Alfred Russel Wallace

“ Neither science nor philosophy, neither skepticism nor religion, has ever yet in this quarter of a century made one single convert from the ranks of Spiritualism! This being the case, and fully appreciating the amount of candor and fairness, and knowledge of the subject, that has been exhibited by their opponents, is it to be wondered at that a large proportion of Spiritualists are now profoundly indifferent to the opinion of men of science, and would not go one step out of their way to convince them? ”

“ Livermore, who, during five years, on hundreds of occasions, saw, felt and heard the movements of the figure of his dead wife in absolute, unmistakable, living form—a form which could move objects, and which repeatedly wrote to him in her own handwriting and her own language, on cards which remained after the figure had disappeared; a form which was equally visible and tangible to two friends; which appeared in his own house, in a room absolutely secured, with the presence of only a young girl, the medium. Had these three men “not a particle of evidence” for the spiritual theory? ”

“ The discussion in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1868, and a considerable private correspondence, indicates that scientific men almost invariably assume that, in this inquiry, they should be permitted, at the very outset, to impose conditions; and if, under such conditions, nothing happens, they consider it a proof of imposture or delusion. But they well know that, in all other branches of research, Nature, not they, determines the essential conditions, without a compliance with which no experiment will succeed. ”

“ Witchcraft and witchcraft trials have a new interest for the Spiritualist. He is able to detect hundreds of curious and minute coincidences with phenomena he has himself witnessed; he is able to separate the facts from the absurd inferences which people imbued with the frightful superstition of diabolism drew from them, and from which false inferences all the horrors of the witchcraft mania arose. Spiritualism, and Spiritualism alone, gives a rational explanation of witchcraft, and determines how much of it was objective fact, how much subjective illusion. ”

“ They will be more and more conformed to the facts of nature; not only to the facts which a diligent Materialism, working in a single direction, has brought to light, but to the transcendent facts which Modern Spiritualism has restored and proved. The one order of facts is incomplete without the other; and Materialism is as surely doomed to be encircled and transfigured by the wider horizon of Spiritualism, as the Ptolemaic system of the universe was doomed to be superseded by the Copernican. ”

“ A science of human nature which is founded on observed facts; which appeals only to facts and experiment; which takes no beliefs on trust; which inculcates investigation and self-reliance as the first duties of intelligent beings; which teaches that happiness in a future life can be secured by cultivating and developing to the utmost the higher faculties of our intellectual and moral nature, and by no other method—is and must be the natural enemy of all superstition. Spiritualism is an experimental science, and affords the only sure foundation for a true philosophy and a pure religion. ”

“ The fact that they declined and ultimately failed, is wholly in their favor: for why should imposture cease as the world became less enlightened and more superstitious? Neither does the fact that the priests could sometimes be bribed to give out false oracles prove anything, against such statements as that of Plutarch and the belief during many generations, supported by ever-recurring experiences, of the greatest men of antiquity. That belief could only have been formed by demonstrative facts; and Modern Spiritualism enables us to understand the nature of those facts. ”

“ We can hardly believe that the man who does this, and who during fifteen years of observation and experiment held out against the spiritual theory, is one of those who, as Lord Amberley tells us, “fall a victim to the most patent frauds, and are imposed upon by jugglery of the most vulgar order”; or who, as viewed from Prof. Tyndall’s high scientific standpoint, are in a frame of mind before which science is utterly powerless—“dupes beyond the reach of proof, who like to believe and do not like to be undeceived.” ”

“ It must be remembered that these beliefs (unlike those of theology) will have a living efficacy, because they depend on facts occurring again and again in the family circle, constantly reiterating the same truths as the result of personal knowledge, and thus bringing home to the mind, even of the most obtuse, the absolute reality of that future existence in which our degree of happiness or misery will be directly dependent on the “mental fabric” we construct by our daily thoughts and words and actions here. ”

“ The non-Spiritualist is obliged to look upon one of the greatest men in human history, not only as subject all his life to a mental illusion, but as being so weak, foolish, or superstitious as never to discover that it was an illusion. He is obliged to disbelieve the fact asserted by contemporaries and by Socrates himself, that it forewarned him truly of dangers ”

“ They form a connected body of evidence, from the simplest to the most complex and astounding, every single component fact of which can be and has been repeatedly demonstrated by itself; while each gives weight and confirmation to all the rest. ”

“ Men of science, like all others, are welcome to enter its ranks; but they must satisfy themselves by their own persevering researches, not expect to have its proofs laid before them. Their rejection of its truths is their own loss, but cannot in the slightest degree affect the progress of Spiritualism. The attacks and criticisms of the press are borne good-humoredly, and seldom excite other feelings than pity for the willful ignorance and contempt for the overwhelming presumption of their writers. Such are the sentiments that are continually expressed by Spiritualists ”

“ It will thus be seen that those who can form no higher conception of the uses of Spiritualism, “even if true,” than to detect crime or to name in advance the winner of the Derby, not only prove their own ignorance of the whole subject, but exhibit in a marked degree that partial mental paralysis, the result of a century of materialistic thought, which renders so many men unable seriously to conceive the possibility of a natural continuation of human life after the death of the body. ”

“ After much inquiry and reading I can find no example of a man who, having acquired a good personal knowledge of all the chief phases of the phenomena, has subsequently come to disbelieve in their reality. If the “explanations” and “exposures” were good for anything, or if it were an imposture to expose or a delusion to explain, this could not be the case, because there are numbers of men who have become convinced of the facts, but who have not accepted the spiritual theory. ”

“ Fresh converts are apt to think that, once satisfied the communications come from their deceased friends, they may implicitly trust to them, and apply them universally; as if the vast spiritual world was all molded to one pattern, instead of being, as it almost certainly is, a thousand times more varied than human society on the earth is, or ever has been. The fact that the communications do not agree as to the condition, occupations, pleasures, and capacities of individual spirits, so far from being a difficulty, as has been absurdly supposed, is what ought to have been expected ”

“ We have here, therefore, a career of twenty-six years of mediumship of the most varied and remarkable character; mediumship which has been scrutinized and tested from the first hour of its manifestation down to this day, and with one invariable result—that no imposture or attempt at imposture has ever been discovered, and no cause ever been suggested that will account for the phenomena except that advanced by Spiritualists.
Mr. Daniel D. Home is perhaps the best known medium in the world; and his powers have been open to examination for at least twenty years. ”

“ This remark justly applies to most religions whose arguments appeal to the emotions and the intellect but not to the evidence of the senses. It is equally just as applied to a great part of modern science. The almost universal belief in gravitation, and in the undulatory theory of light, does not render them in any degree more probable; because very few indeed of the believers have tested the facts which most convincingly demonstrate those theories, or are able to follow out the reasoning by which they are demonstrated. It is for the most part a blind belief accepted upon authority. ”

“ These conditions have to be learnt by a patient questioning of Nature, and they are different for each branch of science. How much more may they be expected to differ in an inquiry which deals with subtle forces of the nature of which the physicist is wholly and absolutely ignorant! To ask to be allowed to deal with these unknown phenomena as he has hitherto dealt with known phenomena, is practically to prejudge the question, since it assumes that both are governed by the same laws. ”

“ Just in proportion as we have developed our higher intellectual and moral nature, or starved it by disuse and by giving undue prominence to those faculties which secure us mere physical or selfish enjoyment, shall we be well or ill fitted for the new life we enter on. The noble teaching of Herbert Spencer, that men are best educated by being left to suffer the natural consequences of their actions, is the teaching of Spiritualism as regards the transition to another phase of life. ”

“ The preceding account of how converts to Spiritualism have been made is a sufficient answer to all this ignorant assertion. The spiritual theory, 36as a rule, has only been adopted as a last resource, when all other theories have hopelessly broken down; and when fact after fact, phenomenon after phenomenon, has presented itself, giving direct proof that the so-called dead are still alive. The spiritual theory is the logical outcome of the whole of the facts. Those who deny it, in every instance with which I am acquainted, either from ignorance or disbelief, leave half the facts out of view. ”

“ The fact that any figures, so clear and unmistakably human in appearance as these, should appear on plates taken in his own private studio by an experienced optician and amateur photographer, who makes all his apparatus himself, and with no one present but the members of his own family, is the real marvel. In one case a second figure appeared on a plate with himself, taken by Mr. Slater when he was absolutely alone—by the simple process of occupying the sitter’s chair after uncapping the camera. He and his family being themselves mediums, they require no extraneous assistance ”

“ EVIDENCE OF THE FACTS. The subject of the evidences of the objective phenomena of Spiritualism is such a large one that it will be only possible here to give a few typical examples, calculated to show how wide is their range, and how conclusively they reach every objection that the most skeptical have brought against them. This may perhaps be best done by giving, in the first place, an outline of the career of two or three well-known mediums; and, in the second, a sketch of the experiences and investigations of a few of the more remarkable converts to Spiritualism. ”