“Objection has been taken in some quarters to the fact that the
Society itself did not publish the Report, but left the matter of the
publication as an open question to its Committee.” Again: on the 20th
of July, 1870, the council passed a resolution--“that the request of
the Committee, that the Report be printed under the authority of the
Society, be not acceded to.”
The exact nature of the work done by the Dialectical Society’s
Committee can be summed up by another extract from the same issue of
“The Medium and Daybreak”:
“In due time the Committee presented to the Council the General
and Sub-Reports, supplementing the same by a voluminous mass of
evidence taken directly from the _lips of Spiritualists practically
acquainted with the subject--persons of the highest respectability and
representing nearly every grade of society_.” (The italics are mine.)
Another element of discord in the Dialectical investigation is shown by
the following:
“Attempt has been made, of course, to undervalue these telling
researches. The non-successful Committees have been brought gleefully
into prominence, in hope that _positive_ results obtained by the
successful Committees might thereby be discredited.”
It seems to be a published fact that this movement on the part of the
Dialectical Society resulted in much discord amounting to a split in
the Society. Mr. Burns in his editorial column of the “Medium and
Daybreak” says:
“Our present issue affords an important and valuable addition to the
cheap literature of Spiritualism. It is filled with useful matter for
investigators, _judiciously extracted from the Report of the London
Dialectical Society_.” (My italics.)
The supporters of Spiritualism lay great stress and importance on the
fact that a few of their co-workers are men prominent in scientific and
literary circles, but these are in such a minority, when compared with
men of the same time who do not co-operate, that the Spiritualists in
order to give force and dignity to their argument “ring the changes” on
these few names and keep them prominently to the front, notwithstanding
that it has been proven beyond question, time and again, that these
sages themselves have frequently been the victims of fraudulent
mediums, sometimes knowingly.
Doyle in his book “The New Revelation” says:
“The days are surely passing when the mature and considerate opinions
of such men ... can be dismissed with the empty ‘all rot’ or
‘nauseating drivel’ formulæ.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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