ndria, who lived in the third century of our
era. The best known anecdote of him is that his disciples asked him if
he were not sometimes levitated, and he laughed, and said, "No; but he
was no fool who persuaded you of this." Instead of Plotinus, we are
referred to a mass of Jewish and anti-Christian apocryphal traditions,
which have the same common point--the assertion of the existence of the
phenomenon of levitation. Apollonius of Tyana is also said to have been
a highly accomplished medium. We are next presented with a list of forty
"levitated" persons, canonized or beatified by the Church of Rome. Their
dates range from the ninth to the seventeenth century, and their
histories go to prove that levitation runs in families. Perhaps the best
known of the collection is St. Theresa (1515-1582), and it is only fair
to say that the stories about St. Theresa are very like those repeated
about our lady mediums. One of these, Mrs. Guppy, as every one knows,
can scatter flowers all over a room, "flowers of Paradise," unknown to
botanists. Fauna, rather than flora, was St. Theresa's province, and she
kept a charming pet, a little white animal of no recognized species.
Still, about her, and about her friend St John of the Cross, the legend
runs that they used to be raised off the ground, chairs and all, and
float about in the most soothing way. Poor Peter of Alcantara was
levitated in a less pleasant manner; "he uttered a frightful cry, and
shot through the air as if he had been fired from a gun." Peter had a
new form of epilepsy--the rising, not the falling, sickness. Joseph
Copertino, again, floated about to such good effect, that in 1650 Prince
John of Brunswick foreswore the Protestant faith. The logical process
which converted this prince is not a very obvious one.

Why do we quote all these old monkish and neoplatonic legends? For some
the evidence is obviously nil; to other anecdotes many witnesses bear
testimony; but then, we know that an infectious _schwarmerei_ can
persuade people that the lion now removed from Northumberland House
wagged his tail. The fact is that there is really matter for science in
all these anecdotes, and the question to be asked is this--How does it
happen that in ages and societies so distant and so various identical
stories are current? What is the pressure that makes neoplatonic gossips
of the fourth century circulate the same marvels as spiritualist gossips
of the nineteenth?