The Vital Message
By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

CHAPTER  II
THE DAWNING OF THE LIGHT
  
Some sixty years ago that acute thinker Lord Brougham
remarked that in the clear sky of scepticism he saw only one
small cloud drifting up and that was Modern Spiritualism.  It was
a curiously inverted simile, for one would surely have expected
him to say that in the drifting clouds of scepticism he saw one
patch of clear sky, but at least it showed how conscious he was
of the coming importance of the movement.  Ruskin, too, an
equally agile mind, said that his assurance of immortality
depended upon the observed facts of Spiritualism.  Scores, and
indeed hundreds, of famous names could be quoted who have
subscribed the same statement, and whose support would dignify
any cause upon earth.  They are the higher peaks who have been
the first to catch the light, but the dawn will spread until
none are too lowly to share it.  Let us turn, therefore,
and inspect this movement which is most certainly destined to
revolutionise human thought and action as none other has done
within the Christian era.  We shall look at it both in its
strength and in its weakness, for where one is dealing with what
one knows to be true one can fearlessly insist upon the whole of
the truth.
  
The movement which is destined to bring vitality to the dead
and cold religions has been called "Modern Spiritualism."  The
"modern" is good, since the thing itself, in one form or another,
is as old as history, and has always, however obscured by forms,
been the red central glow in the depths of all religious ideas,
permeating the Bible from end to end.  But the word
"Spiritualism" has been so befouled by wicked charlatans, and so
cheapened by many a sad incident, that one could almost wish that
some such term as "psychic religion" would clear the subject of
old prejudices, just as mesmerism, after many years of obloquy,
was rapidly accepted when its name was changed to hypnotism.  On
the other hand, one remembers the sturdy pioneers who have fought
under this banner, and who were prepared to risk their
careers, their professional success, and even their reputation
for sanity, by publicly asserting what they knew to be the truth.

Their brave, unselfish devotion must do something to cleanse the
name for which they fought and suffered.  It was they who nursed
the system which promises to be, not a new religion--it is far
too big for that--but part of the common heritage of knowledge
shared by the whole human race.  Perfected Spiritualism, however,
will probably bear about the same relation to the Spiritualism of
1850 as a modern locomotive to the bubbling little kettle which
heralded the era of steam.  It will end by being rather the proof
and basis of all religions than a religion in itself.  We have
already too many religions--but too few proofs.
  
Those first manifestations at Hydesville varied in no way
from many of which we have record in the past, but the result
arising from them differed very much, because, for the first
time, it occurred to a human being not merely to listen to
inexplicable sounds, and to fear them or marvel at them, but to
establish communication with them.  John Wesley's father
might have done the same more than a century before had the
thought occurred to him when he was a witness of the
manifestations at Epworth in 1726.  It was only when the young
Fox girl struck her hands together and cried "Do as I do" that
there was instant compliance, and consequent proof of the
presence of an INTELLIGENT invisible force, thus differing
from all other forces of which we know.  The circumstances were
humble, and even rather sordid, upon both sides of the veil,
human and spirit, yet it was, as time will more and more clearly
show, one of the turning points of the world's history, greater
far than the fall of thrones or the rout of armies.  Some artist
of the future will draw the scene--the sitting-room of the
wooden, shack-like house, the circle of half-awed and half-
critical neighbours, the child clapping her hands with upturned
laughing face, the dark corner shadows where these strange new
forces seem to lurk--forces often apparent, and now come to stay
and to effect the complete revolution of human thought.  We may
well ask why should such great results arise from such petty
sources?  So argued the highbrowed philosophers of Greece and
Rome when the outspoken Paul, with the fisherman Peter and his
half-educated disciples, traversed all their learned theories,
and with the help of women, slaves, and schismatic Jews,
subverted their ancient creeds.  One can but answer that
Providence has its own way of attaining its, results, and that it
seldom conforms to our opinion of what is most appropriate.
  
We have a larger experience of such phenomena now, and we can
define with some accuracy what it was that happened at Hydesville
in the year 1848.  We know that these matters are governed by law
and by conditions as much as any other phenomena of the universe,
though at the moment it seemed to the public to be an isolated
and irregular outburst.  On the one hand, you had a material,
earth-bound spirit of a low order of development which needed a
physical medium in order to be able to indicate its presence.  On
the other, you had that rare thing, a good physical medium.  The
result followed as surely as the flash follows when the electric
battery and wire are both properly adjusted.  Corresponding
experiments, where effect, and cause duly follow, are being
worked out at the present moment by Professor Crawford, of
Belfast, as detailed in his two recent books, where he shows that
there is an actual loss of weight of the medium in exact
proportion to the physical phenomenon produced.[1]  The whole
secret of mediumship on this material side appears to lie in the
power, quite independent of oneself, of passively giving up some
portion of one's bodily substance for the use of outside
influences.  Why should some have this power and some not?  We do
not know--nor do we know why one should have the ear for music
and another not.  Each is born in us, and each has little
connection with our moral natures.  At first it was only physical
mediumship which was known, and public attention centred upon
moving tables, automatic musical instruments, and other crude but
obvious examples of outside influence, which were unhappily very
easily imitated by rogues.  Since then we have learned that there
are many forms of mediumship, so different from each other that
an expert at one may have no powers at all at the other.  The
automatic writer, the clairvoyant, the crystal-seer, the trance
speaker, the photographic medium, the direct voice medium, and
others, are all, when genuine, the manifestations of one force,
which runs through varied channels as it did in the gifts
ascribed to the disciples.  The unhappy outburst of roguery was
helped, no doubt, by the need for darkness claimed by the early
experimenters--a claim which is by no means essential, since the
greatest of all mediums, D. D. Home, was able by the exceptional
strength of his powers to dispense with it.  At the same time the
fact that darkness rather than light, and dryness rather than
moisture, are helpful to good results has been abundantly
manifested, and points to the physical laws which underlie the
phenomena.  The observation made long afterwards that wireless
telegraphy, another etheric force, acts twice as well by night as
by day, may, corroborate the general conclusions of the early
Spiritualists, while their assertion that the least harmful light
is red light has a suggestive analogy in the experience of the
photographer.


[1]    "The Reality of Psychic Phenomena."
       "Experiences in Psychical Science." (Watkins.)


  
There is no space here for the history of the rise and
development of the movement.  It provoked warm adhesion and
fierce opposition from the start.  Professor Hare and Horace
Greeley were among the educated minority who tested and endorsed
its truth.  It was disfigured by many grievous incidents, which
may explain but does not excuse the perverse opposition which it
encountered in so many quarters.  This opposition was really
largely based upon the absolute materialism of the age, which
would not admit that there could exist at the present moment such
conditions as might be accepted in the far past.  When actually
brought in contact with that life beyond the grave which they
professed to believe in, these people winced, recoiled, and
declared it impossible.  The science of the day was also rooted
in materialism, and discarded all its own very excellent axioms
when it was faced by an entirely new and unexpected proposition.
Faraday declared that in approaching a new subject one should
make up one's mind a priori as to what is possible and what
is not!  Huxley said that the messages, EVEN IF TRUE,
"interested him no more than the gossip of curates in a
cathedral city."  Darwin said:  "God help us if we are to believe
such things."  Herbert Spencer declared against it, but had no
time to go into it.  At the same time all science did not come so
badly out of the ordeal.  As already mentioned, Professor Hare,
of Philadelphia, inventor, among other things, of the oxy-
hydrogen blow-pipe, was the first man of note who had the moral
courage, after considerable personal investigation, to declare
that these new and strange developments were true.  He was
followed by many medical men, both in America and in Britain,
including Dr. Elliotson, one of the leaders of free thought in
this country.  Professor Crookes, the most rising chemist in
Europe, Dr. Russel Wallace the great naturalist, Varley the
electrician, Flammarion the French astronomer, and many others,
risked their scientific reputations in their brave assertions of
the truth.  These men were not credulous fools.  They saw and
deplored the existence of frauds.  Crookes' letters upon the
subject are still extant.  In very many cases it was the
Spiritualists themselves who exposed the frauds.  They
laughed, as the public laughed, at the sham Shakespeares and
vulgar Caesars who figured in certain seance rooms.  They
deprecated also the low moral tone which would turn such powers
to prophecies about the issue of a race or the success of a
speculation.  But they had that broader vision and sense of
proportion which assured them that behind all these follies and
frauds there lay a mass of solid evidence which could not be
shaken, though like all evidence, it had to be examined before it
could be appreciated.  They were not such simpletons as to be
driven away from a great truth because there are some dishonest
camp followers who hang upon its skirts.
  
A great centre of proof and of inspiration lay during those
early days in Mr. D. D. Home, a Scottish-American, who possessed
powers which make him one of the most remarkable personalities of
whom we have any record.  Home's life, written by his second
wife, is a book which deserves very careful reading.  This man,
who in some aspects was more than a man, was before the public
for nearly thirty years.  During that time he never received
payment for his services, and was always ready, to put
himself at the disposal of any bona-fide and reasonable
enquirer.  His phenomena were produced in full light, and it was
immaterial to him whether the sittings were in his own rooms or
in those of his friends.  So high were his principles that upon
one occasion, though he was a man of moderate means and less than
moderate health, he refused the princely fee of two thousand
pounds offered for a single sitting by the Union Circle in Paris.

As to his powers, they seem to have included every form of
mediumship in the highest degree--self-levitation, as witnessed
by hundreds of credible witnesses; the handling of fire, with the
power of conferring like immunity upon others; the movement
without human touch of heavy objects; the visible materialisation
of spirits; miracles of healing; and messages from the dead, such
as that which converted the hard-headed Scot, Robert Chambers,
when Home repeated to him the actual dying words of his young
daughter.  All this came from a man of so sweet a nature and of
so charitable a disposition, that the union of all qualities
would seem almost to justify those who, to Home's great
embarrassment, were prepared to place him upon a pedestal above
humanity.
  
The genuineness of his psychic powers has never been
seriously questioned, and was as well recognised in Rome and
Paris as in London.  One incident only darkened his career, and
it, was one in which he was blameless, as anyone who carefully
weighs the evidence must admit.  I allude to the action taken
against him by Mrs. Lyon, who, after adopting him as her son and
settling a large sum of money upon him, endeavoured to regain,
and did regain, this money by her unsupported assertion that he
had persuaded her illicitly to make him the allowance.  The facts
of his life are, in my judgment, ample proof of the truth of the
Spiritualist position, if no other proof at all had been
available.  It is to be remarked in the career of this entirely
honest and unvenal medium that he had periods in his life when
his powers deserted him completely, that he could foresee these
lapses, and that, being honest and unvenal, he simply abstained
from all attempts until the power returned.  It is this
intermittent character of the gift which is, in my opinion,
responsible for cases when a medium who has passed the most rigid
tests upon certain occasions is afterwards detected in
simulating, very clumsily, the results which he had once
successfully accomplished.  The real power having failed, he has
not the moral courage to admit it, nor the self-denial to forego
his fee which he endeavours to earn by a travesty of what was
once genuine.  Such an explanation would cover some facts which
otherwise are hard to reconcile.  We must also admit that some
mediums are extremely irresponsible and feather-headed people.  A
friend of mine, who sat with Eusapia Palladino, assured me that
he saw her cheat in the most childish and bare-faced fashion, and
yet immediately afterwards incidents occurred which were
absolutely beyond any, normal powers to produce.
  
Apart from Home, another episode which marks a stage in the
advance of this movement was the investigation and report by the
Dialectical Society in the year 1869.  This body was composed of
men of various learned professions who gathered together to
investigate the alleged facts, and ended by reporting that
they really WERE facts.  They were unbiased, and their
conclusions were founded upon results which were very soberly set
forth in their report, a most convincing document which, even now
in 1919, after the lapse of fifty years, is far more intelligent
than the greater part of current opinion upon this subject.  None
the less, it was greeted by a chorus of ridicule by the ignorant
Press of that day, who, if the same men had come to the opposite
conclusion in spite of the evidence, would have been ready to
hail their verdict as the undoubted end of a pernicious movement.
  
In the early days, about 1863, a book was written by Mrs. de
Morgan, the wife of the well-known mathematician Professor de
Morgan, entitled "From Matter to Spirit."  There is a sympathetic
preface by the husband.  The book is still well worth reading,
for it is a question whether anyone has shown greater brain power
in treating the subject.  In it the prophecy is made that as the
movement develops the more material phenomena will decrease and
their place be taken by the more spiritual, such as automatic
writing.  This forecast has been fulfilled, for though physical
mediums still exist the other more subtle forms greatly
predominate, and call for far more discriminating criticism in
judging their value and their truth.  Two very convincing forms
of mediumship, the direct voice and spirit photography, have also
become prominent.  Each of these presents such proof that it is
impossible for the sceptic to face them, and he can only avoid
them by ignoring them.
  
In the case of the direct voice one of the leading exponents
is Mrs. French, an amateur medium in America, whose work is
described both by Mr. Funk and Mr. Randall.  She is a frail
elderly lady, yet in her presence the most masculine and robust
voices make communications, even when her own mouth is covered.
I have myself investigated the direct voice in the case of four
different mediums, two of them amateurs, and can have no doubt of
the reality of the voices, and that they are not the effect of
ventriloquism.  I was more struck by the failures than by the
successes, and cannot easily forget the passionate pantings with
which some entity strove hard to reveal his identity to me,
but without success.  One of these mediums was tested afterwards
by having the mouth filled with coloured water, but the voice
continued as before.
  
As to spirit photography, the most successful results are
obtained by the Crewe circle in England, under the mediumship of
Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton.[2]  I have seen scores of these
photographs, which in several cases reproduce exact images of the
dead which do not correspond with any pictures of them taken
during life.  I have seen father, mother, and dead soldier son,
all taken together with the dead son looking far the happier and
not the least substantial of the three.  It is in these varied
forms of proof that the impregnable strength of the evidence
lies, for how absurd do explanations of telepathy, unconscious
cerebration or cosmic memory become when faced by such phenomena
as spirit photography, materialisation, or the direct voice.
Only one hypothesis can cover every branch of these
manifestations, and that is the system of extraneous life and
action which has always, for seventy years, held the field for
any reasonable mind which had impartially considered the
facts.


[2]  See Appendix.

  
I have spoken of the need for careful and cool-headed
analysis in judging the evidence where automatic writing is
concerned.  One is bound to exclude spirit explanations until all
natural ones have been exhausted, though I do not include among
natural ones the extreme claims of far-fetched telepathy such as
that another person can read in your thoughts things of which you
were never yourself aware.  Such explanations are not
explanations, but mystifications and absurdities, though they
seem to have a special attraction for a certain sort of psychical
researcher, who is obviously destined to go on researching to the
end of time, without ever reaching any conclusion save that of
the patience of those who try to follow his reasoning.  To give a
good example of valid automatic script, chosen out of many which
I could quote, I would draw the reader's attention to the facts
as to the excavations at Glastonbury, as detailed in "The Gate of
Remembrance" by Mr. Bligh Bond.  Mr. Bligh Bond, by the way, is
not a Spiritualist, but the same cannot be said of the writer
of the automatic script, an amateur medium, who was able to
indicate the secrets of the buried abbey, which were proved to be
correct when the ruins were uncovered.  I can truly say that,
though I have read much of the old monastic life, it has never
been brought home to me so closely as by the messages and
descriptions of dear old Brother Johannes, the earth-bound
spirit--earthbound by his great love for the old abbey in which
he had spent his human life.  This book, with its practical
sequel, may be quoted as an excellent example of automatic
writing at its highest, for what telepathic explanation can cover
the detailed description of objects which lie unseen by any human
eye?  It must be admitted, however, that in automatic writing you
are at one end of the telephone, if one may use such a simile,
and you have, no assurance as to who is at the other end.  You
may have wildly false messages suddenly interpolated among
truthful ones--messages so detailed in their mendacity that it is
impossible to think that they are not deliberately false.  When
once we have accepted the central fact that spirits change little
in essentials when leaving the body, and that in consequence
the world is infested by many low and mischievous types, one can
understand that these untoward incidents are rather a
confirmation of Spiritualism than an argument against it.
Personally I have received and have been deceived by several such
messages.  At the same time I can say that after an experience of
thirty years of such communications I have never known a
blasphemous, an obscene or an unkind sentence come through.  I
admit, however, that I have heard of such cases.  Like attracts
like, and one should know one's human company before one joins in
such intimate and reverent rites.  In clairvoyance the same
sudden inexplicable deceptions appear.  I have closely followed
the work of one female medium, a professional, whose results are
so extraordinarily good that in a favourable case she will give
the full names of the deceased as well as the most definite and
convincing test messages.  Yet among this splendid series of
results I have notes of several in which she was a complete
failure and absolutely wrong upon essentials.  How can this be
explained?  We can only answer that conditions were obviously
not propitious, but why or how are among the many problems of the
future.  It is a profound and most complicated subject, however
easily it may be settled by the "ridiculous nonsense" school of
critics.  I look at the row of books upon the left of my desk as
I write--ninety-six solid volumes, many of them annotated and
well thumbed, and yet I know that I am like a child wading ankle
deep in the margin of an illimitable ocean.  But this, at least,
I have very clearly realised, that the ocean is there and that
the margin is part of it, and that down that shelving shore the
human race is destined to move slowly to deeper waters.  In the
next chapter, I will endeavour to show what is the purpose of the
Creator in this strange revelation of new intelligent forces
impinging upon our planet.  It is this view of the question which
must justify the claim that this movement, so long the subject of
sneers and ridicule, is absolutely the most important development
in the whole history of the human race, so important that, if we
could conceive one single man discovering and publishing it, he
would rank before Christopher Columbus as a discoverer of new
worlds, before Paul as a teacher of new religious truths, and
before Isaac Newton as a student of the laws of the Universe.
  
Before opening up this subject there is one consideration
which should have due weight, and yet seems continually to be
overlooked.  The differences between various sects are a very
small thing as compared to the great eternal duel between
materialism and the spiritual view of the Universe.  That is the
real fight.  It is a fight in which the Churches championed the
anti-material view, but they have done it so unintelligently, and
have been continually placed in such false positions, that they
have always been losing.  Since the days of Hume and Voltaire and
Gibbon the fight has slowly but steadily rolled in favour of the
attack.  Then came Darwin, showing with apparent truth, that man
has never fallen but always risen.  This cut deep into the
philosophy of orthodoxy, and it is folly to deny it.  Then again
came the so-called "Higher Criticism," showing alleged flaws and
cracks in the very foundations.  All this time the churches were
yielding ground, and every retreat gave a fresh jumping-off
place for a new assault.  It has gone so far that at the present
moment a very large section of the people of this country, rich
and poor, are out of all sympathy not only with the churches but
with the whole Spiritual view.  Now, we intervene with our
positive knowledge and actual proof--an ally so powerful that we
are capable of turning the whole tide of battle and rolling it
back for ever against materialism.  We can say:  "We will meet
you on your own ground and show you by material and scientific
tests that the soul and personality survive."  That is the aim of
Psychic Science, and it has been fully attained.  It means an end
to materialism for ever.  And yet this movement, this Spiritual
movement, is hooted at and reviled by Rome, by Canterbury and
even by Little Bethel, each of them for once acting in concert,
and including in their battle line such strange allies as the
Scientific Agnostics and the militant Free-thinkers.  Father
Vaughan and the Bishop of London, the Rev. F. B. Meyer and Mr.
Clodd, "The Church Times" and "The Freethinker," are united in
battle, though they fight with very different battle cries,
the one declaring that the thing is of the devil, while the other
is equally clear that it does not exist at all.  The opposition
of the materialists is absolutely intelligent since it is clear
that any man who has spent his life in saying "No" to all
extramundane forces is, indeed, in a pitiable position when,
after many years, he has to recognise that his whole philosophy
is built upon sand and that "Yes" was the answer from the
beginning.  But as to the religious bodies, what words can
express their stupidity and want of all proportion in not running
halfway and more to meet the greatest ally who has ever
intervened to change their defeat into victory?  What gifts this
all-powerful ally brings with him, and what are the terms of his
alliance, will now be considered.
 

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