b15966410_0071_205

SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION.
IN AS MUCH as the National Assembly of Sages met this year at Glasgow, it is wonderful that nobody has written thence to say that the Brightish Association (so called) was nae that bright. A. rather dull gathering was, however, towards the close of its session, enlivened with a paper by PROFESSOR BARRETT, embracing the subjects of Mesmerism, Clairvoyance, and Spiritualism, whereon ensued a discussion between the Professor himself and others, including LORD RAYLEIGH, MR. CROOKES, MISS BECKER, MR. A. RUSSELL WALLACE, and DR. CARPENTER, and ending with an altercation about veracity misunderstood to have been impugned sparkling with a brisk interchange of the reiterated assertion and denial, “I didn’t” and “You did.’ Who that remembers stock paragraphs in newspapers respecting witchcraft and fortune-telling, or ghost-stories, headed “Superstition in the Nineteenth Century,” ever dreamt of living to see philosophers, physiologists, and naturalists in a great Council of Science debating the reality of supernatural manifestations? Are there such things as they dispute about, or have they eaten of the insane root that takes the reason prisoner? And in either case are they prepared seriously to consider the question whether it is possible in the nature of things for an old woman to fly over the roof (say) of the Royal Institution on a broomstick? What else would that be, levity apart, than “levitation”?