The Foundations of Spiritualism. By W. Whately Smith, author of the “Mechanism of Survival.” Published by  E. P. Dutton & Co. New York, 1920.

In this little book the author endeavors critically to weigh the evidence for and against two questions: (1) Does the material collected by the spiritualists and others suffice to render the doctrine of survival tenable? (2) Supposing the affirmative, from the nature of this material are the spiritualists warranted in erecting their vast, if. somewhat inchoate structure of a quasi-religious, semi-philosophical nature? To the first of these questions Smith answers yes, to the second no.

He betrays throughout the book a strong desire to believe in survival and, while admitting in his conscious moments, “the difficulty of forming reliable conclusions about it” (p. 119) and that “Spiritualism is, therefore, to be deprecated… because of the scientific immaturity of the whole subject” (p. 122), he evidently wishes unconsciously to believe that in the heterogeneous mass raked together by the spiritualists there must be a modicum of truth. Thus he says, “If Spiritualists were to confine themselves to affirming the experimental verifications of Survival, I would be prepared to concede that they were very likely right” (p. 118).

In this book Smith considers first what he is pleased to call the evidence for survival, which he divides into three heads: (1) Physical phenomena, (2) Automatism, (3) Telepathy, hallucinations and apparitions. The first he rightly discredits. The second he discusses in one page and yet says surprisingly that they “form by far the most important part, both in quantity and quality, of the experimental evidence adduced in favor of Survival” (p. 13). If this be the evidence on which survival rests its case, a brief study in psychopathology is recommended to its adherents. The third “evidence” is discussed more at length. He thinks telepathy should be “allowed some weight” (p. 19), but dismisses apparitions and hallucinations, which he evidently considers separate entities by the way.

The author devotes a long chapter to the citations of cases where discarna