Religion and Spiritualism
Religion and Spiritualism is an article written by Javali published in The Freethinker on 6 march 1927.
Religion and Spiritualism
That highly discerning, unprejudiced, logical, apostle of occultism, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, champion of the rights of fairies, spooks, broom-riders, and hobgoblins generally, has once again been indulging in his favourite pastime of banging the big drum of Spiritualism.
With his propagandist crow-bar — if I may change the metaphor — and with the columns of the favourite daily paper* of the Bishops as a point d'appui, he has made a frantic effort to prise open the doors of the Church, and to gain entrance for his cult.
That his efforts to force its presence on the Church signally failed may have been a matter of surprise to the zealous advocate himself; but were certainly so to the Freethinker who sees, in the far back Witch-of-Endor days, a common origin of the two sets of beliefs; and lines of descent therefrom, which, if not actually parallel, have a divergence, scarcely appreciable, if we ignore such trivial differences of detail as that the spirits of the one kind are furnished with bird-like wings and play harps, while those of the other possess dragon-fly-like wings, drink whisky, and smoke cigars.
But this confident pilot to "Summerland" is going to stand no nonsense. He warns all and sundry that, if the Church will not admit his Spiritualism it will be so much the worse for the Church; or, rather, Churches; for Spiritualism, in that case, will "supersede or modify" every existing belief. In his familiarly characteristic vein, he boasts that his little "philosophy," as he terms it, a "philosophy" that expounds the "relation between life and death," constitutes "the most sane, helpful and cheering view of the intentions of God towards man which has ever yet been vouchsafed to the human race."
With regard to its "saneness," the present writer, who has had a fairly long experience in the treatment and care of mental cases, has seen more than one case of insanity that was directly attributable to spiritualistic obsessions.
The neurologist, Dr. Haydn Brown, has described how several of his patients received their first mental shock at spiritualistic seances, a shock initiating a progressive disorder of illusions, delusions, and, finally, of fixed hallucinations. One spiritualistic enthusiast, under his care, ended up "by hearing voices coming from every manhole in the street until he was terrified to leave his house."
This specialist, though he has "searched the minds" of thousands of persons in health and disease, has found not the least evidence of any communication with a spirit world. Like Sir Arthur, he, too, is prophetic:— "Spiritualism is going to be explained and smashed to atoms in a very few years."
Sir Bryan Donkin (†) is one of our most distinguished alienists, and an authority whose opinions in such matters carry immense weight, as they are based upon a long career of expert work in lunacy and feeble-mindedness and upon a careful and discriminating study of what may be described as the spiritualistic mentality. He had, time and again, called attention to the dangers of Spiritualism; more especially as the very type of individual, who is most readily enfolded in its snares, is one possessing the uncritical, weak, and unbalanced, mind.
Spiritualists, no doubt, would argue:— "All this but proves the existence of a spirit world, and the effect of its occupants on those of our world who are not sufficiently in tune with them."
To which it may be replied that the superstitious servant girl, crossing the churchyard in the dark, screams and swoons away because she believes the screech-owl that she sees and hears is a spook. Saul "fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore afraid" because his mentality was favourable to his being bamboozled by the wily old lady of Endor into believing that the dead Samuel, and not she herself, was talking to him; indeed, we are expressly told that Saul had "no strength in him; for he had eaten no bread all the day, nor all the night."
As the observations of those differing from them are of small account among spiritualists, those of a confirmed believer in the existence of the supernatural element in mediumistic phenomena may — for them — carry more weight.
Dr. A . T . Schofield differs from the orthodox type of spiritualist only as to the character of the participants in these quick-and-dead conversations. Phenomena, which Sir Arthur claims as "vouchsafed" by God and his angels, Dr. Schofield regards as machinations of the Devil and those in league with him.
Now, what has Dr. Schofield to say, concerning Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's vaunted health-giving properties of Spiritualism? He, first, endorses the estimate of a famous mental specialist that "thousands of persons . . . have been driven to the asylum through Spiritualism," and then he adds:— "A truly pitiful record!" When spiritists fall out wise men come into their own.
The claim of Sir Conan Doyle, that Spiritualism is "helpful and cheering," docs not appear to be the view on the Continent, where it is recognised that so much harm has been done that in certain parts the practice has been forbidden by law.
Perhaps Sir Conan Doyle used the expression in the same sense that Huxley did when, in denouncing, as a "gross imposture," a case of Spiritualism he had personally investigated, he remarked that the only good he could see in the demonstration of the truth of the cult was that it furnished an additional argument against suicide, in that it were better to "live a crossing-sweeper than die to be made to talk twaddle by a medium hired at a guinea a seance."
Sir A. C. Doyle has great faith in the experiments and findings of W. J. Crawford, D.Sc., who spent years of his life in investigating the "levitations" and "ectoplasmic outpourings" at the seances of the Belfast medium, Miss Goligher; and who was so cleverly duped by that astute and unscrupulous young lady. Had Dr. Crawford followed Huxley's sound advice he would, almost certainly, not have met his tragic end by suicide.
Sir A. C. Doyle, no doubt, would sweep away all objections to the "helpful" and "cheering" effects of the practice of Spiritualism by pointing to the spectacle of the "several thousand people" who leaped to their feet, at the Albert Hall, as testimony to their having enjoyed the privilege of "getting into touch" with "outside intelligences."
But, as Herbert Spencer said, "to the mass of people nothing is so costly as thought." The intellectually honest will resolutely decline to make a fools' paradise their bourne, and will bodily nail their standard of faith, not to the mast of what is comforting, but to that of what is true.
Perhaps the best evidence of the "plane" of intelligence at spiritualistic conversaziones is forthcoming from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, if one may judge by what he is reported to have said in a lecture at the Gateshead Town Hall:—
There are people who object to the quality of these (spirit) messages; indeed, they say they are all twaddle. Well, friends, I'll tell you how that is. One of our philosophers has said that these islands are inhabited by some forty million people — mostly fools. It is the same on the other side.
Now one would have expected so surprising a statement would have caused considerable amusement among the huge audience assembled, but their faces are described as remaining as "solemn and glum" as that of "a Presbyterian cider dispensing the Sacrament." Only one person in the packed building appreciated the significance of the explanation, and he, our friend Mr. Joseph Bryce, laughed consumedly.
JAVALI.
(*) Morning Post, Dec. 31, 1926. The Place of Spiritualism in Religion. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
(†) It was Dr. Bryan Donkin and Professor Ray Lankester who exposed the charlatanry of the notorious Slade in 1876.
