Our Note Book (review 10 april 1926)
Our Note Book is an article written by G. K. Chesterton published in The Illustrated London News on 10 april 1926.
This is a review of Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Land of Mist (1925-1926).
Review
(10 april 1926, p. 648)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has just published a novel about Spiritualism ; it is called "The Land of Mist," and I for one find it intensely interesting. I do not agree with the mere disparagement of it that has been prevalent in the Press. It is not so neat and telling as one of the short stories about Sherlock Holmes ; nobody but a fool would expect it to be. Even Watson would not be such a fool as that. I have often wondered why Sir Arthur Conan Doyle does not now write us a story about Sherlock Holmes as a Spiritualist. It would be better still if we had a new and psychical repetition of "The Return of Sherlock Holmes," with the detective making his positively last bow as a gaunt and grisly spectre. It would be glorious to have Watson as a worried medium and Holmes as a rather irritable control. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes really did die when he fell over the precipice in the Alpine pass, and all his after adventures were the actions of a revenant.
Perhaps we might go over all those admirable tales, one by one, and tell them the other way round from "the other side." Perhaps the Hound of the Baskervilles really was a demon hound, and the character of a blameless naturalist, collecting butterflies, was blackened merely in order to find a fictitious natural explanation. Perhaps the treasure in "The Sign of Four" really was weighted with some occult curse of the Orient, and Mr. Sholto died by more than mortal agency. It would be great fun to go through the whole series and find out how the fairies stole the racehorse, or how the Musgrave family ghost killed the Musgrave family butler. But nobody could expect an exposition of psychical theory, whether in fiction or no, to have the curt and compact interest of a criminal mystery. Nobody can expect it to have the snap with which the handcuffs are locked on the struggling purloiner of the Romanoff Rugby or the Moon of Bengal. That sort of finality cannot be asked of stories about the infinite. And if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has found it difficult to turn his moral philosophy into a really good novel, he is not the first to fail in doing that.
Instead of reviving Sherlock Holmes he has revived Dr. Challenger, as the distinguished convert to Spiritualism. Dr. Challenger was the hero of at least two other romances ; one about the discovery of a world still full of prehistoric monsters, and the other, I think, about me astronomical danger threatening the earth from a poisonous atmosphere in space. Both these Challenger stories would have been quite good stories if it had not been for Challenger. Challenger himself was a product of that unlucky and undignified tendency in the Teutonic and Imperialistic epoch ; the blunder of supposing that really big men are bullies. It came from Prussia ; or rather, it came from Prussia. But
Sir Arthur was quite innocent in being influenced by it ; he was only one of many millions who were so influenced. In this story the bully begins by being a materialist, and eventually becomes a Spiritualist ; but even before he becomes a Spiritualist he is a good deal less of a bully. He has been softened because his author has been oftened ; and his author has been oftened because he has really got a religion. And that, at any rate, is a real argument for spiritualism. But when we come to the more formal arguments for Spiritualism, as operating in the case of Challenger, we find the whole question raised in a way that is certainly itself open to question.
Challenger, who has come to scoff, remains to pray, or at any rate to praise, at the Spiritualistic séance ; because, after a doubtful exhibition by the professional medium, his own daughter goes into a trance and tells her father something reassuring about two dead men to whom he once secretly administered a drug, of which he has always feared that they died. Up to this moment Dr. Challenger has appeared to be as hard as a rock in his denial and as headlong as a cataract in his disdain ; he will not hear a word, or the whisper of a word, of there being the remotest suggestion of anything to be said for Spiritualism. He is as fierce as a mad dog and as deaf as a post. He bites anybody's head off who mentions the possibility ; he sweeps it away un-
a too ready acceptance of psychic marvels. A man
of that extreme materialism has at least a long way
to travel before he comes even within sight of the
Land of Mist, let alone of the ultimate Land of Light.
We should expect that he would have to be dragged
every step of the way, that he would examine
every step of the argument. And yet, when Dr.
Challenger does receive his private revelation, he
seems to me to take one wild and flying leap over
half-a-dozen logical steps and land beyond the
border-line to which he was being brought. He
accepts more than the revelation reveals ; he is the
fool who rushes in where the angels of the astral
plane fear to tread.
If he is really certain that he inoculated
his late patients secretly, so that
nobody knew; if he is quite certain that
they died before anybody knew; and if he
is quite certain that he has heard certain
words unmistakably referring to a certain
incident that nobody knew - why,
then he may be justified in saying that
there must be some channels of communication
other than the senses-some-
thing capable of receiving and repeating
truths other than the limited human mind,
or (if you will) some power that can communicate
with the spirit by purely spiritual
means. That he knows ; and that is all
he knows; that he must admit, and that
is all he need admit. Whether the new
abnormal power is good or bad, whether
the strange unexpected message is true or
false, even whether the additional and
unexplored faculty is inside him or outside
him, he need not in the least confess
to knowing. All he need admit (who
had a moment before recoiled in disgust
from admitting anything) is that a knowledge
of his hidden thoughts. exists somewhere
in something that can act outside
him and without his consent. But when
Dr. Challenger suddenly leaves off denying
everything, he instantly begins accepting
everything, and that beyond anything he
is required to accept. These are his words :
"Others may try to explain what has occurred
by telepathy, by sub-conscious mind
action, by what they will, but I cannot
doubt-it is impossible to doubt-that a
message has come to me from the dead."
Now, I should not have thought it was
impossible to doubt it. I should .not certainly
have thought it was impossible for
so stubborn a doubter to doubt it, for so
reckless a denier to doubt it. A message
touching a secret need not come
from the dead because it is about the
dead. All we can say for certain about
the secret message is that it came from
somebody who knew the secret. All we
know about the knowledge is that some-where
or other it is known. It need not
necessarily be a dead man ; it might be
a devil ; it might be a fairy ; it might
be a dual personality or mysterious separate
mind of some other sort ; it might be
all sorts of things. I do not blame a man
for having a mystical and intuitional faith
Later, it belonged to Mary second Marchioness of Downshire.
By Courtesy of l\lessn. Sotheby and Co.
examined' with nothing but roaring, rending, deafening
contradiction. For Dr. Challenger is a Rationalist,
and one of those lucid scientific enquirers who
have adopted an attitude of Agnosticism.
This does not seem an attitude quite worthy of
a profe ional man. But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has
never been particularly flattering to his ovm profession.
There may be doctors as simple and silly
as Dr. Watson. There may also be doctors as stupid
and rabid as Dr. Challenger. But at least Dr. Challenger's
stubborn dogmas and strong unnatural
antipathies ought to be a protection to him against
and saying so. But I do blame a man
of science for first of all furiously denying
that any evidence can possibly exist ; and then,
when he finds it does exist, blindly accepting it as
proof of something that it does not prove. And
I do not blame it the less because it does not
only occur in the case of fictitious characters, but
also in the case of real characters ; because it is
not only found in an imaginary monster of a mad
materialist, but in many a genuine and admirable
Victorian agnostic ; because it is exemplified not only
in an impossible person whom I dislike, but in a
real person whom I respect and to whom I am grateful;
because it is not only the story of Professor
Challenger, but of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
