Spiritualism
Spiritualism
The term “spiritualism” has been frequently used to denote the belief in the possibility of communication with disembodied spirits, and the various devices employed to realize this belief in practice. The term “Spiritism”, which is used in Italy, France, and Germany, seems more apt to express this meaning. Spiritualism, then, suitably stands opposed to materialism. We may say in general that Spiritualism is the doctrine which denies that the contents of the universe are limited to matter and the properties and operations of matter. It maintains the existence of real being or beings (minds, spirits) radically distinct in nature from matter. It may take the form of Spiritualistic Idealism, which denies the existence of any real material being outside of the mind; or, whilst defending the reality of spiritual being, it may also allow the separate existence of the material world. Further, Idealistic Spiritualism may either take the form of Monism (e.g., with Fichte), which teaches that there exists a single universal mind or ego of which all finite minds are but transient moods or stages: or it may adopt a pluralistic theory (e.g. with Berkeley), which resolves the universe into a Divine Mind together with a multitude of finite minds into which the former infuses all those experiences that generate the belief in an external, independent, material world. The second or moderate form of Spiritualism, whilst maintaining the existence of spirit, and in particular the human mind or soul, as a real being distinct from the body, does not deny the reality of matter. It is, in fact, the common doctrine of Dualism. However, among the systems of philosophy which adhere to Dualism, some conceive the separateness or mutual independence of soul and body to be greater and others less. With some philosophers of the former class, soul and body seem to have been looked upon as complete beings merely accidentally united. For these a main difficulty is to give a satisfactory account of the inter-action of two beings so radically opposed in nature.
Historically, we find the early Greek philosophers tending generally towards Materialism. Sense experience is more impressive than our higher, rational consciousness, and sensation is essentially bound up with the bodily organism. Anaxagoras was the first, apparently, among the Greeks to vindicate the predominance of mind or reason in the universe. It was, however, rather as a principle of order, to account for the arrangement and design evident in nature as a whole, than to vindicate the reality of individual minds distinct from the bodies which they animate. Plato was virtually the father of western spiritualistic philosophy. He emphasized the distinction between the irrational or sensuous and the rational functions of the soul. He will not allow the superior elements in knowledge or the higher “parts” of the soul to be explained away in terms of the lower. Both subsist in continuous independence and opposition. Indeed, the rational soul is related to the body merely as the pilot to the ship or the rider to his horse. Aristotle fully recognized the spirituality of the higher rational activity of thought, but his treatment of its precise relation to the individual human soul is obscure. On the other hand, his conception of the union of soul and body, and of the unity of the human person, is much superior to that of Plato. Though the future life of the human soul, and consequently its capacity for an existence separate from the body, was one of the most fundamental and important doctrines of the Christian religion, yet ideas as to the precise meaning of spirituality were not at first clear, and we find several of the earliest Christian writers (though maintaining the future existence of the soul separate from the body), yet conceiving the soul in a more or less materialistic way (cf. Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement, etc.). The Catholic philosophic doctrine of Spiritualism received much of its development from St. Augustine, the disciple of Platonic philosophy, and its completion from Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas, who perfected the Aristotelian account of the union of soul and body.
Modern Spiritualism, especially of the more extreme type, has its origin in Descartes. Malebranche, and indirectly Berkeley, who contributed so much in the sequel to Monistic Idealism, are indebted to Descartes, whilst every form of exaggerated Dualism which set mind and body in isolation and contrast traces its descent from him. In spite of serious faults and defects in their systems, it should be recognized that Descartes and Leibnitz contributed much of the most effective resistance to the wave of Materialism which acquired such strength in Europe at the end of the eighteenth and during the first half of the nineteenth centuries. In particular, Maine de Biran, who emphasized the inner activity and spirituality of the will, followed by Jouffroy and Cousin, set up so vigorous an opposition to the current Materialism as to win for their theories the distinctive title of “Spiritualism”. In Germany, in addition to Kant, Fichte, and other Monistic Idealists, we find Lotze and Herbart advocating realistic forms of Spiritualism. In England, among the best-known advocates of Dualistic Spiritualism, were, in succession to the Scottish School, Hamilton and Martineau; and of Catholic writers, Brownson in America, and W.G. Ward in England.
EVIDENCE FOR THE DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUALISM
Whilst modern Idealists and writers advocating an extreme form of Spiritualism have frequently fallen into grievous error in their own positive systems, their criticisms of Materialism and their vindication of the reality of spiritual being seem to contain much sound argument and some valuable contributions, as was indeed to be expected, to this controversy.
(1) Epistemological Proof
The line of reasoning adopted by Berkeley against Materialism has never met with any real answer from the latter. If we were compelled to choose between the two, the most extreme Idealistic Materialism would be incomparably the more logical creed to hold. Mind is more intimately known than matter, ideas are more ultimate than molecules. External bodies are only known in terms of consciousness. To put forward as a final explanation that thought is merely a motion or property of certain bodies, when all bodies are, in the last resort, only revealed to us in terms of our thinking activity, is justly stigmatized by all classes of Spiritualists as utterly irrational. When the Materialist or Sensationist reasons out his doctrine, he is landed in hopeless absurdity. Materialism is in fact the answer of the men who do not think, who are apparently quite unaware of the presuppositions which underlie all science.
(2) Teleological Proof
The contention, old as Anaxagoras, that the order, adaptation, and design evidently revealed in the universe postulate a principle distinct from matter for its explanation is also a valid argument for Spiritualism. Matter cannot arrange itself. Yet that there is arrangement in the universe, an that this postulates the agency of a principle other than matter, is continually more and more forced upon us by the utter failure of natural selection to meet the demands made on it during the last half of the past century to accomplish by the blind, fortuitous action of physical agents work demanding the highest intelligence.
(3) Ethical Proof
The denial of spiritual beings distinct from, and in some sense independent of, matter inexorably involves the annihilation of morality. If the mechanical or materialistic theory of the universe be true, every movement and change of each particle of matter is the inevitable outcome of previous physical conditions. There is no room anywhere for effective human choice or purpose in the world. Consequently, all those notions which form the constituent elements of man’s moral creed–duty, obligation, responsibility, merit, desert, and the rest–are illusions of the imagination. Virtue and vice, fraud and benevolence are alike the inevitable outcome of the individual’s circumstances, and ultimately as truly beyond his control as the movement of the piston is in regard to the steam-engine.
(4) Inefficacy and Uselessness of Mind in the Materialist View
Again, unless the reality of spirit distinct from, and independent of, matter be admitted, the still more incredible conclusion inexorably follows that mind, thought, consciousness play no really operative part in the world’s history. If mind is not a real distinct energy, capable of interfering with, guiding, and influencing the movements of matter, then clearly it has played no real part in the creations of art, literature, or science. Consciousness is merely an inefficacious by-product, an epiphenomenon which has never modified in any degree the movements of matter concerned in the history of the human race.
(5) Psychological Proof
The outcome of all the main theses of psychology, empirical and rational, in Catholic systems of philosophy is the establishment of a Spiritualistic Dualism, and the determination of the relations of soul and body. Analysis of the higher activities of the soul, and especially of the operations of intellectual conception, judgment, reasoning, and self-conscious reflection, proves the faculty of intellect and the soul to which it belongs to be of a spiritual nature, distinct from matter, and not the outcome of a power inherent in a bodily organ. At the same time the Scholastic doctrine, better than any other system, furnishes a conception of the union of soul and body which accounts for the extrinsic dependence of the spiritual operations of the mind on the organism; whilst maintaining the spiritual nature of the soul, it safeguards the union of soul and body in a single person.
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MICHAEL MAHER AND JOSEPH BOLLAND Transcribed by Janet Grayson
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIVCopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Spiritualism
is a word now generally used to designate the belief of those who regard certain mental and physical phenomena as the result of the action of spirits through sensitive organizations known as mediums. Spiritualists claim that Spiritualism is but another term for the belief in the supernatural; that it has pervaded all ages and nations; and that American Spiritualism is but the last blossom of a very ancient tree. They assert that phenomena differing but slightly from the manifestations of modern Spiritualism appear in many of the Scripture incidents, e.g. the vision of Elisha’s servant (2Ki 6:15-17), the spiritual handwriting at the feast of Belshazzar (Dan 5:5), in the Delphic oracles, in the experiences of Luther, the occurrences related by Glanvil (1661), in the Camisard marvels in France (1686-1707), in the occurrences in the Wesley family (1716), and in the communications of Swedenborg with the spirit world. For about a hundred years before the American phase of Spiritualism appeared, Germany and Switzerland had their Spiritualists, developing or believing in phenomena almost identical. They had spirit vision, spirit writing, knowledge of coming events from the spirit world, and daily direct intercourse with its inhabitants. Preeminent among these Spiritualists were Jung-Stilling, Kerner, Lavater, Eschenmeyer, Zschokke, Schubert, Werner, Kant, etc. Clairvoyance and mesmerism were intimately associated with the introduction of modern Spiritualism, making the same claims to open intercourse with the spiritual world, and in some cases predicting that this communition would ere long assume the form of a living demonstration (Davis, The Principles of Nature, her Divine Revelations, etc.).
Spiritualism assumed a novel shape in the United States that of moving physical objects and has introduced spirits speaking through means of an alphabet, rapping, drawing, and writing, either by the hand of mediums or independently of them. The spirit rapping phenomenon began in the home of J.D. Fox, Hydeville, Wayne Co., N.Y., and is thus described by Mr. Dale Owen: In the month of January 1848, the noises assumed the character of distinct knockings at night in the bedrooms, sounding sometimes as from the cellar below, and resembling the hammering of a shoemaker. These knocks produced a tremulous motion in the furniture and even in the floor. The children (Margaret, aged 12 years, and Kate, aged 9 years) felt something heavy, as of a dog, lie on their feet when in bed; and Kate felt, as it were, a cold hand passed over her face. Sometimes the bedclothes were pulled off. Chairs and the dining table were moved from their places. Raps were made on doors as they stood close to them, but on suddenly opening them no one was visible. On the night of March 13 (or 31), 1848, the knockings were unusually loud, whereupon Mr. Fox tried the sashes, to see if they were shaken by the wind. Kate observed that the knockings in the room exactly answered the rattle made by her father with the sash.
Thereupon she snapped her fingers and exclaimed, Here, old Splitfoot, do as I do.’ The rap followed. This at once arrested the mother’s attention. Count ten,’ she said. Ten strokes were distinctly given. How old is my daughter Margaret?’ Twelve strokes. And Kate?’ Nine. Other questions were answered, when she asked if it was a man? No answer. Was it a spirit? It rapped. Numbers of questions were put to the spirit, which replied by knocks that it was that of a traveling tradesman, who had been murdered by the then tenant, John C. Bell, for his property. The peddler had never been seen afterwards; and on the floor being dug up, the remains of a human body were found. After a time the raps occurred only in the presence of the Fox sisters, accompanying them upon their removal to Rochester, and developing new phenomena. In November, 1849, the Fox girls appeared in a public hall, and their phenomena were subjected to several tests, without being able to trace them to any mundane agency. They arrived in New York in May 1850, and became the subject of extensive newspaper and conversational discussion. Meanwhile knockings were reported to have occurred in the house of Mr. Granger, of Rochester, and in that of a Dr. Phelps, at Stratford, Conn. Individuals were discovered to be mediums, or persons through whose atmosphere the spirits were enabled to show their power, until, in 1853, their number is given at 30,000. The following are some of the numerous phenomena characteristic of Spiritualism in this country. Dials with movable hands pointing out letters and answering questions without human aid; the hands of mediums acting involuntarily, and writing communications from departed spirits, sometimes the writing being upside down, or reversed so as to be read through the paper or in a mirror. Some mediums represented faithfully, so it was said, the actions. voice, and appearance of deceased persons, or, blindfolded, drew correct portraits of them. Sometimes the names of deceased persons and short messages from them appeared in raised red lines upon the skin of the medium. Mediums were said to have been raised into the air and floated above the heads of the spectators. Persons claimed to be touched by invisible and sometimes by visible hands; and voices were heard purporting to be those of spirits. In 1850 D.D. Home became known as a medium, and maintained for five years a wide-spread reputation, giving sittings before Napoleon III in Paris, and Alexander II in St. Petersburg. Other prominent mediums were the Davenport brothers, Koons of Ohio, Florence Cook, and the Holmeses. In the London Quarterly Journal of Science, Jan. 1874, some of the phenomena exhibited in repeated experiments with the mediums D.D. Home and Kate Fox are thus classified:
1. The movement of heavy bodies with contact, but without mechanical exertion;
2. The phenomena of percussive and other allied sounds;
3. The alteration of weight of bodies;
4. Movements of heavy bodies when at a distance from the medium;
5. The rising of chairs and tables off the ground without contact with any person;
6. The levitation of human beings;
7. Movement of various small articles without contact with any person;
8. Luminous appearances;
9. The appearance of hands, either self luminous or visible by ordinary light;
10. Direct writing;
11. Phantom forms and faces;
12. Special instances which seem to point to the agency of an exterior intelligence;
13. Miscellaneous occurrences of a complex character.
Later phenomena are those of the cabinet, in which the medium is, ostensibly, tied and untied by spirit hands; and other forms of materialization. One of the most recent of these last is spirit photographs. It is asserted that on clean and previously unused plates, marked by the sitter, and even when the sitter has used his own plates and camera, there has appeared with the sitter a second figure, which in many instances has been recognized as the portrait of a deceased relative or friend.
While many persons distinguished in the walks of science, philosophy, literature, and statesmanship have become avowed converts to Spiritualism, or have admitted the phenomena so far as to believe in a new force not recognized by science, or, at least, have witnessed that its phenomena are not explainable on the ground of imposture or coincidence, others boldly assert that they are all attributable to physical agencies (see Gasparin, Science vs. Spiritualism, transl. by Robert, N.Y. 1857, 2 vols.). Spiritual photographs, it is alleged, are secured by first tampering with the negative; and all the effects shown by Spiritualists are claimed for the simple processes of photography. The cabinet trick has frequently been reproduced by ordinary performers, and professional prestigiators have publicly offered to imitate all the so called marvels of Spiritualism without the slightest pretence of spiritual intervention. We have before us a letter from one who has made the whole subject a careful study, and he declares his ability to reproduce by sleight of hand any phenomenon of Spiritualism after seeing it once or twice.
It is impossible to make an approximate estimate of the number of Spiritualists, owing to the fact that their organized bodies contain but a small proportion of those who wholly or partially accept these phenomena. A very large proportion of the converts are from the ranks of those who previously doubted or disbelieved the immortality of the soul, and who affirm that they carry their skeptical tendencies into the investigation of this subject.
The Spiritual Magazine (the oldest journal of Spiritualism in England, and one that contains a record of the movement from its establishment, in 1860) has the following as its motto: Spiritualism is based on the cardinal fact of spirit communion and influx; it is the effort to discover all truth relating to man’s spiritual nature, capacities, relations, duties, welfare, and destiny, and its application to a regenerate life. It recognizes a continuous divine inspiration in man. It aims, through a careful, reverent study of facts, at a knowledge of the laws and principles which govern the occult forces of the universe; of the relations of spirit to matter, and of man to God and the spiritual world. It is thus catholic and progressive, leading to true religion as at one with the highest philosophy. The British National Association of Spiritualists was organized in Liverpool, November, 1873, and has for its object the union of Spiritualists of every variety of opinion, the aiding of students in their researches, and the making known of the positive results arrived at by careful research. Of periodicals, the number in Europe, America, and Australia is at least one hundred. The books relating to Spiritualism maybe. reckoned by the hundred, of which the following are some of the more important: Ballou, Spiritual Manifestations; Crookes, Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism (Lond. 1874); Crowe, Spiritualism and the Age we Live in (ibid. 1859); De Morgan, From Matter to Spirit (ibid. 1863); Edmonds and Dexter, Spiritualism (N.Y. 1854-5, 2 vols.); Hardinge, Modern American Spiritualism (ibid. 1870); Home, Incidents in my Life (Lond., Paris, and N.Y. 1862, 1872, 1875); Howitt, History of the Supernatural in All Ages and Nations (Lond. 1863); Olcott, People from the Other World (Hartford, 1875); Owen, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (Phila. 1860), and The Debatable Land between This World and the Next (N.Y. 1872); Sargent, Planchette, or the Despair of Science (Boston, 1869); Wallace, On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, three essays (Lond. 1875).
Spiritualists. 1.= Libertines (q.v.). 2. The name assumed by persons who profess to hold communication with the spirits of the departed. SEE SPIRITUALISM.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Spiritualism
See Necromancy; Sorcery
Necromancy; Sorcery
Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible
Spiritualism
Spiritualism (1) is the doctrine that the ultimate reality in the universe is Spirit, (Pneuma, Nous, Reason, Logos) an Over-Mind akm to human spirit, but pervading the entire universe as its ground and rational explanation. It is opposed to materialism.
Spiritualism (2) is sometimes used to denote the Idealistic view that nothing but an absolute Spirit and finite spirits exist. The world of sense in this view is a realm of ideas.
Spiritualism (3) is used in religious terminology to emphasize the direct influence of the Holy Spirit in the sphere of religion and especially to indicate the teaching of St. John’s Gospel that God is Spirit and that worship is direct correspondence of Spirit with spirit.
Spiritualism (4) means the faith that spirits of the dead communicate with the living through persons who are “mediums” and through other forms of manifestation. The word Spiritism is more properly used for this faith. — R.M.J.