Life After Death
Life After Death is a letter written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published in The Freethinker on 8 december 1918.
Letter
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "FREETHINKER."
Sir, — Since Major Warren mentions my name in connection with Spiritualism, and quotes me as saying that "the phenomena have been proved up to the hilt for any reason able man," let me say that I added elsewhere "but no evidence is of any use to those who refuse to examine it." Major Warren's letter shows that he is quite out of touch with the subject. The S. P. Research is not, as he seems to imagine, a Spiritualist Society, and could not possibly take up the self-advertising challenge of Mr. Maskelyne. As a matter of fact, if my memory serves, the challenge was taken up by Archdeacon Colley, and Maskelyne entirely failed. I remember reading an account by Dr. Russel Wallace, who had seen both the original phenomenon and the imitation, in which he said that there was no comparison at all between them. But in any case, would Major Warren seriously assert that because a thing can be plausibly imitated by an expert, therefore the thing itself must be false?
The other difficulties raised in Major Warren's letter would cease to trouble him if he read more of the subject, and realized the limitations as well as the powers of psychic phenomena. The other world has its own work to do, and if it interfered continually in ours (presuming that it could do so), we should all become automata.
Arthur Conan Doyle.
