Lights and shadows of spiritualism

f) ANCIKX'J' SPIRITUALISM.illustrate and verify whatever I Lave already asserted in thisintroduction to my task.I shall seek to show that the occurrencesreceivedwith stuhborn incredulity in the nineteenth centurj- Averefamiliar to the first, and perhaps equally familiar to centuries longanterior to the Christian era. I shall point to the belief in thesupermundane entertained by the mightiest minds of these ancientages, and rank as spiritual believers such giants as Homer,Hesiod and Pindar ; as Alexander and Csesar ; as Virgil andTacitus ; as Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, Plutarch, and a hundred more.Finally, having pointed out the vivid resemblance which thespiritual phenomena of the past bear to the spiritual phenomenaof to-day, I shall call attention to the fact that the outbreaksof evil which of old convulsed the earth, were heralded by justsuch clouds as, at first no bigger than a man's hand, have rapidlycome to overcast the present spiritual horizon.