Modern spiritism; its science and religion - SpiritArchive.org

24 MODERN SPIRITISM
Sir Oliver J. Lodge
During the war, as a well-known scientific writer
points out, there was a felt need in Modern Spiritist
circles of some commanding authority, some Luke
or Paul, to appear in England to^support the cult.
He must be a scientist to suit the temper of the time.
Sir Wm. Crookes was over eighty, and Sir Wm.
Barrett not an active or popular teacher.
The want was supplied by the sudden arrival in
The
the front rank of Spiritists of Sir Oliver Lodge.
remarkable details from America of his opportune
conversion afford food for thought.
It is pointed out by some that Spiritism is. to-day
in the stage that storms, electricity, and epidemics
were only a century ago. We know their laws now,
and no longer ascribe their phenomena immediately
to any supernatural agency.
Already many of the phenomena of Spiritism
have been satisfactorily discounted by science; and
it seems not improbable that in another hundred
years there may be few left that are still deemed
supernatural.
Not only so, but, as Professor Richet well points
out, it is a more difficult task in the present state of
our knowledge to form a sane estimate of
Spiritism than to learn Arabic.
have done the latter,
Modern
Few of my readers
and none should suppose that
this book alone will enable them to do the former.
The Latest Book on Spiritism
I will bring these few notes up to date by touching
on the latest book on Spiritism by a journalist,
a Mr. Sydney Moseley, whom Sir A. Conan Doyle, in