Occultism and Common Sense Part 15

AFTERWORD

_And so our little tour into the occult is ended and we return into the glare of common things--things which we know and can touch and find a practical use for. If only a little of this light we hold so cheap were to illumine the tenebrous fastnesses we have just left, then, perhaps we, in our dull worldly way, might be able to a.s.similate the mystic to the common, the unseen to the seen, the unknown to the known. But we are not vouchsafed this white light; yet, even in the shadows to which our eyes have grown accustomed, we have heard enough to make us wonder and maybe make us doubtful when some voice, even such a voice as Matthew Arnold's, cries out to us: "Miracles are touched by Ithuriel's spear"--"Miracles do not happen."_

_True, miracles do not happen: but there are events of frequent occurrence in this age, as in all ages of which we have a record, which are miraculous in the sense of their being supernormal--for which science offers no consistent explanation. Is not hypnotism a miracle? Is not telepathy a miracle? Is not the divining rod a miracle? Would Sir William Ramsay or Sir James Crichton-Browne throw these manifestations into the limbo of humbug and charlatanism? And supposing they, and such as they, continue incredulous--is not incredulity a fixed quant.i.ty in any society? Were men ever unanimous in their impressions--in their prepossessions, in the chromatic quality with which they steep every surrounding fact before they allow their critical faculties to be focussed upon it?_

_It may be objected by the reader that I who have led him on this little tour into the wilderness of the occult have myself seen no ghosts. Where are my own experiences? Where the relation of my own personal contact with hypnotists, telepathists, mediums, mysteries? Would not that have been of interest? It may be so: if the phenomena appertaining to those in their best and most convincing quality were always to appear on a casual summons and if I were confided in by the public at large as a sane, unprejudiced witness._

_Granted that I have seen no ghosts, I have at least done this: I have met the men--better men--who have. That at the beginning was the real purpose of my brief itinerary. I designed less a tour into the occult itself than an examination of witnesses for the occult whom I met on the literary bypaths of occultism. This I hope I have done, not satisfactorily--very hurriedly--yet honestly, and wanting like a returned traveller to tell folks more ignorant than myself of what I had heard of wonders which each man must, in the last resort, see for himself and meditate upon for himself._

_The blind leading the blind--yea--but--he who hath ears let him hear!_

_One word more. I should like to see a census of all the minds which embrace a belief in the truth of supernormal phenomena. It would astonish the sceptic. It would reveal to him that the att.i.tude of society at large towards spiritualism and the other world is not the att.i.tude of any but a fraction of the component parts of society--not even the evenly balanced att.i.tude of Huxley towards G.o.d Almighty. We should see something quite different; something even distinct and apart from religion. We should see men, often without any religion at all properly speaking, breaking out into the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of Hamlet to Horatio and refusing to believe that certain occurrences in their experience are to be explained away by chance or delusion. And even in religious men the conviction seems to me secular rather than arising from orthodox faith._

_"Far be it from me," wrote Emerson, "the impatience which cannot brook the supernatural, the vast: far be it from me the l.u.s.t of explaining away all which appeals to the imagination and the great presentiments which haunt us. Willingly I, too, say Hail! to the unknown artful powers which transcend the ken of the understanding." Amen!_

_Only yesterday I picked up a book, a sort of literary autobiography, by the author of "Sherlock Holmes," to find the following pa.s.sage:--_

_"I do not think the hypothesis of coincidence can cover the facts. It is one of several incidents in my life which have convinced me of spiritual interposition--of the promptings of some beneficent force outside ourselves which tries to help us where it can."_

A Catalogue of the Publications of T. Werner Laurie.

ABBEYS OF GREAT BRITAIN, The (H. Clairborne Dixon and E. Ramsden). 6s.

net. (Cathedral Series.)

ABBEYS OF ENGLAND, The (Elsie M. Lang). Leather, 2s. 6d. net. (Leather Booklets.)

ADAM (H. L.), The Story of Crime. Fully Ill.u.s.trated. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d.

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ADDISON (JULIA), Cla.s.sic Myths in Art. Ill.u.s.trated with 40 plate reproductions from famous painters. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s. net.

ADVENTURES OF AN EMPRESS (Helene Vacaresco). 6s.

AFLALO (F. G.), Suns.h.i.+ne and Sport in Florida and the West Indies. 60 Ill.u.s.trations. Demy 8vo, 16s. net.

ALIEN, The (Helene Vacaresco). 6s.

ANTHONY (E.) ("Cut Cavendish"), The Complete Bridge Player. With a Chapter on Misery Bridge. (Vol. I., Library of Sports.) 320 pages. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net.

ARMOUR (J. OGDEN), The Packers and the People. Eight Ill.u.s.trations. 380 Pages. Crown 8vo, 6s. net.

ARNCLIFFE PUZZLE, The (Gordon Holmes). 6s.

ART IN THE DUMPS (Eugene Merrill). 1s. net.

ARTIST'S LIFE, The (John Oliver Hobbes). 2s. 6d. net.

BEAUTY SHOP, The (Daniel Woodroffe). 6s.

BECKE (L.), Notes from My South Sea Log. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s. net.

BECKE (L.), My Wanderings in the South Seas. Ill.u.s.trated. Crown 8vo, 6s.

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BECKE (L.), Sketches in Normandy. Crown 8vo, cloth, 6s.

BELL AND ARROW. The (Nora Hopper), 6s.

BENNETT (A.). See Phillpotts.

BIOGRAPHY FOR BEGINNERS, The (E. Clerihew). 6s. net.

BLAND (Hubert) ("Hubert" of the _Sunday Chronicle_), Letters to a Daughter. Ill.u.s.trated Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. net; paper, 1s. net.

BLAND (Hubert) ("Hubert" of the _Sunday Chronicle_), With the Eyes of a Man. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.

BLIND REDEEMER, The (David Christie Murray), 6s.

BLINDMAN'S MARRIAGE (Florence Warden). 6s.

BLYTH (J.), A New Atonement. A Novel. Crown 8vo, 6s.

BRIDGE PLAYER, The Complete (Edwyn Anthony). 2s. 6d. net.

BRIDGES (J. A.), Reminiscences of a Country Politician. Demy 8vo, 8s.

6d. net.

BROWNE (J. Penman), Travel and Adventure in the Ituri Forests. Demy 8vo, 16s. net.

BUILDING OF A BOOK, The (F. H. Hitchc.o.c.k). 6s. net.

BULLOCK (Shan F.), The Cubs. A Novel. Crown 8vo, 6s.; Prize Edition, 3s.

6d.

BULLOCK (Shan F.), Robert Thorne: The Story of a London Clerk. A Novel.

Crown 8vo, 6s.

b.u.mPUS (T. F.), The Cathedrals of England and Wales. (The Cathedral Series, Vols. III., IV., V.). With many plates and minor decorations, and specially designed heads and tailpieces to each chapter. Octavo, decorative cover, cloth gilt, 6s. net each; in leather, 10s. 6d. net per vol.

b.u.mPUS (T. F.), The Cathedrals and Churches of Northern Italy. With 80 plates, nine of them in colour, and a coloured frontispiece by F. L.

Griggs, 9 6-1/2. 16s. net.

b.u.mPUS (T. F.), The Cathedrals of Northern Germany and the Rhine. (The Cathedral Series, Vol. VI.). With many plates and minor decorations.

8vo, cloth gilt, 6s. net; leather, 10s. 6d. net.