Spiritualism : Part 4

Modern Religious Cults and Movements
by Gaius Glenn Atkins

(Page 14 of 21)

He is willing to admit that if any case in the whole history of Spiritualism points at communication with the spirits of the dead, hers is that case, but he adds, "to other students of the records, including the present writer, the evidence nevertheless appears at present insufficient to justify the spiritualistic view even of a working hypothesis." "I cannot point to a single instance in which a precise and unambiguous piece of information has been furnished, of a kind which could not have proceeded from the medium's own mind, working upon the materials provided in the hints let drop by the sitter."

The Limitations of the Scientist in Psychical Investigation

It is impossible in this study to follow through the records of the Society. A representative group of its members, some of them men whose names carry weight in other regions, have been led by their investigations to adopt the spiritual hypothesis. Significantly, however, it is generally the scientist and not the psychologist who commits himself most strongly to Spiritualism. He is strongly impressed, as was Sir William Crookes, by phenomena of one sort or another which do not come under his laws, and he assigns to them causes which lie altogether out of his field. Indeed the temper and training of the scientist handicap him in all psychical investigations. He has only one of two alternatives: to explain what he sees in terms of what his laboratories have told him, or else in terms of forces with which he is not familiar.

His training in careful experimentation may fit him to test and isolate physical phenomena, but if they cannot be explained in terms of the forces and laws with which he is familiar his conclusions are no more authoritative than the conclusions of any other reasonably intelligent man. He may, therefore, lend the weight of a great name to conclusions - or conjectures - entirely outside his own province. The element of trickery in the ordinary professional séance is notorious.

The ordinary physical phenomena of spiritualism have almost without exception been duplicated by conjurers - many of whom have mystifying tricks of their own no medium can duplicate and even the most unusual phenomena, such as Home's apparent ability to handle fire unburned and his levitation can be paralleled in savage rites or the performance of Indian fakirs, to which no professedly spiritual explanation is attached. In many instances a trained conjurer would be far more apt to detect fraud than a trained scientist. He would at least know where to look for a probable explanation.

The Society for Psychical Research Gives Intellectual Standing to Their Investigations

If the explanations of the whole group of phenomena is not in the known resident forces about us it is presumably in powers or aspects of personality not yet fully known. Here the psychologist is a better witness than the scientist and it is significant that psychologists have been slower to accept the spiritual hypothesis than the scientist. Hyslop is an exception but the extent to which Hyslop has of late gone in some of his reported utterances would seem to indicate that he has passed far beyond the bonds of the scientific. And indeed, the whole tendency of those who let themselves go strongly with the spiritual tide is exactly in this direction. It ought, however, to be said that even these members of the S.P.R. who have become spiritual have generally been conservative in their conclusions.

At any rate, the work of the Society for Psychical Research has given intellectual standing to what was before a sort of hole and corner affair under suspicion twice: first, because of the character of those involved, second, because of the character of what they revealed. It is difficult for one not predisposed toward the occult and even strongly prejudiced against it to deny in alleged spiritual phenomena a challenging residuum which may in the end compel far-reaching modifications in the conclusions both of science and psychology. By one set of tests this residuum is unexpectedly small. One of the canons of the S.P.R. is to reject the work of any medium once convicted or strongly suspected of fraud. There is a vast literature in this region through whose outstanding parts the writer has for a good while now been trying to find his way, often enough ready to quote the Pope in the Ring and the Book.

"I have worn through this somber wintry day With winter in my soul ... Over these dismalest of documents"

The reports of sittings cover weary pages of murky statement; the descriptions of the discarnate life are monotonously uniform and governed almost without exception by old, old conceptions of planes and spheres. There is always a preponderance of the trivial - though the advocates of spiritualism claim, and the justice of this claim must be allowed, that this is inevitable and that only through the veridical character of the inconsequential can the consequential be established. Moreover, the impartial student working over the records should at least recognize the pathetic importance which those, believing themselves to be in touch with their own dead, naturally attach to even the most trivial instances.

This sense of really being in touch, itself entirely subjective, probably carries over ninety-nine out of every hundred who finally become spiritual. It would be foolish to ignore the contributive force of this sense. In one form or another it is the last element in our recognition of our friends, and it never can be judged externally. But on the other hand a recognition of the unwarranted lengths to which - with lonely longing behind it - it may carry even the best poised minds, must give us pause in accepting any conclusion therefore reached.

The Very Small Number of Dependable Mediums

Spiritual literature is endlessly diffuse, but on the other hand the more dispassionate students rest their case on an unexpectedly small body of undiscredited evidence. Mrs. Piper, Home and Stainton Moses are the mediums with whom the case of the S.p.r. really stands or falls. Home was never detected in fraud and was non-professional. Sir William Crookes' experiments in these physical phenomena were carried on with him as medium. His work, however, was generally done for a small group of already convinced followers and their testimony, while sincere and generally consistent, may often have been influenced in ways of which they themselves were not conscious.

Copyright 1923 by Fleming H. Revell Company