The article--"Vagaries vs. Spiritualism"--purports to be
written by "Philomath," of Roxbury, New York, who is none other
than John Burroughs, at the age of nineteen. It starts out showing
impatience at the unreasoning credulity of the superstitious
mind, and continues in a mildly derisive strain for about a column,
foreshadowing the controversial spirit which Mr. Burroughs displayed
many years later in taking to task the natural-history romancers.
The production was evidently provoked by a too credulous writer
on spiritualism in a previous issue of the "Mirror." I will quote
its first paragraph:--
Mr. Mirror,--Notwithstanding the general diffusion of knowledge
in the nineteenth century, it is a lamentable fact that some minds
are so obscured by ignorance, or so blinded by superstition, as to
rely with implicit confidence upon the validity of opinions which
have no foundation in nature, or no support by the deductions of
reason. But truth and error have always been at variance, and the
audacity of the contest has kept pace with the growing vigor of the
contending parties. Some straightforward, conscientious persons,
whose intentions are undoubtedly commendable, are so infatuated by
the sophistical theories of the spiritualist, or so tossed about on
the waves of public opinion, that they lose sight of truth and good
sense, and, like the philosopher who looked higher than was wise in
his stargazing, tumble into a ditch.
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