A twofold answer reaches us from within the ranks of Spiritualism.
(1) At an early stage of the inquiry, as Mr. A. E. Waite points out, the belief was accepted that “life for man on the other side of the screen of material things was, specifically, neither better nor worse than our own … it was so entirely human, with all the folly that resides in humanity.”
Spiritualist leaders of to-day would not dispute that point. “Yes, of course,” they would say, “it is always possible that the inquirer may get in touch with ‘naughty boys’ on the other side. The spirit passes over just as it was on earth. Bad influences as well as good are present in every séance.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has said plainly: “We have, unhappily, to deal with absolute cold-blooded lying on the part of wicked or mischievous intelligences. Every one who has investigated the matter has, I suppose, met with examples of wilful deception, which occasionally are mixed up with good and true communications.”
Aside from wilful deception, there seems to be a certain mocking malevolence, where we should least expect it, on the part of the supposed spirits. “We do not want to make it too easy for you” is a strange utterance from the other side to bereaved parents.[40]
Speaking at Manchester on May 28, 1919, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle reported a singular experience of his own in Glasgow a few weeks earlier.
“I had to address a very large meeting,” he said, “exactly double the size of this one, and in the morning I went to a séance; we had a number of wonderful manifestations, and finally we had a message sent in a direct voice. The message which came to me was: ‘You are going to have a very good meeting to-night.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ The voice then said, ‘It won’t be quite the same as you are accustomed to; we have a little surprise for you.’ I said, ‘Not unpleasant, I hope?’ They just chuckled at that, and that was all I got.” When the lecturer faced his audience everything he had intended to say passed entirely out of his head. Preachers and platform orators can tell something of the agony of that experience, which has not infrequently been the premonitory symptom of a nervous illness. “I don’t know how long I stood; I suppose about a minute, though it seemed like a week, and all the time I was struggling in the endeavour to find something to say.” The lecturer recovered himself, and all went well; but is there not here a parallel with the Celtic superstition that the powers of nature are malicious, and will do us a bad turn if they can? Alexander Smith writes of “that sense of an evil will, and an alienation from man in nature,” which is found in ancient fragments of Scottish river-lore.
(2) A cautious attitude might seem advisable under such conditions, and we are surprised to note a tendency on the part of our newer Spiritualist teachers to dogmatise on theological matters. “Spirit Teachings,” by Stainton Moses, has become a sort of Bible to the sect. Sir Oliver Lodge reprints passages from it in “Raymond.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle takes the rubbish received through “Imperator” and his fellows with the utmost seriousness, though the genius which created Sherlock Holmes has not otherwise been dulled in psychical studies. Sir Arthur is quick enough to criticise the famous “cross-correspondence” analysed by Mr. Gerald Balfour in “The Ear of Dionysius.” Two eminent Greek scholars, Professor Verrall and Professor Butcher, are supposed to have collaborated to produce a Greek problem. “It may be remarked, in passing,” says Sir A. Conan Doyle, “that these and other examples show clearly, either that the spirits have the use of an excellent reference library, or else that they have memories which produce something like omniscience. No human memory could possibly carry all the exact quotations which occur in such communications as ‘The Ear of Dionysius.’”
The Churches must, however, in Sir Arthur’s view, accept the tenets of Spiritualism or perish.
II
Impartial students of the literature—a growing mass of documentary evidence—are impressed (1) by the triviality of the messages. Punsters would seem to carry on their jokes from the other side. A message which was presumed to come to Mrs. Holland from Myers contained a mysterious allusion to “a peck of pickled pepper.” In the opinion of the best S.P.R. critics the words conveyed a punning allusion to Mrs. Piper. Is there not something pitiable in the thought that the great writer who gave us “St. Paul” and the “Classical” and “Modern” Essays should be occupied in the unseen life in trying to transmit to earth punning references to the name of a medium? Professor William James remarked on the extreme triviality of the supposed communications.