My Library

are employed for purposes of investigation. The occult student believes that such methods, even at their very best, cannot possibly produce evidence which will stand the test of scientific inquiry. The sorrowing and forlorn may, and undoubtedly do, gain satisfaction, comfort and consolation by these methods, and for this reason many thousands owe a debt of gratitude to spiritualism; further it must be admitted that one of the most effective attacks upon the materialism of the last century was made by spiritualistic methods. Valuable though these methods may be from these points of view, they do not appear to be suited to, scientific research. Let us examine the claims of the spiritualist, made in support of his belief in the continuance of life and consciousness after death, and in die possibility of communication between the living and the dead. He says, at best, that through the guide of a certain medium—admittedly a person of the highest morality and of scrupulous honesty, who had never met or heard of him before—he received a communication concerning matters with which only one other person in the world was conversant, and of which the medium could not possibly have been aware. Further, he claims that the other person was deceased, and that the guide, speaking through the medium, gave his name or initials, as the real communicator from the unseen. Later, perchance, this individual himself used the medium’s body, displayed certain peculiar tricks of manner and traits of character which were personal to him, and communicated further material which was only known to the two people concerned—the deceased and his living friend. He asserts that such demonstrations have been multiplied indefinitely, and, in fact, are the common experience of practically every spiritualist. Such an event as the one here described is undoubtedly startling, calculated to shake the confidence of the most hardened sceptic, and to introduce a predisposition in favour of acceptance into the most unprejudiced mind. Yet it is the contention of the occultist that it does not contain evidence upon which an opinion could justly be based. There are many facts which can be adduced in support of this somewhat drastic statement. Two or three will be sufficient to indicate reasons for the unreliability of spiritualistic methods as a guide to the truth in this matter. Firstly, a mildly developed clairvoyance or telepathy, and a fair gift of mimicry, would quite easily enable the medium to elicit the information from the memory