PHELPS. The publication in the Chicago _Inter-Ocean_ of two columns
of sharp criticism
on the spiritual movement by Miss Phelps, which were widely
republished, induced the editor to
send the following reply to the _Inter-Ocean_,
which was duly published. BOSTON, MASS., Jan. 23. The rhetorically
eloquent essay of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
on spiritualism
has been read by
the undersigned with that peculiar pleasure with which we witness an
intellectual
or psychic _tour de force_ which produces singular results. It is
quite an able production, for the ability of an advocate is measured
by his capacity to make that which is obviously absurd appear quite
rational, and to give to that which is intrinsically small or mean an
air of refined dignity. Divested of its dignified and delusive
rhetoric, what does the lady say or mean in plain, homely English?
She says
that "cultivated thought" has a "slippery surface" on which
spiritualism has made "a clutch," and
that it has lately made an "encroachment upon scientific attention,"
so that psychical societies of distinguished
men are "busying themselves;" also that spiritualism must be "made
subject to the laws of common
sense" and controlled
by "common integrity," and if this truth "is at last materializing
before the consciousness of the believers in
spiritualistic phenomena some good may come of it." That a certain
style
of "cultivated thought" familiar in Boston has a "slippery surface"
on which neither religion nor philosophy makes much impression,
cannot be denied, and that it is only lately (as she says) that
psychical societies of more or less distinguished men have a
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