“So much for the opinions of the English scientists. The Americans have not done much better. In 1857, a committee of Harvard University warned the public against investigating this subject, which “corrupts the morals and degrades the intellect.” They called it, furthermore, “a contaminating influence, which surely tends to lessen the truth of man and the purity of woman.”
Later, when Professor Robert Hare, the great chemist, defying the opinions of his contemporaries, investigated spiritualism, and became a believer, he was immediately declared non compos mentis; and in 1874, when one of the New York daily papers addressed a circular letter to the principal scientists of this country, asking them to investigate, and offering to pay the expenses, they, like the guests bidden to the supper, “with one consent, began to make excuses.”
Yet, despite the indifference of Huxley, the jocularity of Tyndall, and the “unconscious cerebration” of Carpenter, many a scientist as noted as either of them, has investigated the unwelcome subject, and, overwhelmed with the evidence, become converted.
And another scientist, and a great author – although not a spiritualist – bears this honorable testimony: “That the spirits of the dead occasionally revisit the living, or haunt their former abodes, has been in all ages, in all European countries, a fixed belief, not confined to rustics, but participated in by the intelligent….If human testimony on such subjects can be of any value, there is a body of evidence reaching from the remotest ages to the present time, as extensive and unimpeachable as is to be found in support of anything whatever.””
H. P. Bkavatsky
