The case against spiritualism

by Jane T. Stoddart

As Dr. J. D. Jones has written, “The dead who are so gloriously alive can hold fellowship with the living who have not yet died. The communion of saints is not to be limited to those who still dwell in this temporal and material world; it extends to those who have passed to the other side of death.… The only way in which we can combat Spiritualism is ourselves to rescue this truth about fellowship from the neglect into which it has fallen—to speak and think in a more Christian way about those who have passed on.… ‘Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect.’”

FOOTNOTES:

[44] In a letter written during his last illness to his friend, Dr. J. H. Rigg.

[45] Wordsworth.

Chapter XI
THE APPEAL TO SCIENCE

Seventy-eight years have passed since Nathaniel Hawthorne warned his future wife, Sophia Peabody, against “the so-called ‘magnetic’ and ‘mesmeric’ impostures which prepared the way for an unspiritual Spiritism.”[46] The words of his letter are not obsolete, though written in 1841.

“Take no part, I beseech you,” he wrote, “in these magnetic miracles. I am unwilling that a power should be exercised on you of which we know neither the origin nor consequence, and the phenomena of which seem rather calculated to bewilder us than to teach us any truths about the present or future state of being.… Supposing that the power arises from the transfusion of one spirit into another, it seems to me that the sacredness of an individual is violated by it; there would be an intruder into the holy of holies.… Without distrusting that the phenomena have really occurred, I think that they are to be accounted for as the result of a material and physical, not of a spiritual influence.… And what delusion can be more lamentable and mischievous than to mistake the physical and material for the spiritual? What so miserable as to lose the soul’s true, though hidden, knowledge and consciousness of heaven in the mist of an earth-born vision?… The view which I take of this matter is caused by no want of faith in mysteries, but by a deep reverence of the soul and of the mysteries which it knows within itself, but never transmits to the earthly eye and ear. Keep the imagination sane—that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven.”

Science has made great advance since Hawthorne wondered whether the phenomena of his “Veiled Lady” foreshadowed “the birth of a new science or the revival of an old humbug.” Is not the public entitled to some indication of the attitude of science toward Spiritualism? Michael Faraday summed up his thoughts, when nearing the end, on a problem he had closely investigated. Answering one who had questioned him about the spirits, the great scientist wrote: “Whenever the spirits can counteract gravity or originate motion, or supply an action due to natural physical force, or counteract any such action; whenever they can punch or prick me, or affect my sense of feeling or any other sense, or in any other way act on me without my waiting on them; or working in the light can show me a hand, either writing or not, or in any way make themselves visibly manifest to me; whenever these things are done or anything which a conjuror cannot do better; or, rising to higher proofs, whenever the spirits describe their own nature, and like honest spirits say what they can do, or pretending, as their supporters do, that they can act on ordinary matter, whenever they initiate action, and so make themselves manifest; whenever by such-like signs they come to me, and ask my attention to them, I will give it. But until some of these things be done, I have no more time to spare for them or their believers, or for correspondence about them.”[47] Has the science of our day advanced beyond the standpoint of Michael Faraday? In the absence of a united pronouncement, can we define the attitude of modern science towards Spiritualism?

I

We are impressed at once, as we seek to answer these questions, by the contemptuous indifference of the learned world as a whole. Spiritualists ring the changes on a handful of eminent names. How is it that the leaders of the Psychical Society have not drawn after them a larger following? Canon Barnes, himself a Doctor of Science, observes that the most distinguished supporters of Spiritualism have not themselves received messages which prove the possibility of communication with the dead. The messages have come through others, for the most part professional mediums.[48] Dr. Barnes recognises that the task of investigation belongs to psychologists, and he considers it “significant that practically none of the leading experimental psychologists of the world are prepared to accept the theory of spirit-communication.” “Nor is it accepted,” he goes on, “by leading medical men, whose careful study of mental disease and experiments with abnormal mental states, would permit them to speak with authority. So long as such experts refuse to accept the spiritualistic explanation of the observed phenomena, it is mere superstition for the mass of men to do so.”[49]