Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud? / The Evidence Given by Sir A.C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined

by Joseph McCabe

A list of distinguished Spiritualists could be accommodated on a single page of this book. A list of distinguished Rationalists in the same period (1848-1920) would take twenty pages. The truth is that in the earlier days of Spiritualism, when less was known than we now know about mediumistic fraud, a number of distinguished men were "converted." They were in every case converted by the impostors I have exposed in the course of this work—by Home, Florrie Cook, Mrs. Guppy, Eglinton, Slade, Morse, Holmes, etc. What is the value of such conversions? Who are the "distinguished" Spiritualists to-day? Sir A. C. Doyle, Sir O. Lodge, Sir W. Barrett, Mr. Gerald Balfour.... The reader will be astonished to know that those are the only names of living men of any distinction that Sir A. C. Doyle dares to give, either in the text or on the margins of his book. What their opinion is worth the reader may judge for himself.

Let us pass on. I wrote recently in the Literary Guide that "there are hundreds of honest mediums." Some of my readers resented this as over-generous. Possibly they have only a vague idea of Spiritualism, and it is advisable for us to reflect clearly on the point. In the eyes of Spiritualists every man or woman, paid or unpaid, who is supposed to be in any way in communication with spirits is a "medium." The word does not simply apply to men and women who, for payment, sit in cabinets or in a circle, and lift tables, play guitars, write on slates, produce ghosts, pull furniture about, tug the beards of sitters, and so on. I should agree with the reader that these people, paid or unpaid, and all mediums who operate in the dark or in red light, are probably frauds. That is a fair conclusion from the preceding chapters, in which I have exposed every variety of their manifestations, and from the history of Spiritualism.

This rules out all professional mediums and a large proportion of the amateurs. Perhaps the reader does not know, and would like to know, what a séance is like. As far as the "more powerful" (and more certainly fraudulent) mediums are concerned, I have already given a sufficient description. A cloth-covered frame or "cabinet" is raised at one end of the room, or a curtain is drawn across an alcove or corner. In this the medium generally (not always) sits, and the curtains are closed until the medium thinks fit to have them opened. The medium is sometimes hypnotized, and sometimes falls into a natural trance; it matters little, for the trance is invariably a sham, and the medium is wide awake all the time, though he simulates the appearance of a trance. The lights are lowered or extinguished. Generally a red-glass lantern or bulb (sometimes several) is lit. Then, after a time, which is occupied by singing or music (to drown the noise of the medium's movements), the ghost appears, or the tambourine is played, or the table is lifted, and so on.

These are the heavier and more expensive performances, and are constantly being exposed. The medium has apparatus in the false seat of his chair or concealed about his person. But the common, daily séance is quite different. You sit round a table or in a circle, or (if you will rise to the price) sit alone with the lady. The light may be good. The medium "sees" and describes spirit forms hovering about you. If you are one of the people whom the medium has, through an intermediary, attracted to the circle, you get some accurate details. If not, the medium begins with generalities and, studying your expression, feels her way to details. It is generally a waste of time. Friends of mine have gone from one to another medium in London, and they tell me that it is simply a tedious and most irritating way of convincing oneself that these people are all frauds.

But beyond these are hundreds, or thousands, of private individuals who discover that they are mediums. They take a pencil in their hands, fall into a passive, dreamy state, and presently the pencil "automatically" writes messages from the spirit world. Others use the planchette (a pencil fixed in a heart-shaped board which, when the medium's fingers are on it, writes on a sheet of paper) or the ouija board (in which the apex of the heart spells out messages by pointing rapidly to the letters of the alphabet painted on a larger board over which it travels). I have studied all three forms, and may take them together as "automatic writing."

The first question is whether this can be done unconsciously. If such messages are consciously spelt or written by the medium, it is, of course, fraud, because the messages purport to come from the dead. My own experience convinces me that even here there is a vast amount of fraud. The social status and general character of the medium do not seem to matter at all, as we have repeatedly seen. People get into the attitude of the child. "I can do what you can't do," you constantly hear the child say to its fellows. There is a good deal of the child in all of us. Prestige, distinction, credit for a rare or original power, is as much sought as money; and this motive grows stronger when the medium already has money. Everybody knows, or ought to know, the perfectly authentic story of Mozart's Requiem. A wealthy amateur, Count Walsegg, secretly paid Mozart to compose that famous Mass, and it was to be passed off by Walsegg as his own.

But while there is much fraud even in automatic writing, there are certainly hundreds of mediums of this description who quite honestly believe that they are spirit-controlled. Mr. G. B. Shaw's mother was an automatic artist of that class. I have seen some of her spirit drawings. A high-minded medical man of my acquaintance was a medium of the same type. The class is very numerous. Psychologically, it is not very difficult to understand. A pianist can play quite complicated pieces unconsciously or subconsciously. A writer, who cannot normally write decent fiction, may have wonderful flights of imagination in a dream. An expert worker can do quite complicated things without attention. Something of the same faculty seems to come in time to the automatic writer or artist. Consciousness is more or less—never entirely, perhaps—switched off from its usual connection with the hand, and the part of the brain-machine which is not lit by consciousness takes over the connection.

That this can be done in perfect honesty will be clear to every reader of Flammarion's book, Les forces naturelles inconnues. Flammarion never became a Spiritualist, but he was quite a fluent automatic writer in his youth. Victorien Sardou, the great dramatist, belonged to the same circle, and was an automatic draughtsman. Flammarion gives specimens of the work of both. Quite without a deliberate intention, he signed his automatic writing (on science) "Galileo."

I have no doubt that at the time both these distinguished men were strongly tempted to embrace the Spiritualist theory. These experiences, and the experiences of the séance, can be exceedingly impressive and dramatic. The man who has never been there is too apt to think that all Spiritualists are fools. I have been to séances, and I do not admit that. I am quarrelling with Spiritualists because they will not realize the possibilities and the actual abundance of fraud. But the séance is undoubtedly very impressive at times. I have held a serious conversation, in German and Latin, through an amateur medium of my own acquaintance, with the supposed spirit of a certain German theologian of the last century whose name (as given) was well known to me. I do not at all wonder that many succumb in sittings of this sort. But I found invariably that, if one resolutely kept one's head and devised crucial tests, the claim broke down. So it is with Flammarion and Sardou. What "Galileo" wrote in 1870 was just the astronomy of that time; and much of it is totally wrong to-day. Sardou, on the other hand, drew remarkable sketches of life on Jupiter; and we know to-day that Jupiter is red-hot!

This is a broad characteristic of automatic writing since it began in the fifties of the nineteenth century. At its best it merely reflected the culture of the time, which was often wrong. Stainton Moses, for instance, wrote reams of edifying revelation. But I find among his wonderful utterances about ancient history certain statements concerning the early Hindus and Persians which recent discoveries have completely falsified. He had been reading certain books which were just passable (though already a little out of date) fifty years ago. Among other things the spirits told him that Manu lived 3,000 B.C., and that there was a high "Brahminical lore" long before that date! So with Andrew Jackson Davis, the first of these marvellous bringers of wisdom from the spirit world. He had probably read R. Chambers's Vestiges of Creation, and he gave out weird and wonderful revelations about evolution. In the beginning was a clam, which begot a tadpole, which begot a quadruped, and so on. Davis certainly lied hard when he used to deny that he had read the books to which his "revelations" were traced, but no one can deny his originality.