The Davenport brothers, that right now attract so much attention, are two young man, one twenty-four years old and the other twenty-five years old, born in Buffalo, New York, giving public displays as mediums. Their skills are, however, limited to physical effects, being the most remarkable one the event in which they are tightly tied up with ropes and released instantaneously by an invisible force, despite all precautions taken to verify that they cannot do it on their own. This is added to other more common phenomena such as the transportation of objects through space, the spontaneous sound produced by musical instruments, the apparition of illuminated hands, people being touched by invisible hands, etc.
The Didiers, editors of The Spirits’ Book, have just published their biography, with a detailed description of the effects that are produced by them and that, except for the tight ropes, share many similar points with those produced by Mr. Home. The commotion caused by their presence in England and in Paris gives this book a strong contemporaneous seal. The book was not written by them but by their English biographer, Dr. Nichols, that limited himself to the report of the events and the documentation provided by them; the French editors, however, had the great idea of adding to the publication two of our brochures:
Summary of the Laws of the Spiritist Phenomena and
Spiritism in its Simplest Expression, with a large number of explanatory notes in the body of the text.
[1] One can then find appropriate teachings about the case of those gentlemen whose detail we cannot provide now since we must look at the issue from a different perspective.
We say only that their aptitude to produce those phenomena presented itself spontaneously since their childhood. For several years they traveled around the main northern American cities where they acquired their reputation. In September 1864 they came to England where they produced vivid interest. They were both acclaimed and denigrated, ridiculed and even scorned by the press and the public. In Liverpool were subjected to the most outrageous malevolence to the point of seeing their own personal safety endangered. The opinions about them were greatly divided: some considered them no more than skillful con men; others thought they were acting in good faith and could admit a hidden cause to the phenomena; but to summarize they did not conquer much support to the Spiritist idea there. In that essentially religious country, natural commonsense repudiated the idea that spiritual beings would reveal their presence through theatrical exhibitions and demonstration of force. Since the Spiritist Philosophy was not much known there, the public confused Spiritism with such demonstrations and built a more contrary than favorable opinion about the doctrine. It is true that in France Spiritism began by the turning tables but in much different conditions. Mediumship revealed itself all over the place, in all social classes with people of all ages and gender, immediately ruling out the idea of charlatanism; anybody could attest it directly, in the intimacy of their homes, through repetitive observations, the reality of events linked to a powerful interest beyond the material effects that were not much appealing to reason but they saw their moral and philosophical consequences. If, instead, that kind of primitive mediumship were the privilege of a few isolated individuals with the need of promoting it on stages, buying faith, and nobody would have heard of the Spirits long ago. Faith is born out of a moral impression. Anything that is prone to produce a bad impression repels faith, instead of exciting it. There would be much less believers in Spiritism today if the phenomenon had been always presented that way. The non-believer, naturally predisposed to mockery, cannot be led to take seriously something that I surrounded by circumstances that do not impose respect or trust. Shallow criticism forms opinion based on a first unfavorable impression, confounding good and bad in the same reproach. Very few convictions were formed in public demonstrations whereas the immense majority came out of intimate gatherings, where the notorious honorability of the members could inspire trust and defy any suspicion of fraud.
In the last Spring, after exploring England, the Davenport brothers came to Paris. Some time before their arrival, a person came to see us on their behalf, asking us to support them in our Spiritist Review. It is a well-known fact that we are not easily enthusiastic, even with things that are familiar to us, and with even more reason with things that are unknow to us. We were then unable to promise an anticipated support, given our habit of only talking about things that we knew. Public opinion was divided in France as well as in England. In France they were only known from the contradictory reports in the papers. Hence, we could not censor them prematurely since this could be injustice, nor could we approve them, since the could have taken advantage of that. That was the reason for our abstention.
On their arrival they went to live in Gennevilliers’ Castle, near Paris, where they stayed for several months, without giving any public appearance. We do not know the reason for that absence. In recent days they gave some private sessions that were reported by the papers in a kind of picturesque way. Their public session was finally announced to September 12
th, to take place at the Hertz theater. The outcome of that deplorable session is well-known; it renovated, in a lesser scale, the tumultuous events of Liverpool, in which one of the spectators jumped on the stage and broke a device used by the brothers and showing a board he said: “Here is the trick!”. Such outrageous attitude, unacceptable in a civilized country, led to the turmoil. The session was interrupted, and money returned to the public. However, since many tickets had been donated, the box office had a deficit of seventy francs, indicating that seventy spectators had come for free and left the theater with ten francs more in their pockets, undoubtedly to compensate for their expenses to attend the meeting. The controversy that was established about the Davenport brothers offers several teaching opportunities that we will examine.
The first question asked by the Spiritists themselves was this: Are those gentlemen mediums or not? All the facts reported in their biography enter the circle of mediumistic possibility, considering that analogous and notoriously authentic effects were produced many times under the influence of serious mediums. If the facts themselves are admissible, we must acknowledge that the circumstances in which they are produced lead to suspicion. The first one that shocks upfront is the need for dimly light, something that evidently facilitates fraud. But that alone would not constitute a strong objection. The mediumistic effects have absolutely nothing of supernatural; all of them, without exception, are due to the combination of fluids of the medium and the Spirit; those fluids, although imponderable, are nonetheless subtle matter. There is, therefore, a cause and effect that are in a certain way material; that led us to always say that since the Spiritist phenomena are based on the laws of nature, they have nothing of miraculous. As with many other phenomena, they only seem miraculous because their laws are unknown. The marvelous and the supernatural have disappeared now that those laws are known, giving place to reality. Therefore, there isn’t a single Spiritist that attribute miraculous skills to oneself. That is what critics would known if they took the burden of studying what they criticized.
Going back to the issue of darkness, it is also known that there are chemical combinations that cannot take place in the light; that there are combinations and chemical decompositions that are excited by light. Considering that every Spiritist phenomenon is the result of fluidic combination, as we said, and since those fluids are material, it wouldn’t be strange that in certain cases light would work against them.
A more serious objection is the timing to produce the phenomena, with scheduled day and time and at will. Such submission to the wishes of individuals is contrary to everything that is known about the nature of the Spirits, and the selective repetition of a given phenomenon must be rightfully considered suspicious, even when there is selflessness, and with more reason when related to profitable public exhibitions that make reason reject the idea that Spirits could submit themselves to that. Mediumship is a natural aptitude, inherent to the medium, like the ability to produce sound is inherent to a musical instrument; but as the instrument requires the musician to produce sound, the medium requires Spirits to produce mediumistic effects. The Spirits come when they wish and when they can, resulting that the best equipped medium sometimes obtains nothing. In that case it is like an instrument without the musician. That happens every day; it happened to Mr. Home that frequently would go for months without producing anything, despite his own will, even if in the presence of a sovereign.
If follows, therefore, from the very essence of mediumship, and that can be established as an absolute principle, that a medium is never certain that a given effect will be produced because that does not depend on her. Affirming the opposite would be total ignorance of the most elementary principles of the Spiritist science. In order to promise the production of a given phenomenon with a set time one needs to possess material resources that do not come from the Spirits. Is it the case with the Davenport brothers? We don’t know. Judgment can be passed by those that followed their experiences.
There was talk of proposed challenges and bets for the best magic. The Spirits are not con artists and a serious medium would never fight anyone, let alone a deceiver. The latter has his own means, the former is a passive instrument of a foreign, free and independent will and that cannot be controlled by anybody. If the con man says that he does more than the medium, let him do so. He is right because he acts with certainty; entertains the public and that is his purpose; he boasts about it and that is his role; he promotes it and that is a necessity for his position. The serious medium that knows to have no personal merit in what is done, is modest; cannot be proud of something that is not the product of his own talent or promise something that does not depend on oneself.
The mediums, however, do something else. Through them the good Spirits inspire charity and benevolence to all; they teach mankind to see everyone as brothers, without distinction of cast or sect; to forgive those that cause them harm; to overcome bad inclinations; to withstand the miseries of life with patience; to face death fearlessly for the certainty of a future life. They give consolation to those in suffering, courage to the weak, hope to the ones that did not believe, etc. What they do not teach is the magic of the deceivers nor that of the Davenports.
The inherent conditions of mediumship, therefore, cannot be submitted to regularity and punctuality, conditions that are necessary to scheduled sessions that must satisfy the public at any price. If, however, the Spirits supported such kind of manifestation, something that is not radically impossible, since there are Spirits at all possible level of advancement, those could only be of low classes because it would be totally absurd to think that other class of Spirits would come to have fun by making exhibitions. But even in that hypothetical case the medium would still depend on that Spirits that could leave the medium when their presence was more necessary and lead the presentation or consultation to failure. Since the theater goer must be compensated, if the Spirits do not show up, they must then be forgotten; with some skill it is easy to make the change. That is what commonly happens to mediums that were originally bestowed with real faculties but insufficient for the proposed objective.
Of all Spiritist phenomena, the physical effects are the ones that better facilitates imitation. Although the real manifestations have a distinct character and are only produced under determined conditions, the imitation may approach reality to the point of eluding people, particularly persons that do not know the laws that govern the true phenomena. But for the fact that they can be imitated it would be illogical to conclude that they do not exist as much as it would be illogical to conclude that there aren’t true diamonds for the fact that there are false ones.
We make no personal assumption here. We provide the principles based on reason and experience from where we come to this conclusion: that a scrupulous examination carried out with a thorough knowledge of the Spiritist phenomena is the only one capable of distinguishing deception from real mediumship. We add that the best of all guarantees is the respect and consideration associated to the medium, her morality and notorious honorability, her absolute moral and material altruïsm. Nobody disagrees that in such circumstances the quality of the individual constitutes precedent that impresses favorably because they rule out the suspicion of fraud.
We do not judge the Davenport brothers and far from us to doubt their honorability. But besides their moral quality that we have no reason to suspect, we must confess that they present themselves in conditions that are not much favorable to attest their condition of mediums, and that it is an enormous frivolity from the part of the critics that raise them to the position of apostles and priests of the doctrine. The objective of their voyage to Europe is clearly defined in this passage of their biography:
“
I believe, without a doubt, that the Davenport’s brothers left New York on August 27th, bringing along a helper, Mr. Willian Fay, who was attending Mr. Willian Davenport’s illness; the former should not be confused with Mr. H. Melleville Fay, that as it seems was discovered in Canada by some sort of authority trying to produce some sort of similar effects. They were followed by Mr. Palmer, a well-known person in the business world as an agent in the world of theater and classical singing, to whom the commercial side of the enterprise was entrusted, thanks to his experience.”
It is then clear that it was a business enterprise, managed by a businessman, an agent of theatrical events. The facts reported in the biography are, as we heard, are possible in mediumistic terms; the age and the circumstances in which they began rule out the idea of charlatanism; it all tends to demonstrate that those young men were in fact mediums of physical effects, as there are many in their country and where the exploitation of such faculty became habit and does not surprise public opinion. What we cannot attest, since we do not have any proof of that, is the possible augmentation of their natural gifts, as other exploiting mediums did to increase their prestige and compensate for the lack of flexibility of those very gifts.
If we admit, however, the truthfulness of those faculties, we would say that they were eluded with respect to the European reception, since they were presented as a spectacle of curiosity, and in conditions much contrary to the principles of religious and philosophical Spiritism. The enlightened and sincere Spiritists that abound, particularly in France, could not welcome them in such conditions, neither to accept them as apostles, even considering that they are sincere. As for the non-believers, whose number is so large and still dominate the press, the occasion was perfect for them to exercise their vein of mockery, so that they could not let it go. Those gentlemen then opened the door to the widest criticism, giving people the same right of those that purchase any kind of ticket. There is no doubt that if they had presented themselves in a more serious manner the reception would have been different; they would have shut the mouth of the detractors. A medium is strong when able to say this courageously: “
How much did you pay to come here and who invited you; God bestowed me a gift that can be withdrawn at God’s will, like the vision or the spoken word. I only use if for good, in the interest of truth and not to satisfy curiosity or my own interests. My only reward is the work of devotion; I do not try even to satisfy self-love for that faculty does not depend on me. I consider it a sacred thing since it puts me in communication with the spiritual world, allowing me to give faith to the non-believers and consolation to those in suffering. To me it is a sacrilege to trade with that because I do not have the right to sell the assistance of the Spirits that come to me for free. Considering that I take no advantage, I therefore have no interest in deceiving you.” A medium that can say so is strong, we repeat. It is a answer without replica and that always imposes respect.
In this present case the critic was malevolent; it was unfair and injurious and embraced all the Spiritists and all mediums in the same reproach, not sparing the most disrespectful labels, regardless of the amount of damage it might cause and that it would reach the most respectable families. We will not repeat the expressions that were used and that only dishonor the ones that produce them. Every sincere belief is respectable and all of you that constantly scream about the freedom of conscience as a natural right, at least respect those of others. You can discuss opinions, for that is your right, but calumny has always been the worst argument and never of a good cause.
Not all the press shares that deviation of civility; there are some, among the critics of the Davenport brothers, whose character does not exclude education and moderation, and that are fair. The one we are going to cite, points out precisely the weak spot that we mentioned above. It was taken from the “
Courrier de Paris du Monde Illustré”, on September 16
th, 1865, signed by Neuter.
“
A first objection seemed enough to me to demonstrate that the good young men that gave a public display at the Hertz theater were skillful in tricks completely strange to the superior worlds. This objection is taken from the very regularity with which they exploited their supposedly miraculous power. Since they gave guarantees that it was the Spirits that came to manifest publicly in their benefit, the Davenports treated them as servants and with the same familiarity that the director of a play treats his chorus girls. They never asked if their super-human accomplices were tired, if the date was convenient to them, if the heat bothered them, and yet the scheduled a precise day and time, expecting that the fluidic beings were available and played their roles at that moment, executing their musical jokes with the precision of a musician to whom their concert-café yields the fee of 1 franc.They did not ask their super-human accomplices if the day was good for them, if they were tired, if it was not too hot and still scheduled a fixed date and time, and it was expected that the fluidic beings were okay at that moment, that they played their role on time, executed their little musical tricks with the precision of a musician to whom the café-concert would pay a one franc fee!Seriously, that is a petty idea of the spiritual world, presenting it like that to us, like a village of commanded genies, commissioned elves that go to a given city attending a signal of their master. No rest to the super terrestrial actors! When a sudden illness of the show-off gives him the right of rescheduling the spectacle, the souls of the Davenports lot are slaves that must attend at any time. It is hard to live in fantastic planets to become reduced to such a degree of slavery. And what is the task attributed to those unfortunate souls from beyond the grave? Make their hands – the hands of souls – pass through the cracks of an armoire. Take them down to the exhibition level of jesters! Make them play guitars, those grotesque instruments refused even by the wandering minstrels in search of a few cents!”
Isn’t that in fact like touching a sore spot? If only Mr. Neuter knew that Spiritism says precisely the same thing, although in a less witty way, he would then have said: “But this is not Spiritism!” absolutely in the same way, when he sees a charlatan, he says: “This is not medicine.” Since neither science nor religion support abuse, Spiritism does not support those that use its name either. The bad impression that the author had was not of the persons of the Davenports but from the condition that they place themselves before the public and from the ridiculous idea that they pass of the spiritual world, something that even non-believers are shocked to see displayed on the stage. That was the impression of critics in general, translated by him in a kind of polite way. This will always be the case when the mediums are not ready to respect the belief that they profess. The hardship of the Davenports is a lucky strike to the adversaries of Spiritism that, in turn, hurry to boast victory and ridicule the followers as much as they can, screaming at them that their belief is mortally wounded, as if Spiritism was incarnate in the Davenports brothers. Spiritism is incarnate in nobody. It is in nature and nobody can preclude its march, because those that try, in fact, work to make it progress. Spiritism is not about tying someone with ropes, nor it is about this or that physical experimentation. Spiritism has never sponsored those gentlemen, nor has it presented them as cornerstones of the doctrine that they did not even know, hence it cannot be belied by their adversity. Their failure is not a blow against Spiritism but against those that exploit Spiritism.
It must be one of the two: they either are con men or true mediums. If they are charlatans, we must thank all the others that helped to unmask them; with that regards we owe Mr. Robin special thanks for in the present case he does a great service to Spiritism that would have suffered if people believed in their frauds. Every time the press pointed out abuse, exploitation or maneuvers to compromise the doctrine, the sincere Spirits, far from regretting it they applauded. If they are true mediums, the conditions in which they present themselves does not produce a favorable impression and cannot be useful to the cause. In one case or the other Spiritism has no interest in taking sides in their favor.
Now, what is going to be the result of such uproar? Here it is: the chronicle that was starving in these days of tropical heat gains a subject with that, quickly grabbing it to fulfil their lacking columns of political and theatrical news. Mr. Robin finds there an excellent publicity for his theater of conjurers, something that he exploited skillfully, and we wish him well since there he speaks of the Spiritists and Spiritism every day. With that criticism loses some of its consideration, given the eccentricity and lack of civility of the controversy. Materially speaking perhaps, the least benefited are the Davenports, whose speculation is markedly compromised.
Spiritism is evidently the one that should benefit the most. Its followers understand it so well that they are not absolutely moved by the situation and wait the result with confidence. In the country side where they are affected by the mockery of the adversaries even more than in Paris, they simply respond: Wait and soon you shall see who is going to be dead and buried. With that, Spiritism in principle will gain immense popularity and shall become known, at least by name, by many people that had never heard of it. But among them many do not limit themselves to the name. Their curiosity is excited by the fury of the attacks; they want to know what is behind such a doctrine, that some say is ridiculous; they will search at the source and when they see that they were just making fun and will tell themselves that is it not something bad. Spiritism will then gain for being better understood, judged and appreciated.
It will also gain by putting in evidence the sincere and devout followers with whom it can count on, separating them from the superficial followers. The adversaries will still try to exploit the circumstances to bring divisions or defections, true or simulated, using it as support to destroy Spiritism. After having failed from all other means, this is their ultimate way out; however, it will also fail, only separating the dead branches from the trunk, branches that produced no sap and hence reenergizing the tree.
These results, and several others that we abstain from listing, are inevitable and we would not be surprised by learning that it was the Spirits themselves that provoked all that uproar to reach such object more promptly.
[1] See bibliographic bulletin
