The magazines continue to abound in articles about Spiritualism. Those articles which expose and explode Spiritualism are certainly calculated to make converts to that novel creed; but fortunately the balance is redressed by the articles which defend and expound Spiritualism, which will probably make any thoughtful convert hastily recant his conversion. I believe myself that nothing but advantage can accrue to Spiritualism from all criticisms founded on Materialism. I think there is a mystical minimum in human history and experience, which is at once too obscure to be explained and too obvious to be explained away. It may be admitted that a miracle is rarer than a murder; but they are made obscure by somewhat similar causes. Thus a medium will insist on a dark room; and a murderer is said to have a slight preference for a dark night. A medium is criticized for not submitting to a sufficient number of scientific and impartial judges; and a murderer seldom collects any considerable number of impartial witnesses to testify to his performance. Many supernatural stories rest on the evidence of rough unlettered men, like fishermen and peasants; and most criminal trials depend on the detailed testimony of quite uneducated people. It may be remarked that we never throw a doubt on the value of ignorant evidence when it is a question of a judge hanging a man, but only when it is a question of a saint healing him. Morbid and hysterical people imagine all sorts of ghosts and demons that do not exist. Morbid and hysterical people also imagine all sorts of crimes and conspiracies that do not exist. A great many spiritual communications may be auto-suggestions; and a great many apparent murders may be suicides. But there is a limit to the probability of self-destruction; so there is of self-deception. Now I think it well worth while to concentrate our common sense, not on where these messages come from, or why they come, but simply on the messages. Let us consider the thing itself about which there is no doubt at all. Let us consider, not whether spirits can speak to us, or how they speak, but simply what they say, or are supposed to say. If spirits in heaven, or scoundrels on earth, or fiends somewhere else, have brought us a new religion, let us look at the new religion on its own merits. Well, this is the sort of thing the spirits are supposed to write down, and very possibly do write down:
“You make death an impenetrable fog, while it is a mere golden mist, torn easily aside by the shafts of faith, and revealing life as not only continuous but as not cut in two by a great change. I cannot express myself as I wish.... It is more like leaving prison for freedom and happiness. Not that your present life lacks joy; it is all joy, but you have to fight with imperfections. Here, we have to struggle only with lack of development. There is no evil—only different degrees of spirit.”
The interrogator, Mr. Basil King, who narrates his experiences in an interesting article in Nash’s Magazine, proceeds to ask whether the lack of development is due to the highly practical thing we call sin. To this the spirit replies: “They come over with the evil, as it were, cut out, and leaving blanks in their souls. These have by degrees to be filled with good.”
Now I will waive the point whether death is a mist or a fog or a front door or a fire-escape or any other physical metaphor; being satisfied with the fact that it is there, and not to be removed by metaphors. But what amuses me about the spirit is that for him it is both there and not there. Death is non-existent in one sentence, and of the most startling importance six sentences afterwards. The spirit is positive that our existence is not cut in two by a great change, at the moment of death. But the spirit is equally positive, a little lower down, that the whole of our human evil is instantly and utterly cut out of us, and all at the moment of death. If a man suddenly and supernaturally loses about three-quarters of his ordinary character, might it not be described as “a great change”? Why does so enormous a convulsion happen at the exact moment of death, if death is non-existent and not to be considered? The Spiritualist is here contradicting himself, not only by making death very decidedly a great change, but by actually making it a greater change than Dante or St. Francis thought it was. A Christian who thinks the soul carries its sins to Purgatory makes life much more “continuous” than this Spiritualist, who says that death, and death alone, alters a man as by a blast of magic. The article bears the modest title of “The Abolishing of Death”; and the spirit does say that this is possible, except when he forgets and says the opposite. He seldom contradicts himself more than twice in a paragraph. But since he says clearly that death abolishes sin, and equally clearly that he abolishes death, it becomes an interesting speculation what happens next, and especially what happens to sin: a subject of interest to many of us.
Mr. Basil King asked the spirit, who had told him that animals are human, whether it is wrong to destroy animal life. It may be remarked that the questions Mr. King asks are always much more acute than the answers he gets. The answer about the killing of animals is this: “You can never destroy life. Life is the absolute power which overrules all else. There can be no cessation. It is impossible.” And that is all; and for a man considering whether he shall or shall not kill a tom-cat, it does not seem very helpful. Logically, if it means anything, it would seem to mean that you may do anything to the cat, for its nine lives are really an infinite series. In short, you can kill it because you cannot kill it. But it is obvious that if a man relies on this reason for killing his cat, it is an equally good reason for killing his creditor. Creditors also are immortal (a solemn thought); creditors also pass through a golden mist torn easily aside by the shafts of faith, and have all the evil of their souls (including, let us hope, their avarice) cut out of them with the axe of death, without noticing anything in particular. In short, Mr. Basil King, when he asks a reasonable question about a real moral question, the relations of man and the animals, gets no reply except a hotch-potch of words which might mean anarchy and may mean anything. From beginning to end the spirit never answers any real question on which the real religions of mankind have been obliged to legislate and to teach. The only practical deduction would be that it is no disadvantage to have sinned in this life; as in the other case that it is no disgrace to kill either a creditor or a cat. If it means anything, it means that; and if it is spirits and not spifflications, the spirits mean that: and I do not desire their further acquaintance.