Lights and shadows of spiritualism

DELUSIONS. 191claims were subniittcil, many movements, mistakenly termedreligious, might have been checked at the outset. There aromen—and women not less often than men—who hold it grosainjustice that they should not have been born to mitres orcrowns. In all who have striven to found sects or communities,and establish themselves as the high-priests of such, this characteristichas been dominant, conjoined usually with a certainenthusiasm, which aids in attracting minds weaker, thoughperhaps yet more enthusiastic, than their own. Such alwaysrender blind submission to the energy which has fascinated them,and become the blindest adorers of the pseudo-prophet orprophetess, I recall an instance in which a young man of goodposition, possessed of high literary gifts, and, in his earlier years,of sound judgment, was submitted to an ordeal sufficient to haveutterly overwhelmed any ordinary organization. He emergedfrom it with his intellectual power almost unscathed, but theinjur}' Avhich a reason once eminently masculine had undergonewas sufficiently evinced. He became the humble and unquestioningadherent of one among the pseudo-religious charlatansreferred to.It is not to be doubted that these " God-inspired" beings arcat times sincere in their wild visions and impracticable theories.So are those sincere, who, being yet more advanced in theiridiosyncrasies, and having them less under control, are entitled"dangerous madmen,"' and restrained in asylums. Yet theinsanity partially swayed by reason of the one is, in reality, muchmore dangerous than the raging madness, into which no suspicionof reason enters, of the other. Bedlam makes no proselytes ;nor, if the whole of the tenants of asylums were let loose in abody, couldthey do more than appal, disgust, and perhaps injurebodily, those of mankind who encountered them. But all historyteems with the mischief which minds, less disordered than these,but still disordered, and accompanied with an energetic will anda restless thirst for domination, can do to natures weaker thantheir own. I might produce instances from every century of theChristian era, but a reference to the nineteenth will be sufficient