This incident originated in 1848, when two teenage girls, Margaret Fox (Margaret Fox) and Katie Fox (Katie Fox), lived in Hydes, New York. A prank played in the small village of Ville.
The girls learned a trick where they tapped their toe joints in secret places, which resulted in weird sounds. It was not difficult to convince their superstitious mother that the sounds were made by the soul of the recently deceased hawker, who was using the code in his voice to announce that he had been murdered. As the words spread around the small village, the girls became local celebrities, and soon Fuchs's little home was filled with crowds, hopeful entreaties for the young girls to communicate with their dead relatives or other spirits from the underworld. connect.
If it weren’t for the intervention of the girl’s sister Leah, the whole thing would be just a local phenomenon. Leah lived in a nearby town, and she immediately thought that this was a good opportunity to make money, so she asked her sister to tell the truth and their mischievous deception in private. Then she began a series of lectures and exhibitions to let the two Two girls demonstrate their "power" to contact and talk to the dead. The demonstration was a huge success, and soon other so-called "psychics" were demonstrating similar abilities. (The term medium is used to refer to a person who claims to have the ability to communicate with spirits.)
The long-closed door between the living and the dead seems to have suddenly been opened. With the opening of the door, empirical evidence was finally obtained that there are signs of survival after death. We today may find it incredible that this was just a children's joke, but it actually started a movement and attracted thousands of followers. In fact, many Americans were willing to completely suppress their distrust during this process because they had been prepared to accept such a thing.
Although the history of spiritualism in the United States began with the Fuchs sisters, in fact, thanks to the efforts of "hypnotists" and phrenologists, the road was already paved, because they were at this young age. Countries have set up shops everywhere. However, at this time, "hypnotism" was no longer popular in Britain and Europe. Hypnotists claimed that humans could be healed and controlled by a special power called "animal magnetism". This special power was passed from the controller to the controlled, thus Affect the health and behavior of the person charged. Hypnotists postulate the philosophical assumption that in every individual there is a natural "state" of balanced animal magnetism. Disturbance of balance causes disease, and controlling it "scientifically" can restore people to "health." These wishes convinced optimistic Americans that science could be used to cure all physical, mental, and social ailments.
Americans deeply felt that the new ideas of science and nature were better touchstones of truth than tradition or autocracy, and that pseudosciences such as hypnotism and phrenology, because they claimed to provide exact Empirical evidence seems to confirm their belief.
If new “sciences” like hypnotism can be used for healing, and if new “sciences” like phrenology can reveal the inner secrets of the soul, then shouldn’t new “sciences” like spiritualism be able to Might it be possible to provide empirical evidence that the soul continues to exist after death and that the dead can communicate directly with the living? With so many new discoveries and inventions almost every day, and so many speakers, philosophers, writers, and teachers openly declaring that humanity has unlimited capabilities within itself, is it impossible that previously insurmountable barriers can finally be crossed?
A young man named Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910) further paved the way for the Spiritualism movement in the United States. Davis's success is that he adds a certain soul and social dimension to the crackling sound of the Fuchs sisters and their ilk. Known as the Poughkeepsie Prophet, Davis began using his so-called clairvoyance powers to treat patients at the age of 14. Years before the Fuchs sisters began talking to dead people at their home in upstate New York, Davis had been speaking to dead celebrities in New York City, including Emanuel Swedenborg and others. The ghost of "Summer Resort", he calls the place where the soul lives after leaving the earth "Summer Resort".
Davis, like many Americans in the mid-19th century, was convinced that the United States was a very special experimental case, a country on the verge of many major changes, social, political, and spiritual. He was deeply involved in various reform movements while making a living by performing and lecturing, and in doing so he demonstrated at least a firm belief that his "power" pointed to and led to a better new world. The Cox sisters (Margaret and Katie), under the control of their sister Leah, only operate on a simpler principle - get the money and leave. Davis was deeply influenced by Swedenborg's philosophy. His words and deeds expressed common equal fraternity, human beings' "innate" supernatural healing abilities, and the immortality of the soul after death. Therefore, he was favored by many Americans. *Ming. After abandoning the strict teachings and "moral authority" of the church, they are eager for some new empirical "truth" to fill the void. Throughout his long career, Davis combined his religious and philosophical teachings with a humanist social reform movement in order to fill this void.
At a Reform convention in 1858, Davis spoke of what was then called "Spiritualism," declaring: "My belief in Spiritualism is but the gateway to acceptance at this convention. The door to the various reforms proposed. … I believe that for you all, Spiritualism is a magnificent triumphal arch leading to freedom and the paradise to which people all over the world aspire.”
Irony. What is clear is that, despite the many ways in which Davis provided the American people with the philosophical and religious framework that underpinned the Spiritualist movement, it was the Fuchs sisters' public activities that attracted so many believers, whether sincere or not-so-noble motives, have become involved in the spiritualist lifestyle.
As the movement grew in size, so did the chaos. It's as if American egalitarianism has been taken to extremes in an attempt to encompass every aspect of this new "science." In addition to "closet" mediums, who use spiritualism to attract the gullible with fast talk, there is also a growing number of "spiritual" churches, which attract many orthodox but distracted by newer spiritualism and "scientific" wisdom. Misguided followers. Some of these spiritualists are honest but misguided, while others are outright liars, but it is not easy to distinguish between these two groups. When those honest but "self-righteous" "spiritual mediums" deliberately resort to deception and believe that it is necessary to use this strategy occasionally in order to make their followers believe in their abilities and gather in the world of spiritualists with peace of mind. , the problem becomes more complicated.
By the time the movement moved to England, it was a hodgepodge. Although "Soul Call" begins with the crackling percussion of the Fuchs sisters, it quickly develops into a strikingly quirky vaudeville act. Tables, chairs, lamps and beds can all be moved by ghosts and jump up and down "under ghost control". Ghosts played banjos and guitars, trumpets and harmonicas in dimly lit rooms and behind closed curtains. Mediums manipulated ventriloquist puppets to impersonate eloquent but shallow-thinking dead celebrities such as Franklin, Newton, Shakespeare, and many American Indian warriors and chiefs. Dead relatives and friends make ghostly appearances. Some ghosts also compose poetry, play music and write books, while others are busy with more mundane matters, untying the hands and feet of bound mediums in hastily constructed dark rooms.
In 1850, a few British psychics opened shops in London, and some Americans cooperated with them. However, by 1853, spiritualist activities had sufficiently aroused the interest of the British public, including the famous British scientist Faraday. Faraday was one of the first British scientists to study this phenomenon, and he made careful observations of one of the most common activities of early London mediums, called table-tilting. The mediums sit around the table in the darkroom, and the customers put their hands on the table. Then the medium summons the ghost to attend. The ghost responds by pushing or shaking the table. The customers' hands can feel the vibration of the table, so it can be determined that the ghost is present. "Ghost appears" in the dark room. After conducting a series of experiments, Faraday concluded that the movement of the table was caused by the unconscious pressure exerted by the customer's hands on the table. At the end of his report, Faraday severely criticized those so-called educated people who accepted nonsense such as "the table is tilted" and abandoned their basic judgment and common sense.
In 1855, it was the arrival of the young American psychic Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-1886) that set off a British spiritualism movement. Holm already has a considerable following in the United States, which is an interesting phenomenon in terms of his own experience. Five years before he arrived on British shores, he had been a scruffy 17-year-old. A group of American spiritualists transported him to London, where he arrived carrying a gold box, a large diamond ring, and rich clothes. All were gifts from his admirers. He is tall and thin, with a pious temperament and feminine elegance. He claims to have various spiritual powers. Not content with being a passive medium of contact with ghosts, he also mastered many tricks. Among the many stunts he claimed were the ability to elongate his body, hold onto hot coals with his bare hands, and most importantly, lift his body several feet into the air. These tricks were not performed casually by Holm, reserved only for the dignitaries and wealthy people. There were never free séances in Home's career. His talents were strictly reserved for wealthy patrons who had him as a guest in their homes.
As in the United States, spiritualism soon began to spread in Britain and attracted widespread attention. Some see it as an alternative religious experience, leading to the birth of "spiritual churches"; others see it as a way to alleviate personal sorrow and pain because it promises communication with deceased loved ones; for others, it Provide diversion and novelty. However, for some highly educated British scholars and scientific researchers, it at least provides an opportunity to empirically prove whether the soul exists and whether the soul continues to exist after death.
Almost from the birth of Spiritualism, exposures and exposures of mediums followed one after another. A local doctor who carefully watched the Fuchs sisters' activities before they left Hyndesvili questioned not only the plausibility of their claims but also the vocalizations of the mysterious ghosts.
A few years later, the Fuchs sisters admitted that the whole incident was a hoax and that the mysterious sound was caused by them cracking their toe joints. But in fact, long before that, a careful doctor correctly exposed this as a fraud. However, despite the continuous exposure of incidents, there are indeed some people who are willing to believe that they can communicate with the dead, and therefore remain stubborn; as for those who doubt, there is nothing they can do about the behavior of the gullible. For each exposure, the psychics would at most protest or make some explanations, showing no signs of restraint.
However, even true believers have to admit that there is a lot of fraud involved in the operations of psychics. They have been exposed too many times. I don’t know how many times the skeptics sitting around the medium’s table have caught the medium’s deceptive actions with their quick eyes and hands. They have seen the hidden assistants manipulating the ghosts to appear in the dark room. They have discovered all kinds of things. Mechanisms are used to animate tables, chairs and hat stands, or to glow and create floating human hands and faces in the air. Professional magicians have been instrumental in such revelations, admitting that many psychic phenomena are simply tricks they perform on stage. However, no matter how many deceptions "dishonest" mediums do, and even sometimes honest mediums cannot summon the so-called ghosts as required, there are still many believers who insist that the spiritualist movement itself is reasonable. For there are too many phenomena that doubters cannot explain, and too many empirical facts that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the soul is immortal and can communicate with the living.
By the late 1860s, the phenomenon of ghosts and the controversies they caused were attracting increasing attention, and a handful of serious scholars and scientists decided to get involved in the investigation.
In the United States, the earliest organized attempt to use scientific methods to seriously investigate the entire phenomenon of spiritualism began in 1857, when a group of Harvard professors announced their intention to investigate the claims of spiritualists. The rationality is that the living can communicate with the dead. In order to encourage mediums to take the initiative to verify their claims, the Boston Courier offered a reward of $500 to the medium who could meet the requirements of Harvard professors and demonstrate genuine spiritualism. Five mediums were invited to accept the committee's challenge, and all of them failed. However, these people later claimed that the conditions set by the professors were not suitable for contact with sensitive ghosts.
In general, the Harvard survey lays the groundwork for future research. Defenders of spiritualism insist that they have scientifically demonstrated that spirits not only exist after death but can communicate with the living. At the same time, they insist that the scientific conditions and tests set up by the investigators prevent the phenomena they want from occurring. When processes and controls are ordered, operated, and monitored by believers, the reported results are always positive; when processes and controls are ordered, operated, and monitored by skeptics, the results are always negative. Compromises often produce mixed results. This statement is extremely dubious and, in the eyes of most serious scientists, ridiculous. To a skeptical scientist like Huxley, how absurd it was for a group of supposedly sane adults to sit around a table in a dark room and think they were communicating with the dead. Like most serious scientists of the day, Huxley regarded the whole matter of spiritualism as nonsense and not worthy of scientific seriousness. When a handful of members of the London Dialectical Society proposed a commission to investigate spiritualism in 1869, Huxley, one of the Society's most prominent members, refused to join the committee, dismissing the whole thing as "nonsense."
Today, most of us would regard the whole incident as blatant nonsense, as Huxley said, but there are some equally famous 19th-century scientists, such as Wallace, one of the discoverers of the theory of evolution. , but takes this matter extremely seriously. One of the committee's most active members, he had been leaning toward spiritualism long before the inquiry, and he co-wrote the committee's controversial final report.
Although the committee admitted that it had not found enough evidence to prove that talking to dead people actually happened, some members of the committee claimed that there was enough evidence to warrant continuing to investigate the phenomenon. Serious investigation.
Reading it today, this report is just a patchwork of fragmentary anecdotes, an extremely subjective piece of reportage, loose and haphazard. This impression was still made when it was read to non-committee members of the Dialectic Society in 1869. The Dialectical Society refused to publish its final report, and the committee members published it in their own names.
As can be expected, public reaction to this report has been mixed. The original believers and doubters remain the same. "The Daily Telegraph" commented: "The facts sworn by many witnesses are certainly extraordinary, and if we were asked how we could explain them, we could only answer that they could not, and that it was none of our business. There is no Sphinx in front of us, and even if we cannot solve these mysteries, we are not afraid of it swallowing us. Some people with excellent intelligence and familiarity with science do believe in the reality of such phenomena. This fact reminds us that it is worth looking at this phenomenon with a more keen eye. After all, believers are not all emotional and unscientific followers.
Meanwhile, the Pall Mall Gazette reported: "But because of the formality and tedium of the testimonies, the stories read like a chapter in a manual of natural magic." It is difficult to express or imagine anything other than contempt for the activities described in the report. "The Morning Post" questioned: "The published report is worthless." Isn’t it time to put a stop to this ghost worship? We raise this issue seriously. Putting an end to this type of behavior would at least sweep away a lot of self-deception. ”
How could a serious scientist like Wallace be involved in this report? Is it possible that, as the Morning Edition suggested, some such as Wallace and his committee colleagues How could a good thinker fall into such obvious self-deception? A few years later, in 1873, another well-respected scientist, William Crookes (1832-1919), the discoverer of the element thallium and Crookes The inventor of the cathode ray tube, an instrument for people to study cathode rays, actually recognized the ghost of psychic Florence Cook. Crookes claimed that he had been with a ghost named "King Katy". Dancing together, this ghost is resurrected in the body of Miss Cook.
Is it just because of the clever tricks of the medium and his co-conspirators that these scientists are willing to deceive themselves?
This question has puzzled scholars for a long time. Of course, it stands to reason that science is a method that can help you be sure that you are not fooling yourself. After all, it was the scientific method that brought this to 19th-century researchers. The Hope: Science has the potential to clarify the mystery of the human "soul" and the existence of souls after death.
When the Society for the Study of the Soul was founded in 1882 by a small group of academics in Cambridge with the goal of studying the phenomenon of spiritualism, Its submission states that the Society's purpose is "to examine questions such as these without any prejudice or preconceived notions, and with the precise and dispassionate pursuit that has enabled science to cleanly resolve so many problems." "Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), one of the founders of the Society, later said: "This is our... position. We have unreserved faith in modern scientific methods and are prepared to accept well-reasoned conclusions if the experts agree on them unanimously; but we are not prepared to submit equally to the prejudices of mere scientists. It seems to us that there is a great deal of evidence - tending from the first to support the independent existence of souls or ghosts - and it is from the ignorance of modern science that these facts have been despised or even ignored; and it is for this reason that science has not been faithful followed through on her purported approach and prematurely reached negative conclusions. Please note that we do not agree that these negative conclusions are scientifically wrong. Let's just say that this approach may fall into exactly the kind of error we are trying to avoid. We just say that they came to conclusions prematurely...".
Frederic Myers (1843-1901), another founder of the Society for the Study of the Soul, commented on the power of science: "This method... has never been applied to so important questions as to the existence, power, and destiny of the human soul. ”
Although their intentions were certainly pure, and perhaps a little fanatical, the fact is that most of the original members of the Society for Soul Research had a strong desire to find souls from the beginning. Evidence of existence and immortality, no matter how objectively they are queried
In a letter to Miles, Sidwick wrote: "I sometimes...have a little bit of it. Sincere hope and enthusiasm, the sense that the British indomitable spirit of truth-seeking will answer the final questions about the universe with perseverance and determination, and the answers will eventually come to light. ”
Although the original members of the Soul Research Society voluntarily severed their ties with traditional religion and religious activities, they still had a deep yearning to discover some deeper meaning of life, which made their research from the very beginning. It is impossible to be completely objective. Most of them have already had a keen interest in ghosts and so-called "ghost haunted places" long before joining the Soul Research Society.
Victoria Glendinning (1937-) quoted scholar Trevor Hall as saying that members of the Society for the Study of the Soul "believe with a reckless and obsessed desire...", which shows that the members of the Society for the Study of the Soul allowed themselves to participate in Such "obviously child's play experiments" and research are motivated only by their "need to prove immortality after death regardless of the consequences - which may be related to the shaking of the foundation of religion in the post-Darwinian era. Hall, an expert on the history of Spiritualism and the activities of the Society for the Study of Souls, leaves room for criticism of the fashion of early members, such as their "ignorance of fraudulent methods" and their pretensions to being inviolable English gentlemen. "Noble" people cannot be deceived.
Needless to say, the first generation of researchers of the Society for the Study of the Soul never found or provided conclusive and acceptable scientific proof of the soul or the immortality of the soul after death.
However, even before original members began to drop out, divisions within the Society were already emerging, as certain highly influential members began to believe that many of the conditions they were studying might not be evidence of conversations with dead people, but of so-called extrasensory perception. illustration.
Perhaps the mediums do not receive messages from the dead, but simply feel the thoughts of their clients through some strange power? Doesn’t this also prove that humans have some special and unique qualities, indicating that there is a more intimate and harmonious relationship between humans, nature and God than previously imagined? In this way, the focus of the Soul Research Society gradually shifted from finding evidence of the immortality of the soul after death to research on extrasensory perception and beyond the normal range (such as superhuman vision, etc.).
Although Spiritualism continued into the early 20th century and still exists to some extent in different forms today, its climax came to an end at the end of the 19th century. The changing attitude of the Society for the Study of the Soul heralded, in a sense, the end of Spiritualism as a movement. As more and more of the mediums' deceptions were publicly exposed, most of the public began to lose interest, although investigators, led by the Society for Spiritual Research, began to splinter into different factions. A small number of investigators continue to focus on the "spirits" of mediums - are they really talking to the dead? But more and more people are beginning to pay attention to extrasensory perception - is the "spiritual power of nature" really being used intentionally or unintentionally? As the centuries turned and science became increasingly specialized, its insistence on “hard data,” experimental repeatability, and skeptical verification led many to realize that, despite its success in the material realm of nature, science It doesn't have to be in the more nebulous realms of the social and the supernatural.