Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?

Excerpt: '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 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[Pg iv] 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.'