The Betty Book, by Stewart Edward White

CHAPTER I

De-Occultization
The history of all progress in knowledge is a "de-occultization." Fully
half of the things we do daily as a matter of course would, even as
recently as two centuries ago, have been considered magic, without
explanation except as the product of occult forces and knowledge. The

continuity of history is unbroken in that respect. If we should learn
anything at all from the past, that one thing should stand out for us as
invariable. The superstition of the past is the science of the present,
the proverb of the future. The order of events is always the same. First
a few people observed or did things which were denied or denounced
vehemently by the old school as crazy or maleficent or supernatural.
Exact knowledge overtook these things and found them to be harmonious
examples of natural law.

The uses of humanity absorbed them and they became commonplaces of
existence, thoroughly de-occultized, adopted into the body of usual
mental life. This has happened over and over and over again with
unvarying regularity. One of the most fascinating of scientific byplays
is to backtrack through history picking up at random marvels and
miracles, stripping them of warping legend, and explaining them in the
light of what we now know. They became not the less marvels and miracles,
if you please, but de-occultized. It should be added that all cannot be
so explained. The unsolved residue is not the more-or less-improbable for
that. Perhaps our grandchildren's progress will show this unexplained
residue as simple as we have found some of the miracles that dumfounded
our ancestors.

There are two things that this history of de-occultization, as I have
called it, has taught us. One is, the extraordinary initial opposition
that always meets the process. A combination of man's conservatism,
dislike of being jarred loose once he has settled down to his
satisfaction, a greater dislike of being proved mistaken, an intellectual
pride in his achievements so far, and a rooted suspicion of the one who
walks apart, have all contributed to this attitude. The principle of the
telescope is so much a commonplace of today that the very children catch
and accept the idea; yet Galileo was branded as a madman, imprisoned, and
only just escaped martyrdom. So certain were the scientists of his time
of their reasoning according to "immutable physical law," that they
refused to look through the telescope! They knew already what they would
see! Joseph Thompson reported a mountain with snow under the equator, and
died of a broken heart under the weight of scientific ridicule heaped
upon him. Science PROVED by the "immutable law of physics"-as then
understood-that, no matter what the altitude, snow could not exist at
such a latitude: only it does! Darwin was fought with savage ferocity.
Langley was laughed to death. Why the bitterness? If these things, and
all the others were not so, why rend and tear in attacking them? Answer
that as you will, it is the history of progress; just as de-occultization
is the invariable result.

The other thing which this history has taught us is the very human
tendency to ascribe the unexplained to "spirits." And again we may well
ask, why? Just because a table moves, or a strange light shows, or a
pencil writes under our hand, surely there is no need of invoking the
ghostly or the supernatural. These are facts, perhaps, and some of them
may be due to the activities of spirits, for all we know. But if so, we
can rest completely assured that they will eventually be found working
along the lines of natural law, and not by means of the supernatural, in
the literal meaning of that word.

In the meantime, even if some of these things are the results of spirit
activity-as they may or may not be-we need not treat them as either
spooky or sacred. After all, they are just natural phenomena, and some
day they will be de-occultized, like all the rest. Then all at once they
will seem as normal and commonplace as well, as radio.


1937