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Spiritualism : Is Communication with the Spirit World an Established Fact?

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Spiritualism : Is Communication with the Spirit World an Established Fact? ti n Is Communhatm with Be an established fact? flRH ^H^^^^^H^K^^^^^^^^^^I^^B^^H^^^I^^^^^^^B^^^^HI^^^^^H bl™' ^^^^^H^^HHS^^ffiiyS^^H^^^^^^^^^I^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^BH^^BiHwv^ 1 f \ 1 PRO—WAKE COOK^H hi ''^KSBm 1 CON FRANK P0DM0rE9I i 1 l::| - ; Hodgson, AMEfilC^^ secret; ^, FLAub, B BOYLSTOtl BOSTOxM, MASS. Boston Medical Library 8 The Fenway The Pro and Con Series EDITED BY HENRY MURRAY VOL. II. /l 6 Br SPIRITUALISM " ^ SPIRITUALISM IS COMMUNICATION WITH THE SPIRIT WORLD AN ESTABLISHED FACT? PRO—E. WAKE COOK AUTHOR OF '•' THE OEGANISATION OF MAlfKIND " 'THE INCREASING PURPOSE" ETC. CON—FRANK PODMORE AUTHOR OF " MODERN SPIRITUALISM " " STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH" ETC. AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM LONDON ISBISTER AND COMPANY LIMITED 15 & 16 TAVISTOCK ST. COVENT GARDEN 1903 / 9. cA:/d9, Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &> Co. London <&» Edinburgh '-OCIETY FO.- KEbt-i^i^^^- f5 BOVi-^S-V.ss. BOSTON. SPIRITUALISM—PRO BY E. WAKE COOK A Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School http://www.archive.org/details/spiritualismiscoOOcook SPIRITUALISM IS COMMUNICATION WITH THE SPIRIT-WORLD AN ESTABLISHED FACT? PRO PAKT I The mystery of Existence deepens. Physical Science, whose splendid advance promised to make all things clear, is taking us into mys- terious wonder-worlds, revealing profounder depths than were ever dreamt of in our philosophies, and making greater and greater demands on our powers of belief. Materialism, never either philosophically or scientifically sound, seems now to be suspended in mid-air like Mahomet's coffin. What is matter ? No one can tell us ; Sir Oliver Lodge asserting that we know more of electricity than of matter. Years ago I said that if we had eyes to see by electricity, which is first-cousin to 4 SPIRITUALISM—PRO light, this so solid-seeming world would be almost invisible to us, and we should only see the few things that are non-conductors. What a transformation that would work in our ideas can be realised even by the unimaginative. The recent discovery of the Eontgen rays proves the truth of my contention. Science postulated indivisible and indestruc- tible atoms, small beyond the limits of thought. Now the chemist finds they can be destroyed, or dematerialised, and put as much out of reach of his most delicate tests as the soul is. The atom of hydrogen, hitherto considered the smallest unit, is now found to contain a thou- " " sand forceful entities called electrons ; while an atom of mercury contains one hundred thousand. To illustrate the relative sizes of the atom and the electron. Sir Oliver Lodge likens the atom to a church two hundred feet long and proportionately high and broad, and the electron to a full stop in ordinary print. The electrons occupy the atom as a regiment of soldiers might hold a country by being scattered all over it ; their distance apart recalls Sir Isaac Newton's statement about atoms, that they may be as far apart in pro- portion to their size as the fixed stars are in proportion to their size. Yet these inconceiv- ably minute entities are of awful potency. Sir William Crookes, in his lecture before the Prince of Wales on his enrolment as a Fellow of the Koyal Society, said that a gramme of ! SPIRITUALISM—PRO 5 electrons contained force enough to lift the whole British Navy to the top of Ben Nevis Years ago Sir W. Crookes made some wonderful researches in "Molecular Physics inHigh Vacua," and he invented the apparatus known as Crookes s tube, which has proved remarkably fruitful in results. A number of valuable discoveries have resulted, including the Eont- gen rays, and it has now led to something still more astounding. M. and Madame Curie and M. Laborde recently reported to the French Academy of Sciences the discovery of a wonderful element they call Radium, which not only produces heat without combustion^ but throws oif spontaneously a stream of particles so minute as to bring about no loss of substance after millions of years ! And so the flood of marvels flows on as we penetrate the arcana of nature. Lord Kelvin, then Sir William Thomson, for- mulated the brilliant theory that the material atom may be a vortex-ring in a frictionless fluid. This Cosmic Ether is a bundle of paradoxes. It is so fine as to be oat of the range of our tactual senses, and yet, instead of behaving like a gas in the last extremity of attenuation, it acts like a solid or semi-solid—like a jelly. In this case it may be stratified, and correspond with matter, having its solid, fluid, gaseous, and radiant conditions. This would bring us to a state of fineness beside which what is called " spirit " would be quite a tangible entity. 6 SPIRITUALISM—PRO Dr. Osborne Reynolds,"^ one of the ''men with heavy scientific appendages to their names," says that to complete the mechanical explanation of the structure of the universe, and explain with mathematical exactness all the known facts, we must postulate a perfect solid in place of the ether, and that all motion through it must be wave-motion ; that it must be a granular substance of a mean density " ten thousand times greater than that of water, or, as being four hundred times greater than that of the densest matter on earth"; "the mean pressure being nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand tons on the square inch." The minuteness of the grains of this solid, and their sphere of motion, all worked out mathemati- cally, go beyond what is said of electrons, and they simply leave us gasping. Wild as these statements seem of these awful pressures, or stresses, they curiously correspond with the unthinkable energy of the electrons ;t and the long course of beautiful experiments on which they are founded, give such startling, such unexpected results that they will probably lead to a revolution of scientific conceptions. But to return to orthodox scientists. Lord Kelvin has had partly to abandon Newton's Law of Gravitation and confine it to tangible * ^' On an Inversion of Ideas as to the Structure of the Universe." Cambridge Press. 1902. t Sir Oliver Lodge favours the theory that material atoms consist solely of various groupings of electrons. a! SPIRITUALISM—PRO 7 bodies, the Cosmic Ether being outside its operation. Science is still groping for an ex- planation of the cause of gravitation ; the guesses put forth postulate an amount of pres- sure, or energy, ridiculously out of proportion to the effects produced. The theories of Clerk- Maxwell, Le Sage, and Lord Kelvin make impossible demands on our credulity. Years ago Lord Kelvin, driven by the force of his genius, postulated a seventh sense— magnetic sense—but the moment he found this was bringing him into line with the spiritualists he shied, and to put himself right threw stones at us. Having done this, he gave the reins to his genius again, and it has done what all such transcendent genius must do—it has brought him straight towards our camp. Confronted by serious difficulties in the undulatory theory of light, which had baffled scientists, he, " with a master hand, has dispelled all these difficulties by a direct denial of a tenet of the Schoolmen that ' two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time.' He says that the material atom is permeated by the ether atom, both occupying the same space. The electron is the marvellous worker in the atom of matter, per- meated by the ether atom." ^ Thus we have a sort of trinity in unity even in the atom The significance of this will be seen when we * See Lord Kelvin's " New Idea about Ether Atoms." By Dr. J. G. McPherson, F.R.S.E. Knowledge, April ' - 1903, ^ 8 SPIRITUALISM—PRO come to the working hypothesis of the Spiritu- ahsts. I have touched on these amazing demands on our powers of behef to show that the sanest scientists are taking us into wonder-worlds, awe-inspiring, transcending all theologic notions, and stirring that '^ Cosmic Emotion " so essential to religion. I also wished to show that scientific conceptions are changing and deepening, coming more into line with the higher branches of the Spiritualist's Philosophy ; and that the only thing absolutely certain is that the grander, the higher, deeper and broader the belief the nearer it is sure to be to the Truth ; and that the narrow conservative scepticism, discredited age after age by every new discovery that has blessed mankind, is becoming more and more an out-of-date absurdity. These changes in fundamental conceptions show that to "establish" a thing as a ''scien- tific fact" does not mean that it is built on quite such a rock of ages as we have hitherto supposed ; it only means it is given a temporary halting-place in the progress of thought. II The popular notion of Spiritualism figures it as a strange mixture of ignorance, credulity, imposture, and old-world superstitions ; founded SPIRITUALISM—PRO 9 on a belief in ghosts, spirit-rapping, table-turn- ing, materialisations, and other physical pheno- mena that are vaguely supposed to have been exposed as trickery. But, as a matter of fact, it is a Scientific System of thought resting on vast masses of verified facts, of enormous range and variety, involving questions of the pro- foundest import. The phenomena range through all history, accompany the rise, progress, and revival of all forms of Religion. They persist in spite of all opposition, and the movements founded on them have marched step by step with the splendid but one-sided advance of physical science.
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