-wOrkers
was based upon disOrdeTed nervous sys-
tenn, they have settled into the fortune
telling business, and figure mainly and
mOdestly in the astrologers' column Of the
daily newspaper.
Where, one might reasonably ask, with
some CONSERVATION, in reviewing this de-
cline, is, then, the immortality of the
soul, if indeed one had ever based its
proof upon the cratic dynamics of these
people? 1t is true Mr.. Foster sits some
where up town, or did quite recently,
shutting his slips of paper jauntily in be-
half of the life hereafter. So, too, Mime.
COralie De SOvigne, a descendant of the
priests of Isis, still RECEIVERS stolen prop
erty and "toretells future events" from
her eyrie in Prince street (ring the fourth
belly, giving, it is authenticity stated,
special attention to lucky numbers.
But these are UnaggTessiye debris OF
the grand army whose war-whOOp was
heard ten years ago. A desOlate con-
VictiOn takes possession of us that
| ''spiritualism" as a popular movement is
| ''petering out" 1t is in vain that we
| ask for Planchette. The country orders
! tor spirit photographs remain untitled,
and the gIorffed bodies of materializers,
like that carnaI mamma of the gods
which fell in Kentucky, tuIn out to be
the cOmmOnest frog-spawn.
Nothing remains to us, then, but
| Henry S. Olestt, the president of the
Theosophical society, and he purposes to
make final test of spiritualism by tax
ing a '. ell-known American medium,
DR.. Slade, to Russia, there to be scientif-
icaily examined.
Weunderstand the theOsophist that this
effort is to be made in the behalf OF
science, and to recover, il possible, the
lost art of Communing with the dead
an art which was lost when the priceless
treasures of the Alexandrian library were
consumed.
Other than thCOsOphists, we are as
sured, will not be sanguine of the re-
suits.
The sum total of the three years in
curry in England, reported with so much
fairness by w. CroOkes, f. r. s, can
hardly be exceeded in Russia Science
admits the evidence of its senses, but
avoids any interference that is not lOgi-
cally clear. The most patient and pains.
taking investigations up to the present
time have only attested the occurrence
of certain phenomena, both physical and
intellectual, which are explicable on No
known physical theory. Mr.. Olcott is
in hOpes that the northern savanTs viii
he able to formulate Ehe means of ''lOOk-
ing beyond the vail, i" and that the ART
now lost to all but a select few in the
oriental communities will be restored t.
us, and, as Satan once put it, we shall
"beoOme as gods, knowing good from
eviI'-by some theurgic process.
/ We can only say to Mr.. OlcOtt that
we sincerely hope DIR. Slade will be able
IN Russia 70 SNOW WHAT HAS never Ju'
been shown in the United States-that
his phenomena have benefited his tel
lowmen in the slightest respect, and that
it is any less Tepugnant to the wisdom
and instincts of mankind to seek after
the dead now than it was when tht
early legislators of the race forbade it.
The Cherokee Indians.