Classic Reprint: Materialism v. Spiritism (2007)

A Classic Reprint from the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The October 1926 Socialist Standard reviewed a pamphlet by a Communist Party sympathiser entitled Is Materialism the Basis of Communism? The case against Materialism from the Revolutionary Standpoint. The author replied. We republish our reply as a still valid exposition of the scientific method.

Dear Comrade,

Someone kindly sent me a copy of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD yesterday containing your review of my pamphlet. As you have honoured me with a front page notice, I think you might have got the title of the pamphlet correct. It is, “Is Materialism Basis of Communism?” Not “communion,” as you print it. And, by the way, if, as you say, the pamphlet contains its refutation, why didn’t THE STANDARD accept an advertisement of it?

Before criticising my facts you ought to have studied the subject with which I deal. But Socialists are too busy fighting one another to find time to inform themselves on new discoveries. They are still under the delusion the limits of the Knowable were fixed by Victorian science.

I believe a great revival of religion on a scientific basis to be imminent, and it is possible that spiritualism and theosophy, perhaps in alliance with a reformed Roman Catholicism, will sweep Socialism aside. As I think this would be a disaster, I am trying to get Socialists to recognise the importance of the great spiritualist movement, which is wholly proletarian in its origin.   

Yours fraternally,

Isabel Kingsley.

Reply to Isabel Kingsley.

The misprint of the title of Isabel Kingsley’s pamphlet was so clearly a printer’s error that it was not thought that anyone would be misled by it. The proof-reader has been suitably admonished. THE SOCIALIST STANDARD did not accept an advertisement of the pamphlet because the only advertisements we insert in THE SOCIALIST STANDARD are those of our own publications and announcements. As the review was placed on the front page it is rather difficult to see any reason for the authoress’s complaint on this point.

It is interesting to note that Isabel Kingsley makes no attempt to meet the criticism of her pamphlet beyond the statement that I ought to have studied the subject with which she deals. This statement is entirely gratuitous. As a total stranger to myself Isabel Kingsley has no knowledge whatever of my studies in any direction. But this “retort” is the usual one of the Spiritist, who finds his or her case demolished by a critical examination. Those who were present at the debate between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph McCabe will remember that when Conan Doyle’s bubble of bluster had been coolly pricked, when his statements of supposed facts were shown to be wrong in every essential particular, his only reply was, “My opponent has not read the books, or if he has he doesn’t understand them.”

This was too much for even the respectable audience of the Queen’s Hall, and the protests from them led to one of Conan Doyle’s usual shuffles. He gave another illustration of this habit when faced with the confession of the gentleman who arranged the “Masked Medium” illusion, that Conan Doyle claimed as an instance of an actual materialisation.

Equally gratuitous is the statement that Socialists “are still under the delusion the limits of the Knowable were fixed by Victorian Science.” Not a tittle of evidence is offered in support of this assertion, though it may be said in passing, that Victorian Science, with its names like Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Hemholtz, Spencer, etc., is certainly in advance of the archaic ideas of the ethnological period of savagery held by Isabel Kingsley.

The last paragraph of her letter supplies a key to Isabel Kingsley’s attitude. A person who talks of religion having a “scientific basis” is evidently mentally incapable of understanding either science or religion.

The basis of all religion is the fear of the unknown; and all religions attempt to explain what the unknown is, and what occurs there. Here is the happy hunting ground of the wildest and most degrading superstitions, often accompanied by filthy rites and barbarous mutilations. A large section of the Spiritist movement openly claims that their views are those of a new religion.

Science is based upon knowledge and knowledge only. Observation, experiment, classification, generalisation, are its methods.

Such errors as occur are the usual human ones of faulty observation, incomplete experiments, or too hasty generalisations. But these errors are corrected as further knowledge is acquired and applied to the various departments of science. No scientist places any definite limit upon the Knowable. All the scientist asks is that any claim to the extension of the Knowable must be based upon knowledge, not superstition.

And even if “the great spiritualist movement … is wholly proletarian in its origin “—a debatable point—it has not only wandered far from its “origin,” but such “origin” does not excuse its superstitions any more than those of the other mental deficients around us.

Nor does Isabel Kingsley give us any information to show how a movement, based upon the ideas of primitive man plus the puerile conjuring tricks of “mediums,” can be of any “importance” to Socialism—except as a stumbling block to be cleared out of the way.

The various attempts to foist crude superstitions, by those of limited or perverted mentalities, upon the Socialist movement, are evidences of the progress of Socialism, but such attempts must be fought and exposed.   

Jack Fitzgerald

Letter: Materialism v. Spiritism: A Further Rejoinder and Our Reply. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrade,

If my mentality be, according to J. Fitzgerald, “peculiar,” his must surely be unique, at any rate in a civilised community, since he considers that to describe the Marxian Theory of Value as an ideal of social ethics, a moral ideal, is abuse of Marx! And one need not be a ”capitalist” to see the inconsistency of professing a belief in scientific materialism, and then sacrificing oneself for the benefit of posterity. Men can only be said to believe a thing when they act as if it were true.

I can see that no amount of evidence will make your reviewer believe what he does not want to believe; but I must repeat that the four founders of the S.P.R. were not Spiritists at the time they founded the society, but were converted by their researches. William James, no mean judge of character, says of Myers and his great work : ”Heart and head alike were wholly satisfied by his occupation. His character also grew stronger in every particular for his devotion to these inquiries. He became learned in science, circumspect, democratic in sympathy, endlessly patient, and, above all, happy.” A sufficient answer to the insinuation that dabbling in such phenomena disintegrates the critical faculties.

Yours fraternally,

Isabel Kingsley,

9, Maybury Mansions, W.I 

June 11th, 1927.

P. S.—Since writing the above I have seen the further letters on this subject in the June S.S. J. Fitzgerald has apparently forgotten what he has written. He said that certain evidence that was good enough for Sir O. Lodge “would not impose upon a school-child.”

The straits to which our critic is put is shown by his dragging in the conjurers. They have been challenged time and again to produce the physical phenomena of spiritualism under the same conditions as the mediums, and they have never done it. Their opinions on the subject are therefore worthless. It is not the objective but the subjective phenomena that have convinced such men as Lodge and Barratt and Myers, the evidence, that is, of the survival of memory and personality. Why is a conjurer better fitted to judge of that?

Isabel Kingsley.

Our Reply:

When in the October, 1926, issue of the Socialist Standard, we reviewed Isabel Kingsley’s pamphlet on ” Materialism,” we stated :—

Throughout the pamphlet there are numerous totally unsupported assertions and claims of the authoress that would take a volume to refute in detail.

while further on in the article we pointed out that she :—

Pours out shoals of baseless assumptions, of unsupported assertions, besides indulging in deliberate misrepresentation,

and gave chapter and verse from the pamphlet to prove our case.

The above is the fourth letter we have received from Isabel Kingsley, but in no single instance has she attempted to meet our exposure of her false assertions and deliberate misrepresentations. Nay, more. We have refuted many of her assertions and claims by quotations from the very sources she refers her reader to for evidence, particularly the volumes of Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. An important point emerges from these facts. Either Isabel Kingsley has read these volumes, and is guilty of deliberate falsification, or she has not read them and is guilty of brazen bounce.

Her first paragraph is empty nonsense. The statement in her second paragraph : — ” I can see that no amount of evidence will make your reviewer believe what he does not want to believe,” coming from one who has failed to produce a single atom of evidence throughout the discussion, is just a sample of her brazen bounce.

Her remarks on the founders of the S.P.R. are interesting. We said in the March (1927) S.S. that the S.P.R. was founded by Spiritists. Isabel Kingsley, without giving any evidence for her statement, replied that the society was NOT so founded. We proved the falsity of this statement by giving the names of the founders in the May S.S. With all the boldness of ignorance she now repeats her lie in a slightly different form and says these four men ” were not Spiritists at the time they founded the society.” And her evidence? Absolutely none. Here again the falsity of her assertion can be proved from her beloved Proceedings of the S.P.R.

At the first conference of that society, the President—Mr. H. Sidgwick—stated in his address : —

I say it is a scandal that the dispute as to the reality of these phenomena should still be going on. . . . and yet that the educated world as a body should still be simply in the attitude of incredulity (Vol. I., page 8).

Here we have not merely an admission of belief in Spiritism by the founders, but a protest, to the extent of calling it a ”scandal,” that any dispute should exist as to the reality of the phenomena. But the President went further. He admitted quite plainly why the society was formed when he said :—

I think that even educated and scientific spiritualists were not quite prepared for the amount of fraud which has recently come to light, nor for the obstinacy with which mediums against whom fraud has been proved have been afterwards defended, and have in fact been able to go on with what I may, without offence, cal! their trade, after exposure no less than before (Ibid, p. 11).

The cat is out of the bag. Faced with the torrent of exposure of the fraud perpetrated by mediums, which torrent threatened to sweep away the remains of the Spiritist movement, these prominent Spiritists tried to save the situation by instituting a show of ”investigation” and ”research” into the claims made. They had to warn ”even educated and scientific Spiritualists ” against defending frauds who had been exposed over and over again, though this warning has not saved Conan Doyle and others from still following that course.

The postscript follows the now familiar lines. I have “apparently forgotten what I had written.” Then why did not Isabel Kingsley enlighten us on the point?

Her remarks on the conjurers is not only a sample of her usual audacity; it is also an illustration of her massive ignorance. Where are these courageous mediums who have so gallantly issued these challenges? And echo—as Isabel Kingsley fails—answers ”Where?” As every student of Spiritism knows, it is just the contrary that is true. It is the mediums who have been challenged and failed to appear. Scores of instances could be given, but a few well-known cases must suffice.

Years ago Maskelyne and Cooke reproduced at the Egyptian Hall the “phenomena” of the “Davenport Brothers” with ropes and cabinet. Readers of Reynolds Newspaper will remember that for many years the then editor, Mr. W. M. Thompson, in conjunction with Mr. Maskelyne, had a standing challenge to reproduce the phenomena of any ”medium,” but the challenge was never taken up. Mr. Labouchere, editor of Truth, placed a £1,000 note inside an envelope, sealed it, and offered the contents to any medium or clairvoyant who could read the number on the note. No one ever read it. Some of our readers will remember a notorious case in 1901, one of the filthiest that ever disgusted a judge and jury, where one of the leading defendants was known in her ”Theocratic” circle as “The Swami.” This angelic creature, who received seven years’ penal servitude for ”aiding and abetting the commission of rape,” had previously been a Spiritist medium in America, where she had been convicted of attempting to defraud a Mr. Marsh out of certain property by means of messages from the ”Spirits.” Mr. Marsh believed in it, but some of his relatives—no doubt ”gross materialists“—brought Ann Diss Debar (as she was then known) into court. She was not the only one they brought. They created a sensation by suddenly bringing into court the celebrated conjurer, the late Carl Hertz, who, in broad daylight and not two feet away from Mr. Marsh, produced messages just as the medium had done. Miss Debar, when she saw what was coming, snatched the tablet away from Hertz in the middle of the performance, but, to her amazement, Hertz got the message through in spite of her trick. Then he showed the court ” how it was done.” The full details will be found in Houdini’s interesting volume, A Magician Among the Spirits (pages 74-75, etc.).

A wealthy Spiritist named Leybert left a sum of money to Pennsylvania University for the purpose, among other things, of investigating the claims of mediums. The notorious Slade, who had previously been exposed in London by Sir E. Ray Lankester and Sir Bryan Donkin, gave a séance of spirit writing on slates. Mr. Kellars, the conjurer, duplicated every trick of Slade’s, and then showed how it was done.

In London in 1919 a séance was held under the auspices of the Sunday Express, where a “Masked Lady” gave a performance that Conan Doyle described as “most successful and convincing,” and as a “clear proof of clairvoyance.” Yet the whole thing was a conjuring trick, as was admitted almost immediately after by the man who arranged the show, Mr. Selbit. Mr. Stuart Cumberland, who was present, has given a full description in Chapter VII. of his Spiritualism. The Inside Truth.

But what in many ways is perhaps the most interesting case of all is to be found where Isabel Kingsley never looks—the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. The “great” medium Eglinton had been giving spirit messages on slates similar to Slade. Dr. Hodgson arranged with a young conjurer named S. J. Davey to give a set of séances duplicating Eglinton’s “phenomena.” Certain Spiritists who had seen Eglinton were invited to attend and give a written record of what they saw. They all agreed that the séances were duplicates of Eglinton’s, and all genuine. When the trick was announced the Spiritists claimed that Davey was really a medium who would not admit the fact !

Isabel Kingsley’s last remark on Oliver Lodge being convinced by “subjective” phenomena, while, as usual, contrary to the facts, shows the danger people run who use terms they do not understand. Used in this connection her statement is idiotic nonsense.

Jack Fitzgerald.

In view of Miss Isabel Kingsley’s failure to give evidence and authority for her assertions and claims, we do not feel that any useful purpose would be served by allowing more space for the repetition of these assertions.—Editorial Committee.

Letter: Materialism v. Spiritism. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editor, the Socialist Standard.

Dear Comrade,

It is only the great importance of the subject under discussion that induces me to continue a controversy in which my opponent, conscious of the weakness of his case, stoops to personal abuse. I will leave it to your readers to judge which of us, your reviewer or myself, has been guilty of “evasions, assumptions and misrepresentations.”

The Society for Psychical Research was NOT “founded by Spiritists,” and it has never hesitated to expose fraudulent mediumship when it met with it. If J. Fitzgerald were up-to-date in his knowledge of its methods, he would know that nowadays mediums never dictate the conditions of the séances arranged by the Society. It is simply laughable to read my opponent’s description of its publications as “chatter, drivel, and ramblings,” when we know that the Society number amongst its members scientists of the standing of Madame Curie, Dr. Hans Driesch and Professor Julian Huxley. So much for the first and second points raised by your reviewer.

I now come to points three and four. Years before Einstein the Theory of Relativity was anticipated in occult writings, which called in question the then accepted dogmas of Space and Time, and, moreover, regarded Matter itself as a “derived” instead of a fundamental concept. Occultism also declared that there had existed very early civilisations resembling our own (see Mrs. Besant’s Man—Whence, Whither?) and later, archaeologists laid bare the traces of the Minoan civilisation with its modern system of sanitation. Occult science has always taught the underlying unity of all created things—one spirit but many forms. Now orthodox biology surveys the entire zoological series, and sees the psyche increasing in powers and capabilities as we rise higher and higher in the scale. But the chief discovery of occultism is the supernormal powers of man, and modern science has by hundreds of recorded laboratory experiments by first-class men, incontrovertibly proved that the phenomena due to these powers are true occurrences in nature. I refer readers to the writings of Osty, Tischner, Richet, Geley, and Schrenk-Notzing, now obtainable at Boot’s Libraries. These things are not matters of opinion, but of hard fact. The objection that since they were known to primitive man they must be “cleared out of the way,” has no validity whatever. On the contrary, the antiquity and wide prevalence of the ideas constitute a claim on the attention of the unprejudiced. We are here in the presence of faculties or senses, more or less latent, but at the same time universally distributed, which form part of the general heritage of mankind.

In conclusion, I brand as a wicked lie your reviewer’s assertion that my pamphlet contains “pages of abuse of Marx.” I challenge him to quote ONE WORD of the kind from my pamphlet. Marx’s view of the universe was that generally held in his day. His true glory, obscured by his followers, is that his idea of society should be so much in line with the idealistic reactions of today against materialist science.

Yours fraternally,

Isabel Kingsley

Reply:

After accusing Marx, among other things, of intellectual dishonesty, and myself of ignorance of the subject I was criticising, Isabel Kingsley now claims that her opponent, ”conscious of the weakness of his case, stoops to personal abuse ” !

The readers will certainly be able to judge of the “evasions, assumptions and misrepresentations” as the numerous quotations from her pamphlet given in the review published in the October, 1926, Socialist Standard, prove the truth of my charges. Isabel Kingsley has not made the slightest attempt in any of her letters to meet those charges. The only shadow of a reply is the hysterical shriek that it is “a wicked lie” to say that she abuses Marx, and her challenge to me to quote “ONE WORD” of the kind from her pamphlet. Why does she not read the instances given in the October, 1926 issue? There it was pointed out that on page 13 of her pamphlet she says :—

“Never was there a less scientific mind than Marx nor a less scientific book than Capital .”

Perhaps, with her peculiar mentality, Isabel Kingsley thinks it is praise. This point is further emphasised on the same page, when she says that Marx’s theory of value “is not a scientific deduction; it is an ideal of social ethics, a moral ideal” ; while it is extended on page 15, when we are told :— ” Marx’s method in Capital is the method of the moralist. He first postulates on absolute morality.” This is only one of the falsifications of Marx given in the pamphlet. Worse than these is the direct charge of dishonesty levelled against Marx on the same page where Isabel Kingsley says:—

“No doubt Marx realised that the law of determinism, if valid, would tend to paralyse all revolutionary action by making us condone the brutalities of capitalism on the ground that those responsible for them wire automata moved by some impersonal force called history.”

Thus, having first twisted Marx’s theory from the “Materialist Conception of History” into “Economic Determinism,” our authoress then suggests that Marx disbelieved his own theory ! But perhaps the greatest, if more subtle, instance of abuse, as pointed out in the review of the pamphlet, is Isabel Kingsley’s deliberate refusal to quote a single word from Marx on his theory, but to substitute a travesty from a Capitalist publication in its place. After perpetrating such a dirty trick, she does well to protest against a truthful description of her attitude as abuse.

On her defence of Spiritism, the reader will notice that although this is her third letter on the subject, she makes no attempt to bring forward any evidence to support her case. As in her pamphlet, all that is done is to make various assertions without a single fact to back them up. Her only reply to my statement that the Society for Psychical Research was founded by Spiritists is to say—in capital letters—that it was NOT so founded.

This retort raises an interesting—and instructive—point. Does Isabel Kingsley know who founded the S.P.R? If she does not, and the extremely superficial character of her writings gives some support to such a view, then why wildly deny my statement? If she does know, then why did she not quote their names and so smash my argument? The answer to this is easy. Here are the names of the four men who founded the S.P.R. : Frederick W. H. Myers, Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney and William Barrett—all well-known leading Spiritists.

When our authoress says “that nowadays mediums never dictate the conditions of the séances,” she is guilty of another deliberate mis-statement. Eusapia Palladino refused to allow a Committee of the S.P.R. to uncover her feet during a test séance (F. Podmore, Newer Spiritualism, page 117).

“Eva C.,” one of Conan Doyle’s “white angels,” insisted upon her clothing being left in a certain manner to suit herself. The Thomas brothers—other of Conan Doyle’s loudly advertised marvels from Wales—refused to allow Stuart Cumberland to be present at the séance they gave in London. Unfortunately for the mediums, the latter gentleman was allowed to assist in arranging the preliminaries with the result that nothing more wonderful happened than a pair of braces being thrown upon a sitter’s knees—a terrible disappointment to those who thought there “must be something in it,” because of Conan Doyle’s extravagant claims. But the over-riding fact that shows the falsity of Isabel Kingsley’s statement is that all séances are held in shaded or red light or else in total darkness. When it is remembered that conjuring tricks far more marvellous than anything ever performed at a séance, are given every week-night on music halls in brilliant light, and yet completely mystify the audiences, one may judge the value of the mediums’ tricks.

The only attempt at a reply to my description of the contents of the 40 volumes of proceedings is to give the names of three scientists who are members of the S.P.R. But what does Isabel Kingsley mean by this? Does she wish to suggest that these scientists are responsible for the contents of these volumes? If not, then why give their names? If she does suggest it, the only answer is that she is again guilty of deliberate falsification. The bulk of the contents of these volumes are descriptions of séances, and so-called supernormal occurrences. In many instances they read like conversations in Bedlam, or conferences among persons in an advanced state of intoxication. Has my opponent read these volumes herself? If so, what has she to say to the statement of one of the S.P.R.’s own committees, when they remark :—

” Further we would warn future readers that the details of the evidence are in many cases not only dull, but of a trivial and even ludicrous kind.” ‘ (Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. 1, page 118.)

One can certainly agree with this after reading the stuff. This trick of quoting names is, of course, an old one with defenders of Spiritism. When, however, one turns to “evidence” that is supposed to have convinced many of these scientists the reader is amazed at the credulity that can swallow such drivel. One example is the séance held by Sir Oliver Lodge with Mrs. Thompson at the former’s house in Birmingham. The conversation of the supposed F. W. H. Myers that Lodge says “was in fact as convincing as anything that could be imagined ” (Survival of Man, p. 290) was too stupid to impose upon a school-child in an inquiring frame of mind.

I asked for one scientific discovery that confirms occultism or Spiritism. In her third paragraph of about 250 words, she has to admit that she does not know of one, for the whole paragraph consists of vague assertions without a single fact or quotation to support them.

The history of Spiritism is one long record of fraud and swindling. Practically every prominent medium—whether paid or unpaid—has been proven a fraud, while not a single “miracle” has been produced when the conditions have been at all stringent. In other words, while fraud has been proven as rampant throughout the Spiritist movement, not a single claim of anything “supernatural” has ever been established.

Jack Fitzgerald

Letter: Science v. Spiritism. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

To The Editor

I really did not intend that last letter I sent you, for publication. However, as you did print it, it gave me an opportunity of reading your reply, and for this further communication on what you must admit is an important subject.

The difficulty about evidence on psychic matters is that it is so inaccessible to most people : Socialists, especially, are too busy to give time to investigation. Therefore I did not intend any disrespect to you when I said you were not well up in the subject. If you were you would not oppose science to psychical research, as you do when you write : ” Science is based upon knowledge and knowledge only. Observation, experiment, classification, generalisation, are its methods,” implying that these methods are not used in the demonstrations of spiritualism. There are over forty vols. of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research available for study, and the evidence there recorded is based on the scientific method.

Anthropology, archaeology, and ethnography, have moved since the days of the scientists you name, and all the latest views and discoveries confirm the knowledge given by the occultists !

Why object to discoveries because they appear to be archaic? Have you read the chapter on Communism in Hyndman’s book, The Evolution of Revolution?

A scientist of the standing of Charles Richet said, in Nature lately; “Our intelligence is reached by forces that disclose facts which neither sight, hearing, nor touch, could reveal.”

If Socialists object to taking the plunge straight away into survival and spirit communication, let them begin by studying the question of the supernormal powers of man. Is there anything unreasonable in asking them to do this?

Yours fraternally,

Isabel Kingsley.

By the way, you wouldn’t send anyone to Sir Ernest Benn for arguments for Socialism, and Joseph McCabe and Edward Clodd are in the same category with regard to psychism.

Reply to Isabel Kingsley.

After carefully evading our exposures and criticisms of her pamphlet and letter, Isabel Kingsley gaily sets off on a fresh path of assumptions and misrepresentations. We might demand, in fairness to our readers, that she should attempt to deal with our previous replies before introducing fresh matter. As, however, she has shown no inclination to follow such a course, it may be as well to point out the fallacies in the above letter.

First. As every reader of the December, 1926 Socialist Standard knows, I not only do not admit that Spiritism is an “important” subject, but stated distinctly that it was only a “stumbling block to be cleared out of the way.”

Second. Isabel Kingsley’s pamphlet was not written in defence of “psychical research,” but of Spiritism—a wholly different thing—and it was Spiritism we attacked. Even then her case is rotten. The Society for Psychical Research was founded by Spiritists to back up the claims of Spiritists by a show of investigation. And, as their greatest investigator said, when dealing with the report of a Committee who, on one occasion, examined the infamous Eusapia Palladino :—

“It is to be understood, of course, that in investigating phenomena of this kind …. the investigators impose their own conditions at their own risk. …. If the Committee had begun by putting the medium into an iron cage they might have ended with nothing for their money.” (F. Podmore, Newer Spiritualism, p. 115.)

In practically every case the medium dictates the conditions of the séance. This is not “scientific method,” it is just barefaced fraud. Where the investigators insist upon elaborate precautions, the watchers get “nothing for their money.”

The forty volumes referred to by Isabel Kingsley contain an enormous amount of dreary drivel, childish chatter, and imbecile ramblings, but precious little “evidence.”

Occasionally a page is brightened, as on P. 133 of Volume VII., where the great God of the Spiritists, F. W. H. Myers, reports the result of an examination of Eusapia Palladino, held at Cambridge.

”I cannot doubt that we observed much conscious and deliberate fraud which must have needed long practice to bring to its present level of skill …. I do not think there is adequate reason to suppose that any of the phenomena at Cambridge were genuine.”

Third. It is quite true that science has moved since the Victorian days, but I challenge Isabel Kingsley to name one scientific discovery that confirms Occultism or Spiritism.

This challenge was given, in a slightly different form, in our original review of the pamphlet (October, 1926, S.S.), and it is significant to note that challenge has been ignored.

Fourth. I made no objection to any” discoveries,” archaic or other. All that I did was to point out that what Isabel Kingsley, in her ignorance and mental limitations, thought was new, was really borrowed from primitive man.

Richet’s opinion is not scientific evidence and—assuming the quotation is correct, for no date is given—it is for Richet to show how he knows these wonderful facts. Moreover, it will be time enough for Socialists to consider studying the “supernormal powers” of man when any evidence is brought forward that any such “powers” exist.

The postscript is a further illustration of the poverty of Isabel Kingsley’s case, for I never mentioned Edward Clodd’s name at all, and Joseph McCabe’s only in connection with a debate. Here, however, she has laid herself open to a crushing retort. When reviewing her pamphlet in the October (1926) Socialist Standard I showed that, although there were pages of abuse of Marx and the Materialist Conception of History, not a single quotation, or even word, was given from Marx on this subject !

My answer, therefore, is : “No ! I should not send anyone to Ernest Benn or Isabel Kingsley for arguments on Socialism, but would send them to Marx.”

Jack Fitzgerald

Letter: Materialism v. Spiritism: A Criticism and Our Reply. (1926)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

9, Maybury Mansions, 

Weymouth Street, W.1.

 

Dear Comrade,

Someone kindly sent me a copy of the Socialist Standard yesterday containing your review of my pamphlet. As you have honoured me with a front page notice, I think you might have got the title of the pamphlet correct. It is, “Is Materialism Basis of Communism?” Not ” communion,” as you print it. And, by the way, if, as you say, the pamphlet contains its refutation, why didn’t the Standard accept an advertisement of it?

Before criticising my facts you ought to have studied the subject with which I deal. But Socialists are too busy fighting one another to find time to inform themselves on new discoveries. They are still under the delusion the limits of the Knowable were fixed by Victorian science.

I believe a great revival of religion on a scientific basis to be imminent, and it is possible that spiritualism and theosophy, perhaps in alliance with a reformed Roman Catholicism, will sweep Socialism aside. As I think this would be a disaster, I am trying to get Socialists to recognise the importance of the great spiritualist movement, which is wholly proletarian in its origin. 

Yours fraternally,

Isabel Kingsley.

Reply to Isabel Kingsley.

The misprint of the title of Isabel Kingsley’s pamphlet was so clearly a printer’s error that it was not thought that anyone would be misled by it. The proof-reader has been suitably admonished. The Socialist Standard did not accept an advertisement of the pamphlet because the only advertisements we insert in the Socialist Standard are those of our own publications and announcements. As the review was placed on the front page it is rather difficult to see any reason for the authoress’s complaint on this point.

It is interesting to note that Isabel Kingsley makes no attempt to meet the criticism of her pamphlet beyond the statement that I ought to have studied the subject with which she deals. This statement is entirely gratuitous. As a total stranger to myself Isabel Kingsley has no knowledge whatever of my studies in any direction. But this “retort” is the usual one of the Spiritist, who finds his or her case demolished by a critical examination. Those who were present at the debate between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph McCabe will remember that when Conan Doyle’s bubble of bluster had been coolly pricked, when his statements of supposed facts were shown to be wrong in every essential particular, his only reply was, “My opponent has not read the books, or if he has he doesn’t understand them.”

This was too much for even the respectable audience of the Queen’s Hall, and the protests from them led to one of Conan Doyle’s usual shuffles. He gave another illustration of this habit when faced with the confession of the gentleman who arranged the “Masked Medium” illusion, that Conan Doyle claimed as an instance of an actual materialisation.

Equally gratuitous is the statement that Socialists “are still under the delusion the limits of the Knowable were fixed by Victorian Science.” Not a tittle of evidence is offered in support of this assertion, though it may be said in passing, that Victorian Science, with its names like Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Hemholtz, Spencer, etc., is certainly in advance of the archaic ideas of the ethnological period of savagery held by Isabel Kingsley.

The last paragraph of her letter supplies a key to Isabel Kingsley’s attitude. A person who talks of religion having a “scientific basis” is evidently mentally incapable of understanding either science or religion.

The basis of all religion is the fear of the unknown; and all religions attempt to explain what the unknown is, and what occurs there. Here is the happy hunting ground of the wildest and most degrading superstitions, often accompanied by filthy rites and barbarous mutilations. A large section of the Spiritist movement openly claims that their views are those of a new religion.

Science is based upon knowledge and knowledge only. Observation, experiment, classification, generalisation, are its methods.

Such errors as occur are the usual human ones of faulty observation, incomplete experiments, or too hasty generalisations. But these errors are corrected as further knowledge is acquired and applied to the various departments of science. No scientist places any definite limit upon the Knowable. All the scientist asks is that any claim to the extension of the Knowable must be based upon knowledge, not superstition.

And even if “the great spiritualist movement … is wholly proletarian in its origin “—a debatable point—it has not only wandered far from its “origin,” but such “origin” does not excuse its superstitions any more than those of the other mental deficients around us.

Nor does Isabel Kingsley give us any information to show how a movement, based upon the ideas of primitive man plus the puerile conjuring tricks of “mediums,” can be of any “importance” to Socialism—except as a stumbling block to be cleared out of the way.

The various attempts to foist crude superstitions, by those of limited or perverted mentalities, upon the Socialist movement, are evidences of the progress of Socialism, but such attempts must be fought and exposed.    

Jack Fitzgerald

Marx versus Mediums: Materialism or Spiritualism? (1926)

Pamphlet Review from the October 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Is Materialism the Basis of Communism?” The case against Materialism from the Revolutionary Standpoint. By Isabel Kingsley. (Henderson 6d.)

If a political Party continuously changes its policy and programme, follows one “stunt” after another, and advocates sensational measures of various kinds at different times for the purpose of attracting crowds of various mentalities to its ranks, it must not be surprised if it sometimes reaps a result such methods deserve.

The pamphlet before us is a case in point. Its authoress, attracted by the wild and whirling phrases of the Communist Party, joined that organisation, and then tried to spread her peculiar views inside its ranks. As the Communist Party is ready to support almost any view on particular occasions, this idea of the authoress had considerable justification. But the Party Executive, who make no fetish of logic, forbade such action, and so the pamphlet was published outside in an endeavour to reach the members inside.

Whether such a thing of shreds and patches, with its curious collection of freaks, as the Communist Party, can be said to have any basis beyond the job-hunting schemes of its leaders, and the money from Russia is a moot point.

Throughout the pamphlet there are numerous totally unsupported assertions and claims of the authoress that would take a volume to refute in detail. One or two examples may be taken. On page 7 we are told that “the middle of the eighteenth century saw the rise of Materialism,” a statement that A. Lange, the standard historian of Materialism, flatly contradicts. We read on page 9 that a new science called “Metapsychics” has been discovered, and it is described by Richet in an unreferenced quotation as follows : –

Metapsychic facts are marked off from the physical in that they seem due to an unknown intelligence,” What a convenient “science”? The “facts” (themselves in dispute) seem to be due to an unknown intelligence ! Perhaps the gem of these baseless assertions is given on page 26, where we are told : –

“Mind has healed broken bones, spinal curvature, and gangrenous wounds, in many cases instantaneously and after every recognised method of treatment had failed.”

Still Couè died. But the unkindest cut – to the Communists – is given on page 44, where one reads : “Between present-day Spiritism and Communism there is a striking general analogy”. We have never said anything quite so cruel as that.

Another feature of the pamphlet is the large number of statements placed between quotation marks, as if taken from various writers, though references are only given in two or three cases. There is a certain wisdom in this omission as we shall show presently.

A criticism of Materialism, sooner or later, means falling foul of Marx, Engels, Morgan, etc., and the Materialist conception of history, and Isabel Kingsley is not long before she begins her attack. On page 13 she asserts : “Never was there a less scientific mind than that of Marx, nor a less scientific book than Capital. “ The authoress’ mental inability to understand anything scientific is shown on the same page, when she says that the new idea brought into political economy by Marx was “the equivalence between Capital and Labour” ! Students of Marx will smile at this grotesque nonsense, as well as at the further statement on the same page, that Marx’s explanation of value “is not a scientific deduction; it is an ideal of social ethics, a new moral ideal.”

As if to make the proof of her ignorance of economics and Marx overwhelming, she follows the above statement with this : –

“While the classical economists regard the labourer as only one means of production, in the Marxian theory he is the sole creator of value.”

The most elementary student of economics can see at a glance that the two phrases of this sentence have no direct connection with each other. In addition, it implies a misrepresentation of Marx, because, as it is written, it infers that Marx said there was only one means of production, the labourer, a statement that is specifically refuted on page 10 of Capital. (Sonnenschein. – ED.)

Another misrepresentation is given on page 15, where we are told : “Marx’s method in Capital is the method of the moralist. He first postulates an absolute morality.” One need go no further than the preface to Capital to see the falsity of this statement.

A further instance of misrepresentation is when the authoress, on page 14, describes Engels’s book as “Socialism, from Utopia to Science.” Engels, of course, did not use such an absurd title, and it is in contradiction to the views in the text. There is not even the excuse of a translator’s slip, as Engels saw the English edition of this work through the press and wrote a special preface for it.

When the subject of the Materialist Conception of History is reached, the misrepresentation becomes blatant. The first thing that strikes the reader is that there is not a single quotation or even a word from Marx’s writing on this subject, in the whole pamphlet. Instead the following travesty of Marx’s view is given from the Century Dictionary and the Dictionary of Philosophy : –

“THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY assumes that the substance of all things human is wealth, qua its production and distribution; that religion, art, morality, etc., are its accidents, i.e., each and all of their manifestations being traceable directly, or indirectly, to economic causes.”

Not satisfied with this piece of trickery, the authoress borrows a falsification from America that consists of substituting the term “Economic Determinism” for the “Materialistic Conception of History,” and then proceeding to demolish the former view, which no Marxian defends, and so avoiding the trouble of meeting the Marxian case at all.

And what does Isabel Kingsley bring against the huge accumulation of facts, the scientific deductions, and the splendid generalisation that supports the Materialist Conception of History? That combination of cheap charlatanism and crude superstition, derived from savages, that is known as Spiritism ! After pages of abuse of Marx and the materialist philosophy in general, we are offered as a substitute the sentimental mouthings of old women of both sexes and the superficial conjuring tricks of mediums that Stuart Cumberland says would not obtain a 30s. a week engagement on a music-hall for most of its exponents. What a mouse from such a would-be mountain !

On page 39 the authoress complains that opponents of her case when writing in the Communist Review used various epithets as “dangerous,” “neurotic ravings,” etc., against her views. What does she expect? When a disputant pours out shoals of baseless assumptions, of unsupported assertions, besides indulging in deliberate misrepresentation, as we have shown above, it is a piece of impertinence to expect such a case, or its exponent, to be received with other than ridicule.

A foreword by Florence Baldwin has a “warning” that is the usual stock-in-trade of the parson worsted in a debate :

“None of us,” she says, “really knows the truth about ultimate problems, and if we dogmatise about them we may some day find ourselves quite on the wrong road.”

When one has recovered from the shock of this awful warning, one may retort that, firstly, the people who are doing the bulk of the dogmatising are the religious and Spiritist advocates who claim to know all about God, Soul, Spirit, Heaven, Hell, and Eternity. The scientist gathers his facts, draws his deductions, and frames his generalisations, but is usually ready to admit that, where his knowledge ends, he does not know. Secondly and of overwhelming importance is the simple truth that while the human race has existed, according to modern authorities, for something like a million years, yet not a single piece of knowledge, not a single fact, has been discovered that was not a materialist one. We may be on the wrong road, but as it is the only one we, or anyone else, know, it would savour of insanity to leave it for the uncouth mumblings and the hysterical promises of the five-shilling medium.

Jack Fitzgerald