Psychics: Facts and Theories

The scientifically impossible is one thing ; while the improbable, the uncommon, or the supernormal, is quite another thing. The supernormal may be true. While, then, the probabilities are against it, the proof may be such as to render it credible. Indeed, it is conceivable that the proof may become so strong as to make incredulity absurd and unscientific. The attitude of caution is rational ; but the attitude of those who " know " a thing cannot be true, merely because it is unusual, or because it does not fit into the theory of things which they happen to hold — this is irrational.

Psychics: Facts and Theories

I offer the reader the following facts and some discussion as to theories. If the facts force us to the reasonable conclusion that
" There is no death, what seems so is transition,"
why should anyone shrink from having proved that which all men hope ? I hesitate, as yet, to say that there can be no other explanation ; but I frankly admit that I can now see no other which seems to me adequate to account for all the facts. If anyone can find another explanation, I am ready to accept it. For what any reasonable man wishes is only the truth.

Preface to Psychics

People who propose to visit Boston or New York are constantly writing and asking me to give them the address of some "reliable medium." I almost always decline. For, first, I know very few advertising mediums to whom any first-comer can be sent. And, secondly, though I may have had some satisfactory experience, it does not at all follow that it can be repeated or duplicated, to order, in the case of another. Most of my own experiences have been in the presence of personal friends to whom I should not be at liberty to send a stranger.

Our Unitarian Gospel, by Minot Savage

Let me call your attention to a fact of immense significance …. [at one time ] the study of science and philosophy, that dared to think beyond the limits of the Church's doctrine, were crushed out. There was no free philosophy, there was no free study of science, there was no free anything for a thousand years. The secular armed forces of Europe, with penalties of imprisonment, of the rack, of the fagot, of torture of every kind, were enlisted against anything like liberty of thinking.

So you need not wonder, then, that there was neither any science nor any Unitarianism to be heard of until the Renaissance. What was the Renaissance? It was the rising again of human liberty, the possibility once more of man's freedom to think and study. Though the armed forces of Europe were for a long time against it, the rising tide could not be entirely rolled back, and so it gained on human thought and human life more and more. And out of this the Renaissance came, the new birth of science, on the one hand, and on the other, issuing in the Reformation's assertion of the right of thought and of private judgment in matters of religion; and along with this latter the rebirth of Unitarianism, its reappearance again as a force in the history of the world.

During this Reformation period there are many names of light and power, among them being Servetus, whom Calvin burned because he was a Unitarian; Laelius and Faustus Socinus, Bernardino Ochino, Blandrata, and Francis David; and, more noted in some ways than any of them, Giordano Bruno, the man who represents the dawn of the modern world more significantly than any other man of his age, not entirely a Unitarian, but fighting a battle out of which Unitarianism sprung, freedom of thought, the right of private judgment, the scientific study of the universe, the attempt, unhampered by the Church's dogma or power, to understand the world in which we live.

Now let us come a step nearer home: let us consider England, and note that just the moment free thought was allowed, you find Unitarianism springing into existence. Milton was a Unitarian; Locke, one of the greatest of English philosophers, a Unitarian; Dr. Lardner, one of its most famous theological scholars, a Unitarian; Sir Isaac Newton, one of the few names that belong to the highest order of those which have made the earth glorious, a Unitarian.

And, then, when we come to later England, we find another great scientist, comparatively modern, Dr. Priestley, who, coming to this country after he had made the discovery of oxygen which made him famous for all time, established the first Unitarian church in our neighbor city of Philadelphia.

The first Unitarian church which took that name in the modern world was organized in London by Dr. Theophilus Lindsey in 1774; and its establishment coincides with the great outburst of freedom that distinguished the close of the eighteenth century.

You must not look for Unitarians where there is no liberty; for it is a cardinal principle of their thought and their life…………………………….

Among the Fathers of the Revolution, all the Adamses, Dr. Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and many another were avowed Unitarians. And, when we come to modern times, it is worth your noting that all our great poets in this country, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, and in this city Stedman, are Unitarian names.

Then the leading historians, Bancroft, Motley, Prescott, Sparks, Palfrey, Parkman, and John Fiske, are Unitarians. Educators, like Horace Mann, like the last seven presidents of Harvard University, Unitarians. Great scientists, like Agassiz, Peirce, Bowditch, Professor Draper, Unitarians. Statesmen and public men, like Webster, Calhoun, the Adamses, the Hoars, Curtis. Two of our great chief justices, Marshall and Parsons. Supreme Court Judges, Story and Miller. Literary men, like Whipple, Hawthorne, Ripley, and Bayard Taylor; and eminent women, such as Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child, Lucretia Mott, Helen Hunt Jackson, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe.

I mention these, that you may know the kind of men, ethical, scientific, judicial, political, literary, who have been distinguished, as we think from our point of view, by being followers of this grand faith of ours.

Our Unitarian Gospel, by Minot Savage

Take the scientific men of the world. They do not expect a policeman after them if they do not hold certain scientific opinions. There is no authority to try them for heresy or to turn them out of your society unless they hold certain scientific ideas. They have no sense of compulsion except to find and accept that which they discover to be true. The one aim of science is the truth. There is no motive for anything else.

And truth being one, mark you, and they being free to seek for it, and all of them caring simply for that, they naturally come together, inevitably come together. So that, without any external power or orthodox compulsion, the scientific men of the world are substantially at one as to all the great principles. They discuss minor matters; but, when they discuss, they are simply hunting for a deeper truth, not trying to conquer each other.

Now Unitarians are precisely in this position. The only thing any of us desire is the truth. We are perfectly free to seek for the truth; and, the truth being one, we naturally tend towards it, and, tending towards it, we come together. So there is, as I said, greater unanimity of opinion in regard to the great essential points among Unitarians than among any other body in Christendom.

Now, as briefly as I can, I want to analyze what I regard as the fundamental principles of Unitarianism. I am not going to give you a creed, I am not going to give you my creed: I am going to give you the great fundamental principles which characterize and distinguish Unitarians.

• Freedom for the sake of finding the truth - First, liberty, freedom of the individual to think, think as he will or think as he must; but not liberty for the sake of itself. Liberty for the sake of finding the truth; for we believe that people will be more likely to find the truth if they are free to search for it than they will if they are threatened or frightened, or if they are compelled to come to certain preordained conclusions that have been settled for them. Freedom, then, for the sake of finding the truth.
• God, is at the heart of the universe  - Second, God. The deep-down conviction that wisdom, power, love, that is, God, is at the heart of the universe.
•  God is the universal ‘Father, of all men - Third, that God is not only wisdom and power and love, but that he is the universal ‘Father’, not merely the Father of the elect, not merely the Father of Christians, not merely the Father of civilized people, but the Father of all men, equally, lovingly, tenderly the Father of all men.
• Revelation is truth - In the next place, being the Father of all men, he would naturally wish to have them find the truth. So we believe in revelation. Not in revelation confined to one book or one epoch in the history of the world, though we do not deny the revelation contained in them. We believe that all truth, through whatever medium it comes to the world, is in so far a revelation of our Father; and it is infallible revelation when it is demonstrably true, and not otherwise.
• The only authority in the world is the truth - The next step, then: in the words of Lucretia Mott, we believe that truth should be taken for authority, and not authority for truth. The only authority in the world is the truth