Spiritualism, and Some of Its Recent Critics
We Spiritualists would seem to have fallen on evil days, Three consecutive numbers of this Journal—those for December 7th, 14th, 21st ult.—contain three vigorous onslaughts on certain cardinal dogmas of our faith. We have the advantage of the ripe criticism of one whose experience dates back five and twenty years.; of another who has for “over a dozen years had manifold opportunities of investigating the phenomena of Spiritualism in all their varied forms,” and who may be supposed there-fore to speak with some weight. And lastly, to complete our discomfiture, we have the Theosophists about our ears with the president himself flourishing the tomahawk of demolition.
We have believed, in our confiding simplicity, that through the gate of mediumship we have access to the world of spirit; and that through the same gate the spirits of our dead were able, under certain restrictions, to return and speak with us. What those restrictions are we cannot always tell; that some revenants are pretenders we entirely know; but we have believed that the master-passion—a pure and holy love—has availed sometimes, aye, many a I time and oft, to draw back the emancipated spirit, and to bring it once again within the sphere of the loved ones left behind.
It is this that I designate “a cardinal dogma of our faith.” I will so far vary my language as to add that it is the central fact round which the whole fabric of Spiritualism is built up. Demolish that faith and you have cut out from the body the heart whose action gave it life. Take away that belief—that pious hope if you prefer to call it so—and you have robbed Spiritualism of that which, in the vast majority of instances is its sole attraction. There remains—what? A scientific something with which the savant may amuse himself: the action of a force, the possibility of a transfusion of thought. A curious questioning as to elementals and elementaries, and the possible action of infra-human (or as the theologian calls them, diabolic) agencies: a body from which the soul has been wrenched, and for which most men will care nothing.
Baldly stated (and I am quite aware that there is far more than that left to the earnest students of nature and of self—I will admit and emphasize the fact before I have done)—this is the situation.
Dr. Wyld tells us that all the phenomena are or may be produced by the spirit of the medium: that we have no proof of the return of the departed: and that the entranced spirit of a living human being is the final cause of all. Elaborated at length, in a paper, the clearness and boldness of which are admirable, he disposes of our departed friends completely, and “leaves us poor indeed” to contemplate our own nakedness, and the desperate wickedness of our common selves, which when freed from the control of the body can play such pranks, and so “fool us to the top of our bent.”
T. J. is only a little more merciful. He leaves us one spirit beside that of the medium, but, alas! he is such a deceiver, that we are a little worse off than before. T. J. has had the fortune, or misfortune, to fall in with what I hope he believes to be a very exceptional man, “a middle-aged man, who was a medium without knowing it,” and who, “from a mere child, had been a victim of spirit manifestations, haunted by a familiar spirit.” This uncanny spook seems to have amused himself in picking the brains of his medium and those who came near him, and producing a series of counterfeit presentments of friends whose images he found there. Nay, so cunning was he, that he would not take the first image that turned up, but would select a curious and unlikely name, or “an uncle deceased, who might have been a soldier, and who had, perhaps, lost a limb”—what an alarming conjunction of perhapses!—as a child might plunge his hand to the bottom of the bag on the chance of getting a bigger apple. With these materials he produced, as might be imagined, extraordinary results, one of which was to impress T. J. with a belief in his “personality” and representations, and so to upset his belief in spirit identity altogether.
Lastly come the Theosophists, propounding much, doubtless, that is true, much that is matter for fair speculation, and a good deal of what none of us can say more than that we can neither prove nor disprove it, just as they who assert it labour under the same inability. Passing by all other points, saving those which bear on the immediate subject of this paper, I remark that Colonel Olcott widens the area very considerably. He tells us that the medium through whom objective physical manifestations are produced, may belong to one of two classes—(a) “those who are moved by the spirits of the departed,” and (b) “those whose occult phenomena are attributable to the agency of their own doubles in concert with other potencies.”
These are very noteworthy statements. We may be in communion with our departed friends, even through a physical medium; and further, Colonel Olcott “thoroughly concedes the action of pure, disembodied human spirits in the sublime phases of inspiration, prophecy, trancevision, and direct writing.” This admission, which covers the whole area of the Spiritualist’s faith, is, however, toned down by a reservation. “But not in all cases; far from it. The medium’s soul may manifest itself in all these, as may also the elementaries.” “Judge this tree, like others, by its fruits.”
The Theosophists then tell us that our faith, as Spiritualists, may or may not be true, that each case must be judged on its own merits; but that, at any rate, we must be prepared to widen our range of vision very considerably, so as to admit the action of the medium’s spirit, of elementaries and elementals, as well as of the departed spirits of mankind. Furthermore, they warn us that mediumship, at its best, is a risky business; that we should strive after adeptship, cultivate magic, and develop our own spirits, which have at best only a precarious chance of immortality.
How, then, do we stand as Spiritualists in the face of the three mentors who have been raised up to “smite us friendly and reprove us”? Are we the victims of T. J.’s masquerading spook—who surely must be a Theosophical elementary of the deepest dye—or, are we befooled by the loose spirit of a medium? Or must we admit that the Protean powers of the world of spirit are such that we do not know where we are, or even whether we are ourselves at all?
Before I attempt to say what is in my mind on these important points, let me emphasize their importance and express my own satisfaction that they have been openly raised. I believe it to be entirely beneficial that such theories should be put forward, and that we should have an opportunity of canvassing and discussing them. I distrust any all round theory, and while I gladly admit the modicum of truth that I believe underlies all these views—and some have a wider grasp of fact than others have—yet I must say that I do not believe that any one of them, or all three of them combined for the matter of that, has any monopoly of truth. Though the Theosophist comes nearest, inasmuch as his platform is widest, I say for myself that I cannot accept any one of these theories as entirely sufficient to cover the facts. And, though I speak here and elsewhere for myself alone, I believe that that <... continues on page 4-124 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Spiritualism, and Some of Its Recent Critics by Moses, W. S. (signed as M. A. (Oxon)), London Spiritualist, No. 280, January 4, 1878, pp. 1-3
London Spiritualist, No. 280, January 4, 1878, pp. 1-3