Page:A Rambler's Recollections and Reflections.djvu/74

 CHAPTER VI

WHAT IS THE OCCULT?

This is a somewhat difficult question to answer. A few years ago one would have been regarded as weak-minded, if not actually insane, had he ventured to put such a question, or even to hint at the possibility of the existence of anything that was not absolutely tangible and in daily evidence. But we have travelled far since that day, and the researches of such men as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, the Rt. Hon. Arthur Balfour, and many others have helped to place mysticism on a far higher and nobler plane than we could have imagined was possible fifty or even thirty years ago. For the delicate mysticism of the refined and cultured student, for the wonderfully suggestive experiences and utterances of many of the most trustworthy and scientific thinkers of the day, I have the most profound respect. It is only against the impudent charlatanism of its most unscrupulous exponents that I feel called upon to inveigh, and I protest, with all my soul, that such prostitution of what might otherwise be devoted to the higher and spiritual welfare of mankind degrades not only the unworthy professors of so-called spiritualism, but it drags the whole idea of mysticism and the theory of the spirit world through the slough and mire of the most horrible degradation.

For myself, I am absolutely persuaded of the infinite superiority of the spiritual over the material ; that is 64