The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-27
THE CREDULIrY OF INTELLIGENCE.

purified.
THE CREDULIrY OF INTELLIGENCE.
Professor" Harvey Archer, "a spirit
ualistic professor" was exposed the other
day in Chicago. He was personating "a
materialized spirit" and had imposed on
a number of people commonly credited
with common sense. The success of these
montebanks is due to the fact that
credulity among persons of considerable
intelligence and mental capacity is quite
common. Exposure of fraud has no effect
on the faith of what we might call 'intel-
ligent credulity," for Intelligent credul-
ity' always complacently answers that
the discovery of a counterfeit twenty-dol-
pieces, does not prove that all are counter
felt, but, on the contrary. is only evidence
of the fact that there are genuine twenty
dollar pieces in circulation. This
stale answer and illustration is
absurd. Nobody denies the existence of
twenty-dollar gold pieces, but the "intel-
ligent credulity" does not seem to be able
to logically distinguish between the coun-
terfeit of something that actually exists
whose existence has been tested by all our
senses and is admitted by the common
consent of the entire range of human in
telligence-and the counterfeit of some
thing whose very existence is matter
of pure assumption and is discredited
by the vast weight of intelligent human
testimony for the last hundred years.
The twenty-dollar gold piece is a fact,
not an assumption, but spirit intercourse,
spirit naturalization is not fact at all;
it is mere assumption against all the
authentic human testimony that has en-
dured the examination of high intelli-
gence and scientific Investigation.
When these so-called spirit phenomena
are traversed and are shown to be
merely the tricks and twilight mummeries
of mountebanks they are frauds; they are
not counterfeits of accepted facts, but
counterfeits of popular fancies and delu-
sions. To illustrate: There is no such
thing as mermaid; it has a fanciful ex-
istence in poetry and fable; it has an ex-
istence in pictorial art, but because we find
it in poetry, art and literature we do not
infer that the mermaid is a fact any more
than we infer because there are pictures and
statues of Jupiter and Venus that Jupiter
in the shape of a Thessalian bull ever ran
away with Europa or followed the flying
fleet of 10, or that Venus really made love
to Adonis. There are counterfeits of
facts and counterfeits of fancies.
The base twenty-dollar gold piece
is a counterfeit of an undisputed
fact, while the so-calIed spirit
phenomena, when reduced down to their
lowest terms of delusion. illusion, trickery
and fraud, are no more evidence that there
are any real spirit phenomena than the
picture, the statue or the fable of Venus
is proof that there ever was any Venus.
making Vulcan jealous by flirting with
the first handsome mortal that she met.
So spirit frauds are not counterfeits of
accepted facts, but of fancies, fables,
ignorant assumptions that are relocated
by the intelligent scientific world to the do
main of fable which delighted the ears of
There is no more judicial evidence today
Of the reality of spirit intercourse, of
spirit naturalization, than there is of the
historical existence of Ulysses or of Poly
phemus, the one-eyed giant whom he re-
duced to total darkness The ignorant
plantation negro and the illiterate peas
antry of Europe and the United States
believe in spirits; the vast mass of intelli-
gent civilization does not believe in them
as manifest to human sense Shall we
assume that the conclusions of ignorance
and superstition are correct and that the
skepticism of intelligence is wrong? The
spiritist frauds like Professor" Archer.
of Chicago, seem to get fat on exposure,
just as gross quacks in medicine and
surgery seem to grow popular on the very
notoriety of some outrageous case of NAL
practice.
There is u Boston spiritualist who has
seen 500 msterislizations; he has seen his
uncle and George Washington waltz out of
q dark cabinet together, and he likes to be-
lieve that his uncle is really keeping better
company than he was ever able to in this
world. On the other hand the admirers of
Charles Summer have been mortified by the
reception of communications that were
totally out of character with his reputation
in this life for grammatical accuracy, re-
fined literary taste and elegance of ex-
preston. The change in Sumner is
so violent that it suggests the
thought that the great snti-slavery orator
has been condemned in the next world 10
stand on his head while in the act of
thinking and ut;ering his supernatural
wisdom. Unless Sunner is greatly
changed, rather than continue to expecto-
rate iu-spelled, ungrammatical and red
headed fustian rhetoric. he must envy
Ixicu, the luxury OF his wheel, Tantalus,
his evasive bunch of grapes, and Sisyphus,
that slippery stone that gave him no time
to stop and gather any moss.
The naturalization frauds, wherever
found and exposed. have the same familiar
suburban scenery today that lent enchant-
ment to the New England spooks in
council that in 1874 at spirit Vale" were
vouched for as genuine" by the late
Nine. Blaystsky and he- faithful ancient,