Lost Leaders | Page 7

of common sense, who would not believe in them if they
were proved. Now, the article in the Journal of Science only deals with
one of the phenomena we hear so much of--that of the sudden

suspension of the laws of gravitation, in the case of individual men.
The author has collected a vast variety of traditions bearing on this
subject, and his conclusion apparently is, that events of this kind,
though rather rare, are natural, are peculiar to people of certain
temperament and organization, and, above all, bring no proof as to the
truth of the doctrines asserted by the persons who exhibit the
phenomena. Now, men of science, as a rule, and the world at large,
look on stories of this sort as myths, romances, false interpretations of
subjective feelings, pious frauds, and absurd nonsense. Before
expressing an opinion, it may be well to look over the facts, as they are
called, which are brought under our notice.
What accounts, then, are there of levitation among the civilized people
of the Old World? First, there is Abaris, the Scythian, "in the time of
Pythagoras," says our author. Well, as a matter of evidence, Abaris may
have been levitated in the eighth century before Christ, or it may have
been two hundred and fifty years later. Perhaps he was a Druid of the
Hebrides. Toland thought so, and Toland had as good a chance of
knowing as any one else. Our earliest authority, Herodotus, says he
took no earthly food, and "went with his arrow all round the world
without once eating." It seems that he rode on this arrow, which, Mr.
Rawlinson thinks, may possibly have been an early tradition of the
magnet. All our detailed information about him is of later date than the
Christian era. The fact remains that tradition says he was able to fly in
the air. Pythagoras is said to have had the same power, or rather the
same faculty came upon him. He was lifted up, with no will or
conscious exertion of his own. Now, our evidence as to the power of
Pythagoras to be "like a bird, in two places at once," is exactly as
valuable as that about Abaris. It rests on the tradition repeated by
superstitious philosophers who lived eight hundred years after his death.
"To Pythagoras, therefore," as Herodotus has it, "we now say farewell,"
with no further knowledge than that vague tradition says he was
"levitated." The writer now leaves classical antiquity behind him--he
does not repeat a saying of Plotinus, the mystic of Alexandria, who
lived in the third century of our era. The best known anecdote of him is
that his disciples asked him if he were not sometimes levitated, and he
laughed, and said, "No; but he was no fool who persuaded you of this."

Instead of Plotinus, we are referred to a mass of Jewish and
anti-Christian apocryphal traditions, which have the same common
point--the assertion of the existence of the phenomenon of levitation.
Apollonius of Tyana is also said to have been a highly accomplished
medium. We are next presented with a list of forty "levitated" persons,
canonized or beatified by the Church of Rome. Their dates range from
the ninth to the seventeenth century, and their histories go to prove that
levitation runs in families. Perhaps the best known of the collection is
St. Theresa (1515-1582), and it is only fair to say that the stories about
St. Theresa are very like those repeated about our lady mediums. One
of these, Mrs. Guppy, as every one knows, can scatter flowers all over a
room, "flowers of Paradise," unknown to botanists. Fauna, rather than
flora, was St. Theresa's province, and she kept a charming pet, a little
white animal of no recognized species. Still, about her, and about her
friend St John of the Cross, the legend runs that they used to be raised
off the ground, chairs and all, and float about in the most soothing way.
Poor Peter of Alcantara was levitated in a less pleasant manner; "he
uttered a frightful cry, and shot through the air as if he had been fired
from a gun." Peter had a new form of epilepsy--the rising, not the
falling, sickness. Joseph Copertino, again, floated about to such good
effect, that in 1650 Prince John of Brunswick foreswore the Protestant
faith. The logical process which converted this prince is not a very
obvious one.
Why do we quote all these old monkish and neoplatonic legends? For
some the evidence is obviously nil; to other anecdotes many witnesses
bear testimony; but then, we know that an infectious schwarmerei can
persuade people that the lion now removed from Northumberland
House wagged his tail. The fact is that there is really matter for science
in all these