I was amazed to
find what a number of great men--men whose names were
to the fore in science--thoroughly believed that spirit
was independent of matter and could survive it. When I
regarded Spiritualism as a vulgar delusion of the
uneducated, I could afford to look down upon it; but
when it was endorsed by men like Crookes, whom I knew
to be the most rising British chemist, by Wallace, who
was the rival of Darwin, and by Flammarion, the best
known of astronomers, I could not afford to dismiss it.
It was all very well to throw down the books of these
men which contained their mature conclusions and
careful investigations, and to say "Well, he has one
weak spot in his brain," but a man has to be very self-
satisfied if the day does not come when he wonders if
the weak spot is not in his own brain. For some time I
was sustained in my scepticism by the consideration
that many famous men, such as Darwin himself, Huxley,
Tyndall and Herbert Spencer, derided this new
branch of knowledge; but when I learned that their
derision had reached such a point that they would not
even examine it, and that Spencer had declared in so
many words that he had decided against it on a
priori grounds, while Huxley had said that it did not
interest him, I was bound to admit that, however great,
they were in science, their action in this respect was
most unscientific and dogmatic, while the action of
those who studied the phenomena and tried to find out
the laws that governed them, was following the true
path which has given us all human advance and
knowledge.
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