SPIRIT MANIFESTATIONS EXAMINED AND EXPLAINED. JUDGE EDMONDS REFUTED; OR, AND EXPOSITION OF THE INVOLUNTARY POWERS AND INSTINCTS OF THE HUMAN MIND.
Book Details + Condition: De Witt & Davenport, Publishers (New York). First Edition, 1854. By John Bover Dods. 252 pages. Original brown cloth decorated in blind, lettered in gilt on spine. This is the text of a series of lectures that were first delivered in Auburn, NY, in 1851. The author, John Bovee Dods (1795-1872) was a New York-born clergyman, philosopher, mesmerist, and early psychologist who spent much of his adult life in Maine. He appears to have both embraced and rejected Spiritualism at varying times of his life: at the time of delivering these lectures he seems to have been taking a middle-ground, suggesting that the phenomena were real, but natural rather than supernatural; the product of a pyschological electrical force rather than of the occult. A solid, tight and clean copy: cloth of boards rubbed overall; some fading and discoloration to front and back boards; corners and edges bumped and rubbed; wear and fading to spine, particularly at spine ends; owner's name on front endpaper and title page; occasional foxing and browning, with age toning to pages.
