Observations placeholder
Tyndall, John – Science and the Spirits – 09 Conclusions
Identifier
024820
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Now here we have the conclusion which is clearly the preacher of the new religion of ‘science’ in full sway with accusations that spiritualism is the work of the devil and that the people who follow it are drugged or worse.
Then we have a patently false statement “science has given us all the knowledge of the universe” – since if this were true he would not have been able to produce the book he had just written and would presumably be still living in a cave hunting mice.
This is a science paper whose conclusion is emotive and divisory, as well as inflammatory. It is also based on no evidence at all, as is all too clear from the observations.
A description of the experience
SCIENCE AND THE "SPIRITS”
… You urge, in vain, that science has given us all the knowledge of the universe which we now possess, while spiritualism has added nothing to that knowledge. The drugged soul is beyond the reach of reason. It is in vain that impostors are exposed, and the special demon cast out. He has but slightly to change his shape, return to his house, and find it "empty, swept, and garnished."
***************************************************************************************
Spiritualism: A Narrative with a Discussion – Patrick Proctor Alexander
APPENDIX. Professor Tyndall 'on science and spirits: ‘
Throughout, as we have seen. Dr. Tyndall kept to himself everything ; i,e, he was there to test the phenomena, but nobody was to be allowed to test him : the great philosophic principle that everything on earth is to be investigated, save only his investigations, seems throughout to have been his guiding star in this inquiry.
By necessary consequence, his paper is frankly not worth the ink it cost him to write it. Gentlemen whose role it is to expose imposture (and for no other purpose did Dr. Tyndall attend this Seance), if so be they find themselves able to do so, ought really to do it there and then; for afterwards, as we see, there may be difficulties.
If they lack the moral courage so to do, they have clearly mistaken their role, and ought to change it and try some other. The amiable timidity of disposition, in virtue of which Professor Tyndall seems in this case to have shrunk from giving instant offence, has no doubt a beauty of its own ; but clearly it is quite out of place in Scientific investigations of this particular kind.