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Show SPIRITUALISM EXPLAINED AS PURELY SUBJECTIVE. Any one who reads the British, French, and Italian reviews must be struck by the extraordinary amount of attention they arc giving to Spiritualism. Spirit-ualism. It would seem, in fact, as if there were a revival of interest in this occult and erstwhile discredited form of faith. Most of the scientific writers writ-ers in these reviews, such as Lombro-so Lombro-so and Flammarion, while recognizing the wonders revealed, still preserve an attitude of anxious inquiry as to the actuating influence of necromantic necroman-tic revelations, spectral appearances, sounds, and movements which arc familiar fa-miliar things in the ordinary spiritualistic spirit-ualistic seance. Wc find in the foreign for-eign magazines three principal theories theor-ies broached with regard to spiritualistic, spiritual-istic, or, as most commonly nowa days written, psychic phenomena. The Roman ecclesiastic tells us that they belong to the domain of dc-monology dc-monology and witchcraft. Evil and unclean spirits arc at work in the spiritualistic seance. The man who h a Spiritualist pure and simple an-nounccb an-nounccb that the dead have come back and arc present, speaking through the medium. Many Italian and French scientists believe that natural forces not yet identified, because hitherto insufficiently investigated, are to be recognized in such phenomena as lc-vitation, lc-vitation, revelation of personal ideni-ty, ideni-ty, and other wonders. In Italy, where the subject of psychic psy-chic research has been investigated with immense interest and curiosity by men of the highest scientific authority, au-thority, a tendency has recently appeared ap-peared to regard Spiritualism as something of merely natural and earthly origin. In the Rassegna Na- zionalc (Florence) Pietro Stoppani, itJaprqpps of a work called "For Spiritualism," Spir-itualism," written by his friend and teacher, Prof. A'ngelo Brafferio of the Academy of Milan, undertakes to ex- plain what the mediumistic power, medianism, as he calls it, consists in. Docs this power pertain, he asks, to the domain of physics, psychology, or dcmonology? He comes to the conclusion con-clusion that Spiritualism is another name for hypnotism, and is connected with telepathy, suggestion, and kindred kin-dred influences. Neither devil, evil spirit, nor souls of the dead, he declares, de-clares, have anything to do with it. Medianism may be a new force, but it is a force generated between the medium me-dium and those present at the seance. He sums up his conclusion in the following fol-lowing terms: "The new force, which many style medianism, which the medium is able to develop when he falls' into a trance, is a connecting link between the physical phy-sical phenomena observed and the senses of those present. By medianism median-ism the latent forces which exist in each individual present arc added to the force or strength of the medium H who sits beside them at the magic H table. Such forces arc excited by the M hypnotic power of the medium and H arc directed at his will. And further, H in the subliminal ego of the medium, H and in the mental recesses of those ' H present, as well as in the easy inter- M change of suggestion promoted by the M presence and hypnotic condition of H the medium, wc find the thread of 11 Ariadne leading to a comprehension H of those effects of mental coloration i M which have led men to suppose the H presence of spirits of the dead, or va- M grant spirits of some kind or another. M while all the time, whether problem M or mystery, the matter was nothing M in the world but a mystery of our M mother nature. Translation made ,M for The Literary Digest. M |