FORTUNE-TELLING
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sia,—The sympathetic attitude of the Spectator towards the Secretary of the " London Spiritualist Alliance," who was recently brought before a London Police Magistrate, will be to some extent shared by everyone who believes in free inquiry, and in the invincibility of truth. But it should be borne in mind that the alleged offence was certainly not believing or practising spiritualism, which, as the Spectator says, " many people find either a help to faith, or a method of scientific investigation," but " fortune-telling," and nothing else.
Police Magistrates, however, and other persons who are well acquainted with the facts and have no reason to exag- gerate, constantly refer to the mischief which is caused amongst ignorant and superstitious people by persons who profess to be able, for a consideration, to " read the future " in half a dozen different ways ; so it would seem that if any alteration in the existing law is required, it should rather be in the direction of greater stringency than relaxation.
It may not be strictly justifiable, from a philosophical point of view, to hold every " fortune-teller " to be, as such, necessarily guilty of fraud, and confidently to assert that it is impossible for anyone to foresee the future, whilst freely admitting that most people can recall the past, but there ought to be no great difficulty in distinguishing sharply between, say, the predictions of the Nautical Almanac and those of Zadkiel or " Old Moore," and I cannot think that it is impossible to check impostors without hampering honest efforts to investigate and explain what are usually described as " occult " phenomena.—I am, Sir, &c., WALTER CRICK.
liartfield Square, Eastbourne.
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