There are dozens of such depositions, and here it is that the
student of testimony and of belief finds himself at a deadlock.
Believe the evidence we cannot, yet we cannot doubt the good faith,
the veracity of the attesting witnesses. Had we only savage, or
ancient and uneducated testimony, we might say that the uniformity
of myths of levitation is easily explained. The fancy wants a
marvel, it readily provides one by positing the infraction of the
most universally obvious law, that of gravitation. Men don't fly;
let us say that a man flew, like Abaris on his arrow! This is
rudimentary, but then witnesses whose combined testimony would prove
almost anything else, declare that they saw the feat performed.
Till we can find some explanation of these coincidences of
testimony, it is plain that a province in psychology, in the
relations between facts as presented to and as represented by
mankind, remains to be investigated. Of all persons who have been
levitated since St. Joseph, a medium named Eglinton was most subject
to this infirmity. In a work, named There is no Death, by Florence
Marryat, the author assures us that she has frequently observed the
phenomenon. But Mr. Eglinton, after being 'investigated' by the
Psychical Society, 'retired,' as Mr. Myers says, 'into private
life'. The tales told about him by spiritualists are of the kind
usually imparted to a gallant, but proverbially confiding, arm of
Her Majesty's service. As for Lord Orrery's butler, and the others,
there are the hypotheses that a cloud of honourable and sane
witnesses lied; that they were uniformly hallucinated, or
hypnotised, by a glamour as extraordinary as the actual miracle
would be; or again, that conjuring of an unexampled character could
be done, not only by Home, or Eglinton, in a room which may have
been prepared, but by Home, by a Zulu, by St. Joseph of Cupertino,
and by naked fakirs, in the open air. Of all these theories that of