th.

These answers are obvious: M. Littre's satire was not the weapon of
science, but the familiar test of the bourgeois and the Philistine.
Still, he admitted, nay, asserted strongly, that the whole series of
'demoniac affections' was 'most worthy of investigation,' and was
'hardly sketched out'. In a similar manner, Brierre de Boismont, in
his work on hallucinations, explains a number of 'clairvoyant'
dreams, by ordinary causes. But, coming to a vision which he knew
at first hand, he breaks down: 'We must confess that these
explanations do not satisfy us, and that these events seem rather to
belong to some of the deepest mysteries of our being'. {60} There
is a point at which the explanations of common-sense arouse
scepticism.

Much has been done, since 1856, towards producing a finished
picture, in place of an ebauche. The accepted belief in the
phenomena of hypnotism, and of unconscious mental and bodily
actions--'automatisms'--has expelled the old belief in spirits from
many a dusty nook. But we still ask: '_Do_ objects move untouched?
_why_ do they move, or if they move not at all (as is most probable)
_why_ is it always the same story, from the Arctic circle to the
tales of witches, and of mediums?'

There is little said about this particular phenomena (though
something is said), but there is much about other marvels, equally
widely rumoured of, in the brief and dim Greek records of
thaumaturgy. To examine these historically is to put a touch or two
on the picture of 'demoniac affections,' which M. Littre desired to
see executed. The Greek mystics, at least, believed that the airy
music, the movements of untouched objects, the triumph over
gravitation, and other natural laws, for which they vouch, were
caused by 'demons,' were 'demoniac affections'. To compare the
statements of Eusebius and Iamblichus with those of modern men of
science and other modern witnesses, can, therefore, only be called
superfluous and superstitious by those who think M. Littre
superstitious, and his desired investigation 'superfluous'.

When the epidemic of 'spiritualism' broke out in the United States
(1848-1852) students of classical literature perceived that
spiritualism was no new thing, but a recrudescence of practices
familiar to the ancient world. Even readers who had confined their
attention to the central masterpieces of Greek literature recognised
some of the revived 'phenomena'. The 'Trance Medium,' the
'In