The History of the Supernatural, in All Ages and Nations, and in All Churches, Christian and Pagan, Demonstrating a Universal Faith
By . Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co.
THERE has been a great change of late years in connection with the science of Pneumatology and with the manner of treating it. There was a revolution of opinion on this subject in the middle of the last century; there is a counter-revolution today.
The superstitions and credulities of the Middle Ages eventuated, during the course of the eighteenth century, in the Encyclopædism of French philosophy. The grounds upon which the Church based her doctrine of the supernatural were fiercely attacked. The proofs brought forward to prove the insufficiency of such grounds were assumed to prove more than lack of logic in the Church; they were taken as proofs, that, in the nature of things, there is no evidence for the supernatural, in any sense of the term ; in other words, that there is no knowledge within the reach of mortals, except that which relates to the physical, — to this earth, as the only phase of existence, — to the vital body, as the all of the human being. Emotional and intellectual phenomena were but results of material organization, as heat is the result of combustion : they exhibited themselves so long as vitality continued; they disappeared when death supervened, as the warmth from a fire dies out with the cessation of combustion. No hypothetical soul was needed to account for the thousand phenomena of thought or of sensation. Pneumatology was no science, but the mere fancy of an excited imagination.
Not to the literature and the social life of France alone was this materialistic influence confined. The mind of Germany, of England, and, more or less, of the rest of Europe, and of America, was pervaded by it. The tendency, all over the civilized world, was towards unbelief, not merely in miracles, but in all things spiritual. Science, with her strict tests and her severe inductions, lent her aid in the same direction.
It does not seem to have occurred to the philosophers of the Encyclopædian school that a doctrine is not necessarily false because an insufficient argument is brought forward to prove it. It does not appear to have occurred to skeptical physicists that there may be laws of Nature regulating ultramundane phenomena, as fixed, as invariable, as those which decide the succession of geological phenomena and the products of chemical combinations.
Here is a theory which is worth considering. May it not be that God adapts the proofs of that which it is important that man should know to the intellectual progress of mankind ? Is it certain that the same evidence which sufficed for the foundation of religious faith five hundred years ago will suffice equally well to-day ? Truths are eternal; laws of Nature vary not. But of the world's thoughts there is a childhood, a youth, a manhood ; and there may be various classes of arguments suited to various stages of progress.
Again, assuming that the materialist takes a contracted view of the economy of human life, ignoring every portion of it except its present phase, (that phase being but the preparation for another and a higher,) may it not be, that, as the world advances, men may gradually be permitted, occasionally and to a limited extent, to become aware of influences exerted from a more advanced phase of existence over this ? May it not be that the links connecting the two phases of existence are gradually to become more numerous and apparent?
Such are the general views which William Howitt’s work is intended to illustrate and enforce. He selects, as a title-page motto, an axiom from Butler’s “Analogy,” — “ There are two courses of Nature: the ordinary and the extraordinary.” By the supernatural he does not mean phenomena out of the course of Nature, but such comparatively rare phenomena as are governed by laws with which we are unacquainted, and as are, therefore, to us something extraordinary, something to be wondered at, — miracles.
The author travels over a vast extent of ground, — more, we think, than can be properly explored in the compass of two duodecimo volumes. All ages, all countries, all faiths, furnish their quota towards his collection. It is curious, interesting, suggestive, rather than conclusive. It exhibits more industry than logic. It consists rather of abundant materials for others to use, than of materials worked up by the collector. It gives evidence of learning, research, and a comprehensive study of the subject. It is a thesaurus of pneumatological knowledge, collected with German assiduity. It will set many to thinking, though it may convince but few, except of the one truth, that the faith in the supernatural has been a universal faith, pervading all nations, persisting through all ages.
The number of those who take an interest in the subject treated of in Mr. Howitt’s book, and who believe that great truths underlie popular superstitions, increases day by day; and the work will probably have a wide circulation.