Part 1

_The Case Against Spiritualism_

BY JANE T. STODDART

HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

MCMXIX

_Contents_

CHAPTER I NEW VOTARIES OF SPIRITUALISM 17

CHAPTER II DISTURBERS OF THE DEAD 31

CHAPTER III THE MEDIUM 43

CHAPTER IV THE MEDIUM’S “CONTROL” 57

CHAPTER V TABLE PHENOMENA 71

CHAPTER VI AUTOMATIC WRITING 85

CHAPTER VII IS THERE DANGER FROM THE OTHER SIDE? 99

CHAPTER VIII SPIRITUALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 111

CHAPTER IX QUALITY OF THE ALLEGED MESSAGES 133

CHAPTER X THE CHURCHES AND THE SÉANCE 147

CHAPTER XI THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE 159

_Preface_

Rudyard Kipling, with his robust common sense, has warned intruders who seek to establish a traffic with discarnate beings that they are entering on a dangerous path.

“Oh the road to En-dor is the oldest road And the craziest road of all. Straight it runs to the Witch’s abode, As it did in the days of Saul. And nothing has changed of the sorrow in store For such as go down on the road to En-dor!”

That old road has never been more crowded than it is to-day. The merchants who travel on it appear to ignorant onlookers laden with balm and spicery and myrrh. Owing to the propagandist activities of honoured men like Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir W. F. Barrett and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the cult of Spiritualism has received a new advertisement, and is proving itself, in certain quarters, a rival to Christianity. Its literature is growing rapidly, and the wish has often been expressed for a brief, comprehensive, up-to-date exposition of the arguments on the other side. This book is designed to supply that need. While the writer is well acquainted with the older historical works, both of Britain and America, the publications of the Society for Psychical Research, and the standard Continental treatises, these chapters deal mainly with Spiritualism in the war-period and after. The strongest arguments against “dabbling” are to be found, as will be seen, in the writings of Spiritualists themselves. Warnings are heard from many pulpits, though with the exception of Dr. Barnes in his admirable short pamphlet, “Spiritualism and the Christian Faith,” none of our leading preachers seems to have grappled with the subject in detail. The writer may therefore claim to have broken new ground. “The Case Against Spiritualism” is set forth under many aspects, and it is hoped that the book may prove acceptable to Christian teachers, as well as to inquirers in general.

_Chapter I_

NEW VOTARIES OF SPIRITUALISM

Expert writers believed twenty years ago that Spiritualism was declining. The late Mr. Frank Podmore, about the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, called attention to the disappointing results attained by the Society for Psychical Research. The number of believers, he said, had been much larger in the seventies, and the things they believed much more difficult of acceptance. There was a time, he thought, when the number of avowed Spiritualists in this country and the United States might fairly have been reckoned by tens of thousands, but between 1882 and 1897 (the first period of the Society’s investigations) zealous students had been brought up against defeat. “No positive results,” he said frankly, “have been obtained worthy of record.” There was a “cooling-off” in public interest. Sir William Crookes, though a believer in Spiritualism, had seemed to discourage intrusive curiosity in a famous passage. “In such an inquiry,” he wrote, “the intellect demands that the spiritual proof must be absolutely incapable of being explained away; it must be so strikingly and convincingly true that we cannot, dare not, deny it.”

The truth is that Spiritualism breaks like waves on the modern world; and when each successive wave has spent its force there follows a period of lassitude. Can we wonder that a tidal wave should have followed the late war? Three classes, at least, have felt themselves strongly attracted towards psychical studies.

I

There are, first, the idle, curious gazers who under the late Roman Empire would have been thronging to the worship of Isis or Mithra. Sir Samuel Dill and Dr. Reaveley Glover have painted these men and women, some of whom had great possessions. Their successors were found in Paris under the Second Empire, when society, for a short time, was bewitched by the revelations of Douglas Home. Neither time nor space, it was believed, had any existence for him. Through his means the spirits of St. Louis, Pascal, Rousseau, and even ancient Greeks like Aristides and Solon, were consulted, and if we may trust French memoir-writers of the period, they replied with touching alacrity. Père Lacordaire, the foremost preacher of his time, was almost deceived by the phenomena. He wrote to Madame Swetchine in 1853 that he had heard tables talk and made them talk. “They have told me some very remarkable things about the past and the present.” “A poor and vulgar phenomenon,” was his verdict, yet he did not think it was all imposture. The Roman Catholic Church, in our own day, speaks with sharper condemnation. Under the Second Empire, about the time of the Crimean War, table-turning and spirit-rapping were the amusements of every drawing-room. While our great war lasted the need for distraction was felt by those who in normal times are known as “the pleasure-loving classes.” Individuals among these classes--hundreds, nay thousands, of them--were occupied to the limit of their strength in public service. Crowded theatres and music-halls proclaimed their need of respite and excitement. Spiritualism had its distractions to offer to the weary rich.

II

It has drawn recruits, in the second place, from that large body of the middle and working-class population which has no link with any of the organised Churches. Mr. George Haw, writing in the _Daily News_ census volume of 1904, gave a picture of Sunday as spent by non-churchgoers in greater London. Among the artisans “the day opens with an idle morning, divided between nap and newspaper. After a late dinner the afternoon sees a saunter, sometimes with wife and children, through the streets, or a walk into Epping Forest ... or by the banks of the Lea. An early supper and a pipe close the day.” That section of the working classes represented by clerks, shop assistants and warehousemen spent Sunday, as Mr. Haw had observed, in visiting and entertaining. “Thoughts of taking part in public worship are as far from their minds as thoughts of taking part in public life.” “Games and concerts in their little parlours beguile many a Sunday night.” Spiritualist lecturers to-day are teaching such people to “form home circles” for the evocation of spirits.

III

From all these classes, whether rich or poor, is drawn a companionship of the bereaved. It is from them that the new Spiritualism expects a multitude of recruits, for their eyes are looking towards the shadows. Sunday morning in greater London was once “a time for tending little gardens,” but the boy who used to “help father” with his spade and pail may be resting now in a hero’s grave by Somme or Tigris. Perhaps he has no sleeping-place, even among the undistinguished dead. His body may have been utterly obliterated, his end may be a subject for mysterious surmise. If the Churches cannot speak to the mourners words of Divine consolation, Spiritualism will rush in with its false and fatal comfort. Shallow writers have told us in recent months that “the dead are sleeping in their graves, already half-forgotten.” So it seems, because life’s routine proceeds as usual in homes where “one is not.” If Mr. George Haw’s description of the day of rest in outer London could be brought up to date, we should doubtless hear of nap and newspaper, country walk and evening concert, with a cigar as the breadwinner’s treat in the after-dinner hour. But the clay cottage of materialism has begun to rock and crumble. Every incident of the war is marked and dated according to its bearing on the personal sorrow. Nor is it surprising that ignorant persons should brush aside contemptuously vague warnings as to the peril of dabbling in Spiritualism. There is no more superstitious peasantry in the world than that of Brittany, nor any with a darker array of ghostly legends. Yet we are told that on St. John’s Eve, when the bonfire is lit and the priests and choir have gone past in long procession with banners and relics, places are set beside the glowing embers for those whose bodies are in the churchyard, that they, too, may look in at the dancers. In every land which war has visited arms are stretched out towards the young and beautiful who have fallen, and the cry is heard from mourners’ lips, “I am determined to take the hazard of the night along with you.”

IV

New inquirers are, for the most part, wholly ignorant with regard to the history of Spiritualism, which Mr. Waite, our chief living occultist, has called “a masque of anarchy.” The most respectable leaders of the movement are only too anxious to break with the ugly, disreputable past. A well-known authority says in _Light_[1]: “It has been the misfortune of Spiritualism that many of its public expositions have been conducted in circumstances the reverse of dignified. It has suffered from contact with stupidity and cupidity, and its enemies have made the most of their numerous opportunities of holding it up to ridicule.”

Just as the Government of Ebert and Scheidemann pleaded with the Allies: “The past is past; the old bad system is gone for ever; let us write on this clean slate,” so the newer exponents of Spiritualism--even men like Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--seem inclined to pass over, _sub silentio_, all that was guilty and fraudulent in the records of seventy years. Such an amnesty could not be granted in public affairs. The framers of the Peace Treaty of 1919 were guided in every step they took by a knowledge of the crimes committed by Germany during the war. The greater her misdeeds, the sterner were the guarantees required. “Take up the study of Spiritualism _without prejudice_,” says the devotee to the ignorant new-comer. The words of Mr. Robert Hichens are in place, though they refer to the testing of individual character: “The question is, What is prejudice? The facts of a life are facts, and cannot leave one wholly uninfluenced for or against the liver of that life. If I see a man beating a dog because it has licked his hand, I draw the inference that he is cruel. Would you say that I am narrow-minded in doing so? If one does not judge men and women by their actions, by what is one to judge them?”

As with individuals, so with movements. “It is infinitely to be regretted,” says the French Spiritualist leader, Camille Flammarion, “that we cannot trust the loyalty of the mediums. They almost all cheat.” Are we to pass over such a sentence as of trifling importance, or shall we receive it as a warning against all attempts to pry into the fate of our dead by unlawful and unholy methods? “The judgment, the estimate, _where they are_,” wrote Bishop Francis Paget, “is formed with perfect knowledge, perfect love; and our loose guesses, our hasty impressions, our blundering words are like voices in the noisy street outside a church.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] May 10th, 1919.

_Chapter II_

DISTURBERS OF THE DEAD

Modern Spiritualism has its roots in Necromancy, a practice hated in all ages by sober and reverent minds. It was only the worst type of sorcerer, according to Mr. Waite, who attempted to communicate with the spirits of departed men and women. Mediæval magic had a by-path leading towards the abyss, “an abhorrent and detested branch, belonging exclusively to the domain of black magic.” The alchemist was bidden by his rules to pray as well as work. The astrologer was taught that in the last resort there is a law of grace by which the stars are governed, that “Christ rules all things, even the stars.” Though poisoning alchemists, like Alasco, in “Kenilworth,” or star-gazers, like Galeotti, in “Quentin Durward,” deceived Courts and peoples with a pretence of superior knowledge, there was nothing actually odious to the human mind in their professed and ostensible business. Necromancy, as Sir William Barrett points out, incurred the reprobation of Hebrew prophets, the statesmen and men of science of their day. From Moses to Isaiah, says this writer, we find them united in warning the people against any attempts to peer into and forecast the future, or to meddle with psychical phenomena for this or any lower purpose. “These practices,” he says, “were condemned ... irrespective of any question as to whether the phenomena were genuine or merely the product of trickery and superstition. They were prohibited ... mainly because they tended to obscure the Divine idea, to weaken the supreme faith in, and reverent worship of, the One Omnipotent Being, whom the nation was set apart to proclaim.” Sir W. F. Barrett quotes with approval the words of Sir George Adam Smith in his “Isaiah”: “Augury and divination wearied a people’s intellect, stunted their enterprise, distorted their conscience. Isaiah saw this, and warned the people: ‘Thy spells and enchantments with which thou hast wearied thyself have led thee astray.’ And in later years Juvenal’s strong conscience expressed the same sense of the wearisomeness and waste of time of these practices.”

It is fair to add that Sir William Barrett is convinced that the perils which beset the ancient world in the pursuit of psychical knowledge do not apply to _scientific_ investigation to-day. Enough for our purpose that he lays emphasis on the warnings of Holy Scripture against intrusion into unhallowed realms.

How shall we explain the deep repugnance of the human mind, at its best and sanest, against any attempt to summon back the souls of the departed?

I

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in “The New Revelation,” admits that the opponents of Spiritualism are guided in part by that strange instinct which warns men and women to keep off forbidden ground. The man who would violate a grave is naturally regarded with loathing. Dickens, in “A Tale of Two Cities,” has drawn such a person in Tellson’s outside porter, Jerry Cruncher. Jerry’s good wife looks with horror on the night work of the body-snatcher, and Mr. Lorry says sternly to his employee: “You have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous description.” With even deeper aversion does the unsophisticated mind turn from those who seek to rend the veil which hangs between this world and the next.

II

If the stern voice from Sinai says “Thus far and no farther,” a tenderer reproach, breathed from earliest ages, warns presumptuous intruders who would disturb the dead. Here, again, we venture to quote the words of Mr. Waite: “There was a very strong and prevailing impression that the dead were at rest, and that the attempt to disturb that rest was a monstrous profanation.” Tennyson’s lines express the feeling of bereaved hearts, even where there was no hope of survival, in lands where Christianity was unknown:

“Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace: Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul, While the stars burn, the moons increase, And the great ages onward roll.

“Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet. Nothing comes to thee new or strange. Sleep full of rest from head to feet; Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.”

Many sayings of Scripture confirm the Christian’s assurance that the faithful dead, having passed the waves of this troublesome world, are at rest in their desired haven. Newman’s words on the calm of Ascensiontide belong in part not only to the exalted Saviour, but to each of His brethren now absent from the body: “He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness--stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy--that most perfect of joys, the utter, profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine essence. He has entered into his rest.”

Jesus said: “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” St. Paul wrote: “I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep.” The Church does not interpret these and other passages as teaching that the dead are wrapped in profound unconsciousness, or that they are wholly unconcerned with dear ones left on earth. New activities may claim their interest, while old memories remain alive.

“For the breed of the Far-going, Who are strangers and all brothers, May forget no more than others Who look seaward with eyes flowing.”

But the New Testament use of the word “sleep” ought at least to warn us against meddling with their sacred rest.

III

Spiritualist teachers are not without a sense of the impropriety of such attempts, when pressed on grounds of curiosity alone. Sir William Barrett advises that those who have attained the assurance of survival by means of the séance should not pursue the matter further, but rather learn more of the spiritual world and spiritual communion from the Christian mystics of all countries. He recommends especially a study of the writings of Swedenborg. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, unlike Sir W. F. Barrett, regards Spiritualism as a religion, but he advises his readers to get away from the phenomenal side, and learn the “lofty teaching” from such books as those of Stainton Moses. The cult of the séance, he says, may be very much overdone. “When once you have convinced yourself of the truth of the phenomena, the physical séance has done its work, and the man or woman who spends his or her life in running from séance to séance is in danger of becoming a sensation-hunter.” In all such writing there is a note of uneasiness. The séance is not regarded as a “means of grace” for the believer in Spiritualism, therefore the outsider should avoid these dark and perilous ways. “Not for nothing,” says the Rev. Cyril E. Hudson, “has the Church throughout her history discouraged the practice of necromancy, the morbid concern with the dead which must inevitably interfere, and does in fact interfere, with the proper discharge of our duties in that plane of existence in which God has placed us.”[2]

FOOTNOTES:

[2] _Nineteenth Century_, May, 1919, p. 919.

_Chapter III_

THE MEDIUM

In ordinary trance-mediumship, at least four distinct entities are involved. There is first the inquirer, next the medium, thirdly the medium’s alleged “control” or controlling spirit, and, lastly, the presumed discarnate being who speaks to the inquirer through the “control” and through the medium.

I

“Mediumship” is a word with ugly associations, as every honest-minded Spiritualist will admit. It used to be said that the Psychical Society found its chief occupation in exposing fraud and trickery. The great Russian authority, Aksakof, complained bitterly of the frequent transmission of obviously false messages. He wrote of “the deception which appeared along with the dark séance and materialisations, and which was confirmed in my experience, not only from literature, but also through my personal relations with the most celebrated professional mediums.” He would have agreed with Mrs. Sidgwick’s words: “The chief scandal of Spiritualism is the encouragement it gives to the immoral trade of fraudulent mediumship.”

On that point, inquirers should note, there is no dispute at all among responsible investigators. In the earlier stages of the movement exposures were so numerous that a theory was evolved to account for them. It was admitted that in many cases the medium cheated, but it was alleged that this was done unconsciously, and that the fraud was really perpetrated from the other side. The late Professor De Morgan wrote of certain phenomena: “If these things be spirits, they show that pretenders, coxcombs and liars are to be found on the other side of the grave as well as on this.” The idea was also elaborated that an uncongenial “circle” might induce bad spirits to play tricks with the medium.

“The cheating medium,” as Mr. Waite puts it, “was sure of his defence. He was caught red-handed, but it was the ill-conditioned circle that attracted the ‘unprogressed spirits’ to tempt him. He carried the baggage of a conjuror on his tours, but the real infamy rested with the persons who had dared to trespass on the liberty of the subject by ransacking his private effects.” Kind-hearted men and women would make any excuse rather than admit that a favourite “psychic” had been guilty of conscious deception.

Since the bad side of mediumship is admitted, it is needless to re-array the historic evidence. Let us turn from the past to the present, and ask what has been the cumulative effect of so many disastrous exposures on the leaders of the Spiritualist movement in our own day.

II

Four names stand out on that side as specially authoritative: Sir W. F. Barrett, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mr. J. Arthur Hill, and Sir Oliver Lodge. Three of these men are eminent in the worlds of science and literature, while the Spiritualistic writings of Mr. Hill deserve attention for their knowledge, fairmindedness and sanity.

(1) Sir William Barrett refrains from citing any evidence obtained through paid professional mediums, and has evidently a low esteem for this class. He welcomes the action of the Psychical Society in clearing off “a number of those detestable professional rogues who prey on the grief and credulity of mankind.”[3] The very word “medium,” he acknowledges, is usually associated in the public mind with various degrees of rascality, and he says emphatically that “so long as paid mediums and dark séances are encouraged, and rogues and fools abound, the evil odour which surrounds the name ‘medium’ is likely to remain.”

He also recognises that many so-called communications from the unseen are merely the unconscious revelation of the medium’s own thoughts, or latent memory, or subliminal self.[4] Even with honest “psychics” there is a natural tendency not to disappoint the sitter when a fee is paid, “and the temptation arises to supplement genuine by spurious phenomena.”

Super-normal gifts, in the view of our most experienced authority, are rare and elusive, and require patience, knowledge and discrimination on the part of the inquirer.[5] Sir William Barrett dissuades uninstructed persons from resorting to mediums; and it is clear that he desires the total elimination of the commercial element.

We need to guard against self-deception, he thinks, even in people whose character is beyond reproach.

(2) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle greatly dislikes the commercial element in mediumship. In a letter to _Light_[6] he pleads for the “training and segregation of mediums.” Like Sir William Barrett, he condemns the whole system of paying by results. “It is only when the professional medium can be guaranteed an annuity which will be independent of results,” he says, “that we can eliminate the strong temptation to substitute pretended phenomena when the real ones are wanting.” He points out that mediumship in its lowest forms is a purely physical gift, with no relation to morality.