WCP6901

[1]

The Dell, Grays, Essex

Oct. 30th. 1875

My dear Sir

Many thanks for your letter & the copy of your article, which must do good.

In case, however, you should reprint it in any other form, allow me to call your attention to a few passages which I think require alteration.

1. "The utterances of the mediums never appear to go beyond the information possessed by those present."

This would be so very important a fact if true, and would go so strongly against the spiritual hypothesis, that, in the face of the mass of evidence to the contrary I think it should not be any longer put forward. It has been contradicted from the very dawn of modern spiritualism. No one present knew, or believed, or had ever had knowledge, that a dead body was to be found in Mr Fox's cellar, yet that was an utterance through that little girl Kate Fox, & was found to be true. This one case, were there no other, contradict[s] the statement, but others equally conclusive (and many if possible even more so) run through the whole history of Spiritualism, and it is simply misleading to ignore such facts. It is really now on a par with the statement that "only tables move" — that "darkness is essential" etc. etc.

To quote any cases of Dr. Mahan's as "corroborating the important fact that no extraneous information has ever been given at a seance," again assumes this as a fact, but the contrary can not be disproved by any number of cases in which no extraneous information was given or even rendered improbable. No number of seances at which nothing happened, are are [sic] [as] grains weighed as evidence against the fact of something happening at other sèances. [2]

2. Mrs De Morgan's statement that "the language, grammar, &c. are always that of someone present" — would not I think be accepted by most Spiritualists. It may be her experience or her opinion, nothing more.

3. You say in a note that "the American medium confessed that she had imposed upon Mr. Dale Owen". This is not correct. The medium, Mrs. Holmes, never confessed anything of the kind, but another woman confessed that she had been employed by the Holmes's to act the spirit, & that she did so act. The difference you may say is not very important, but it is in the sequel. For this case has been carefully investigated by Col. Olcott, & he adduces the strongest evidence that this "confession" was an entire falsehood. The woman was a bad character, she had lived as a lodger & acquaintance with the Holmes's, — she was very needy, — & she was paid well for the "confession". It is proved, however, that during the greater part of the seances with Mr Owen this woman was not in the house or even in the same town with the Holmes's — that the phenomenon went on exactly the same before her arrival & after her departure, & the Holmes's submitted to the usual most searching examination, in Col. Olcott's own rooms, and under the most rigid tests. This is a very good sample of the kind of "exposure" of mediums that is relied on. The falsehood is accepted and widely spread, the refutation is never published by opponents of Spiritualism. This refutation was published by Col. Olcott in a New York daily paper and since in a Volume — "People from the Other World." —

The materialization phenomena are now so widely spread & have been so frequently tested, that they rest upon better evidence than the simple physical manifestations did a few years ago. In America there are three (at least) distinct mediums through whom these phenomena have been seen and experienced by scores of intelligent men. In Newcastle on Tyne there are two distinct families of mediums for [3] materialization. The tests these have been subjected to surpass those of Miss Cooke by Mr. Crookes. Mr. Henry Sedgwick of Cambridge & some friends have now been engaged some months in a systematic investigation of two of these mediums. The others have just gone with M. Aksakoff to St. Petersburg, to submit to the examination of a Committee of the University there.

The spirit forms here appear with the mediums in full light. Children, young girls, grown women, & tall men, all appearing successively from a small closet in a private house, to which the medium never had access before!

The evidence in fact, of the reality of these beings and of [7] their production & disappearance, often before the eyes of numerous witnesses, is now overwhelming, and a theory which, like Dr. Mahan's, rejects this as all imposture, may just as well — for anything it is worth — reject the whole of the phenomena and say that no theory is required for there is nothing to explain.

Mr. Crookes very wisely refrains from openly expressing his belief on the matter, but in private he is a thorough-going Spiritualist, as are all, who have seen as much of the phenomena as he has, and who cannot contentedly rest without some hypothetical explanation of them, which does really explain something.

As to Swedenborg, most Spiritualists admire him as a great medium and a great Spiritual teacher, but he was too dogmatic, and his followers place themselves out of the pale of modern thought by declaring him all-sufficing & infallible. We want knowledge of the facts of actual modern Spiritualism, as well as of that of the past, and the subject is too vast for us to devote time to the study of such ponderous and miscellaneous volumes as those of Swedenborg.

You do not mention Sp. Photographs. I consider these as the best of tests, when carefully applied, & especially valuable as [4] showing that these spiritual figures are just as real, when invisible as when visible.

I hope you will pursue the subject

and Remain | Yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace

Prof. W.F.Barrett

P.S. I strongly suspect the authors of the "Unseen Universe" are Spiritualists. Their views are not only consistent with but seem to me often suggested by the doctrine of modern Spiritualism.

Note by E.J.D.

"The Unseen Universe, or physical speculations on a future state" mentioned in the above letter was published in 1875. It was, in fact, by Balfour Stewart and P. T. Tait.