• "MAN'S SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH" [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.]
Sirt,—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, having very neatly and politely called me another, I must conclude that he misunderstood me, in my review of Man's Survival after Death, to have impugned the veracity of spiritualists. I apologise for having made this mistake possible by a slight misapposition of phrases. I have never doubted the honesty of the spiritualist movement. When I wrote that "true psycho-analysis is a science based upon the simple procedure of speaking the truth," I was far from implying that spiritualism is based upon speaking false- hood. I was merely giving the best credential of the only true science of psychic research known to me. The weakness of the Psychical Research Society consists solely in this..---that if has investigated phenomena which must be powerfully affected by the incursions of the dream-consciousness into working life ; and yet it has neglected to carry on any indepen- dent enquiry into the dream-state simply as such. A laborious and faithful study of dreams, and their relation to life, without any hypothesis, is absolutely necessary to the study of the psyche.
That is my criticism of Spiritualism in relation to Science, for Science requires the methodical investigation* of facts and all their possible causes. In relation to religion, the sphere of spiritualism is really very limited, but it has a dangerous tendency to usurp the whole, by providing only -miracles which minister to fire 'most personal affections and emotions.
These opinions were the ground of the remarks to which Sir Arthur objected. They did impute error which he is free to defend, but not fraud, which, of course he would have had a
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