A SPIRITED CRITICISM.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 17021, 18 December 1920, Page 9

A SPIRITED CRITICISM.

MR NORTH ON A FOOLISH PAGANISM. • Modern Spiritualism is ns old as the lulls, though hardly :ts respectable. It Is not a structure reared on th^st 1 families in man, from which knowledge and principle and morality are produced. It is built on the abnormal in man, and on the so dangerously abnormal, that balanced experts like Sir 0. Lodge and Sir W r F. Barrett dissuade average people from dabbling with it. To .people who desire the normal development of the men and women of the nation the reanncaranco of Spiritualism is'a menace. It has more respectable patrons, than it had 50 years "ago. when Faraday and Darwin and Huxley dismissed it with contempt. A handful of scientific men have appeared among tho mediums and crystal gazers as "the cbiel amang ye takin notes." This is the only new feature, save and except such phrasing as ectoplasm and psychoplasm. Witchcraft Modified to Suit. In point of plain fact tho wizards and witches (to use tho rough old terms) and tho augnrs and fakirs and tohungas o.t unashamed paganism went much further iir-materialisation und in the production of .angels like "Katie King," than Mrs Leonard and Mrs Piper can go: For modern mediums ax*© subconsciously aware of tho dignity of tho world and of the majesty of natural law, and are therefore unable to abandon themselves to the occult as their confreres did. Sir A. C. Doyle is mmself a psychological problem. That no is a clever writer and a hard worker is to be admitted, though criminal yarns are hardly masterwork. That he combines with vigour and- matter of factness a credulity which leaves the common man agape . is no great marvel. Jekyll and Hyde ' appear on other than the sensual plane. Somo of the great classical writers were iho counterpart of Sir A. C. Doyde. One of them would stay in bed shivering all day if he happened to put his left leg out before his right. Ghosts gibbering on the streets and bloody rain wor»' enough to paralyse any mind but Caasar's. That the creators of the Roman Empire should bo the victims 1 of augurs and "soothsayers, that the Delphic oracle should dictate the movement of armios, and that the pale shades from Hades should flit "across the gloom of those old 6eances is greatly to be re- ' numbered. It may also be remembered that the whole movement endod in cynicism' and atheism. ; That Sir A. C. Doylo duplicates the old paganism has been a little concealed from public notice during his N.Z. tour. I The fairies on the toadstools have ' dropped from sight. It is no marvel that the most mischievous, feature of his propaganda has also .been o"bscured. That is "fortune-telling, for which old hags and young "prophets" get "quod." Sir Arthur has been responsible for racing tips secured through mediums who reckon to be able to read to-morrow before it comes.. The medium who really could fill in the card of winners fo.r Cup, day would ruin the "Sport of Those of us who love not the gambling aspect of it might. l>e.pleased. But tho ' extension of the augur's art would paralyse tho world." In of healthy vigour which grapple* with uncertain issues "and in tho teeth of blenched antagonisms follows ju> the noblest," there would come a bilious fatalism and a trembling attention to cryptic utterances. Steid, it is well known, started the fiitil venture of a-daily,in London i*/Ott spook ad'-'Vo. He "ent happily to '* ' sea on the ill-fnted "Titanic." for he Was (accord>ntr to nufnrs) to dio in a k street iri London. Let nnv one imagine tha of kiowincc in. front That his life's b'storv is to bo he * will perceive where the new crusade is leading. Unfounded Claims. which has crowded the hauls of I --'-the Dominion with curious and anxious | people is the pretentious announcement I that compnraication with the desCd has j been established. Thqt tho announce- | ment is in front of the facts is admitted by cautions Spiritualists, of whom Sir [ Arthur Conan Doyle is hardly one. The canons of proof are established. s . Nothing that has "come through" has satisfied those canons. The psychic photos were withheld from expert examination here—indeed, the fact tihat ! * 'lady" vouched for 0110 of them, and ( that members of the Peerage had somo- \ •, thing or anotlitr to do with another was : substituted for Nor has ps.vchoplasm been submitted to our uni- * ' a boratory. We are vaguely •old that it has been analysed. What , , "®ppens is that anxious hearts over- < 1 Whelmed with great desires concerning their untimely dead have had experiences which have suggested to them Mie ' , continued existence of their beloved. ■Itese experiences are not on the same plane with the quiet certainties with whim religious history and experience » replete. But the fact that wants .stressing is that none of these commu+t a '^ 1 i ons are bc y°nd the suspicions that attach to them,- grounded partly on ■oeir subjectivity and partly on their relation to telepathy and other unexplored functions of human personality. O. Lodge's case would not survive Sir A. C. Dovle's . purely private experience. >' eats arranged by Spiritualists them- ■. ? Veß » which were to put the matter* - ie reac b of scepticism, broke> ;. hopelessly down. The Moses caso and * ?^- ers case aro known to rcflUiro repetition. The modern Spiritf~ U«iflt does not care to say so, but -he is \j , guesting for tho grand perhaps," anu £: "Besting among the acknawladned, i S'-'v

frauds of mediums and the mocking inconsequence of the spirits themselves. &ir A. C. I>oyle is remarkable among the leaders in the cccult in that, having riddled out so much of t;he fraud as ho can, he reckons to have a now revelation left at the bottom of his sieve. That new revelation contradicts the old, which lias come to us in connexion with C irist's glorious personality at nearly , all points. To class tho 'polygamous i camel-driver or Arabia with our Lord is to write oneself down as dull on moral differences. To waive aside tin; ; most reiitral of all the laws of life, that • of vicarious sacrifice, which finds <-o i Christians be'ieve) its supreme example I in Him, is to be bold to the point of auii-.i"itv. To sweep nsida as ot no account the so frequent sensualism, e'_oi :sm, and selfishness of man —to de<dare v'tat v.e arc all (save perhaps half ;i dozeni good fellows at bottom, /ind , that there merely some pleasant i waiting-halls on the fringes of a life of ; esceedinir jollity, is indeed revolutionary. The revolution may shake our ; sense of moral values, and so the structure of society .itself. A Poor Substitute. When sill* this, lias been said, it rerfrnins to be said that religious people jare intensely interested in life after death. They b'.lieve in it fixedly. Thev do not deny that spirits may communicate. They certainly believe that they can <|iiietly minister to us in our need. But in common with the people of all the great religions, they believe that it is man's cbicf glory to have eommun : on : wit'li the Father of Spirits. God is the. groat concern of the rclig'ous. mind. A poor substitute for the beatific visionis "my little girl and her flnxen curls" which figures in the "New Revelation" in which God is quite a negligible factor. ' The nverago attitude of Church people to the occult is- (first) to value it as exposing to view a larger vision of man's mentality, nnd so removing us the further from Sir A. C. Doyle's (and our) bete noire, materialism; and (secondly) to regard it ns poor and unhealthy compared with those reasons for human survival which are to bo found in: (1) The largeness of man's mental and moral nature which overlaps tlbo 70 years; (2) the value of human personality which God Himself cannot create, but which is builded amid the adventures of our time life; and (3) the new values given to lifo by the life and! teadhing .and death and resurrection of •Jesus. That the veil should ho drawn as iclosely as ib is between that life an J this, may prove to have been necessary to the vigour and courage and enterprise with which wo grapple witlh our earthly tasks. There arc regions in which faith is better and richer than sigilit.'