Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906. Excerpt: ... A MASQUE OF ANARCHY HERE was a time, as we know, when people were accustomed to speak of the dark ages, of their ignorance, their pretensions, the madness of their crowds, and the concealers of the light who governed them. There is no need to say that this point of view has passed utterly into abeyance! It is somewhat commonplace to mention it. The stones which were then cast have been recovered as best might be, and have been since directed more successfully against the egregious persons who used to decry these ages. We prefer now the period of Duns Scotus, Erigena Johannes, Raymond Lully, and the scholastic philosophers to that of the nineteenth century, up to and including 1850--those dull and pretentious decades which could not see that there were giants on earth in the elder days, and which thought honestly that Lord Macaulay was exceedingly enlightened and tolerant. It was during this period, as we have found, that the great masque of anarchy known as modern spiritualism began to be played in America; that it was anarchic, much after the manner of the revivals which preceded it, no historical student can well question, but that it was a masque in which real characters disguised themselves is also true. It was not the Tableaux Moris of lay figures or the pictured forms of lantern slides, and, at the same time, it was in no sense anything that it seemed or was supposed. It was played so long and so powerfully, and simultaneously in so many places, that the houses of scorn fell, and it is now possible to say, with a very full realisation of all problems connected with the subject, that it has opened up depths, even if it has not revealed heights, the unveiling of which has already transformed, and is destined by all that follows therefrom still further...
