On March 11 of this year Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did me the honour of debating the claims of Spiritualism with me before a vast and distinguished audience at the Queen's Hall, London. My opponent had insisted that I should open the debate; and, when it was pointed out that the critic usually follows the exponent, he had indicated that I had ample material to criticize in the statement of the case for Spiritualism in his two published works.

How conscientiously I addressed myself to that task, and with what result, must be left to the reader of the published debate. Suffice it to say that my distinguished opponent showed a remarkable disinclination to linger over his own books, and wished to "broaden the issue." Since the bulk of the time allotted to me in the debate was then already spent, it was not possible to discuss satisfactorily the new evidences adduced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and not recorded in his books. I hasten to repair the defect in this critical examination of every variety of Spiritualistic phenomena.

My book has a serious aim. The pen of even the dullest author—and I trust I do not fall into that low category of delinquents—must grow lively or sarcastic at times in the course of such a study as this. When one finds Spiritualists gravely believing that a corpulent lady is transferred by spirit hands, at the rate of sixty miles an hour, over the chimney-pots of London, and through several solid walls, one cannot be expected to refrain from smiling. When one contemplates a group of scientific or professional men plumbing the secrets of the universe through the mediumship of an astute peasant or a carpenter, or a lady of less than doubtful virtue, one may be excused a little irony. When our creators of super-detectives enthusiastically applaud things which were fully exposed a generation ago, and affirm that, because they could not, in pitch darkness, see any fraud, there was no fraud, we cannot maintain the gravity of philosophers. When we find this "new revelation" heralded by a prodigious outbreak of fraud, and claiming as its most solid foundations to-day a mass of demonstrable trickery and deceit, our sense of humour is pardonably irritated. Nor are these a few exceptional weeds in an otherwise fair garden. In its living literature to-day, in its actual hold upon a large number of people in Europe and America, Spiritualism rests to a very great extent on fraudulent representations.

Here is my serious purpose. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made two points against me which pleased his anxious followers. One—which evoked a thunder of applause—was that I was insensible of the consolation which this new religion has brought to thousands of bereaved humans. I am as conscious of that as he or any other Spiritualist is. It has, however, nothing to do with the question whether Spiritualism is true or no, which we were debating; or with the question to what extent Spiritualism is based on fraud, which I now discuss. Far be it from me to slight the finer or more tender emotions of the human heart. On the contrary, it is in large part to the more general cultivation of this refinement and delicacy of feeling that I look for the uplifting of our race. But let us take things in order. Does any man think it is a matter of indifference whether this ministry of consolation is based on fraud and inspired by greed? It is inconceivable.

And, indeed, the second point made by my opponent shows that I do not misconceive him and his followers. It is that I exaggerate the quantity of fraud in the movement. If they are right—if they have purified the movement of the grosser frauds which so long disfigured it—they have some ground to ask the critic to address himself to the substantial truth rather than the occasional imposture. But this is a question of fact; and to that question of fact the following pages are devoted. I survey the various classes of Spiritualistic phenomena. I tell the reader how materializations, levitations, raps, direct voices, apports, spirit-photographs, lights and music in the dark, messages from the dead, and so on, have actually and historically been engineered during the last fifty years. This is, surely, useful. Spiritualism is in one of its periodical phases of advance. Our generation knows nothing of the experience of these things of an earlier generation. To teach one's fellows the weird ingenuity, the sordid impostures, the grasping trickery, which have accompanied Spiritualism since its birth in America in 1848 can hurt only one class of men—impostors.

J. M.

Easter, 1920.