52 THEOPHOBIA AND NEMESIS 



the war. Further, he explains that it was the war 

 which induced him to take an active interest in 

 a subject which had been before no more than 

 one of passing curiosity. " In the presence of an 

 agonised world," he writes, " hearing every day of 

 the deaths of the flower of our race in the first 

 promise of their unfulfilled youth, seeing around 

 one the wives and mothers who had no clear 

 conception whither their loved one had gone to, 

 I seemed suddenly to see that this subject with 

 which I had so long dallied was not merely a study 

 of a force outside the rules of science, but that it 

 really was something tremendous, a breaking down 

 of the walls between the two worlds, a direct 

 undeniable message from beyond, a call of hope 

 and of guidance to the human race at the time of 

 its deepest affliction." Perhaps it is not wonder- 

 ful that spiritualism should have won the success 

 which it has, for it offers a good deal to those who 

 can believe in it. It offers definite intercourse 

 with the departed ; positive knowledge as to 

 the existence of a future state, and even as to its 

 nature the last-named intelligence not always 

 very attractive. Further, it requires no parti- 

 cular creed and, it would appear, no special code 

 of morals ; for one of its teachings, I gather, is 

 that it does not greatly matter what a man thinks 

 or even does, so far as his future welfare is con- 

 cerned. 



Sir A. Doyle's book is the least convincing 

 exposition of spiritualism I have yet read and I 

 have studied many of them but it may be taken 

 to include the latest views on the subject. 



