Page:Spiritualism-1920.djvu/17

 12

that date. The nineteenth century was, they say, just entering upon a very dangerous period of "materialism," or absorption in this visible world and its concerns. There was the democratic movement to which I have referred. The masses of the workers were beginning at last to dream of a better earth and throw all their energy into the creation of it. There was the new scientific movement. In 1848, Charles Darwin was quietly working out his new theory. Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, and so many other apostles of this world were approaching their mighty tasks. On the other hand, the authority of the Churches was visibly failing. It was just the time for a new revelation. Philosophy and theology, the wings on which men had hitherto risen to higher spheres, were drooping. So, Spiritualists say, the living spirits of those who had "passed beyond" began to rap on the walls of our earthly home and prepare men for a direct revelation of the truth of immortality.

There can be no doubt that the decay of the older creeds had much to do with the rise of this modern movement, but the precise connection between the two, and with other movements of the time, requires more careful study. What happened in Hydesville in 1848 does not explain a movement which within a few years had hundreds of thousands of adherents. It is clearly the conditions of the growth of Spiritualism that we need to understand first.

There was a good deal of what is broadly called "occultism" in the world in the first half of the