Books Received. (1906)

From the August 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Riddle of the Universe. by Ernst Haeckel (Watts & Co.) 6d.

Secular Education. by Joseph McCabe (Watts & Co.) 6d.

Socialism and Labour Policy. (Fabian Soc) 1d.

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 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

Ghosts. (1921)

From the December 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world is suffering from a plethora of fat boys who will persist in trying to make our flesh creep. We have no objection to them practising their black magic in the privacy of their back parlours, to the prostration of their maiden aunts, but the limit is reached when they insist upon the rest of the world witnessing their performances. We refer to that cult of neurotics of both sexes, viz., "Spiritualism," and to the publicity that the "sensation press" is giving it.

Some time ago the Weekly Dispatch worked overtime getting out extra copies, while it was running a series of articles by Mr. Vale Owen which purported to convey "communications from departed spirits." Now Mr. James Douglas, the editor of the Sunday Express is performing similar stunts albeit in the guise of a "not-yet-convinced agnostic." Yet it is easy to perceive that Mr. Douglas, as a smart journalist, is, among other things, endeavouring to emulate the commercial success of his contemporary and draw the coppers from the pockets of the mystified working class to the coffers of Lord Beaverbrook, "the apostle of success."

Although one may have a doubt as to whether Mr. V. Owen was a knave or a fool, Mr. Douglas has a more accessible public record, and we know he is no fool. It is perhaps only just, however, to concede him the point that he is the tool of an exploiting master class, to whose interest it is that confusion should exist in the minds of the workers.

It is not our mission, or of any propagandist value to debate "Spiritualism" as distinct from any other phase of religion. Socialism as a system of society means the end of supernatural beliefs. Our work has as its objective the overthrow of Capitalism, and we do not care to spend much time on its various side shows. We therefore are not primarily interested in exposing the credulity of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or the senility of Sir Oliver Lodge. Mr. Joseph McCabe and others can do that quite well enough in their professional capacity. But where we are concerned with the question of Spiritualism is that Capitalism prolongs its lease of life while the minds of the working class are confused and side-tracked from the path of progress towards their emancipation.

That the phenomena supposed to have been experienced by Mr. Douglas at the "Black Seance" cannot be substantiated by any scientific fact is obvious to the logical mind, but that the working into a hysteria of nervous apprehension of a great proportion of the populace is a direct advantage to the Capitalist class in their business of keeping the working class submissive and enduring is obvious to the Socialist.

If a table can defy the law of gravity and float round the room of its own volition, well and good; scientists must alter their texts books accordingly. And if a spirit can sing "The long long trail" without a larynx, anatomists must also revise their opinions ! But what we do discover about these seances is that no dead Socialist has come back to tell the readers of the Capitalist Press how they are exploited in the interests of the humbugging Capitalist class! And there must be many of our comrades wandering about the Astral Plane we think! Perhaps—horrible thought—the spirit of Capitalism reigns up there too, and has clapped our departed pals into ghostly jails so that they shan't blow the gaff on the fat men below !

But, maybe, we wax flippant. The situation has really no funny side. It calls for the same stern comment that the Armistice Day hypocrisy demands, and indeed, as do all the dodges that Capitalism uses to maintain its existence. The Cenotaphs and bunting, the ceremonies and sentimentalities, the panem et circenses, that seem to be more in evidence than ever before, all serve their turn, and the brutal rapacity of the Moloch we endure battens on the ignorance they signify.

Spiritualism will have its brief turn on the stage of history and make its exit, and something else will take its stead in the public mind and eye; but in the meantime the facts remain that Society here below is rotten to the core, that a small section of it lives in luxurious idleness on the profits rung from the remainder, who, as a consequence, suffer the pangs of hunger, the diseases attendant on slum working class should fix its mind upon. Directly the master class discover that flying tambourines and mystic ventriloquisms no longer absorb the attentions of an awakening proletariat they will command the spirits they have summoned to emulate the Arabs by "folding their tents and
silently stealing away." It will be almost time then for the Capitalist class to do likewise.

S.

Some publications. (1906)

Book Review from the April 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Origin of Life, by Joseph McCabe. (Watts & Co.,) 6d.

Professor Oliver Lodge is a gentleman with whose name the churches delight to conjure. He is one of the very few persons of intellectual standing upon whose help the churches, in their strenuous battle against extinction, always rely. He is their stand-by, the straw at which they catch in their efforts to keep their heads above the waters of oblivion which threaten to engulf them. He is a brake to their feet slipping dangerously upon a sharply deflected path. He enables them to dig their toes into the projections (of ignorance) and hang on.

Nevertheless the gospel according to St. Lodge differs from the gospels of that shadowy quartet of New Testament worthies as the proverbial chalk differs from the proverbial cheese. The god in whom his faith finds lodgement (no joke) is as intangible and elusive as the god of the churches is tangible and well defined—to that eye of faith exclusively the property of the church (and chapel) man. The Churches either don't understand this, or do understand—and bury the difference in their quaking hearts. But to our even churchman Professor Lodge is '"agin" the "atheist" (a term embracing everything " agin" the Church'), and is therefore roped in for the defence of the "faith of our fathers." Hence the alacrity with which the Professor's last book, "Life and Matter," is seized upon and hurled in the face of the presumptuous layman in whose sight "miserable and degraded Monism" and the "extravagant, pretensions" and ''rather fly-blown productions" of Professor Haeckel find favour. (It should be mentioned here in fairness to Professor Lodge that the chaste descriptions and the gravely scientific language in quotation marks are his own).

"Life and Matter" purports to be a criticism of the well-known "Riddle of the Universe" by Professor Haeckel, whose name and work have become a haunting horror—a sort of unholy ghost—to those who sit in the darkness of clerical enlightenment. Mr. Joseph McCabe's brochure is a reply to Professor Lodge. Mr. McCabe is the English translator of Haeckel and one of his most doughty champions. His style, while perfectly fair and courteous, is delightfully trenchant, and the manner in which he "goes for" Professor Lodge affords us who are accustomed to, and if the truth must out, rejoice in, the dialectical "rough and tumble," much satisfaction. He finds small difficulty in disposing of Professor Lodge's anti-Haeckel diatribes and effectively establishes the charge he brings against the Lodge method by showing it to be based upon unblushing misquotation. As is moderately well known, Professor Lodge has been repudiated by biologists of established repute, while his dogmatism (the particular failing he alleges with little justification against Haeckel) was recently very roundly censured and his pretensions to biological knowledge crushed by a vigorously worded intervention from Professor Ray Lankester. Mr. McCabe presents the problem which Haeckel has made such valuable contribution to the solution of, very ably and summarises the arguments for the monistic position with considerable skill. We cordially commend his book to the consideration of our readers.