"
M. Arago also came off with very doubtful honours from a wrestle
with the uncombative Martyr; who is perfectly clear (and so are we,
let us add) that scientific men are not the men for his purpose. Of
course, he is the butt of "utter and acknowledged ignorance", and of
"the most gross and foolish statements", and of "the unjust and
dishonest", and of "the press-gang", and of crowds of other alien
and combative adjectives, participles, and substantives.
Nothing is without its use, and even this odious book may do some
service. Not because it coolly claims for the writer and his
disciples such powers as were wielded by the Saviour and the
Apostles; not because it sees no difference between twelve table
rappers in these days, and "twelve fishermen" in those; not because
it appeals for precedents to statements extracted from the most
ignorant and wretched of mankind, by cruel torture, and constantly
withdrawn when the torture was withdrawn; not because it sets forth
such a strange confusion of ideas as is presented by one of the
faithful when, writing of a certain sprig of geranium handed by an
invisible hand, he adds in ecstasies, "WHICH WE HAVE PLANTED AND IT
IS GROWING, SO THAT IT IS NO DELUSION, NO FAIRY MONEY TURNED INTO
DROSS OR LEAVES"--as if it followed that the conjuror's half-crowns
really did become invisible and in that state fly, because he
afterwards cuts them out of a real orange; or as if the conjuror's
pigeon, being after the discharge of his gun, a real live pigeon
fluttering on the target, must therefore conclusively be a pigeon,
fired, whole, living and unshattered, out of the gun!--not because
of the exposure of any of these weaknesses, or a thousand such, are
these moving incidents in the life of the Martyr Medium, and similar
productions, likely to prove useful, but because of their uniform
abuse of those who go to test the reality of these alleged
phenomena, and who come away incredulous.
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