Some sixty years ago that acute thinker Lord Broughamremarked that in the clear sky of scepticism he saw only onesmall cloud drifting up and that was Modern Spiritualism. It wasa curiously inverted simile, for one would surely have expectedhim to say that in the drifting clouds of scepticism he saw onepatch of clear sky, but at least it showed how conscious he wasof the coming importance of the movement. Ruskin, too, anequally agile mind, said that his assurance of immortalitydepended upon the observed facts of Spiritualism. Scores, andindeed hundreds, of famous names could be quoted who havesubscribed the same statement, and whose support would dignifyany cause upon earth. They are the higher peaks who have beenthe first to catch the light, but the dawn will spread untilnone are too lowly to share it. Let us turn, therefore,and inspect this movement which is most certainly destined torevolutionise human thought and action as none other has donewithin the Christian era. We shall look at it both in itsstrength and in its weakness, for where one is dealing with whatone knows to be true one can fearlessly insist upon the whole ofthe truth.The movement which is destined to bring vitality to the deadand cold religions has been called "Modern Spiritualism." The"modern" is good, since the thing itself, in one form or another,is as old as history, and has always, however obscured by forms,been the red central glow in the depths of all religious ideas,permeating the Bible from end to end. But the word"Spiritualism" has been so befouled by wicked charlatans, and socheapened by many a sad incident, that one could almost wish thatsome such term as "psychic religion" would clear the subject ofold prejudices, just as mesmerism, after many years of obloquy,was rapidly accepted when its name was changed to hypnotism. Onthe other hand, one remembers the sturdy pioneers who have foughtunder this banner, and who were prepared to risk theircareers, their professional success, and even their reputationfor sanity, by publicly asserting what they knew to be the truth.

Their brave, unselfish devotion must do something to cleanse thename for which they fought and suffered. It was they who nursedthe system which promises to be, not a new religion--it is fartoo big for that--but part of the common heritage of knowledgeshared by the whole human race. Perfected Spiritualism, however,will probably bear about the same relation to the Spiritualism of1850 as a modern locomotive to the bubbling little kettle whichheralded the era of steam. It will end by being rather the proofand basis of all religions than a religion in itself. We havealready too many religions--but too few proofs.Those first manifestations at Hydesville varied in no wayfrom many of which we have record in the past, but the resultarising from them differed very much, because, for the firsttime, it occurred to a human being not merely to listen toinexplicable sounds, and to fear them or marvel at them, but toestablish communication with them. John Wesley's fathermight have done the same more than a century before had thethought occurred to him when he was a witness of themanifestations at Epworth in 1726. It was only when the youngFox girl struck her hands together and cried "Do as I do" thatthere was instant compliance, and consequent proof of thepresence of an INTELLIGENT invisible force, thus differingfrom all other forces of which we know. The circumstances werehumble, and even rather sordid, upon both sides of the veil,human and spirit, yet it was, as time will more and more clearlyshow, one of the turning points of the world's history, greaterfar than the fall of thrones or the rout of armies. Some artistof the future will draw the scene--the sitting-room of thewooden, shack-like house, the circle of half-awed and half-critical neighbours, the child clapping her hands with upturnedlaughing face, the dark corner shadows where these strange newforces seem to lurk--forces often apparent, and now come to stayand to effect the complete revolution of human thought. We maywell ask why should such great results arise from such pettysources? So argued the highbrowed philosophers of Greece andRome when the outspoken Paul, with the fisherman Peter and hishalf-educated disciples, traversed all their learned theories,and with the help of women, slaves, and schismatic Jews,subverted their ancient creeds. One can but answer thatProvidence has its own way of attaining its, results, and that itseldom conforms to our opinion of what is most appropriate.We have a larger experience of such phenomena now, and we candefine with some accuracy what it was that happened at Hydesvillein the year 1848. We know that these matters are governed by lawand by conditions as much as any other phenomena of the universe,though at the moment it seemed to the public to be an isolatedand irregular outburst. On the one hand, you had a material,earth-bound spirit of a low order of development which needed aphysical medium in order to be able to indicate its presence. Onthe other, you had that rare thing, a good physical medium. Theresult followed as surely as the flash follows when the electricbattery and wire are both properly adjusted. Correspondingexperiments, where effect, and cause duly follow, are beingworked out at the present moment by Professor Crawford, ofBelfast, as detailed in his two recent books, where he shows thatthere is an actual loss of weight of the medium in exactproportion to the physical phenomenon produced.[1] The wholesecret of mediumship on this material side appears to lie in thepower, quite independent of oneself, of passively giving up someportion of one's bodily substance for the use of outsideinfluences. Why should some have this power and some not? We donot know--nor do we know why one should have the ear for musicand another not. Each is born in us, and each has littleconnection with our moral natures. At first it was only physicalmediumship which was known, and public attention centred uponmoving tables, automatic musical instruments, and other crude butobvious examples of outside influence, which were unhappily veryeasily imitated by rogues. Since then we have learned that thereare many forms of mediumship, so different from each other thatan expert at one may have no powers at all at the other. Theautomatic writer, the clairvoyant, the crystal-seer, the trancespeaker, the photographic medium, the direct voice medium, andothers, are all, when genuine, the manifestations of one force,which runs through varied channels as it did in the giftsascribed to the disciples. The unhappy outburst of roguery washelped, no doubt, by the need for darkness claimed by the earlyexperimenters--a claim which is by no means essential, since thegreatest of all mediums, D. D. Home, was able by the exceptionalstrength of his powers to dispense with it. At the same time thefact that darkness rather than light, and dryness rather thanmoisture, are helpful to good results has been abundantlymanifested, and points to the physical laws which underlie thephenomena. The observation made long afterwards that wirelesstelegraphy, another etheric force, acts twice as well by night asby day, may, corroborate the general conclusions of the earlySpiritualists, while their assertion that the least harmful lightis red light has a suggestive analogy in the experience of thephotographer.

[1] "The Reality of Psychic Phenomena.""Experiences in Psychical Science." (Watkins.)

There is no space here for the history of the rise anddevelopment of the movement. It provoked warm adhesion andfierce opposition from the start. Professor Hare and HoraceGreeley were among the educated minority who tested and endorsedits truth. It was disfigured by many grievous incidents, whichmay explain but does not excuse the perverse opposition which itencountered in so many quarters. This opposition was reallylargely based upon the absolute materialism of the age, whichwould not admit that there could exist at the present moment suchconditions as might be accepted in the far past. When actuallybrought in contact with that life beyond the grave which theyprofessed to believe in, these people winced, recoiled, anddeclared it impossible. The science of the day was also rootedin materialism, and discarded all its own very excellent axiomswhen it was faced by an entirely new and unexpected proposition. Faraday declared that in approaching a new subject one shouldmake up one's mind a priori as to what is possible and whatis not! Huxley said that the messages, EVEN IF TRUE,"interested him no more than the gossip of curates in acathedral city." Darwin said: "God help us if we are to believesuch things." Herbert Spencer declared against it, but had notime to go into it. At the same time all science did not come sobadly out of the ordeal. As already mentioned, Professor Hare,of Philadelphia, inventor, among other things, of the oxy-hydrogen blow-pipe, was the first man of note who had the moralcourage, after considerable personal investigation, to declarethat these new and strange developments were true. He wasfollowed by many medical men, both in America and in Britain,including Dr. Elliotson, one of the leaders of free thought inthis country. Professor Crookes, the most rising chemist inEurope, Dr. Russel Wallace the great naturalist, Varley theelectrician, Flammarion the French astronomer, and many others,risked their scientific reputations in their brave assertions ofthe truth. These men were not credulous fools. They saw anddeplored the existence of frauds. Crookes' letters upon thesubject are still extant. In very many cases it was theSpiritualists themselves who exposed the frauds. Theylaughed, as the public laughed, at the sham Shakespeares andvulgar Caesars who figured in certain seance rooms. Theydeprecated also the low moral tone which would turn such powersto prophecies about the issue of a race or the success of aspeculation. But they had that broader vision and sense ofproportion which assured them that behind all these follies andfrauds there lay a mass of solid evidence which could not beshaken, though like all evidence, it had to be examined before itcould be appreciated. They were not such simpletons as to bedriven away from a great truth because there are some dishonestcamp followers who hang upon its skirts.A great centre of proof and of inspiration lay during thoseearly days in Mr. D. D. Home, a Scottish-American, who possessedpowers which make him one of the most remarkable personalities ofwhom we have any record. Home's life, written by his secondwife, is a book which deserves very careful reading. This man,who in some aspects was more than a man, was before the publicfor nearly thirty years. During that time he never receivedpayment for his services, and was always ready, to puthimself at the disposal of any bona-fide and reasonableenquirer. His phenomena were produced in full light, and it wasimmaterial to him whether the sittings were in his own rooms orin those of his friends. So high were his principles that uponone occasion, though he was a man of moderate means and less thanmoderate health, he refused the princely fee of two thousandpounds offered for a single sitting by the Union Circle in Paris.

As to his powers, they seem to have included every form ofmediumship in the highest degree--self-levitation, as witnessedby hundreds of credible witnesses; the handling of fire, with thepower of conferring like immunity upon others; the movementwithout human touch of heavy objects; the visible materialisationof spirits; miracles of healing; and messages from the dead, suchas that which converted the hard-headed Scot, Robert Chambers,when Home repeated to him the actual dying words of his youngdaughter. All this came from a man of so sweet a nature and ofso charitable a disposition, that the union of all qualitieswould seem almost to justify those who, to Home's greatembarrassment, were prepared to place him upon a pedestal abovehumanity.The genuineness of his psychic powers has never beenseriously questioned, and was as well recognised in Rome andParis as in London. One incident only darkened his career, andit, was one in which he was blameless, as anyone who carefullyweighs the evidence must admit. I allude to the action takenagainst him by Mrs. Lyon, who, after adopting him as her son andsettling a large sum of money upon him, endeavoured to regain,and did regain, this money by her unsupported assertion that hehad persuaded her illicitly to make him the allowance. The factsof his life are, in my judgment, ample proof of the truth of theSpiritualist position, if no other proof at all had beenavailable. It is to be remarked in the career of this entirelyhonest and unvenal medium that he had periods in his life whenhis powers deserted him completely, that he could foresee theselapses, and that, being honest and unvenal, he simply abstainedfrom all attempts until the power returned. It is thisintermittent character of the gift which is, in my opinion,responsible for cases when a medium who has passed the most rigidtests upon certain occasions is afterwards detected insimulating, very clumsily, the results which he had oncesuccessfully accomplished. The real power having failed, he hasnot the moral courage to admit it, nor the self-denial to foregohis fee which he endeavours to earn by a travesty of what wasonce genuine. Such an explanation would cover some facts whichotherwise are hard to reconcile. We must also admit that somemediums are extremely irresponsible and feather-headed people. Afriend of mine, who sat with Eusapia Palladino, assured me thathe saw her cheat in the most childish and bare-faced fashion, andyet immediately afterwards incidents occurred which wereabsolutely beyond any, normal powers to produce.Apart from Home, another episode which marks a stage in theadvance of this movement was the investigation and report by theDialectical Society in the year 1869. This body was composed ofmen of various learned professions who gathered together toinvestigate the alleged facts, and ended by reporting thatthey really WERE facts. They were unbiased, and theirconclusions were founded upon results which were very soberly setforth in their report, a most convincing document which, even nowin 1919, after the lapse of fifty years, is far more intelligentthan the greater part of current opinion upon this subject. Nonethe less, it was greeted by a chorus of ridicule by the ignorantPress of that day, who, if the same men had come to the oppositeconclusion in spite of the evidence, would have been ready tohail their verdict as the undoubted end of a pernicious movement.In the early days, about 1863, a book was written by Mrs. deMorgan, the wife of the well-known mathematician Professor deMorgan, entitled "From Matter to Spirit." There is a sympatheticpreface by the husband. The book is still well worth reading,for it is a question whether anyone has shown greater brain powerin treating the subject. In it the prophecy is made that as themovement develops the more material phenomena will decrease andtheir place be taken by the more spiritual, such as automaticwriting. This forecast has been fulfilled, for though physicalmediums still exist the other more subtle forms greatlypredominate, and call for far more discriminating criticism injudging their value and their truth. Two very convincing formsof mediumship, the direct voice and spirit photography, have alsobecome prominent. Each of these presents such proof that it isimpossible for the sceptic to face them, and he can only avoidthem by ignoring them.In the case of the direct voice one of the leading exponentsis Mrs. French, an amateur medium in America, whose work isdescribed both by Mr. Funk and Mr. Randall. She is a frailelderly lady, yet in her presence the most masculine and robustvoices make communications, even when her own mouth is covered. I have myself investigated the direct voice in the case of fourdifferent mediums, two of them amateurs, and can have no doubt ofthe reality of the voices, and that they are not the effect ofventriloquism. I was more struck by the failures than by thesuccesses, and cannot easily forget the passionate pantings withwhich some entity strove hard to reveal his identity to me,but without success. One of these mediums was tested afterwardsby having the mouth filled with coloured water, but the voicecontinued as before.As to spirit photography, the most successful results areobtained by the Crewe circle in England, under the mediumship ofMr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton.[2] I have seen scores of thesephotographs, which in several cases reproduce exact images of thedead which do not correspond with any pictures of them takenduring life. I have seen father, mother, and dead soldier son,all taken together with the dead son looking far the happier andnot the least substantial of the three. It is in these variedforms of proof that the impregnable strength of the evidencelies, for how absurd do explanations of telepathy, unconsciouscerebration or cosmic memory become when faced by such phenomenaas spirit photography, materialisation, or the direct voice. Only one hypothesis can cover every branch of thesemanifestations, and that is the system of extraneous life andaction which has always, for seventy years, held the field forany reasonable mind which had impartially considered thefacts.

[2] See Appendix.

I have spoken of the need for careful and cool-headedanalysis in judging the evidence where automatic writing isconcerned. One is bound to exclude spirit explanations until allnatural ones have been exhausted, though I do not include amongnatural ones the extreme claims of far-fetched telepathy such asthat another person can read in your thoughts things of which youwere never yourself aware. Such explanations are notexplanations, but mystifications and absurdities, though theyseem to have a special attraction for a certain sort of psychicalresearcher, who is obviously destined to go on researching to theend of time, without ever reaching any conclusion save that ofthe patience of those who try to follow his reasoning. To give agood example of valid automatic script, chosen out of many whichI could quote, I would draw the reader's attention to the factsas to the excavations at Glastonbury, as detailed in "The Gate ofRemembrance" by Mr. Bligh Bond. Mr. Bligh Bond, by the way, isnot a Spiritualist, but the same cannot be said of the writerof the automatic script, an amateur medium, who was able toindicate the secrets of the buried abbey, which were proved to becorrect when the ruins were uncovered. I can truly say that,though I have read much of the old monastic life, it has neverbeen brought home to me so closely as by the messages anddescriptions of dear old Brother Johannes, the earth-boundspirit--earthbound by his great love for the old abbey in whichhe had spent his human life. This book, with its practicalsequel, may be quoted as an excellent example of automaticwriting at its highest, for what telepathic explanation can coverthe detailed description of objects which lie unseen by any humaneye? It must be admitted, however, that in automatic writing youare at one end of the telephone, if one may use such a simile,and you have, no assurance as to who is at the other end. Youmay have wildly false messages suddenly interpolated amongtruthful ones--messages so detailed in their mendacity that it isimpossible to think that they are not deliberately false. Whenonce we have accepted the central fact that spirits change littlein essentials when leaving the body, and that in consequencethe world is infested by many low and mischievous types, one canunderstand that these untoward incidents are rather aconfirmation of Spiritualism than an argument against it. Personally I have received and have been deceived by several suchmessages. At the same time I can say that after an experience ofthirty years of such communications I have never known ablasphemous, an obscene or an unkind sentence come through. Iadmit, however, that I have heard of such cases. Like attractslike, and one should know one's human company before one joins insuch intimate and reverent rites. In clairvoyance the samesudden inexplicable deceptions appear. I have closely followedthe work of one female medium, a professional, whose results areso extraordinarily good that in a favourable case she will givethe full names of the deceased as well as the most definite andconvincing test messages. Yet among this splendid series ofresults I have notes of several in which she was a completefailure and absolutely wrong upon essentials. How can this beexplained? We can only answer that conditions were obviouslynot propitious, but why or how are among the many problems of thefuture. It is a profound and most complicated subject, howevereasily it may be settled by the "ridiculous nonsense" school ofcritics. I look at the row of books upon the left of my desk asI write--ninety-six solid volumes, many of them annotated andwell thumbed, and yet I know that I am like a child wading ankledeep in the margin of an illimitable ocean. But this, at least,I have very clearly realised, that the ocean is there and thatthe margin is part of it, and that down that shelving shore thehuman race is destined to move slowly to deeper waters. In thenext chapter, I will endeavour to show what is the purpose of theCreator in this strange revelation of new intelligent forcesimpinging upon our planet. It is this view of the question whichmust justify the claim that this movement, so long the subject ofsneers and ridicule, is absolutely the most important developmentin the whole history of the human race, so important that, if wecould conceive one single man discovering and publishing it, hewould rank before Christopher Columbus as a discoverer of newworlds, before Paul as a teacher of new religious truths, andbefore Isaac Newton as a student of the laws of the Universe.Before opening up this subject there is one considerationwhich should have due weight, and yet seems continually to beoverlooked. The differences between various sects are a verysmall thing as compared to the great eternal duel betweenmaterialism and the spiritual view of the Universe. That is thereal fight. It is a fight in which the Churches championed theanti-material view, but they have done it so unintelligently, andhave been continually placed in such false positions, that theyhave always been losing. Since the days of Hume and Voltaire andGibbon the fight has slowly but steadily rolled in favour of theattack. Then came Darwin, showing with apparent truth, that manhas never fallen but always risen. This cut deep into thephilosophy of orthodoxy, and it is folly to deny it. Then againcame the so-called "Higher Criticism," showing alleged flaws andcracks in the very foundations. All this time the churches wereyielding ground, and every retreat gave a fresh jumping-offplace for a new assault. It has gone so far that at the presentmoment a very large section of the people of this country, richand poor, are out of all sympathy not only with the churches butwith the whole Spiritual view. Now, we intervene with ourpositive knowledge and actual proof--an ally so powerful that weare capable of turning the whole tide of battle and rolling itback for ever against materialism. We can say: "We will meetyou on your own ground and show you by material and scientifictests that the soul and personality survive." That is the aim ofPsychic Science, and it has been fully attained. It means an endto materialism for ever. And yet this movement, this Spiritualmovement, is hooted at and reviled by Rome, by Canterbury andeven by Little Bethel, each of them for once acting in concert,and including in their battle line such strange allies as theScientific Agnostics and the militant Free-thinkers. FatherVaughan and the Bishop of London, the Rev. F. B. Meyer and Mr.Clodd, "The Church Times" and "The Freethinker," are united inbattle, though they fight with very different battle cries,the one declaring that the thing is of the devil, while the otheris equally clear that it does not exist at all. The oppositionof the materialists is absolutely intelligent since it is clearthat any man who has spent his life in saying "No" to allextramundane forces is, indeed, in a pitiable position when,after many years, he has to recognise that his whole philosophyis built upon sand and that "Yes" was the answer from thebeginning. But as to the religious bodies, what words canexpress their stupidity and want of all proportion in not runninghalfway and more to meet the greatest ally who has everintervened to change their defeat into victory? What gifts thisall-powerful ally brings with him, and what are the terms of hisalliance, will now be considered.