One thing I can truly say, and that is, that in spite of false
messages, I have never in all these years known a blasphemous, an
unkind, or an obscene message. Such incidents must be of very
exceptional nature. I think also that, so far as allegations
concerning insanity, obsession, and so forth go, they are entirely
imaginary. Asylum statistics do not bear out such assertions, and
mediums live to as good an average age as anyone else. I think,
however, that the cult of the seance may be very much overdone. When
once you have convinced yourself of the truth of the phenomena the
physical seance has done its work, and the man or woman who spends his
or her life in running from seance to seance is in danger of becoming a
mere sensation hunter. Here, as in other cults, the form is in danger
of eclipsing the real thing, and in pursuit of physical proofs one may
forget that the real object of all these things is, as I have tried to
point out, to give us assurance in the future and spiritual strength in
the present, to attain a due perception of the passing nature of matter
and the all-importance of that which is immaterial.
The conclusion, then, of my long search after truth, is that in spite
of occasional fraud, which Spiritualists deplore, and in spite of wild
imaginings, which they discourage, there remains a great solid core in
this movement which is infinitely nearer to positive proof than any
other religious development with which I am acquainted. As I have
shown, it would appear to be a rediscovery rather than an absolutely
new thing, but the result in this material age is the same. The days
are surely passing when the mature and considered opinions of such men
as Crookes, Wallace, Flammarion, Chas. Richet, Lodge, Barrett,
Lombroso, Generals Drayson and Turner, Sergeant Ballantyne, W. T.
Stead, Judge Edmunds, Admiral Usborne Moore, the late Archdeacon
Wilberforce, and such a cloud of other witnesses, can be dismissed with
the empty "All rot" or "Nauseating drivel" formulae. As Mr. Arthur
Hill has well said, we have reached a point where further proof is
superfluous, and where the weight of disproof lies upon those who deny.
The very people who clamour for proofs have as a rule never taken the
trouble to examine the copious proofs which already exist. Each seems
to think that the whole subject should begin de novo because he has
asked for information. The method of our opponents is to fasten upon
the latest man who has stated the case--at the present instant it
happens to be Sir Oliver Lodge--and then to deal with him as if he had
come forward with some new opinions which rested entirely upon his own
assertion, with no reference to the corroboration of so many
independent workers before him. This is not an honest method of
criticism, for in every case the agreement of witnesses is the very
root of conviction. But as a matter of fact, there are many single
witnesses upon whom this case could rest. If, for example, our only
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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