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gent mind can reasonably be pardoned for advocating the very ancient doctrine of the existence of invisible malignant spirits, commonly called "devils" and "de,"neither can any cultured mind be rationally

mons,"

*"And inasmuch as every one carries his own life with him into the other world, therefore all who sink to hell carry their own hell with them; for they carry the loves that make the essence of hell, and from which the external condition and conduct of all there, as described by Swedenborg, result as an effect from its cause."

A Swedenborgian minister says (of course, theoretically), that "the incurably wicked are consigned to hell and not to heaven; for, considering the character and quality which they have acquired to themselves, heaven would be a sphere of still more exquisite torment to them than hell, a truth evinced by what Swedenborg frequently says of the result of experiments actually made by evil spirits to enter the precincts of celestial bliss. They were at once thrown into tortures from which relapse to hell was their only relief."

In view of this hypothesis it is asked: "Can the human imagination conceive a more melancholy and appalling picture? There they are-beings who might have been happy angels, bereft of every angelic grace-completely de-humanized-all love of the Lord and the neighbor quenched in their hearts—all light of truth extinguished in their understandings-all generous feelings and noble aspirations gone-conscience dead-manhood lost-the beauty of true human life blasted and spoiled! There they are, with no love for what is good and true-delighting in hatred, cruelty, revenge, and unmercifulness-with no desires for a holier life-their tones, words, gestures, and even their faces, imaging forth, with mathematical exactness, the false and perverted life within them! There they are-monsters in feeling, mousters in form, monsters in act! Their false thoughts and evil affections go forth and imprint themselves in daguerreotype likeness on earth and sky-on all above, around, and beneath them -on the regions they inhabit, the houses they live in, the garments they wear, the creatures they see-all the dismal sights they look

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excused for still believing in the performance of supernatural miracles by Heaven-sent Messiahs, whereby those "devils" were exorcised, and those "demons hurled from the bodies of hypochondriacal men and hysterical women.

In the days historically allotted to Jesus, the symptoms and other manifestations of lunacy were not wisely discerned, nor scientifically interpreted. The imagination of uncultured minds supplied the most thoughtless explanation in the absence of thoughtful and correct knowledge. That explanation among religionists-who are invariably more superstitious than minds in any other department of thought-was summed up briefly in four words: "He hath a devil!" In short, the unthinking spiritualists of the first, like their counterparts in the churches of the nineteenth century, adopted, in the fulness of its unmixed simplicity, the (apparently) supernatural explanation rather than the truly scientific.

Conscientious investigators, however-who are inevi

upon are but the reflected images of the falses and evils which they have made (to be) of their life."

The above from two writers on the theory promulgated by Swedenborg (one B. F. Barrett, the other the departed Geo. Bush) I value simply as records of avoidable mistakes, derived from Swedenborg and reiterated by men equally honest and as deplorably mistaken. Why and how Swedenborg made his mistake, I have fully set forth in the third volume of the Great Harmonia.

tably philosophical and rational in their methods and deductions have made genuine progress in the study and treatment of lunacy and madness. The rationalistic Egyptians, repudiating the demon-theory of the Arabian priests, cured a large percentage of their insane. Pythagoras, a true spiritualistic rationalist, a natural born IIarmonial Philosopher, cured the violent and other varieties of insanity by the institution of pleasing musical performances, succeeded immediately by a series of harmonious and beautiful physical exercises. Had he adopted the religious superstition of many about him-the theory of "obsession" and "demoniacal possession "—his benevolent attempts at healing would have failed, and the mentally sorrowful and violently insane of his day would have died in indescribable agony, their stars going down in the midnight blackness of despair.

Interpreted in the light of unchangeable principles insanity is no more caused by the infestation of individualized demons than is dyspepsia caused by the sting of a fly, or epilepsy by the perpetual flow of Niagara Falls.

The very wonderful experiences of psychological subjects and sympathetic mediums-who, as a rule, are incompetent to investigate and scientifically comprehend their own exquisitely impressible and strangely

mixed conditions, while obtaining their experiences -must be solved and utilized in the light of the fixed principles of eternal Nature—the infinite counterpart of the infinite God-whose authorized exponents are enlightened Reason and the pure, unselfish, impersonal Intuition.

So interpreted, modern spiritualism immediately and bountifully confers upon mankind the invaluable legacy of a complete and absolutely true explanation of all the psychological causes concerned in the development and legitimate treatment of every variety and degree of mental maladies.

The truth of this affirmation will be made sufficiently manifest in other parts of this volume.

4

MEDICAL DEFINITIONS NOT SATISFACTORY.

AN eminent authority* connected with the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, ingenuously says: "Many attempts have been made to define insanity, but with very problematical success. Locke's notion,

that delusion, illusion, or hallucination, is necessary to insanity, excludes a large class of cases in which neither of these sources of error may be present. The definition of Dr. Cullen-'a lesion of the intellectual faculties, without pyrexia and without coma-errs in the same way; for often the purely intellectual faculties are comparatively sound. Equal difficulty attends the classification of the various forms of mental disease, and must continue to exist until our knowledge of the philosophy of the mind, and of the functions of the various parts of the organ which subserves its manifestations, is much more advanced than at present."

Notwithstanding this frank and truthful confession of a professional, does any one imagine that Dr.

* Prof. B. W. McCready, M.D., of New York, in vol. ix. p. 540, Am. Cyclopædia.