ITS HISTORY, PHENOMENA

AND DOCTRINE

BY

J. ARTHUR HILL

AUTHOR OF "MAN IS A SPIRIT," "PSYCHICAL INVESTIGATIONS,"
"NEW EVIDENCES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH,"

HIS book has been written in response to a sugges

tion that I should prepare a volume giving a comprehensive answer to the question: "What is Spiritualism?" A large literature of the subject exists, the library of the London Spiritualist Alliance containing about 3,000 volumes; but the aspects are many, the ramifications extensive, and there is no single work that presents a review of the whole, except Mr. Podmore's "Modern Spiritualism" (2 vols., 1902), which, besides being too bulky for any but a determined student, is now regarded by most investigators as being too negative. The progress of psychical research in the last sixteen years has raised into new credibility many narratives which, in those earlier days, a cautious mind could not even provisionally accept.

Here it is necessary or desirable that I should indicate my own position, in order that the reader may know how to discount my opinions. In debatable matters, we naturally want to know exactly where a writer stands, before we can decide how far to rely on what he says; for, though he may be perfectly honest, he may involuntarily be very unfair if he happens to have strong preferences.

I was never a materialist, for I happened to read Berkeley at an unusually early age; but I was unable to believe in an angry God who would punish for ever

-not for wicked acts towards one's fellow-creatures, but for holding incorrect theological opinions during our short span of a few years-and consequently our saintly old minister did the opposite of what he intended; instead of making me a Christian according to his definition, he made me a Huxleyan.

A rather close reading of evolutionary literature, plus some years of laboratory work which taught me scientific method, plus a fair amount of philosophybrowsing and a careful reading of Carlyle, Emerson, Tennyson, etc.-I had not then grown up to Browning-landed me safely in the "reverent agnosticism" which was to be expected; and there I stayed, with perhaps a slight tendency away from the fighting temper of Huxley towards the milder mood of Emerson, until I was over thirty. Then I became acquainted with a certain medium whose queer powers puzzled me. Previously I had, of course, scoffed at the whole thing, even when intimate friends of mine described their own inexplicable experiences. But I was soon compelled to admit that there was "something in it". I began to read spiritualistic literature, but it did not impress me. The writers were mostly unknown, their experiments were not described with sufficient fulness or exactness, and they often seemed ready to believe anything. Then I joined the Society for Psychical Research, and found what I wanted. Here was real evi'dence, set out in detail by men like Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor Sidgwick, and others, whose work I knew and could rely on in other departments. I read all the S.P.R. publications, and was greatly impressed; in fact, convinced so far as the logic

of the thing went-i.e. I felt that the evidence was sufficient to justify belief in the happenings and even in a spiritistic explanation of some of them. But personal experience is necessary before real conviction of new truth can be attained, when one has remained in ignorance until over thirty; so I set myself to investigation. I sat with many mediums, professional and private, and the result was that I was gradually driven to admit that phenomena certainly happen which orthodox science does not explain or even recognise, that some of them may be due to not understood subliminal activities of living people, or to still more unknown causes, but that some others point to the agency of discarnate human beings.

I described some of these experiences in my book, "Psychical Investigations," and in earlier volumes; but the printed records are incomplete, much evidential private matter having had to be excluded because it involved other living people who would object to publicity. If we investigators could publish everything, our case would be much stronger.

In short, then, I believe that the survival of human beings past death, and the possibility of occasional communication, is a legitimate inference from the facts. I do not believe that communication is as free or as frequent as most spiritualists seem to think. I am not convinced that the regular trance-controls are spirits at all; they may be parts of the medium's subliminal, acting as channels for communications from beyond. And there are some phases of mediumship-apports, for instance -which I have never witnessed, the phenomena being rare. As to such unwitnessed things, my attitude is one