IS SPIRITUALISM BASED ON FRAUD? THE EVIDENCE GIVEN BY SIR A. C. DOYLE AND OTHERS DRASTICALLY EXAMINED BY JOSEPH McCABE LONDON: WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.4 PREFACE On March 11 of this year Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did me the honour of debating the claims of Spiritualism with me before a vast and distinguished audience at the Queen's Hall, London. My opponent had insisted that I should open the debate; and, when it was pointed out that the critic usually follows the exponent, he had indicated that I had ample material to criticize in the statement of the case for Spiritualism in his two published works. How conscientiously I addressed myself to that task, and with what result, must be left to the reader of the published debate. Suffice it to say that my distinguished opponent showed a remarkable disinclination to linger over his own books, and wished to "broaden the issue." Since the bulk of the time allotted to me in the debate was then already spent, it was not possible to discuss satisfactorily the new evidences adduced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and not recorded in his books. I hasten to repair the defect in this critical examination of every variety of Spiritualistic phenomena. My book has a serious aim. The pen of even the dullest author--and I trust I do not fall into that low category of delinquents--must grow lively or sarcastic at times in the course of such a study as this. When one finds Spiritualists gravely believing that a corpulent lady is transferred by spirit hands, at the rate of sixty miles an hour, over the chimney-pots of London, and through several solid walls, one cannot be expected to refrain from smiling. When one contemplates a group of scientific or professional men plumbing the secrets of the universe through the mediumship of an astute peasant or a carpenter, or a lady of less than doubtful virtue, one may be excused a little irony. When our creators of super-detectives enthusiastically applaud things which were fully exposed a generation ago, and affirm that, because they could not, in pitch darkness, see any fraud, there _was_ no fraud, we cannot maintain the gravity of philosophers. When we find this "new revelation" heralded by a prodigious outbreak of fraud, and claiming as its most solid foundations to-day a mass of demonstrable trickery and deceit, our sense of humour is pardonably irritated. Nor are these a few exceptional weeds in an otherwise fair garden. In its living literature to-day, in its actual hold upon a large number of people in Europe and America, Spiritualism rests to a very great extent on fraudulent representations.