When actually
brought in contact with that life beyond the grave which they
professed to believe in, these people winced, recoiled, and
declared it impossible. The science of the day was also rooted
in materialism, and discarded all its own very excellent axioms
when it was faced by an entirely new and unexpected proposition.
Faraday declared that in approaching a new subject one should
make up one's mind a priori as to what is possible and what
is not! Huxley said that the messages, EVEN IF TRUE,
"interested him no more than the gossip of curates in a
cathedral city." Darwin said: "God help us if we are to believe
such things." Herbert Spencer declared against it, but had no
time to go into it. At the same time all science did not come so
badly out of the ordeal. As already mentioned, Professor Hare,
of Philadelphia, inventor, among other things, of the oxy-
hydrogen blow-pipe, was the first man of note who had the moral
courage, after considerable personal investigation, to declare
that these new and strange developments were true. He was
followed by many medical men, both in America and in Britain,
including Dr. Elliotson, one of the leaders of free thought in
this country. Professor Crookes, the most rising chemist in
Europe, Dr. Russel Wallace the great naturalist, Varley the
electrician, Flammarion the French astronomer, and many others,
risked their scientific reputations in their brave assertions of
the truth.
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