A BOOK OF THE MOMENT

THE HISTORY OF SPIRITUALISM

[03F1WOHT HI THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE New York Times.] The History of Spiritualism. By Arthur Conan Doyle. (Cassell. 2 volumes, 42s. net the set.) Tfrouon there is more to regret than to approve in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book, though he is often wrong-headed, vague and irrational in his comments, though his narration is apt to. be as dull as it is painstaking and well-intentioned, I am not prepared to say that I wish his book unwritten. In spite of its many failings, the general effect is what it was designed to be—the drawing of public attention to the advance that has been made by the supporters of and believers in Spiritualism during the past quarter of a century in convincing the world that there is something that imperatively demands attention and investigation in the Faith and its phenomena.

What we should have liked to obtain from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or some other expert in the theory and practice of modern spiritualism, was a narrative which would have shown what is in my belief the most memorable and arresting thing about recent aspects of psychical investigation. Up to some twenty- five or thirty years ago it might have been said that the bask fact about spiritual phenomena was that they, and the ex- planations and speculations in regard to them, always re- mained about the same. The best and most careful of critics of ghostly manifestations in the past invariably ended with a verdict of "not proven." They could neither dismiss the observed phenomena as pure delusions, nor accept them as -facts. The human mind failed to place these things or explain them, very much as it fails to explain certain abstract mathematical propositions. No one can rightly explain what we mean by an Incommensurable, or lay down in what relation it stands to things which are measurable and so capable of being brought into relation with other explicables: Take the Bible stories of the wizards who, -like those of our own day, "peep and mutter," or "chirp." The amazing episode of the Witch of Endor may serve as an example. The story is, so to speak, thrown at our heads as a fact, but no attempt is made to correlate it with the Hebrew view of God or of immortality. So with a hundred other alleged com- munications, Christian and Pagan, between the seen and the unseen worlds.

Froissart's " Chronicle " gives us another instance in what is perhaps the best and most vraisemblable story of a Polter- geist that has ever been recorded. But nobody in Froissart's day, or, indeed, tip till quite modern times, ever attempted to fit this piece of highly exciting observation into the mosaic of ordinary human knowledge. The old World simply noted the facts and said, "That is odd ! " and passed by on the other side. Romans, Greeks, Mediaeval and Eighteenth Century philosophers, and even Shakespeare himself, left it at that. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," said Hamlet ; but he failed to add that he would not rest till he had discovered the mystery. Neither he nor his creator felt it necessary to say, "We cannot let a thing which is contrary to all ordinary human experience go as if it did not matter."

A very apt example of this passing by on the other side attitude is to be found in the pages of Addison's Spectator. Addison does what so many thousands of wise men before and since have done. He takes a story of unaccountable hauntings and phenomena, analyses them to a certain extent, gives fairly good reasons for regarding the whole affair as a muddy mixture of superstition and mal-observation, and then ends up with a sealed pattern comment to the effect that "All the same, there is something queer about these things which nobody ever has explained, or ever will explain."

But of late that method of treating the phenomena of Spiritualism has died out. There has been a serious effort to record the odd phenomena fairly and accurately, and to find out what explanations in regard to them will hold water.

It is possible, no doubt, that it will all end in our having to admit that the darkness is-impenetrable. On the-other hand, fruitful sources of new truths may be made -known to us, If -they should be, we shall have a technique of investigation to apply to them. That is what the scientific investigators of

the Psychical Research Society have achieved for us, and we ought to be eternally grateful to them for their vigilance,' hardihood, and faithfulness.

A fact of good omen may be noticed in this context. The Einstein hypothesis and the doctrine of Relativity, by altering fundamentally our way of looking at Time and Space, has put Psychical investigation in many ways on a new plane. In old days our investigations were always being stopped, or

apparently rendered empty, if not actually ridiculous, by some dark and impenetrable obstacle presented by the enigmas of Time and Space. Now we have changed all that. We can not only pierce the thickest walls by Choosing- the right

kind of ray, but may very likely find that it is the wall that is the illusion and not the "inexplicable" phenomenon--meaning

thereby things that appeared to negative the accepted con-1 cepts of what we now designate the Continuum.

In the matter of scientific research it is interesting to note

how, as often happens, the poets were able, as Fuller called it, to" prediscover " many of the arguments for and against what we may roughly call Spiritualism. We are all familiar

with the attempts to explain or rationalize, prophecies of things to come, disclosures of hidden knowledge, such as we

get in automatic writing and other alleged direct communi- cations from the dead. Tennyson in "In Memoriam," dealing with these communications, shows how they can apparently be set aside on various grounds. Addre,s. sing his dead friend, Arthur Hallam, he says that he wants the most sublimated form of communication with -him because other manifestations can be, as it were, gradually frittered away by dialectic. Therefore he asks for :— "No visual shade of some one lost.," but for :— "Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost." For, as he had said :— "If any vision should reveal Thy likeness, I might count it vain As but the canker of the brain ; Yea, tiro' it spake and made appeal

To chances where our lots were cast Together in the days behind. I might but say, I hear a wind Of memory murmuring the past.

Yea, tho' it spake and bared to view A fa-it within the coming year ; And tho' the months, revolving near, Should prove the phantom-warning t rue, They might not seem thy propheciem, But spiritual presentiments. And such refraction of events As often rises ern they rise."

In this wonderful passage the ease for a non-spiritual explana- tion of the phenomena which have to be admitted is given with

marvellous penetration. Here are our old familiar friends "the self-created image " and the appeal to a memory of which one is no longer conscious, but which, all the same, -may persist in the subconscious mind. Finally, we get' the ex-. planation of prophecies and presentiments ; and the poet "pre- discovers " the Einstein theory. The "refraction of events" rising" ere they rise" is very much the same as the hypothesis that all things exist at one and the same time and in one and the same place. Though we may think that- they grew or developed, they were always there. In truth and reality we are only passing by them. Wordsworth, remember, in hiS strange and rather frigid, but mystic poem, "Presentiments," puts this same point.

I feel that my review of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book--has been one long grumble and, though I am not prepared to take that grumbling back, I should like to point out that, in spite of my objections, there are certain things of real value In' his book. The account of 'Andrew Jackson Davis,- the American mystic, is very curious. ' - -

J. S. LOE STRACHEY. •