The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1876-04-14
PHILOSOPHICAL.
spirit d alisn GO be scientifically Exam
fred by EXPERTS.

SpirItdalisnn % be scientifically Exam
fRed by EXPERTS.
The New York World of March 2ls
says: Henry S. Olcott is a 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 gibber
ish of the rest of them has subsided.
And subsided it certainly has. The
swiftest glance ever American "Spiritu
alism" reveals curious and complete
decline. What, one asks, has become o
the multiloquent crowd of seers anC
| soothsayers who seemed to have beer
raped into life by the toes and knuckle'
of Kate Fox Where are the weird peo
pie who held conventions, who proclaimed
| the new Evangelium OF an immortal bed
lam, and ierked, pounded, iabbered and
| otherwise demonstrated the indestructi
bility OF the sotil, by table-legs and hired
costumes? Their apostles are gone, theil
Sunday-night temples are desolate. An
drew Jackson Davis has settled pertta
nently into the superior condition of 81
lencc. Judge Edmonds' book is out o
print. Robert Dale Owen, the most pa
tient, the most credulous, the most sin
cere of their pamphleteers, is dumb OF
the other side of disaster Katie King
was dissipated by her own confession
and the Eddy family, the Fay brother:
and the Petty boys, who had mission
to establish the Immortality of the SOU
with ropes and side shows, have failed
and been exposed 50 often that there |:
no longer any money iii that lighter
branch of business. Even Home has lc
waited out of the reach of the senses
and as for the sibyls, lecturers, dream
erS, fakirs, trance drivellers, prognOstica-
tors and clairvoyant women, whose chiei
claim to be oracles and wOnder-wOrkers
was based upon disordered nervous sys-
TEN, 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 erratic dynamits of these
people? 1t is true Mr.. Foster sits some
where up town, or did quite recently,
shufiing his slips of paper jauntily in be-
half of the life hereafter. So, too, Nine.
Coralie De Sovigne, descendant of the
priests of Isis, still RECEIVERS stolen prop
erty and "foretells future events" from
her eyrie in Prince street (ring the fourth
belD, giving, it is automatically stated,
special attention to lucky numbers.
But these are unaggIessive debris of
the grand army whose war-whoOp was
heard ten years ago. A desOlate con-
viction takes possession of us that
"spiritualism" as popular movement is
"petering out" 1t is in vain that we
ask for Planchette. The country orders
for spirit photographs remain untitled,
and the glorified bodies of materializers,
like that carnal mamma of the gods
which fell in Kentucky, tuln out to be
the commonest frog-spawn.
Nothing remains to us, then, but
Henry 5. Olcett, the president of the
TheosophicaI society, and he purposes to
make final test of spiritualism by TAX
ing well-known American medium,
DIR. ISlade. to Russia, there to be scientif-
icaily examined.
We understand 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 theosophists, we are rs
sured, will not be sanguine of the re-
suits.
The sum total of the three years in
quiry 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-
calIy clear. The most patient and pains
taking investigations up to the present
time have only attested the occurrence
of certain phenomena, both physical and
which are explicable on no
known physical theory. Mr.. OlcOtt is
in hopes that the northern savants will
be able to formulate Jhe means of ''loOk-
ing beyond the vail" and that the art
now lost to all but select few in the
oriental communities will be restored to
us, and. as Satan once put it, we shall
''become as gods, knowing good from
evil'-by some theurgic process.
We can only say to Mr.. Olcott that
we sincerely hope DIR. Slade will be able
in Russia to show what has never yet
been shown in the United States-that
his phenomena have benefited his tel-
lOwmen in the slightest respect, and that
it is any less repugnant to the wisdom
and instincts of mankind to "seek after
the dead' now than it was when the
early legislators of the race forbade it.