Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings

First published in 1886, this largely sceptical account of Victorian spiritualist interests attempts to find natural explanations for supernatural occurrences.

Henry Maudsley (Author)

9781108072700, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 May 2011

388 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.2 cm, 0.49 kg

First published in 1886, this comprehensive analysis of nineteenth-century spiritual experiments questions our long tradition of encounters with the supernatural, and why it appeared to have declined in influence in the writer's era. Maudsley (1835–1918), a medical psychologist and pioneer psychiatrist, sets out to bring such alleged spiritual phenomena under scientific investigation. Emphasising the natural defects and errors of human observation and reasoning, as well as the prolific activity of the imagination, this inquiry into the causes of belief in the supernatural suggests that much of it can be explained though hallucination, mania, and delusion. The book is divided into three parts: the first section concentrates on the causes of fallacies in the sound mind, while the second considers unsound mental action. The focus of part three is theopneusticism, or the attainment of supernatural knowledge by divine inspiration. This second edition appeared in 1887.

Statement of the argument
Part I. Fallacies Incident to the Natural Operations of Sound Mind: 1. The natural defects and errors of observation and reasoning
2. The natural defects and errors of observation and reasoning continued
3. The activity of imagination
Part II. Unsound Mental Action: 1. Mental malformities
2. Hallucinations and illusions
3. Hallucinations and illusions continued
4. Mania and delusion
5. Natural and supernatural religion
Part III. Theopneuticism, the Attainment of Supernatural Knowledge by Divine Inspiration
1. Ecstatic intuition
2. Ecstasy of feeling
3. Intuition of the heart
4. The physical basis of ecstatic intuition
5. Theological illumination
6. Isolation of spiritual knowledge
7. Theology and metaphysics
Statement of the conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]