The consideration of the effects of a prepossession in favor of a
belief in spirit-agency leads naturally to a consideration of the
origin of the belief. This tendency to believe in the return to
earth of the spirits of the departed, is probably to be viewed as a
form of expression of the primitive animism that dominates savage
philosophy, that pervades the historical development of religion
and of science, and that crops out in various ways throughout all
grades of civilization and all levels of society. Combined with
it is an equally fundamental love for the marvelous, and a more
or less suppressed belief in the significance of the obscure, the
mysterious, the occult. These belief-tendencies, accordingly, have
an anthropological significance and an historical continuity which
Mr. Lang thus presents: "These instances prove that, from the
Australian blacks in the Bush, who hear raps when the spirits come,
to ancient Egypt, and thence to Greece, and last, in our own time,
and in a London suburb, similar experiences real or imaginary are
explained by the same hypothesis. No 'survival' can be more odd and
striking, none more illustrative of the permanence, in human nature,
of certain elements. To examine these psychological curiosities may,
or may not, be 'useful,' but, at the lowest, the study may rank as
a branch of mythology or folk-lore." Mr. Tylor fully concords with
this view: "The received spiritualistic theory," he says, "belongs
to the philosophy of savages.... Suppose a wild North American
Indian looking on at a spirit-séance in London. As to the presence
of disembodied spirits, manifesting themselves by raps, noises,
voices, and other physical actions, the savage would be perfectly
at home in the proceedings; for such things are part and parcel
of his recognized system of nature." Mr. Podmore's comment upon
the spiritualistic hypothesis expresses a kindred thought. "As the
peasant referred the movement of the steam-engine to the only motive
force with which he was acquainted, and supposed that there were
horses inside, so the spiritualists, recognizing, as they thought,
in the phenomena the manifestations of will and intelligence not
apparently those of any person visibly present, invoked the agency of
the spirits of the dead. We can hardly call this belief an hypothesis
or an explanation; it seems indeed at its outset to have been little
more than the instinctive utterance of primitive animism."
The strongly rooted, anti-logical tendencies of our nature, thus
indicated, come to the surface in various and unexpected ways,
and give rise to views and cults that have much in common with
the manifestations and beliefs of Spiritualism. It is this very
community that forms one of the recognizable stigmata of such
movements; everywhere there is an appeal to the yearning for the
mysterious, for special signs and omens that may reinforce the
personal interpretation of the events of the universe, and reveal the
transcendence of the limitations of natural law. These movements,
too, seem at different epochs to flare up and spread into true
epidemics, utterly consuming all inherent foundations of logic and
common sense, in the white heat of the emotional interest with which
they advance. It seems to matter little how trivial, how absurd,
how vulgar, how ignorant, or how improbable the manifestations may
be, the passion for belief in their mysterious origin sets all
aside. Why returning spirits should devote their energies to playing
tambourines, and conjuring with slates, to Indian dances, and vapid,
bombastic, and ungrammatical "inspirational" speeches, seems not even
to be considered. It requires as little evidence and as ridiculous
evidence to prove a spirit to a spiritualist as it did to prove a
witch to a witch-finder. Those whose feelings are not appealed to by
the doctrines of Spiritualism will assuredly never be attracted by
its logic.
The psychologist who observes the natural history of the belief in
Spiritualism,--its origin, and mode of propagation, its blossoming
and fruitage, is naturally led to consider the nature of its decline.
That it declines rapidly in the presence of newer rivals for popular
favor, appealing to much the same mental and emotional traits, and
therefore finding a similar constituency, has been made evident
in the vicissitudes of its career. It suffered considerably at the
period when the meteoric showers of Theosophy passed over our planet;
it is subject to the waning of interest that always accompanies
familiarity, and that makes even the most exciting experiences pale
with time. Such familiarity also gives opportunity for the return
of a calm and critical investigative attitude, such as the last two
decades, in particular, have brought about. That such investigation
is destined seriously to influence opinion, and eventually to triumph
over error and superstition, no one with confidence in the ultimate
rationality of mankind will be inclined to doubt. In the case of
Spiritualism, logic will find a worthy ally in the more discerning
development of the moral sensibilities which true culture always
brings with it. When it is realized that a system that aims to
instruct men in regard to beliefs appealing most earnestly and deeply
to the human heart appears in the light of exact investigation as
a tottering framework, held together by gross fraud, covered over
with innocent self-deception, but also with vulgar sham; when it is
realized that under the shelter of such a system men and women all
over our land are daily and hourly preying upon the credulity of
simple-minded folk, and obtaining a livelihood by means for which
the law provides punishment,--the moral indignation following upon
this realization will impart vigor to the protest against such
practices, which a mere sense of their irrationality would fail to
incite. The moral and æsthetic aversion which many of the practices
and tenets of Spiritualism arouses in those whose ideals are sound
and steadfast may prove to be a more serious menace to the spread of
the belief, a more potent source of its decay, than even its inherent
inconsistencies and improbabilities.