FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157  
158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   >>   >|  
still more remarkable, modify the lie. So far back as the autumn of 1860 I heard him discuss the trickery which he believed himself to have witnessed, as dispassionately as any other non-credulous person might have done so. The experience must even before that have passed out of the foreground of his conjugal life. He remained, nevertheless, subject, for many years, to gusts of uncontrollable emotion which would sweep over him whenever the question of 'spirits' or 'spiritualism' was revived; and we can only understand this in connection with the peculiar circumstances of the case. With all his faith in the future, with all his constancy to the past, the memory of pain was stronger in him than any other. A single discordant note in the harmony of that married love, though merged in its actual existence, would send intolerable vibrations through his remembrance of it. And the pain had not been, in this instance, that of simple disagreement. It was complicated by Mrs. Browning's refusal to admit that disagreement was possible. She never believed in her husband's disbelief; and he had been not unreasonably annoyed by her always assuming it to be feigned. But his doubt of spiritualistic sincerity was not feigned. She cannot have thought, and scarcely can have meant to say so. She may have meant to say, 'You believe that these are tricks, but you know that there is something real behind them;' and so far, if no farther, she may have been in the right. Mr. Browning never denied the abstract possibility of spiritual communication with either living or dead; he only denied that such communication had ever been proved, or that any useful end could be subserved by it. The tremendous potentialities of hypnotism and thought-reading, now passing into the region of science, were not then so remote but that an imagination like his must have foreshadowed them. The natural basis of the seemingly supernatural had not yet entered into discussion. He may, from the first, have suspected the existence of some mysterious force, dangerous because not understood, and for this reason doubly liable to fall into dangerous hands. And if this was so, he would necessarily regard the whole system of manifestations with an apprehensive hostility, which was not entire negation, but which rebelled against any effort on the part of others, above all of those he loved, to interpret it into assent. The pain and anger which could be aroused in him by an indica
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157  
158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
existence
 
dangerous
 
denied
 

thought

 
communication
 

disagreement

 
feigned
 
Browning
 

believed

 

proved


tremendous

 
subserved
 

potentialities

 

modify

 

remote

 
science
 

region

 

reading

 

passing

 

remarkable


hypnotism

 

autumn

 

farther

 

spiritual

 

imagination

 

living

 

possibility

 

abstract

 
foreshadowed
 
entire

negation

 
rebelled
 

hostility

 

apprehensive

 

regard

 

system

 

manifestations

 

effort

 

assent

 

aroused


indica

 
interpret
 

necessarily

 

entered

 

discussion

 
supernatural
 
tricks
 

natural

 

seemingly

 
suspected