About twenty years ago a writing medium, a sober professional man whose character would not be questioned, showed me a pile of his automatic "script." He sincerely believed that he had for several years been in communication with the dead. I glanced over many sheets of platitude and familiar moralizing, and then asked him to tell me how they described the new world in which the dead lived. He hesitated, and tried to convince me that this point, which seemed to me the most interesting of all, was unimportant. When I pressed, he said that it was a world so different from ours that the spirits could hardly convey a coherent description of it in our language. They had to be content with such vague phrases as that they "lived in houses of flowers."

That was the state of the "new revelation" twenty years ago. Long before that whole volumes of quite precise description of ghost-land had been written, but it was discredited. Andrew Jackson Davis had invented the name "Summerland," which Sir A. C. Doyle adopts to-day; but Davis's wonderful gospel had turned out to be a farrago of wild speculation, founded on an imperfect grasp of a crude, early stage of science. Then Stainton Moses and hundreds of other automatic writers had given us knowledge about the next world. A common feature of these early descriptions was that the dead lived in a quasi-material universe round about the earth and could visit the various planets and the sun at any time. In that case, of course, they could give most valuable assistance to our astronomers, and they were quite willing. Some said that there were living beings on the sun. As a matter of fact, one of our early astronomers had conjectured that there might be a cool, dark surface below the shining clouds which give out the light of the sun, and this "spirit" was following his lead. We know to-day that no part of the sun falls below a temperature of 7,000° C. Others described life on Jupiter and Saturn, and we now know that they are red-hot. Another medium, Helen Smith, attracted to herself a most romantic interest for years because she was controlled by the spirit of a late inhabitant of the planet Mars, and we learned a marvellous amount of weird detail about life on Mars.

The thing was so obviously overdone, and Spiritualism was so generally discredited in the eighties on account of the very numerous exposures of mediums, that for a time revelations were less frequent. People fell back very largely on the older belief, that the dead are "pure spirits," living in an environment that cannot be described in our language, which is material. This, in point of fact, is a hollow and insincere pretext. Philosophers have been accustomed for two thousand years to describe the life of the spirit, and have provided a vocabulary for any who are interested in it. The truth is that ideas were changing, and mediums were not at all sure what it was safe to say.

Towards the close of the century there was some revival of Spiritualism, and there were fresh attempts to describe the beautiful world beyond the grave. Mediums were then in the "houses of flowers" stage. It sounded very pretty, but you must not take it literally. With the advance of the new century, mediums recovered all their confidence. It was at the beginning of the present century that physicists began to discover that matter was composed of electrons, and "ether" was the most discussed subject in the whole scientific press. Here was a grand opportunity. A world of ether would not be so crudely Materialistic as the earlier post-mortem world of the mediums. Yet it might be moulded by the imagination into a more or less material shape. It must be frankly admitted that the "pure spirit" idea is not attractive. Those who yearn to meet again the people they had known and loved are a little chilled at the prospect of finding only what seems to be an abstraction, a mere mathematical point, a thing paler and less tangible than a streak of mist. Ether was therefore gladly seized as a good compromise. Ghost-land was in the ether of space.

There had been, it is true, earlier references in Spiritualist revelations to "ether bodies," but it is chiefly since the series of discoveries in science to which radium led that the modern Spiritualist idea has been evolved. As usual, the spiritual revelations follow in the rear of advancing science. But in this case the automatic writers had a great advantage. They need only follow the lead of Sir Oliver Lodge, who, however curious his ideas of physiology may be, is certainly an authority on ether. He began by hinting mysteriously that he saw "a spiritual significance" in ether. Following up that clue, the automatic writers have worked so industriously that we now know the "Summerland" more thoroughly than we know Central Africa or Thibet.

Buoyed up by the growing sentiment of agreement, as proved by the very profitable sales of his works, Sir Oliver Lodge, in Raymond, gave the world a vast amount of detail about the land beyond the grave. He did not guarantee it, it is true. That is not his way. But he assured the public that his mediums were undoubtedly "in touch" with his dead son, and the Spiritualist public must be pardoned if they understood that all the marvellous matter put out in the name of Raymond was to be taken seriously. The message was really ingenious. Raymond was, unhappily, not merely unable to give "direct voice" communications, as Sir A. C. Doyle's son is believed to have done, but he could not even directly communicate through Mrs. Leonard, the medium. He used as an intermediary the spirit of a child named "Feda"; and, of course, when one has to use a child—and such an irresponsible, lisping, foolish little child as "Feda"—as intermediary, you must not press the message literally in every part. The method had the advantage of pleasing Spiritualists, who found a complete confirmation of all their speculations about ghost-land, and at the same time disarming critics, because Raymond was not really responsible.

Many people did not fully realize this when they bore down heavily and contemptuously on the description of the next world which is given in Raymond. The deceased young officer had a "nice doggie," which he brought along with him when he strolled to the medium's shop to send a message to his distinguished father. Presently the medium added a "cat," though she said nothing about a cats'-meat man. Raymond had also what I believe young officers call "a bird"—a young lady acquaintance on spiritual terms. There were cows in the spirit meadows and flowers in the gardens. Our "damaged flowers," we are told, pass over to the other side and raise their heads once more gloriously. Why they flower if there are no bees, whether they have chlorophyll circulating in their leaves, whether the soil is sandy or clayey, etc., we are not told. The information comes in chance clots, as if Raymond were too busy with ethereal billiards to study the natural history of ghostland very closely. We are told to picture Raymond in a real suit of clothes. He was offered the orthodox white sheet, which every right-minded spirit wears; but he had a British young man's repugnance to that sort of thing. So in the laboratories on the other side they made Raymond an ordinary suit, out of "damaged worsted" which we earthly wastrels had no use for. For other young officers, with less refined tastes, they manufactured whisky-and-soda and cigars. "Don't think I'm stretching it," Raymond observed to his father, through "Feda" and Mrs. Leonard. The father does not say what he thought.

Now, it is, as I said, quite wrong for Spiritualists to plant all this upon the authority of Sir Oliver Lodge. Does he not warn us in a footnote that he has "not yet traced the source of all this supposed information"? It would not take most of us long to do so, but the remark at least leaves open a way of retreat for Sir Oliver Lodge. On the other hand, we must not blame Spiritualists too severely. He assures them that this lady, Mrs. Leonard, is in undoubted communication with his dead son, and one may question whether he is entitled to take one part of the lady's message as genuine and leave other parts open. At all events, this puerile and bewildering nonsense was put before the world in an expensive book by Sir Oliver Lodge, with his personal assurance that Mrs. Leonard was a genuine medium.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle next gathered details from scores of revelations of this kind—they fell upon us like leaves in Vallombrosa after Sir Oliver Lodge's bold lead—and built them into a consistent picture of "Summerland." It is an ether world. Each of us has a duplicate of his body in ether. This is quite in harmony with science, he says, because some one has discovered that "bound" ether—that is to say, ether enclosed in a material body—is different from the free ether of space. From this slight difference Sir A. C. Doyle concludes that there is a portion of ether shaped exactly like my body; then, by a still more heroic leap of the imagination, he gathers that this special ether has not merely the contour of my body, but duplicates all its internal organs and minute parts; and lastly—this is a really prodigious leap—he supposes that this ether duplicate will remain when the body dissolves. On that theory, naturally, every flower and tree and rock that ever existed, every house or ship that was ever built, every oyster or chicken that was ever swallowed, has left an ether duplicate somewhere.

Well, when you die, your ethereal body remains, and is animated by your soul just as the body of flesh was. A death-bed is, on the new view, a most remarkable scene. Men and women weep round the ghastly expiring frame, but all round them are invisible (ether) beings smiling and joyful. When the last breath leaves the prostrate body, you stand erect in your ethereal frame, and your ethereal friends gather round and wring your ethereal hand. Congratulations over, one radiant spirit takes you by the hand and leads you through the solid wall and out into the beyond. Presumably he is in a hurry to fit you with one of the "damaged worsted" suits. Sir Arthur stresses the fact that they have the same sense of modesty as we.

The next step is rather vague. One gathers that the reborn man is dazed, and he goes to sleep for weeks or months. Sleep is generally understood to be a natural process by which nerve and muscle, which have become loaded with chemical refuse, are relieved of this by the blood. What it means in ghostland we have not the least idea. But why puzzle over details where all is a challenge to common human reason? You awaken presently in Summerland and get your bearings. This is so much like the paradise described by Mr. Vale Owen that we will put ourselves under the guidance of that gentleman. I would merely note here a little inconsistency in the gospel according to St. Conan.

One of the now discovered charms of Summerland is that the young rapidly reach maturity, and the old go back to maturity. The ether-duplicate of the stillborn child continues to grow—we would give much for a treatise from Professor Huxley (in his new incarnation) on this process of growth without mitosis and metabolism—and the ether-duplicate of the shrunken old lady of eighty smoothes out its wrinkles, straightens its back, and recovers its fine contour of adipose tissue. But here a difficulty occurred to Sir A. C. Doyle. In his lectures all over the kingdom he has had to outbid the preacher. I promise you, he told bereaved mothers, that you shall see again just the blue-eyed, golden-haired child that you lost. He even says this in his book. With all goodwill, we cannot let him have it both ways. If children rapidly mature, mothers will not see the golden-haired child again.

At the risk of seeming meticulous, I would point out another aspect of the revelation on which more information is desirable. Golden hair implies a certain chemical combination which is well known to the physiologist. Blue eyes mean a certain degree of thinness of pigment on the front curtains of the eye. Now, ether has no chemical elements. It is precisely the subtle substance of the universe which is not yet moulded into chemical elements. Are we to take it that Summerland is really a material universe, not an ether world?

As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has glowingly praised the revelations which have come through the Rev. Mr. Vale Owen, I turn to these for closer guidance, and I find that my suspicion is correct. The next world is a material world. Whether it has a different sun from ours is not stated, but it is a world of wonderful colour. Flowers of the most gorgeous description live in it perpetually. Whether they ever grew up or will ever decay, whether they have roots in soil and need water, the prophet has not yet told us. But the world is lovely with masses of flowers. People also dress like the flowers. They have beautifully coloured robes and gems (none of your "damaged worsted" for Mr. Vale Owen). In other words, light, never-fading light, is the grand feature of the next world. Since ether does not reflect light, it is obviously a material universe.

Music is the second grand element. Perhaps Mr. Owen would dispute this, and say that preaching is the outstanding feature. Certainly, everybody he describes preaches so constantly and so dully that many people will not like the prospect. Let us take it, rather, that music is the second great feature. They have great factories for musical instruments which make a mockery of Brinsmeads. The bands go up high towers and produce effects which no earthly musician ever dreamed of producing. It follows, of course, that the ghosts not only tread a solid soil, in which flowers grow, on which they build towers and mansions, but a very considerable atmosphere floats above the soil. Mr. Vale Owen, in fact, introduces streams and sheets of water; lovely lakes and rivers for the good ghosts and "stagnant pools" in the slums of ghostland. We will not press this. Mr. Owen forgot for a moment that it never rains in Summerland. But the atmosphere is an essential part of the revelation, as without it there will certainly be no music or flying birds. And an atmosphere means a very solid material world. Our moon, which weighs millions of billions of tons, is too light to possess an atmosphere and water. Consequently, there must be thousands of miles of solid rock and metal underfoot in ghostland.

It follows further that, since ghostland is very spacious, and since at least a billion humans (to say nothing of animals) have quitted this earth since the ape men first wandered over it, this other material universe must be very extensive. If all the inhabited planets in the universe have their Summerlands, or all pour their dead into one vast Summerland, one begins to see that modern science is a ridiculous illusion. We should not see the sun, to say nothing of stars a thousand billion miles away, or even remoter nebulÆ. As to astronomical calculations of mass and gravitation....

I can sustain the comedy no longer. These "revelations" are the most childish twaddle that has been put before our race since the Middle Ages. They are the meanderings of imaginations on a level with that of a fifteen-year-old school-girl. One really begins to wonder if our generation is not in a state of senile decay, when tens of thousands of us acclaim this sort of thing as an outcome of superhuman intelligence. It is on a level with the "happy hunting grounds" of the Amerind. It is a dreamy parson's idea of the kind of world he would like to retire to, and continue to "do good" without getting tired. It is a flimsy, irresponsible, juvenile thing of paint and tinsel and gold-foil: the kind of transformation-scene in which we revelled, at the Christmas pantomime, when we were young. Our generation needs guidance if ever any generation of men did. Another great war would wreck the planet. The social soil heaves with underground movements. The stars are hidden from view. And people come before us with this kind of insipid puerility, and tell us it is "the greatest message ever offered to man."

Seriously, what it is can be told in few words. It is partly a fresh attempt to bring our generation back to religion. It is partly an attempt to divert working people from the politics and economics of this world. And it is partly a fresh outbreak of the unlimited credulity which every epidemic of Spiritualism has developed since 1848. There was such a phase in the fifties of the nineteenth century, when Spiritualism swept over the world. There was a second such phase in the seventies, when materializations began. This was checked by exposures everywhere in the early eighties, and not until our time has Spiritualism partly recovered. Now the vast and lamentable emotional disturbance of the War has given it a fresh opportunity, and for a time the flame of credulity has soared up again.

To come back to the question which forms the title of this book, the reader may supply the answer, but I will venture to offer him a few summary reflections. We do well to distinguish two classes of phenomena. Broadly, but by no means exactly, this is the distinction between psychical and physical phenomena. Messages on slates or paper from the spirit-world I would class with the physical phenomena. We have seen that they reek with fraud, and there is no serious claim that any of them are genuine.

The nearest we can get to a useful division is to set on one side a small class of mediums of high character who claim that, in trance and script, they are spirit-controlled.

Spiritualism is not based on these things. The thousands of enthusiastic Spiritualists of Great Britain and America know nothing about the "Ear of Dionysius" and the "cross-correspondences" of the Psychical Researchers. Their faith is solidly based on physical phenomena. They are taught by their leaders to base it on physical phenomena. Sir A. C. Doyle and Sir W. Barrett urge the levitations and other miracles of D. D. Home and Stainton Moses and Kathleen Goligher. Sir Oliver Lodge—who seems also to admit the preceding—asks us to consider seriously the performances of Marthe Beraud. Sir W. Crookes lets it be understood that to the day of his death he believed in "Katie King" and the spirit-played accordion. Professor Richet, and all those other professors and scholars whose names are fondly quoted by Spiritualists, rely entirely on physical phenomena. If you cut out all the physical-phenomena mediums of the nineteenth century, and all the ghost-photographs and "direct voices" of to-day, you have very little left. That is to say that Spiritualism is generally based on fraud.

Does it matter? Yes, it matters exceedingly. It matters more than it ever did before. The world is at a pass where it needs the clearest-headed attention and warmest interest of every man and woman in every civilization. Fine sentiments, too, we want; but not a sentimentality that palsies the judgment. Men never faced graver problems or had a greater opportunity. Instead of distraction we want concentration on earth. Instead of dreaminess we want a close appreciation of realities. There lies before our generation a period either of greater general prosperity than was ever known before, or a period of prolonged and devastating struggle. Which it shall be depends on our wisdom.

Is there any need to settle whether we shall live after death? The Spiritualist says that if we could convince men that their lot in that other world will be decided by their characters they will be more eager for justice, honour, and sobriety. But a man's position in this world is settled by his character. Justice, honour, and sobriety are laws of this world. Men would have perceived it long ago, and acted accordingly, but for the unfortunate belief that these qualities were arbitrarily commanded by supernatural powers. We need no other-worldly motives whatever for the cultivation of character. Indeed, so far as I can see, the man who gambles and drinks is more likely to say to the Spiritualist: "You tell me there is no vindictive hell for what I do here. You tell me there are no horses or fiery drinks in that other world. Then I will drink and bet while the opportunity remains, and be sober and prudent afterwards."

But the dead, the loved ones we have lost! Must we forfeit this new hope that we may see them again? Let us make no mistake. Half the civilized world has already forfeited it. Six million people in London never approach a church, and the vast majority of these believe no longer in heaven. So it is in the large towns of nearly every civilization. Yet the number of Spiritualists in the entire world is not one-tenth the number of "pagans" in London alone. And there is no weeping and gnashing of teeth. At the time of the wrench one suffers. Slowly nature embalms the wound, as she already draws her green mantle over the hideous wounds of France and Belgium. We learn serenity. Life is a gift. Every friend and dear one is a gift. It is not wise to complain that gifts do not last for ever.

The finest sentiment you can bestow on the memory of the dead is to make the world better for the living. Has your child been torn from you? In its memory try to make the world safer and happier for the myriads of children who remain. This earth is but a poor drab thing compared with what it could be made in a single generation. Hotbeds of disease abound in our cities, and children fall in scandalous numbers in the heat of summer or perish in the blasts of winter. Let the pain of loss drive us survivors into securing that losses shall be less frequent and less painful. Do not listen to those who say that critics crush the voice of the heart in the name of reason. We want all the heart we can get in life, all the strength of emotion and devotion we can engender. But let it be expended on the plain, and plainly profitable, task of making this earth a Summerland. Do that, as your leisure and your powers permit, and, when the day is over, you will lie down with a smile, whether you are ever to awaken or are to sleep for ever.

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