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line by line, and ground an effective answer, from my own point of view, on what they have said respecting my views and opinions as they have understood them. But this would inevitably lead to the emphasizing of minute points of difference, to literary criticism, to verbal analysis, and to the consequent development of animus, and to the obscuration of those broad points of agreement that exist between us. I am strongly impressed with the feeling that he who stirs up unnecessary strife accepts a position of grave responsibility at any time; and I believe, too, that the present is just one of those crises when it is desirable to minimize points of divergence, and to throw one’s whole energy into emphasizing the many and far more serious points of agreement which exist among us, and especially between my present critics and myself.
I shall have private opportunity of answering any arguments that, in their opinion, demand reply; and I hope, therefore, they will not consider me lacking in courtesy, or inattentive to their instructive comments, if I do not reply to them now, except in as far as they are concerned with my argument. Nor must it be assumed that arguments which I do not answer I therefore deem unanswerable. I shall be quite ready to meet them at another time, when I have cleared away misconceptions.
It is desirable to go back, for a moment, to the manifesto of the Theosophists in The Spiritualist of Dec. 9th. That utterance seems to me to mark a crisis to which events had long been tending. Thoughtful minds had come, from various causes, to question the received belief of the Spiritualists. Those who were most concerned with investigation saw around them- much that filled them with perplexity. Most of them had no personal evidence to rely on, and were compelled to accept such as they could get at second hand, either from records or from observation in promiscuous circles where none expects that the special points on which I insist would be proved, or even illustrated. The tests of identity, of the return of the departed spirits of earth, of intercourse with personal friends, are not so obtained, save in rare cases.
It came to pass, therefore, that the keenest minds found themselves without evidence of the return of departed spirits, and each evolved for itself a theory more or less sufficient to cover the facts within the observers’ personal knowledge, The negative evidence was strong against the hypothesis of the Spiritualist; the positive evidence pointed to acts and words which were strongly antagonistic to any such belief, Moreover, men’s prepossessions were ranged against the notion of human spirits so acting. They said indignantly that the acts were silly and the words frivolous, more characteristic of the antics of a Pack, or sometimes of the gambols of an animal, and even of the malignant mischief of an intelligence destitute of moral consciousness, than of the manifestation of the human mind of a responsible agent. By degrees there grew in the minds of some of us a strong conviction that these are not the people they pretend to be. Their highly-sounding names, their goody-goody talk, their evasion of anything like test and proof identity strengthened the conviction gathered from their acts. We have all of us, I suppose, felt the force of these conclusions.
Others again had studied the phenomena of mesmerism, and had arrived at strong opinions as to the power of the embodied human spirit. There were some public manifestations connected with Spiritualism that could not be explained on the previous hypothesis, and some accounted for them by the theory that the spirit of the medium was the operating agency. These views have been so clearly stated by Dr. Wyld in his late paper that I need not further allude to them,
Then we had to contend with the theories of men who, knowing nothing of the facts, found no difficulty in evolving from their inner consciousness the camel that they needed in the shape of an all round theory. They scornfully told us that we knew nothing about subjects which had engaged our patient attention for years during which they were occupied in asserting that no such phenomena existed. “Spirits! Pooh! Look after your liver. Private circles! Pooh! Private lunatic asylums. You are besotted, mad, deluded, defrauded, victims of prepossession. Do you not know that the savage explains everything by means of spirits? You are a mere savage, superstitious as a Red Indian, and not quite as sensible. Revise 4 the simplicity of your early con elusions,’ and send the ghosts packing.”
So it came to pass that circumstances within the movement combined with materialistic criticism from without to crush out the spirit theory, save in so far as we might keep a few spooks to do the dirty work of circle-manifestation. For the rest, spirits there were none that we ought to care to associate with.
Those of us who had assured themselves beyond a perhaps of the return of their own friends from beyond the grave, or who had received from progressed intelligences words of instruction and comfort in seasons of darkness and spiritual desolation, were not sorry that the wholesale claims of exoteric Spiritualism that none but the departed spirits of humanity were at work should receive a check. They said that it was not so; and they saw moreover, that their own faith was largely imperilled by such credulity.
The next row of houses was on fire, and they found it time to look after themselves. Their belief therefore—their conviction, their great and “central fact” as I called it—was in abeyance so far as it was not insisted on in public, and so far as it was overshadowed by a pushing cloud of other theories. They had never wavered from it, never lost hold on its consolations, but it had dropped into the background.
It was at this crisis that Colonel Olcott came forward with the manifesto of Theosophy, and opened out “a new departure.” Familiar as I had been with the speculations of that branch of Theosophical Science which is expounded by Colonel Olcott—for it must not be forgotten that there is another Theosophy of which Boehmen and Saint Martin are the exponents, and which New York Theosophy ignores altogether—I was startled at some of the statements made, and sorry that they should have been put forward at such a time. For that, of course, Colonel Olcott is not responsible. He could not be supposed to be familiar with the progress of the movement in England, except very superficially; and even if he were he would have the same right to propound his panacea, as I have to question its efficacy.
But, as a matter of fact, into the slightly troubled pool-troubled, I should say, by a descending angel for the healing of the waters—came a Theosophical rock hurled by the vigorous arm of the President of the Theosophical Society, and creating a huge splash.
It was then that as one who has satisfied himself of the facts and who can give a reason for the faith that is in him, I venture to defend my belief in intercourse with the ascended spirits of humanity, and to claim for Spiritualism a field and a mission wider than that conceded by its critics. In so doing I did express my essential belief, but I also expressed, in a passage quoted by Mr. Massey, my accord with much of the incidental teaching of Theosophy. I did not think it necessary, I do not now think it necessary, to proclaim the exact lines of my assent. That concerns myself. I only thought it well, in the interests of truth, to ask for some evidence and even for proof of certain allegations. They were to me mere word-balloons. I, or any one else, with a speculative tendency could spin theories by the hour. What is important in dealing with psychological questions, as it seems to me, is to distinguish between a mere hypothesis, and a warrantable deduction from observed fact, or an accepted theory which has stood the test of time and is unshaken.
It was, and is, on this ground alone that I propounded my queries. Trained in the theology of the West, I have received from it such knowledge of the subject as concerns my soul and its progress. That knowledge has been increased and carried forward many degrees by the experiences of the last eight years. I have learned to put aside somewhat of the latter and to substitute for it the spirit of Christian teaching. I have a coherent and reasonable scheme of religious belief which centres round what to me is the purest and holiest system of teaching that I know of—the teaching of the Christ. I seek no better, for it tells me all that in my present stage of progress I can grasp. I will not abandon it, for it serves my needs, and before I cut myself loose from it to swim across an angry sea to something that I can only dimly discern in the distance, I must be quite sure that that something is a haven of surer rest than that which I abandon. <... continues on page 4-160 >