NEW REVELATION.* Sm ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE'S book is practically a
brief sketch of some of the more recent questions and answers of Psychical Research, and an attempt to correlate and explain its religious and scientific aspects. The author has been a member of the Society for Psychical Research for many years, and has only gradually become convinced of the existence of spiritual phenomena. His opinion of spiritualism is valuable rather in the same way that the juryman's opinion may be genuinely useful even in a complicated case. His book shows simply and clearly what has been the effect of the evidence upon an " unspecialized " person who has taken the trouble to listen to the case. He is very sensible In what he urges against what we may call the " puerility " argument :— " Do jiot sneer at the humble beginnings, the heaving table or the flying tambourine, however much such phenomena may have been abused or simulated, but remember that a falling apple taught us gravity, a boiling kettle the steam engine, and the twitching leg of a frog opened up the train of thought and experi- ment which gave us electricity."
Again, he begs the reader not to be too hypercritical if "a young engineer-soldier" like Raymond Lodge does not always give a perfectly scientific or coherent account of the material, constitution of an alien world : " If one of us were suddenly called up by the denizen of some sub-human world, and were asked to explain exactly what gravity is, or what magnetism is, how helpless we should be I " The author's theological views seem very simple, and the ease with which he accepts rather florid " non-evidential matter " as to the next life is perhaps regrettable. But the conclusions which he draws as to practical conduct are still broad- minded and sensible. But one thing is needful. That is a non- materialistic point of view. And if it helps us to " an upward glance of the eye," every religious form may have a purpose for somebody : " If to twirl a braes cylinder forces the Tibetan to admit that there is something higher than his mountains, and more precious than his yaks, then to that extent it is good."
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