Spiritualism and Rationalism
Spiritualism and Rationalism is an essay written by Arthur Conan Doyle published by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. on 27 august 1920.
Preface
The following pamphlet, in which the objections of the Rationalists are considered, is associated throughout with the name of Mr. Joseph M'Cabe, because he has been their mouthpiece upon this subject in this country. To those, however, who are unaware of this gentleman's writings or speeches, the pamphlet may still be of use, since these objections have always been of the same stereotyped form. whoever may be the particular pleader, and the arguments and facts here advanced are equally valid in any country and with any antagonist.
- ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
July 30th, 1920.
Spiritualism and Rationalism
With a Drastic Examination of Mr. Joseph M'Cabe.
Mr. M'Cabe is in some ways the most amusing of the many disputants with whom I have reasoned concerning spiritual matters. His humour is very subtle. He is like those comedians who produce their effect by a very grave face and dignified manner which is in absurd contrast to their actual words and actions. Mr. M'Cabe assumes a pose of extreme accuracy. He speaks or writes in short snip-snap sentences. He will have no equivocations. All must be logical. This is the last word, the inevitable word, cold and clear. We are down to the facts at last. Dates, names, references, all must be as definite as Bradshaw. Such is the superficial effect, and such may be the lasting effect upon some. But when one gets behind this show of accuracy one finds such a jumble, such prejudice, such misquotation,, such an absolute refusal to conform to the same laws which he enforces upon others, and such a determination to insist that Mr. M'Cabe's own private opinion can ride superior over any evidence, that the general effect, after one has recovered from the surprise of it, is richly comical.
Several documents, of Mr. M'Cabe's lie before me, as I write, each of which would illustrate my words. There is the procès verbal of the debate at the Queen's Hall. I have his article in the May number of the "English Review" — ("Scientific Men and Spiritualism,") and finally his little book, "Is Spiritualism based upon Fraud?" which professes to examine drastically my evidence. Let me in return, within the limits of my space and time, do a little drastic examination of Mr. M'Cabe.
One of the less pleasing features which prevents a whole-hearted enjoyment of Mr. M'Cabe's humour is his cruel and reckless want of charity. The less anyone is able to defend his or her own reputation the more damaging are, Mr. M'Cabe's assertions. Take as an example the two cases of Miss Goligher and of D. D. Home. One has only to look at Miss Goligher's photograph at the beginning of Dr. Crawford's "Reality of Psychic Phenomena" to see that she is a charming and refined girl. Without any sort of reward, she has for four years aided science by allowing Dr. Crawford, checked by several other capable observers at various times, to investigate in every way which he could suggest the obscure laws which regulate these phenomena. Mr. M'Cabe chooses to presuppose that such phenomena do not exist, and accordingly with no attempt at proof and acting solely upon his unreasoning a priori prejudice, he brands Miss Goligher as a deliberate swindler who, with no conceivable reason, after joining in prayer and hymns spends the rest of the evening, according to his wild theory, in lifting the table with her leg, attaining the extraordinary height of four feet, at times, so that the surface of the table would be about seven feet above the ground. What particular gymnastic and acrobatic position would have to be assumed to produce such a result does not in the least disturb this apostle of accuracy, nor does the fact that he has not a shadow of evidence in any way abash him. "The table being levitated," says Dr. Crawford in "Experiments of Psychic Science," (p. 92), "I slowly moved a thermometer across the space under the table from legs to legs at nearly all heights from floor to surface, covering practically all the space below the table — the table remaining quite easily in the air all the time." One would think this was rather fatal to Mr. M'Cabe's theory that it was the medium's leg which was raising it. To do him justice, he does not pretend that he has any evidence. He simply says it is so, snip-snap, and that he, Mr. M'Cabe, knows better than the actual observers what occurred during four years of faithfully recorded experiments. His assurance is almost incredible. Upon one occasion (Exp. 78, op. cit.), a dish of putty is laid down by Dr. Crawford near the middle of the circle with the intention that an impression should be produced upon it by the psychic rod which had been inferred from previous experiments. An impression was produced by three similar indentations. This is described by Mr. M'Cabe in this way : "Kathleen got so contemptuous... that she stuck her big toe in a saucer of putty." After so startling a statement, you naturally expect that the next words would be: "I have proof that she was barefoot at this sitting"; or, "On suggesting to Dr. Crawford that she had taken off her boots and stockings he was forced to admit it." Nothing of the kind. There is not the least attempt to justify it — simply a crude and brutal accusation without an attempt at proof. In seme of Dr. Crawford's more recent experiments the psychic rod is described by him as having carried in front of it some moist carmine placed upon the medium's blouse and left carmine traces upon the opposite wall. This of course is done, on the M'Cabe theory, by putting carmine upon the toe and elongating the leg across the room. Anything will pass for an explanation if we adopt the fashion of omitting all proof. It is a gross injury to psychic Science which is done in this way, for how can we expect self-respecting, unpaid subjects to come forward for experiment if their reputations are to be assailed in so reckless a fashion, and they are to be branded as swindlers without an attempt at proof by men who are themselves ignorant of psychic laws. It is not to Miss Goligher alone, but to experimental science that Mr. M'Cabe owes a very humble apology.
In his recent experiments, Dr. Crawford has succeeded in obtaining photographs of the psychic rods, which I have seen. They appear to consist of white material flowing from the body of the medium, and they bear a great resemblance to the ectoplasm which is shown in the photographs both of Eva C. and of the Polish medium employed by Dr. Schrenck-Notzing, save that they are more definite. Thus three separate mediums, checked by varying groups of scientific men, have been shown to produce similar results under similar conditions. The Bisson and Schrenck-Notzing experiments lasted over five years. Those of Dr. Crawford must have covered nearly four. Which are we to believe : the people who have laboured for so long without any possible object in deception, or Mr. M'Cabe who builds up conditions from his own imagination and puts forward explanations which are impossible upon the face of them ?
Mr. M'Cabe is really not well equipped in this subject on which he writes and talks so much. It is sometimes very dificult, as I pointed out in the debate, to believe that he has read the books upon which he comments. Thus he says: "Where he" (meaning me) "gets the word 'ectoplasm' I cannot imagine." I quote these words from his article in the "English Review." Yet if he had read Professor Maxwell's weighty preface to Madame Bisson's book he would have had full information, for the Professor says: "Il semble qu'il y ait dans ces cas un procédé different... correspondant a la formation de ce que M. Charles Richet a, je crois, appelé Ectoplasma." Apparently, Mr. M'Cabe thought I invented the word. Again, in the debate he put forward the eructation of food as the source of the white plasma shown in the photographs as flowing from the medium's mouth and nose. But a most superficial examination would have shown the same plasma in connection with the nipples and other parts of the body ; while special photographs are given of the substance passing through a fine-meshed veil in a way that not only eructated food, but even mucus could not possibly do. I would ask the serious inquirer to read Mr. M'Cabe's "explanations," to look at the photos, especially Plate XXI. with these in his mind, and then io ask whether this is a real attempt to get at truth or whether it is playing with the ignorance of those who have not seen or read the evidence. That Mr. M'Cabe dealing with a complex subject should make mistakes is not to be wondered at; but it is indeed remarkable that he does not realise his own limitations and that he should allow himself to speak in terms of contempt of Lombroso, Crookes, Lodge, or Barrett. When one reads Mr. M'Cabe's suppositions as to how materialisation effects are produced, and then the assertion of Dr. Geley, whose observations were checked by a hundred observers at the various sittings, one can but marvel at the critic's audacity. "I do not merely say there has been no deception," says Dr. Geley: "I say that there has never been any possibility of deception." This is the man who handled the matter, a rising scientific man with his reputation at stake. "The whole three years' investigation is really turned into a farce," says Mr. M'Cabe, with no personal knowledge of the matter whatever. Is it not stupendous !
To show the loose way in which Mr. M'Cabe treats matters which are really of vital importance. we will take his assertion that in the two books of Madame Bisson and Dr. Schrenck-Notzing there were "the same photographs." It is clear that if they were the same photographs they could not corroborate each other. The statement is, however, quite incorrect. The Doctor, while giving the Bisson photographs, adds to them a series which he had obtained independently at Munich from the Polish medium Stanislas. This point is most important, since, if Eva was a fraud, as Mr. M'Cabe so roundly declares, then one would certainly not expect an independent reproduction of such extraordinary results. And yet we have it here in Munich, as we have had its analogue since in Belfast. This fact would, of course, suggest to any common-sense man that Eva was not a fraud, since the same causes had produced the same psycho-material effects. To prevent that deduction Mr. M'Cabe asserts that the photographs in the two books are the same, whereas anyone who cares to examine them will find that they are not so.
Mr. M'Cabe seems obsessed by the idea that if anyone opposes a psychic explanation, that opposition in itself destroys the explanation, whoever may uphold it. Thus, when an unknown lawyer named Marsault talked of fraud and quoted an alleged confession by Eva, that at once, without further proof or examination, disposes of the opinion of Charles Richet, the first physiologist in Europe. In the same way, in another argument, two years of research upon the part of Sir William Crookes are negatived in an instant because two undergraduates of Oxford claimed to have detected the medium walking about the room. We who know something of hypnotic suggestion and the sensitive organism of mediums, would think it very likely that the mental attitude of these Oxford lads was the cause of the medium walking about the room, or even of partially undressing. It is not difficult to influence the movements of those in trance if you set yourself to do so. But how preposterous to waive aside the whole of the Florrie Cook experiments, experiments which were verified again and again, upon such evidence as this. It is typical of Mr. M'Cabe's prejudiced mentality.
Mr. M'Cabe appears to think that his mere assertion, founded upon a wild guess or imaginary hypothesis, will always outweigh any records of facts, no matter how laborious the investigation, or how eminent the investigator. He is prepared at a moment's notice to tell Dr. Crawford what really happened in Belfast, to tell Lord Dufferin what happened in Ashley Place, to tell Sir William Crookes what happened in Mornington Road, to tell Prof. Schrenck-Notzing what happened in Munich, to tell Professor Zollner what happened in Leipzig, to tell Dr. Geley what happened in Paris, and so ad infinitum. Talking of my own remarks about Madame Bisson, he says that my assertion that "the figure moulded itself, was gradually suffused with life, and on one occasion stepped into the room and embraced Madame Bisson, is a finer flight of fiction than any adventure of Sherlock Holmes." That is very crushing! But it happens that the last paragraph of the account of the experiments, written apparently by Dr. Bourbon the observer, is: "Since these séances, and on several occasions, the entire figure showed itself: it has come out of the cabinet, has begun to speak, and has made its way up to Madame Bisson, whom it embraced on the cheek. The sound of the kiss was audible." Of course, this is only the evidence of those who conducted the experiment, and Mr. M'Cabe doubtless knows better.
In the presence of these and similar phenomena, I feel that we are in truth upon the edge of the unknown, and that every conceivable explanation must be examined, and every fact rigidly weighed. I am prepared to believe, owing to many considerations connected with psychic photography, that a thought form may be projected into the air to the extent of leaving a record upon a sensitive plate. I am prepared also to think it possible that some, at least, of the pictures which are taken in front of or behind the medium Eva may represent her misty recollection of pictures which she has seen, and which have externalised in this strange fashion. There is one for example, which is reminiscent of the famous Mona Lisa of Leonardo, and yet is so far different from it that it seems rather to be a recollection than a copy. I would even receive with respect, though without acquiescence, the theory that it is possible that a thought form may obtain solidity, and may be suffused with the vitality and thoughts of the entranced medium, so as to represent a spirit without any spirit being actually present. Any or every theory I am prepared to examine, save only one, and that is that the medium entered the cabinet after her daily search with the natural cavities of her body filled with pins, morning papers, caricatures, thin rubber, chiffon, white gloves, inflated fish bladders and all the other objects which Mr. M'Cabe conjures up. Whatever is true, even the most inflexible materialist must surely admit that that cannot be true, and that Mr. M'Cabe must try again for an explanation.
Mr. M'Cabe reads the text so hurriedly that he continually puts forward explanations which are absolutely incompatible with the conditions. Thus, upon one occasion, a photograph of which is preserved, a cigarette was held out towards the cabinet, upon which a naked foot appeared, as seen in the print, and grasped it between the toes. This, of course, presents no difficulty to Mr. M'Cabe, who says in his airy fashion, untrammelled by facts, "as both of Marthe's (Eva's) hands are visible, you are puzzled for a moment until, on looking closely, you perceive that the hand is a bare foot. You then realise that what purports to be her face is a bit of muslin. She is bending backwards and lifting her left foot high to represent a hand." The photograph is Fig. 24 of the book, and I would ask anyone who consults it whether the face is really of muslin, and whether any acrobat could get the foot, which is described in the text as a foot, into such a position. Finally, I would remind the inquirer, since Mr. M'Cabe has forgotten it, that we have Madame Bisson's assurance that the medium, save when stripped, was clad in a single black combination garment from foot to neck with no possibility of getting out of it. "Je lui mettais ensuite un caleçon noir (caleçon de danseuse) d'une seule pièce des pieds à la taille et un grand serran noir de lycéenne." What becomes, then, of Mr. M'Cabe's explanation? And incidentally, what becomes of the whole theory of natural cavities and their utility in place of handbags? Was ever a more absurd theory put before the public! And yet it has such a fascination for Mr. M'Cabe that he repeats it, on the alleged authority of Colonel Rochas, as being the means by which Bailey the Australian medium conveyed apports, including two live birds, into the séance room. Mr. M'Cabe seems to oscillate between the extreme of incredulity and of credulity.
Every fact which might inconvenience him he has dropped out of the narrative, as it appears in the "English Review." He has not told that a portion was cut off with a scissors from the mysterious ectoplasm. He has not told that it was analysed by a chemist and examined by a microscopist. He has not told that some hair was taken from the head of one materialisation and was compared by experts with the hair of the medium, with the result that it was shown to be entirely different. Asan advocate, Mr. M'Cabe is entitled to conceal these facts, but as an honest searcher after truth he has no right to do so, nor is it fair to his readers to present so garbled an account.
It is worth noting that during the last few months Eva has been tested in London by a committee of the P.R.S., consisting of the Hon. Everard Feilding, Mr. Baggally and another. The result has not yet been given to the world, but it is understood that, under every test condition, definite phenomena were actually obtained. It is also reported by Mr. A. S. Pearse, lately returned from Munich, that Baron Schrenck-Notzing has another subject, an Austrian boy, under observation. He adds: "The materialisations which take place are only slight so far but confirm in every respect the results obtained with Eva C."
Let us turn now to Mr. D. D. Home, who was in many respects the most remarkable man who has appeared in this movement. I have had occasion recently to edit his life, and the examination of evidence which this entailed left me profoundly impressed by the transparent honesty, the utter unselfishness, and the lofty idealism of his character. Apart from his extraordinary psychic gifts, this character would in itself have made him a man of mark to anyone who came within his influence. Though in very moderate circumstances, and an invalid, he refused during his whole life to take one farthing for the exhibition of his psychic gifts, though princely offers, amounting in one case to fifty thousand francs for a single sitting, were put before him. He would demonstrate his powers at any time or place or before anyone if he thought they were really earnest inquirers. The only observers whom he refused, as any independent gentleman would do, were those who approached him as Faraday and Tyndall did, with conditions which presupposed in so many words that the phenomena were trivial. There was never a man who worked with a more single mind for the spread of essential knowledge and for the good of humanity. In all his long career I cannot find any evidence which exposed his methods or his motives. Yet this is the man of whom Mr. M'Cabe speaks in terms as if he were a detected impostor or a notorious cheat, throwing mud at the grave of one of the most beneficent of mankind. The only positive and undeniable thing which he alleges is, that Lord Gifford spoke insultingly of Home and of Spiritualism in the Court of Chancery — as if many judges have not in the old days spoken insultingly from the bench about Deism, Secularism, Agnosticism, and every other form of belief which Mr. M'Cabe or his friends profess. Does he really consider that in such cases any dishonour is left by the judge's ignorant and prejudiced remarks? If not, why should he apply a different rule to Home?
Altogether, there are at least a hundred occasions upon which Home raised himself in the air and floated round the room in front of such reputable witnesses as Lord Adare, Lord Lindsay, Captain Wynne, Professor Crookes, Samuel Carter Hall and his wife, Mr. Hewett and his wife, and many others. Critics of spiritual phenomena habitually refer to each case as if it were something entirely peculiar in itself, with no reference to the cumulative testimony of many separate observers. It is as unfair as if some strange animal had been reported by fifty travellers in Central Africa but its existence was disputed by men who examined one single case and refused even to allude to the other forty-nine. There are few earthly things which could not be contested by such tactics as these.
Mr. M'Cabe in the recent debate centred himself upon the case of levitation in Ashley Place in 1868, when in the presence of Lord Adare, Lord Lindsay, and Captain Wynne of the Guards, Mr. Home is alleged to have passed out of the bedroom window in Lord Adare's lodgings and floated seventy feet high over the street, entering in through the sitting-room window. Three excellent witnesses were present, each of whom agreed that this extraordinary thing occurred. Mr. M'Cabe, who, of course, was not present, explains after his fashion what really happened, and that they saw not what they said they saw, but something entirely different. We must always presuppose in order to get Mr. M'Cabe's point of view that everybody present was either a liar or an incompetent idiot who needs a man of sense — Mr. J.M. for choice — to set him right and dry-nurse him lest he be the victim of a delusion.
Let us consider Mr. M'Cabe's explanation of this incident. I say "explanation", but on carefully reading over what he has said I do not find that he has offered any explanation at all, though he has given a most grotesque account of what took place. He begins by making the legitimate point that whereas Lord Lindsay said the moon was shining upon December 16th, the almanac shows that on that date it was only three days old. That is fair enough, though, as I pointed out in the debate, when a man sees so wondrous a sight as a figure floating in the air, he may well be excused for making some mistake as to whence the light came from. But bar this one point, there is no common sense in any of Mr. M'Cabe's criticisms. He is under the strange delusion that these three men who were expecting that Home would attempt this feat and had been warned of it, sat with their backs to the window. Could anything more absurd be imagined! Why should they sit with their backs to the point where they expected a wonderful manifestation to appear? They actually sat with their faces to the window, as any reasonable beings would sit. They then saw, not "a shadow on the wall", as Mr. M'Cabe so perversely supposes ; but the shadow of the man outside thrown across the window sill in front of them. "Home's feet were six inches above it," says Lord Lindsay. "We heard Home go into the next room, heard the window thrown open, and presently Home appeared standing upright outside our window," says Lord Adare. "I can swear that Home went out of one window and came in at the other window," says Captain Wynne. What quibbling it is to suppose that there is anything nebulous about this evidence, or that these gentlemen are bolstering up some doubtful case! I repeat that many historical events have been accepted upon far slighter evidence.
Up to this point, Mr. M'Cabe is not open to any more serious charge than that of having twisted the facts in order to produce some vague feeling of deceit which he cannot apparently himself define. But there follows a suppressio veri, which must forever shake confidence in Mr. M'Cabe as a controversialist. Both Lord Lindsay and Lord Adare have stated that the latter then went into the bedroom with Home, and finding the window only slightly open, wondered how he could have got through. Says Lord Adare, writing at the time to his father Lord Dufferin:
"He told me to stand a little distance off ; he then went through the open space head first quite rapidly, his body being nearly horizontal and apparently rigid. He came in again, feet foremost, and we then returned to the other room." Mr. M'Cabe, not being able to explain this incident in any way, has omitted it altogether. Surely it is a very weak case which has to pick its evidence in this fashion, and a very wild advocate who winds up his impotent criticisms by saying, "the supposed levitation of Home was the most hollow piece of charlatanry in the whole history of Spiritualism." Such a saying is on a par with a previous assertion that "Home lived on his spiritualistic gifts from his sixteenth year to the year in which he died." It is not true, and anyone who reads the man's life must know that it is not true, and that it is a posthumous slander upon a most ill-used and noble man.
One of the many tricks of the opponents of Spiritualism is to depict those who disagree with them as afflicted with some bodily weakness which accounts for their opinions. Thus, we have references from Mr. M'Cabe to 'poor' Lombroso and his arterio-sclerosis, the inference being that his conversion to Spiritualism and his subsequent writings were the product of this disease. Whoever reads Lombroso's "After Death — What?" with its balanced judgment and its breadth of knowledge, will wish that they could get a touch of his complaint. Speaking of Professor Zollner's experiments and his complete endorsement of Slade's mediumship in 1878, Mr. M'Cabe says of the four investigators, "one was mentally disturbed, one was nearly blind, and two were short-sighted." The four were Professors Zollner, Fechner, Weber, and Scheibner. Most men over fifty are presbyoptic; but there is an engenious little instrument called "spectacles" which professors have been known to use, and which puts their sight on a level with that of their juniors. The gentleman to whom mental disturbance is attributed is Zollner himself. Fortunately, an American, Mr. Funk, took the trouble to look into the matter, receiving the following testimonial from Dr. Karl Bücher, acting for the Rector, and quoted in "The Widow's Mite," page 276.
"Information from Zollner's colleagues states that... until his death he was of sound mind, moreover in the best of health. The cause of his death was a haemorrhage of the brain on April 25th, 1882, while he was at breakfast with his mother, and from which he died shortly after." So the case of the four professors resolves itself finally into one being "nearly blind," an assertion which is so improbable on the face of it, since it was to Zollner's interest to have the results carefully checked, that I should wish some stronger witness than an anonymous American before I accepted it. If he can take liberties with Zollner's intellect, he may do the same with Scheibner's eyes.
Let me instance one other case to show how Mr. M'Cabe builds up any sort of explanation with no apparent sense of responsibility in order to get over whatever difficulty he may find in his path. When Slade, whom I have always looked upon as an intermittent, though very powerful, medium, visited Professor Zollner at Leipzig, he gave an example of his powers by smashing to pieces with a loud report a solid screen of aspen wood which stood in the professor's room, guarding the bed from view. Zollner has stated that Slade entered the room for the first time that day, that he was five feet from the screen at the time, and that two horses could hardly have done the damage, since the wood broke across the grain. Listen to Mr. M'Cabe's explanation of this. "Before the séance, no one had thought of looking to see if the screen had been taken to pieces and lightly tied together by a black thread, which Slade could pull asunder at will." This in the bedroom of a German professor which Slade is visiting for the first time! Is "childish nonsense" too strong a term to use for such an explanation as that?
Mr. M'Cabe calls loudly upon Science to play the part of Mrs. Partington and sweep back the rising Atlantic of psychic knowledge and aspiration. The appeal is amusing, in view of what has happened in the past. The same cry was raised in America in the early 'fifties. Professor Hare, professor of chemistry in the University of Philadelphia, was one of the best known investigators in the United States. He is still remembered in connection with the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. This gentleman was infused with a perfect hatred of the new subject and he set forth in the name of Science, with the blessing of all the M'Cabes of that generation, to destroy it. Before doing so he declared that he "felt called upon to bring what influence he possessed to stem the tide of popular madness which, in defiance of reason and science, was fast setting in favour of the gross delusion called Spiritualism."
In order to detect the villainies of the spiritualists, Professor Hare has prepared what Mr. M'Cabe now calls a "pseudo-scientific apparatus," but which he would certainly have hailed as a splendid and accurate instrument had the result been different.
I have Professor Hare's final report, covering 460 pages, before me as I write, with diagrams of his test machines, which were certainly very effective and indeed final. After a year of experiment, even though it meant eating his own words and scientific martyrdom, he announced that he had been entirely converted, not only to the phenomena, but, what is far more important, to their religious significance. His report was the whole-hearted utterance of a brave man who has done an injustice and spares himself nothing, either in personal vanity or in worldly disadvantage, in his attempt to remedy it. I say deliberately that from the hour of the Hare report there has been no excuse for the human race, and it has been nothing but ignorance and prejudice with the constant misrepresentations of those who should have been its leaders, which has stood in the way of this greatest of revelations.
About the time when Hare was playing the part of a modern Saul, Sir David Brewster, representing Science, had two sittings with young Home, who had just arrived in England. Here again was a splendid chance for an exposure. Brewster could make nothing of the phenomena, and seriously compromised his own reputation over them. Immediately after the sittings he wrote to his sister describing his wonderful experience in detail and offering no possible explanation. Then when his name began to be mentioned as a witness he fell into a panic and began to sneer at the whole thing, forgetting that this letter to his sister might, as it did, some day see the light. It is not a noble story, and Science, as represented by Sir David, does not come very well out of it.
Professors Faraday and Tyndall stood aloof from the matter, refusing to examine it unless Home would admit in advance that the whole affair was trivial, which Home, who regarded himself as God's missionary, naturally refused to do. Several other professors did go somewhat deeply into it, with results which Mr. M'Cabe euphemistically describes as being "nearly caught" and "much too lenient in their language"! The reader will judge how far Mr. M'Cabe can be relied upon as a guide to truth when [I give the following extracts to show what these professors actually thought and said of their experience. Says Professor de Morgan, late President of the Mathematical Society, "The Spiritualists beyond a doubt are on the track that has led to all advancement in physical science. Their opponents are the representatives of those who have striven against progress." "From Matter to Spirit," p. xviii. Says Professor Mayo, Professor of Anatomy, King's College: "Twenty-five years ago I was a hard-headed unbeliever. Spiritual phenomena, however, suddenly and quite unexpectedly developed in my own family. This led me to inquire and to try numerous experiments in such a way as to preclude the possibility of trickery and self-deception. That the phenomena occurred there is overwhelming evidence and it is too late now to deny their existence." Says Professor Challis, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, "The testimony has been so abundant that either the facts must be admitted or the possibility of certifying facts by human testimony must be given up." These are the people whom Mr. M'Cabe describes as "nearly caught" and "too lenient in their language," as though they were hostile to spiritualism but not hostile enough. Truly Mr. M'Cabe presupposes an extraordinary want of independent information among his readers.
The opponents of the movement, and possibly the neutrals also, were getting restive in the presence of these scientific pronouncements and the continued reports of phenomena, so they set up a committee of about forty common-sense laymen, consisting of doctors, engineers, lawyers, and others who professed an impartial attitude. This was the "Dialectical Society," who held numerous sittings and presented their report in 1870. It is a very business-like, practical document, moderate in tone, for indeed the results were very moderate, as any spiritualist would expect who has had an experience of incongruous experimental circles. The religious question seems never to have been reached. On the phenomenal side, the committee reported that sounds with vibration were produced without either muscular action or mechanical contrivance, that movements of objects were observed without contact, that questions were answered by a simple code of signals, that these answers were of a commonplace character, but sometimes gave facts known only to one person present, that the presence of some people helped and of others hindered the phenomena, but that they would never be absolutely assured by any presence whatever. There was no minority report.
Neither side got all they wanted from a result like that, so that there was general interest when, in 1871, Professor Crookes, the young rising chemist, announced that he was ready with an open mind to examine the physical claims of the spiritualists. His manner towards them was not effusive "Like other men," he says ("Researches," p. 7) "who thought little and saw little of the matter, I believed that the whole affair was a superstition or at least an unexplained trick." He quotes with approval Faraday's dictum, "Many dogs have the power of coming to more logical conclusions" than the Spiritualists. He associated with himself in his investigations of D. D. Home Dr. Huggins, of spectroscopic fame, and Mr. Cromwell Varley, the famous electrician, who had, I believe, already been converted to Spiritualism. After a thorough examination in which "pseudo-scientific" instruments were again used, since no Mr. M'Cabe was at hand to prescribe the correct scientific ones, the investigators were confronted with the exact same results which the much-derided dogs of Spiritualists had claimed, and the final upshot was that Professor Crookes admitted the full truth and became one of the leaders of the movement. So ended the second attempt of science to go systematically into this subject. Crookes could only corroborate what Hare had already decided. Their double result is far more important than any single decision could be — though this question of cumulative evidence is one which our opponents will never honestly face.
Soon afterwards another very great man of science, a close observer and a fearless thinker, devoted his mind to this subject. This was Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer with Darwin of the origin of species, and a convinced rationalist, as was Dr. Elliotson, and many another brave pioneer. Wallace's researches convinced him of the truth of the assertions of the Spiritualists and he announced his conversion with characteristic courage. "My position then is," says he, "that the phenomena of Spiritualism in their entirety do not require further confirmation. They are proved quite as well as any facts are proved in other sciences, and it is not denial or quibbling that can disprove any of them." The quotation is from "Spiritualism and Modern Miracles," which contains this great thinker's whole profession of faith — one more decision upon the part of science.
Mr. M'Cabe quotes the report of the Seybert Commission which in 1886 came to the conclusion that there was no evidence in favour of Spiritualism. Had he, however, given an account of the history of that commission he would have enabled his readers to place a proper value upon its conclusions. This account I take from "The Widow's Mite," p. 117, of Mr. Isaac Funk, who was not himself a Spiritualist when he wrote it. He informs us that Mr. Seybert left a legacy to the University of Philadelphia to be used for spiritual research. Failing spiritual research, the money reverted to the University. The Commission by their report ensured that the money should be used for the general purposes of the university. Such is the account of Mr. Funk, whom I have usually found to be a very cautious and capable guide upon American matters. Granting that this is correct, I should think that now, when psychic research is in the very air, the university will surely restore Mr. Seybert's bequest to the purpose for which it was intended.
With this single very questionable exception, it is hard to recall any systematic and earnest research into this question by scientific men, or men of picked intelligence, which has not ended in their concurrence in varying degrees with the phenomena. In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded in London, most of the members being agnostic and many inimical. The movement of thought, however, has all the time been from the material right to the psychic left. I can remember Mr. F. W.H. Myers when he refuted spiritualistic theories. Yet he died a spiritualist. I remember Dr. Hodgson when he was the exposer of the occult. Yet he also found the evidence too strong for him and accepted the facts. Apart from Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Barrett, and others who have so bravely proclaimed their faith and so patiently given their reasons, there are many members, some of them in the highest public positions, who know that these things are true, who see the fight which is maintained by those who have more moral courage than themselves, and who by their silence make that fight more difficult. It is not, I think, a very heroic attitude, and the future will show if it is a wise one.
The brain of Italy has been most generally affected by this new knowledge, though rather upon the unimportant scientific side than upon the vital religious one. Mr. M'Cabe has to admit this, for he says, "Apart from Lombroso, however, quite a number of academic and professional men, Chiaia, Foa, Bottazzi, Morselli, Porro, Imoda, etc., endorsed the performances of Palladino and unwillingly lent great strength to a superstition which they professed to detest." Mr. M'Cabe is fond of pretending that all those like Charles Richet or Flammarion who fully admit the phenomena have a contempt for religious inferences. The fact is that they are in process of reaching them, for they are based upon the phenomena, and until that base is secured the religious interpretation must be obscure or uncertain. Both Professor Richet and Flammarion admit, not only the material facts, but also a spiritual interpretation, though it may not coincide with that of our own school of thought. Ina recent letter to me Professor Richet was good enough to define his position in this way:—
- "There are numerous, certain and authentic facts which establish these three fundamental points:
- "1. There is in man, and especially in the medium and the somnambulist, a faculty of superior intelligence (I have named it cryptoesthesia) which enables the subject to have ideas about things which his normal senses could not give.
- "2. There are movements without contact and there are materialisations. Apparently phantoms can form capable of being seen by many persons and of affecting the photographic plate.
- "3. There are premonitions, that is to say to the confusion of your normal intelligence there comes a knowledge more or less complete of the future.
- "But what are we to conclude 2? Here are three hypotheses.
- "A. These powers are the human intelligence, much amplified, having depths and powers which we do not suspect.
- "B. These are the dead — who are not dead, but still hover near us and can communicate with us.
- "C. These are angelic or demonic beings, who are omniscient and very powerful.
- "Provisionally — very provisionally — it is to the latter hypothesis that I incline, for it is probable by the logic of things, that other beings exist besides the material ones in the immense cosmos. Then why not admit their existence? If they take human form it is doubtless because if they had not human attributes we should not understand them. But these attributes are only symbolic. Alas, alas, all this is very vague. The spirit doctrine is much more precise, but it seems to me in its entirety to be impossible to sustain. In the meantime let us work, and let us have as much care in our experiments as audacity in our hypotheses."
Such is the considered judgment of this great thinker. I need not say that I venture to differ from it, for I have had personal experiences which he has lacked and which would infallibly have altered his judgment. The matter is so vast, however, that there is room for all his hypotheses, and it seems to me as I review the evidence that there are indeed unknown powers in man, that there are the living spirits of the dead, and that there are others with whom we can come into contact who may have lived here in the long ago, but who have now become so exalted that they may be described as angels.
This opinion of Professor Charles Richet, which shows that he is really more spiritual than the Spiritualists, is dated June, 1920. I am able also to give the views of the illustrious French astronomer, Flammarion, as expressed in "La Revue Spirite" as late as April of this year,
- "Materialists are in complete error in thinking that there is nothing but matter and its properties in the universe, and that all the facts of humanity are explicable upon this theory... There is the unexplored region which is infinitely more vast than what we know... Our psychic personality is endowed with faculties which are still little understood. The invisible world
amidst which we live, does it not contain beings as invisible as those forces which govern Nature? In imagining such a thing I admit that it is improbable, but one cannot call it impossible. It recalls under a different aspect the Guardian Angel which the Christian religion assigns as the invisible companion to each of the faithful. May we not also admit that the atmosphere, or rather the ether, may contain a psychic element not yet discovered? At every instant a human spirit quits the body. Is it destroyed? Nothing indicates that this is so. There are thirty-six million a year, To think with Victor Hugo that the universe is full of souls is perhaps no poetic fiction."
It will be seen that Flammarion's opinion is much on the same lines as that of his famous fellow-countryman. In this case also, it seems to me to be further from Materialism than our ordinary Spiritualism can claim to be. I see no signs in either case of that contempt and disdain which Mr. M'Cabe declares that all these great thinkers have for the religious side of our subject.
These, then, are the various interventions of Science in the past. Spiritualists ask for nothing better than that it should intervene again and again, for each honest inquiry can only strengthen the cause of truth. The more light the more understanding. But let it be real Science which comes to us, not prejudice and ill-will, which judge a case first and examine it afterwards. That is not Science, but the very antithesis of Science, and no true light can ever come from its researches.
Mr. M'Cabe is in his best vein of dry humour when he comes upon the question of spirit photography. I belong to a society called the $.S.S.P., or Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures, which contains among its members a number of real experts who have given this matter deep study, have carried out numerous experiments, and have examined and exhibited many hundreds of specimens. These students realise the difficulty of the subject and speak with the hesitation which knowledge begets where the question is deep and obscure. Not so Mr. M'Cabe, who has probably never been present at the taking of a psychic photograph in his life. There are no difficulties for him. He can, and does, snip-snap, tell us all about it. First of all, there is the fraudulent example in 1875. One rogue, half a century ago, is always supposed to be a convincing and final argument. The rogue in this case was one M. Buguet, who admitted that he had faked photographs in France. The matter, however, though bad enough, is not quite so simple as is stated. Mr. James Coates, an authority upon this subject, says:—
- "The Revue Spirite had flouted the Catholic Church in the person of the Archbishop of Toulouse... Such insult was not to be tolerated by an all-powerful Church in a country where, at this time, the whole civil and military forces were at her command. The editor of the paper was tried and condemned. Buguet was a pawn in the game for the double purpose of inflicting injury upon the spiritualists and punishing the editor as well, who was condemned and sentenced equally with Buguet, to twelve months' imprisonment."
Buguet, apparently, was promised immunity if he confessed — a promise which was broken. Altogether, however worthless the man, it is not quite so simple as is represented.
But really this ancient case has little to do with the matter. What convinces us is the production in the present day by two famous photographic mediums, Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton, working together, of reproductions of the dead which can by no possibility be faked. and which do not in many cases correspond to any portrait which existed during life. Mr. M'Cabe, with his usual assumption that every inquirer is a weak-minded simpleton, tells us gravely that plates can be half-exposed and used again; that plates can be substituted; that a celluloid ghost could be rigged in the camera ; that it can be painted in sulphate of quinine on the ground-glass screen ; that there is a developing dish with glass slides and bottom, and so forth. At what trial of an exposed medium have these results come out? If in no trial, then what are they, save vain attempts at explanation? How vain they are is shown by the fact that the Crewe circle prefer that you bring not only your own marked plates, but also your own camera and dark slide. As to their apparatus, which I have myself used for development, it consists of porcelain dishes, as in any other dark room. You are most welcome to examine the old battered camera. To anyone who has undergone the experience, how absurd are these imaginary explanations which have had headlines of "Tricks of the Camera Medium Exposed" in many of our newspapers!
I have given my own experiences in full in the public Press, but I repeat here that when I received a photograph purporting to be my son, another of a lady, and a third containing a long written message from Archdeacon Colley, in each case no hand but mine touched the marked plate at any point of the process. I put it in, I took it out, I developed it — I did everything except printing it, and I saw the extra upon it when I held the plate up against the red lamp before I left the dark room. Of course, I examined the camera and noted the vessels which I used. There was no deception or possibility of deception. As to the curious markings upon it, I am inclined to think that they represent some psychic process, for I have seen them in others where there had certainly been no newspaper publication, nor, so far as I know, was there any in the case of my son.
If this experience were mine alone, people might still be justified in doubting. But see how many have had it. Sir William Crookes received a photograph of his dead wife as she had been long years before, very characteristic, and yet, as I understand, different from any in existence. Lady Glenconner has publicly testified to those which she has obtained. Mr. Jeffrey, of Glasgow, has received both his wife and his father. Mr. Hewat MacKenzie has received an excellent likeness of his son, which can be seen in the appendix of my "Vital Message." Mr. Williamson, of Queen Victoria Street, has published the photograph which he received under the usual rigid test conditions. I should not exaggerate if I said that I had myself seen a hundred such photographs which represented the dead and were vouched for by the living. What becomes of all gelatine figures and quinine washes and other vain imaginings in the presence of these positive results! I can assure Rationalists that we Spiritualists love and respect our dead, that we narrowly scan all that bears upon them, and that we do not permit them to be made the tools of knaves and swindlers. The man who can really examine the record of the Crewe circle and fail to be convinced would be unaffected though an angel stood at Charing Cross. This talk of fraud is the merest babble with nothing solid at the back of it.
Yet the question is, I admit, obscure. When I say that it is obscure, I do not mean that the thing does not occur, or that it is not honestly produced. Of that there can be no question whatever save in the minds of the ignorant. But the obscurity lies in the process by which the result is obtained. On the whole, the evidence shows that there are two quite separate processes by which the picture can be got. One is a semi-materialisation of the figure, visible perhaps only to the eye of the clairvoyant, but sufficiently tangible to impress the sensitive plate. "If you had looked over your shoulder you would surely have seen me," says one dead boy to his father. In other cases, it is explained that a skilled control upon the other side, such as is attached to the Crewe circle, looks hard at the spirit form and then transfers the impressions to the plate. This would explain how often it is an impression rather than an exact photograph. There is ample evidence that the impression is not always made at the moment of exposure ; and indeed, in some cases, such as the one in my own case which revealed a female head, there was never an exposure at all. Such pictures are called psychographs by Spiritualists, and they are proof positive that the effect is an impression rather than a reproduction. Dr. Traill Taylor, the well-known photographic expert, formerly editor of the "British Journal of Photography" (an authority upon the subject almost equal, one would imagine, to Mr. Joseph M'Cabe) proved the same point by stereoscopic photography, where he showed that the real image is rounded and the spirit image flat, while the latter does not exactly correspond on each half of the plate, showing that they could not have been taken simultaneously.
The question is further complicated by the existence of thought forms. I have seen two photographs, one of an old woman's head, and the other of a bottle, where the operator, Commandant Darget, without a medium was able roughly to impress these two forms by concentrated thought upon an exposed plate. These pictures have not yet been published, because they are, as I understand, to be submitted to the Académie Française, which insists upon its exhibits being virgin ones. Apart from this, there are wandering images which no one can explain. Thus, reproductions of living men have been known to appear upon the plate, without the subject or operator having consciously assisted it. Still more strange are those absolutely freakish results, a large number of which are on record, which would rather suggest some tricksie sprite with a knowledge of supernormal photography and a turn for practical joking. In one case, the sitter had disappeared entirely, and in his place was an engraving of Lord Nelson, with a page mark which showed whence it had been taken. Of a similar nature were the repeated reproductions of the Cyprian Priestess of Venus, which were produced under Duguid's mediumship in Glasgow, and were traced to an original in a solicitor's office in Edinburgh, with which Duguid had no possible connection. A similar strange photograph of a passage from the Codex Alexandrinus is to be found in Professor Henslow's "Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism." Shallow observers may try to put such Puck-like performances down to fraud, but the real student will understand that in such strange abnormalities we are most likely to find a clue to the supernormal forces at work. Above all, we Spiritualists must never shirk our difficulties, or pretend that we know when we are really in perplexity.
There is much to be learned by studying Mr. M'Cabe's methods if one desired to cultivate the art of telling a story in order to produce an ex-parte effect. Thus, anyone who read his account of Mrs. Fox-Kane's confession and subsequent retraction in 1888 would carry away a false idea of what occurred and would imagine that it was really very damaging to the cause. It was, in fact, very damaging to Mrs. Fox-Kane herself who in her maiden days had been Margaret Fox, the second of the three sisters. I am prepared to believe that her mediumship was of an intermittent quality, and that she was by no means incapable of fraud, while the record of her younger sister, Katie, seems to me to be more consistent. A terrible curse ran in the blood of both sisters — hereditary dipsomania. Her nervous condition as she grew older was deplorable, for three potent causes were at work upon it, the effect of promiscuous spiritual séances long continued, the effect of tippling, and the effect of extreme religious excitement and controversy, for she had become a Roman Catholic, had reverted to mediumship, and had finally been exposed, according to her own account, to pressure from those high in the Church to make her enter a convent. On the top of this came a furious quarrel with her older sister, Leah, whom she accused in her frenzy of having fraudulently started the cult of Spiritualism, forgetting that Leah was not present at Hydesville at all in the early days of the movement. Possibly she may have had in her mind that Leah first suggested charging for their services as mediums. Her language at that time savoured of actual lunacy. Father Thurston gives a full and, on the whole, a fair account of the matter in "The Month" of February, 1920, with some examples of Margaret's ravings. "She's my damnable enemy. I hate her! My God! I'd poison her. No, I wouldn't. but I'll lash her with my tongue. I was an aunt seven years before I was born, Ha, Ha!" There was, in fact, a ferocious family vendetta in which, if the American reporter may be believed, Kate was in alliance with Margaret against Leah. Kate ascribed Leah's alleged jealousy to the fact that, "We could do things in Spiritualism which she couldn't." She was, however, present when her sister denounced the whole affair in public, and heard this sister give a demonstration of rappings which showed that, however produced, she had them at command. A year later, Margaret made a complete recantation in the presence of a reporter and witnesses. "Would to God," she said, "that I could undo the injustice which I did to the cause of Spiritualism when under the strong psychological influence of persons inimical to it I gave expression to utterances that had no foundation in fact. The charges were false in every particular." Mr. M'Cabe blunders in attributing this recantation to Kate and not to Margaret. I am inclined to agree with Father Thurston that both statements may have had some truth in them. Mr. Funk, who knew her at the time and had some remarkable experiences in 1878 of her mediumship experiences which had no connection with rapping, says of her: "At that time, 1888, her affidavit for or against anything should not be given the slightest weight. For five dollars she would have denied her mother, sworn to anything." The whole story cannot fail to be very painful to Spiritualists.
To those of us who have had our own independent proofs of the action of spirit forces, such episodes lose all meaning save as studies of the strange aberrations of the pathological mind. Father Thurston's appeal as to whether any good could come from such sources would be apposite if such people were in any sense our teachers or examples; but a fuller grasp of our philosophy would tell him that they are mere passive instruments, and that their individual characters are to be separated from their functions as a Catholic separates the wicked priest from the divine sacrament which he is the agent for celebrating, or a materialist the telegraphic operator from the message that he handles.
In justice to the Fox sisters one should take them in the days of the fulness of their ministration. The picture drawn by Mrs. Hardinge Britten is not done in their defence but comes incidentally in the course of her life. Speaking of the year 1857, she says: "At the time of which I write, dear old Mrs. Fox, the mother of the celebrated sisters, was living with her two daughters Kate and Margaret. The eldest of the sisters, Leah, was married to a wealthy and highly-respected merchant of the city, Daniel Underhill, but she continued to throw open her handsome house free to her friends for séances, and, being by far the best and most powerful of living mediums at this time, the privilege of admission was highly prized. As my dear mother and I enjoyed an intimate acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Underhill, we organised receptions which were held in these splendid drawing-rooms one evening of each week. Among constant attendants were the poet sisters Alice and Phoebe Carey, Horace Greeley, Raymond, editor of the N.Y. Times, Dale Owen, Fennimore Cooper, Whittier, Longfellow and Washington Irving." When we read such names we trace the true inspiration of Longfellow's ' There is no death" or of Whittier's more spiritual verses. The world owes already much more to Spiritualism than appears upon the surface. Even the sustaining power which carried Abraham Lincoln through his long-drawn ordeal seems to have been nourished by his commerce with the unseen.
Mr. M'Cabe's favourite argument seems to be that because a thing is strange, therefore it is impossible, no matter what the evidence. This he employs again and again. It was used in the old days against mesmerism, and the sceptics made very merry over the poor credulous folk who believed that a subject could really have his whole mind affected by a few passes over his face. The scientific papers of seventy years ago are full of sarcasms from the superior brain, and Dr. Braid, one of the first surgeons in England, was refused permission to read a paper upon it by the British Association. Now there is no child who does not know that these things are true, but the sceptics unabashed take the very same tone towards Spiritualism which their fathers did to mesmerism. If wireless telegraphy had not happened to be self-proving how convincingly these people could have written it down,
A good example of this argument, that because a thing is strange it is therefore impossible, is seen in the treatment of the levitation of Mrs. Guppy. Mrs. Guppy is said to have been carried through the air from Highbury to a third story room in Lambs Conduit Street, and the assertion is certainly a bold one, and lends itself to humorous treatment. The evidence is not in my opinion so final as in the case of Home's levitation in Ashley Place ; but it is so strong that one can at least say that a man accused of murder and confronted with such an array of witnesses would have no chance for his neck. The curious will find an excellent account of the matter from the pen of Dr. Abraham Wallace in "Light" of August 17th, 1918. Dr. Wallace was not there, but he collected his information from Mrs. Guppy herself, and from a gentleman present. The witnesses at the far end were eleven in number, who all signed a report with their names and addresses to the effect that the episode did occur in this room and that door and window were secured. Dr. Wallace mentions also the names of witnesses at the Highbury End who could testify to Mrs. Guppy's sudden disappearance. Such evidence for an occurrence, however wonderful it may be, cannot be dismissed by a mere wave of the pen and a vague assertion of roguery without a word of proof and in face of the assertion of the witnesses that "the possibility of her being concealed in the room is as absurd as the idea of her acting in collusion with the mediums present." Once more we find Mr. M'Cabe in his favourite rôle of explaining, or failing to explain, events which he did not see to the actual spectators. Is all the judgment in the world, then, confined to that single cranium, and can we accept no proof and no assurance until this universal Censor has placed his stamp upon it?
I will not wade through all the cases which Mr M'Cabe has collected in his book, because nothing can be served thereby. One of his constant habits is to quote Spiritualists when they, as honest men, denounce a fraud, but to give their opinion no weight at all when on another occasion they satisfy themselves as to the bona fides of a medium. Thus Mr. Carrington is quoted again and again where he is able to find a flaw, but no one would gather from this account that Mr. Carrington was one of the men who reinstated Palladino's reputation after her misbehaviour in England, and that his general conclusions are not against but in favour of Spiritualism. So also in the case of Professor Willie Reichel of Paris. Mr. M'Cabe quotes him gleefully when he exposed a fraud in South America, but is very reticent of the fact that he endorsed other mediums in California, especially C. V. Miller of San Francisco, as everyone who has read his "Occult Experiences" is aware. If I should come across a cheat I should certainly expose him or her, but is that action on my part to invalidate my other conclusions? I should have thought that with any fair-minded inquirer it would rather strengthen them.
Every honest Spiritualist admits and deplores the fact that there have been cheats within the movement, human hyaenas, who have lived upon the dead. Personally, my experience has lead me to believe that a medium who has been a deliberate cheat from the beginning is a rare object — possibly an unknown one; while, on the other hand, the medium who has lost his power, or who has intermittent power which deserts him with embarrassing suddenness, is not uncommon ; and it is this type which is tempted to fill the gaps by a resort to fraud. This is no excuse, but it is an explanation. There is no earthly punishment which can be too severe for the ghoul who travels the country with false beard and muslin — a creature of the dark. But it is my opinion that he is not so common as readers of Mr. M'Cabe would imagine, and all of his cases need checking and correction. So far as he gibbets the real criminal, he does work which every Spiritualist would applaud. I can only recollect in recent years two cases of fraud in physical mediums, one of which was non-proven, and both of which were ventilated by the Spiritualists themselves. Considering the extension of the interest in the subject, this result of years of mediumship does not point to any prevalence of fraud — indeed, my experience of Spiritualists is that it would be very difficult for even a clever swindler to pass muster among them.
But while I agree as to stern verdicts in such cases, I do not agree with the ignoring of every psychic difficulty which is shown by unscientific fraud-at-any-cost observers. Take the case of the young Welsh medium, Thomas. I was there when in Cardiff, in the presence of the Chief Constable, the under-Constable, and an audience some of whom, at least, were keenly critical, he gave a very fine physical séance which was above suspicion. He was then brought to London and discarded by Mr. M'Cabe because, among strangers, some of whom were bitterly hostile, in a strange environment, with the roar of a printing-press in his ears, he failed to produce the same results. But the medium even then did produce results. If an experienced Spiritualist had been asked what physical phenomena were likely to occur when there was limited power under bad conditions, he would probably have answered that small objects near the medium's person might be thrown about the room. As a fact, in spite of his hands being firmly pinioned, his stud, his armlet, and his braces were actually thrown among the audience. To say that a man can take off his braces with his teeth and then throw them some yards, seems to me to be an insult to our intelligence. By a singular paradox, some of those who were entirely dissatisfied with the phenomena — which were indeed very slight — professed themselves as satisfied of the integrity of the medium, though how those statements could be reconciled is beyond my comprehension.
There are no lights or shades about the reasoning of Mr. M'Cabe. Everything must be fraud — or else expunged entirely from his record. The experiences of men as honourable and far more finely critical than himself, who have really brought scientific consideration instead of bull-headed prejudice to this inquiry, influence him not at all. That a spirit communicating with difficulty through an unaccustomed process should find it impossible to reproduce the higher phases of his own thought and character, is a consideration which does not affect him. That a medium in trance might be influenced by the thoughts of his or her neighbours is not allowed any weight whatever. That a spirit might obsess a medium and walk forth to manifest without the conscious co-operation of the entranced person is waived to one side. That man has an etheric double which is the image of his material self, and that this may leave him in trance and be the mould which is used for a materialising spirit — a very possible theory which would explain a resemblance between spirit and medium, is not within the scope of his philosophy. That the powers of a spirit may be limited by law, and that he may not be able under every condition to read, for example, a document inside a sealed box, seems never even to occur to him. One thing is clear to every man who has had much practical experience: there is assuredly a very subtle connection between the medium and the materialisation which might be expected seeing that the one is built up from the other. I have known a spirit to begin to speak in the medium's own voice and have quivered with the feeling that I was on the verge of an exposure. Yet I have known that voice change before the conversation was over to the most distinctive tones of the dead man. It took him a little time to master his material and to assert his own individuality — that is all. So a shape may begin with a resemblance to the medium, and mould itself to a convincing likeness before the eyes of the sitter. But all these subtleties which are taught by knowledge and experience are lost upon Mr. M'Cabe, who continually proclaims as a damaging discovery some fact which all Spiritualists would accept as a truism, such, for example, as the outbreathing of carbonic acid by a materialised figure. For the moment they are alive, and they obey the physiology of life.
I have in the course of this campaign, which has now extended over three or four years, had occasion to make very many statements, sometimes in hurried interviews, or when I have been away from my library. It is hardly conceivable that I have always avoided mistakes. though I cannot recollect any serious one. Mr. M'Cabe endeavours to convict me of one in the case of the picture of Christ, and makes a complete hash of the whole story. I never sent a picture to the Daily Mail. It was the lady's own mother-in-law, Lady Churchill, who gave permission that it be published, and who in the same column remarked of it, "I cannot explain it, save to express my belief that the artist has strong psychic power." She gives her reasons for that belief, which I think are perfectly valid. Mr. M'Cabe's common sense should teil him that it was not as an art critic, but as a student of the psychic, that I was asked by a member of the family to inspect the picture. There were two errors, for neither of which I was in the least responsible. The one was, that the lady's name should have been mentioned without her consent. I had kept the matter anonymous. The other was, that the word "medium" should have been used by journalists conjuring up in the minds of some people that the artist was necessarily under trance or in an obviously abnormal condition. This was not .so, nor is it a necessary concomitant of the highest inspirational work. For my own part, I have nothing to alter or withdraw. The detail of the French painter I had from Lady Churchill's own lips, though I understand now that the incident occurred to a companion picture, and not to this one. So much for Mr. M'Cabe's attempt to prove "bewildering hastiness" and the rest. If I never wander further from the facts I shall be well satisfied and it speaks for itself that in my whole record Mr. M'Cabe could find nothing more damaging than that.
Mr. M'Cabe in one of his articles has spoken of a certain note of arrogance which has appeared in spiritualistic literature. It would be strange if it did not appear when we consider the arrogance which continually underlies the criticism with which we contend. We cannot be expected to fight forever with boxing-gloves against knuckle-dusters. I am conscious of some acerbity in such an essay as this, and yet I would not modify it when I consider what has brought it forth. There is a point where patience and gentleness may be confounded with indecision and weakness. Conceive for a moment the arrogance which claims that a very great scientific observer like Crookes could carry on for two years an investigation within his own house in which he declared two separate entities, Florrie Cook and Katie King, were concerned, whereas, as a matter of fact, Florrie Cook was there alone. Is it not arrogance which makes such a claim as that? Or imagine the arrogance which proclaims that a responsible doctor of science could for four years use every scientific test which he could devise to account for certain movements, but that he never, during ail that time, had the wit to discover that the medium was raising the table on the end of her foot? Is that not arrogance? Or conceive the frame of mind which can not merely suggest, but lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that Dr. Geley and a hundred observers, in spite of searches, changes of dress, and every precaution, could not once. in a long series of observations, detect that the medium was eructating food, and waving sheets of paper about that they might be photographed. Arrogance seems almost too tame a word for such an assertion. It is, as I said in the debate, a perfect insanity of incredulity. When such charges imply that we are all dupes and fools, and when they bespatter with mud the lives of some, and the graves of others, would we be human if we did not show some signs of our contemptuous anger?
There is one point which I would put very earnestly to Rationalists, who are dour folk, but honest in purpose and ready to follow evidence if they can only get some unpoisoned stream to drink from. The work of many of their leaders is unfortunately to poison the stream by laying before them every real or imagined enormity in the history of Spiritualism, and concealing all that is genuine and sound. This is the point I would have them consider. In the last twenty-five years this subject has been carefully examined by the most brilliant set of intellects who ever concentrated upon one question in this country. Quoting from memory, I would give the names of the two Balfours, the Sedgwicks, the Verralls. Myers, Gurney, Podmore, Andrew Lang, Crookes, Lodge, Barrett, Rayleigh, Professor Jack, W. T. Stead, Dr. Hodgson, Professor Butcher. These have usually started from an agnostic, or even from a hostile position, and all have given considerable time to the investigation. Some of them have endorsed the whole spiritual position ; others have only endorsed the phenomena, a few have remained neutral, but not one has proclaimed a conviction that the movement was a delusion, The most backward and cautious have remained agnostic rather than hostile. Surely no intelligent man can realise this attitude of the experts, and then read without disdain the cheap abuse with which some of our opponents cover the subject. All movements are minorities in the first instance, and we are still a minority, but Mr. M'Cabe deceives himself in this as in other things if he imagines we are decreasing. We will outstay any movement on the globe.
An honest Rationalist is a man who says: "These orthodox people claim a good deal which is false, and which would be immoral if it were true. Their book tells me of a great deal which happened long ago, but much of it is incredible, and much of it is undesirable, and the obvious historical result of it has been bigotry and all that is hateful, therefore I will have none of it, and since existence after death seems to be bound up with this system of thought, therefore I will have none of that either." That is how I thought myself in my Rationalist days, as anyone who reads the "Stark Munro Letters" can see for himself. But since then, my own experiences and those of others have convinced me that the subject of existence after death and its conditions can be treated apart from any particular religious system, and that our evidence applies as strongly to a Moslem or a Hindoo as to a Christian. Each adds it to his own system, and it is a common solid fact at the bottom of all speculative creeds, It is an enormous, an inexpressible blessing in life, as I have found in my own person and in the experience of all genuine Spiritualists I have known. It utterly removes the fear of death, gives grand assurance for the future, and greatly alleviates the agony of temporary separation. A small body of men by their noisy and ignorant opposition have stood between the human race and this immense boon, and when history comes to be written they will assuredly receive the ridicule and contempt of our posterity. Already things have taken shape to such an extent that there is not one of the protagonists who opposed it, Browning, with his slanderous doggerel; Faraday, with his a priori judgment ; Tyndall, with his cocksure ignorance ; Carpenter, with his unscrupulous misrepresentation ; Brewster, with his moral cowardice, who has not suffered in general reputation and discounted his real excellence in life by his attitude to this subject.
I loathe contention. though I have been forced by the responsibility of knowledge into the forefront of this battle, which has more and more absorbed my life and dwarfed every other interest. I have no desire to deal harshly with Mr. M'Cabe, nor would I, after our debate, have referred to the matter again had he not continued the controversy in a series of attacks. It is difficult to be charitable to Mr. M'Cabe, for he is so brutal to others. He goes out of his way, without any object, to explain to us that a certain living foreign medium is not a virgin, as if that had any bearing upon her psychic powers. He explains that Slade took to drink in his later years, as if such a phenomenon were unknown among Rationalists. He declares quite falsely, as I believe, that Stainton Moses, the man who remained as a volunteer in a cholera village when others fled, died of Bright's disease, brought on by drink. Intimate friends of Stainton Moses have told me that in his later years he suffered great pain, and that he occasionally took alcohol as others take morphia, to deaden it, but that' he was never a drunkard — indeed, his clear-headed work as editor of "Light" is proof in itself that he preserved his powers untarnished. I leave such attacks to the judgment of the reader. It is the maker of them, not the object, who is tarnished. Everyone who differs from him is a fraud, a fool or a drunkard. Many whose advice I respect say to me: "Why worry about him? If he rejects this knowledge and hardens his heart against it, who is it who suffers save himself?" That is only a half-truth, for those who read him and have no personal knowledge of the subject are naturally influenced by him, and hearing of no reply, they imagine that what he says is true, and so have their minds barred against happiness. It is this consideration which has induced me to follow in his track, and to expose this false guide who can only lead those who trust him, not to the palace and the High Gardens, but to the cesspool and the midden. As to his talk about the beauty of this world and its self-sufficiency for those who dwell in it, it is the merest fustian when examined. It might pass as true for a healthy man on a fine summer day, or for a lover of Nature in an Amazonian forest, but how about the poor wretch who lies in a garret in a London winter with cancer of the bowels! Is the world self-sufficient for him, and will the prospect of ending up as a box full of carrion carry him through his trials as the knowledge of an approaching glory would do? That is the knowledge which we surely possess, and which we will prove to all the world, not by faith but by demonstration, in spite of all the killjoys. The sailor is none the less efficient because he sees lights of welcome twinkling in the darkness and receives messages of love from the haven to which he is bound, and so the dweller in this world will do his duty none the less thoroughly because he sees existence and great happiness instead of annihilation and putridity as the end of his labours.
CROWBOROUGH,
- SUSSEX.
June 21st, 1920.
