FOOTFALLS

ON THE

BOUNDARY OF ANOTHER WORLD.

WITH NARRATIVE ILLUSTRATIONS.

BY

ROBERT DALE OWEN,

FORMERLY MEMBER OF CONGRESS, AND AMERICAN MINISTER TO NAPLES.

"As it is the peculiar method of the Academy to interpose no personal judgment,
but to admit those opinions which appear most probable, to compare arguments, and
to set forth all that may be reasonably stated in favor of each proposition, and so,
without obtruding any authority of its own, to leave the judgment of the hearers free
and unprejudiced, we will retain this custom which has been handed down from
Socrates; and this method, dear brother Quintus, if you please, we will adopt, as often
as possible, in all our dialogues together."-CICERO de Divin. Lib. ii. 372.

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B LIPPINCOTT & CO.

1860.

BIOLOGY

EDUC.

PSYCH.
LIBRARY

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

PREFACE.

Ir may interest the reader, before perusing this volume, to know some of the circumstances which preceded and produced it.

The subjects of which it treats came originally under my notice in a land where, except to the privileged foreigner, such subjects are interdicted,―at Naples, in the autumn of 1855. Up to that period I had regarded the whole as a delusion which no prejudice, indeed, would have prevented my examining with care, but in which, lacking such examination, I had no faith whatever.

To an excellent friend and former colleague, the Viscount de St. Amaro, Brazilian Minister at Naples, I shall ever remain debtor for having first won my serious attention to phenomena of a magneto-psychological character and to the study of analogous subjects. It was in his apartments, on the 4th of March, 1856, and in presence of himself and his lady, together with a member of the royal family of Naples, that I witnessed for the first time, with mingled feelings of surprise and incredulity, certain physical movements apparently without material agency. Three weeks later, during an evening at the Russian Minister's, an incident occurred, as we say, fortuitously, which, after the strictest scrutiny, I found myself unable to explain without referring it to some intelligent agency foreign to the spectators present,-not one of whom, it may be added, knew or had practiced any thing connected with what is called Spiritualism or mediumship. From that day I determined to test the matter thoroughly. My public duties left me, in winter, few leisure hours, but many during the summer and autumn months; and that leisure, throughout more than two years, I devoted to an investigation (conducted partly by personal ob