IV
The consideration of the effects of a prepossession in favor of a belief in spirit-agency leads naturally to a consideration of the origin of the belief. This tendency to believe in the return to earth of the spirits of the departed, is probably to be viewed as a form of expression of the primitive animism that dominates savage philosophy, that pervades the historical development of religion and of science, and that crops out in various ways throughout all grades of civilization and all levels of society. Combined with it is an equally fundamental love for the marvelous, and a more or less suppressed belief in the significance of the obscure, the mysterious, the occult. These belief-tendencies, accordingly, have an anthropological significance and an historical continuity which Mr. Lang thus presents: "These instances prove that, from the Australian blacks in the Bush, who hear raps when the spirits come, to ancient Egypt, and thence to Greece, and last, in our own time, and in a London suburb, similar experiences real or imaginary are explained by the same hypothesis. No 'survival' can be more odd and striking, none more illustrative of the permanence, in human nature, of certain elements. To examine these psychological curiosities may, or may not, be 'useful,' but, at the lowest, the study may rank as a branch of mythology or folk-lore." Mr. Tylor fully concords with this view: "The received spiritualistic theory," he says, "belongs to the philosophy of savages.... Suppose a wild North American Indian looking on at a spirit-séance in London. As to the presence of disembodied spirits, manifesting themselves by raps, noises, voices, and other physical actions, the savage would be perfectly at home in the proceedings; for such things are part and parcel of his recognized system of nature." Mr. Podmore's comment upon the spiritualistic hypothesis expresses a kindred thought. "As the peasant referred the movement of the steam-engine to the only motive force with which he was acquainted, and supposed that there were horses inside, so the spiritualists, recognizing, as they thought, in the phenomena the manifestations of will and intelligence not apparently those of any person visibly present, invoked the agency of the spirits of the dead. We can hardly call this belief an hypothesis or an explanation; it seems indeed at its outset to have been little more than the instinctive utterance of primitive animism."
The strongly rooted, anti-logical tendencies of our nature, thus indicated, come to the surface in various and unexpected ways, and give rise to views and cults that have much in common with the manifestations and beliefs of Spiritualism. It is this very community that forms one of the recognizable stigmata of such movements; everywhere there is an appeal to the yearning for the mysterious, for special signs and omens that may reinforce the personal interpretation of the events of the universe, and reveal the transcendence of the limitations of natural law. These movements, too, seem at different epochs to flare up and spread into true epidemics, utterly consuming all inherent foundations of logic and common sense, in the white heat of the emotional interest with which they advance. It seems to matter little how trivial, how absurd, how vulgar, how ignorant, or how improbable the manifestations may be, the passion for belief in their mysterious origin sets all aside. Why returning spirits should devote their energies to playing tambourines, and conjuring with slates, to Indian dances, and vapid, bombastic, and ungrammatical "inspirational" speeches, seems not even to be considered. It requires as little evidence and as ridiculous evidence to prove a spirit to a spiritualist as it did to prove a witch to a witch-finder. Those whose feelings are not appealed to by the doctrines of Spiritualism will assuredly never be attracted by its logic.
The psychologist who observes the natural history of the belief in Spiritualism,—its origin, and mode of propagation, its blossoming and fruitage, is naturally led to consider the nature of its decline. That it declines rapidly in the presence of newer rivals for popular favor, appealing to much the same mental and emotional traits, and therefore finding a similar constituency, has been made evident in the vicissitudes of its career. It suffered considerably at the period when the meteoric showers of Theosophy passed over our planet; it is subject to the waning of interest that always accompanies familiarity, and that makes even the most exciting experiences pale with time. Such familiarity also gives opportunity for the return of a calm and critical investigative attitude, such as the last two decades, in particular, have brought about. That such investigation is destined seriously to influence opinion, and eventually to triumph over error and superstition, no one with confidence in the ultimate rationality of mankind will be inclined to doubt. In the case of Spiritualism, logic will find a worthy ally in the more discerning development of the moral sensibilities which true culture always brings with it. When it is realized that a system that aims to instruct men in regard to beliefs appealing most earnestly and deeply to the human heart appears in the light of exact investigation as a tottering framework, held together by gross fraud, covered over with innocent self-deception, but also with vulgar sham; when it is realized that under the shelter of such a system men and women all over our land are daily and hourly preying upon the credulity of simple-minded folk, and obtaining a livelihood by means for which the law provides punishment,—the moral indignation following upon this realization will impart vigor to the protest against such practices, which a mere sense of their irrationality would fail to incite. The moral and æsthetic aversion which many of the practices and tenets of Spiritualism arouses in those whose ideals are sound and steadfast may prove to be a more serious menace to the spread of the belief, a more potent source of its decay, than even its inherent inconsistencies and improbabilities.