The Proof of Spiritualism
The Proof of Spiritualism is an article written by Arthur Conan Doyle published in Hull Evening News on 27 november 1926.
Conan Doyle argues that Spiritualism is proved by the testimony of major investigators, mass personal experience, and his own séances, in which he says he received voices, messages, photographs, and recognitions from dead relatives and friends. He acknowledges occasional fraud among physical mediums but insists this does not invalidate the genuine evidence, and he maintains that the subject must be approached with seriousness, reverence, and moral intent.
This was the 2nd article of a series of 3 in the Hull Evening News:
- Read 1st article (25 november 1929)
- Read 3rd article (29 november 1929)
The Proof of Spiritualism
Life After Death
A Spirit Who Heard A Lecture
Some Frauds and Facts
In this second article I will deal with the proofs of the truth of Spiritualism, by which I mean that under proper conditions we are able to get into touch with those who have changed their vibration and live upon another plane of existence which is invisible to us. People ask why there should be conditions. The reason is that law runs all through the universe, that it exists. for spirits as well as for us, and that when they use matter, which is needful to get into touch with our material senses, they have to obey the laws of matter. It is the object of psychic science to discover exactly what those laws are, and we have made much progress already in that direction.
From the beginning of the movement there is no record of any scientific man who really examined the matter with an impartial mind. and failed to find that the facts were. true. The opposition has come entirely from those who were too prejudiced to inquire before stating their opinion. In acting thus they broke the first law Science, and it will be a permanent blot upon the well- deserved fame of such men as Huxley, Tyndall, Faraday and Lancaster, that they pronounced a false judgment without really hearing the evidence.
CELEBRATED SPIRITUALISTS.
Two years after the Rochester episode, which was the first inrush of spirit power, Professor Hare, who was the best-known experimental chemist in America, declared that he would expose the phenomena.
After a year of close investigation he issued his report to the effect that he had found them to be exactly ne Spiritualists represented. In England Professor de Morgan, the famous mathematician, made a similar confession in the preface to his wife's book, "Matter to Spirit."
In 1871 Professor Crookes did an elaborate investigation in his own laboratory, his subjects being Florrie Cook, D. D. Home and Kate Fox. His results were given in full in the "Quarterly Journal of Science," and showed that every claim in each case was true. Russel Wallace, great naturalist, tried also, and admitted that "the facts beat him."
Professor Zellner and Lombroso, leading men in Germany and in Italy, took the matter up, and both came to the same conclusion as to the truth of the Spiritual position. Many other great investigators, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Barrett, Hyslop, Morselli, Bozzano, Mayo, Challis, among men of science, and W. T. Stead, Thiers, Sardou, Victor Hugo, Robert Chambers and many others have declared that their own senses have taught them that this was true. Field Marshal French believed in it. So did Lord Haig, who used to send us telegrams of encouragement. All these witnesses for truth had actual experience. Their testimony must outweigh any amount which is negative.
The knowledge is now very wide spread. When, a couple of years ago, I spoke to an audience which filled the Albert Hall, and asked those of them who had beyond all doubt had actual personal proof of survival to stand up, some three or four thousand rose to their feet. They were testifying, you will observe, not to a mere belief, but to an actual fact observed by themselves. What a consensus of proof lies there!
It is to be remarked that no one gains by an admission of such belief, but that in a worldly senso we all suffer. Scientific men lose their reputation, worldly men are distrusted in their business. There is no temptation to be convinced too easily. Most of us started with a strong bias against the knowledge, but with an earnest desire to be fair. Hare, Crookes, Zollner, Lodge were all sceptics. In my own case, my experiences began in 1887; but it was not until 1916 that I came forward publicly. No one can say that I was hasty in my conclusions.
MY OWN EXPERIENCES.
Now let me give one or two out of a thousand experiences which have convinced me that there are intelligent forces outside ourselves, that they act for good if we approach them with good intentions, and that all the indications point overpoweringly to the fact that they are our own people. We get messages about things which only they know, we get their handwriting reproduced, we get their turns of speech, we get their faces upon photographs, we even SEE their faces.
Their message is, so far as my own experience goes, always one of hope and joy and uplift. Never in forty years have I heard one word that was indecorous. If these are deceiving spirits, then what more could angelic spirits do to help us on our earthly way?
I have spoken with my "dead" son and brother about intimate family matters. I have seen in the seance room my mother's face, and that of my nephew, as plainly as ever in life. I have heard a departed friend, speaking not with the organs of the medium, but in the air above me, reproduce his own peculiar manner to a nicety. I have listened to beautiful singing and music, and to whistling where there was no slightest pause for the intake of breath. I had got into touch with eight out of ten relatives whom I had lost in the war.
I mentioned the fact at the Queen's Hall in the morning. In the evening I sat in seance. The voice of a ninth came through. I said, "Why, you are one of two whom I alluded to, though I mentioned no names this morning." He answered, "I was there and heard you; that is why I am here now." How can one explain away a thing like that? If, with my Operience, I did not KNOW that it is true, I should be in a home for imbeciles.
UNFAIR TESTS FOR MEDIUMS.
Do not be put off by tales of fraud. There has been fraud occasionally in physical phenomena. But they are only a minor part of Spiritualism. The mental proofs that lie in the messages are the important part. But even in physical phenomena the facts have been absurdly exaggerated. You take the case of mediums like Slade, Madame d'Esperance, Eusapia, and others. They are tested hundreds, even thousands, of times with success. Then they are found to do something suspicious, and it is supposed that this wipes out and disproves all that has gone before.
Such reasoning is absurd. Do we not know the force of suggestion, which may well compel a hypnotised medium to wander round the room? Do we Spiritualists not know also the force of obsession, where a lower entity may delight to put the medium in the wrong? We do not know enough about these things to allow us to judge harshly.
Cling firmly to all that is positive, and disregard what is negative, as the chemist throws his failures down the sink. If a medium can show me beyond all question the face of my mother, do you think that any subsequent allegation of fraud would affect my mind? I KNOW that he has the power, and that to me is final.
But he subject should only be approached by those who are prepared to do so in an earnest and religious spirit. Tennyson has spoken of the qualities of heart and soul which he should possess who desires to hold "an hour's communion with the dead." It is indeed a sacrament — the oldest and most real of all the sacraments. In an atmosphere of gentle and reverent humility, the heights can be reached; in one of frivolity or of scientific or religious arrogance, nothing but confusion can result.
Sir A. C. Doyle will write in Friday's issue upon "What Spiritualism will achieve.
