The Death-Blow to Spiritualism Part 1

The Death-Blow to Spiritualism.

by Reuben Briggs Davenport.

TO MRS. HESTER S. DWINELLE.

"ALONSO. This is as strange a maze as ere men trod, And there is in this business more than nature Was ever conduct of: some oracle Must rectify our knowledge.

"PROSPERO. Sir, my liege, Do not infest your mind with beating on The strangeness of this business: at picked leisure, Which shall be shortly, single I'll resolve you (Which to you shall seem probable) of every These happen'd accidents: till when be cheerful, And think of each thing well.--Come hither, spirit; Set Caliban and his companions free: _Untie the spell._"

SHAKESPEARE.--_The Tempest._

PREFACE.

This book has been written in extreme haste. It does not pretend to literary style. But it pretends to absolute truthfulness and a reverent regard for justice.

Its sole value is its character as a contribution to the real history of Spiritualism. As such, it is unquestionably of great importance, greater even than any work of the kind that has been published since the beginning of modern Spiritualism.

It is, in fact, what its t.i.tle sets forth--"THE DEATH-BLOW TO SPIRITUALISM."

No one who does not love illusion for illusion's sake--better, in other words, than he loves the truth--can, after reading this volume, remain a follower of Spiritualism and its hypocritical apostles.

The full authorization of Mrs. MARGARET FOX KANE and Mrs. CATHERINE FOX JENCKEN for the publication of this work will be found on the next to the following page.

_29th October, 1888._

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARGARET FOX KANE IN HER 18TH YEAR.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: KATIE FOX JENCKEN]

We hereby approve of Mr. Reuben B. Davenport's design to write a true account of the origin of Spiritualism and of our connection therewith, and we authorize him to make proper use of all data and material that we furnish him.

New York, 15th Oct., 1888.

Margaret Fox Kane Catherine Fox Jencken

I. INTRODUCTION.

INTRODUCTION.

POETIC JUSTICE OF THE EXPOSURE.

That the inventors of an infamous fraud should deal to it its death-blow, is the poetic justice of fate.

Over the creature, the creator has power of life and death.

The creators of Spiritualism abjure its infamy.

They decree its death.

They condemn it to final destruction.

They fasten upon those who continue to practice it the obloquy of history, and the scorn of mankind for all time to come.

Margaret and Catharine Fox, the youngest of three sisters, were the first to produce "spiritualistic manifestations."

They are now the most earnest in denunciation of those impostures; the most eager to dissipate the foolish belief of thousands in the flimsiest system of deception that was ever cloaked with the hypocrisy of so-called religion.

When, as by accident, they discovered a method of deceiving those around them by means of mysterious noises, they were but little children, innocent of the thought of wrong, ignorant of the world and the world's guile, and imagining only that what they did was a clever lark, such as the adult age easily pardons to exuberant and sprightly youth.

Not to them did the base suggestion come that this singular, this simple discovery, should be the means of deluding the world, of exalting them in the minds of the weakly credulous and of bringing them fame and splendor and sumptuous pleasure.

No one who learns their true history can still believe them guilty of the willful inception of this most grotesque, most transparent and corrupting of superst.i.tions.

The idea had its monstrous birth in older heads, heads that were seconded by hearts lacking the very essence of truth and the fountain of honest human sympathy.

The two children, who had at first delighted, as younglings will, in what was but a laughable mystification, were dragged into a sordid, wicked and loathsome speculation, built upon lying and fraud, as unforgivable as the sin of Satan, and of which they were but the unthinking instruments, often reluctant and remorseful, yet docile and compliant by nature.

Thus the "Rochester knockings," the example and prototype of all later so-called spiritualistic "phenomena," began merely in a curious childish freak, disguised without effort, and which, from the first, was encouraged to partly formed understandings by the wonder and intense spirit of inquiry it provoked.

The young operators were carried away by the undreamt-of current of enthusiasm and awe in which they soon became involved. They felt the natural need of maintaining with unabating dexterity, that false sense of the miraculous which by chance they had called forth.

Thus they went from one stage to another of this queer illusion, and, being compelled by a harder and more mature intelligence to repeat their part over and over again, became the chief means of establis.h.i.+ng that injurious belief in communications from the spirits of the departed, of which such great numbers have become the victims.

Many an older offender against common sense, reason and strict morality persists through force of circ.u.mstance in the pathway he has chosen, and does not turn backward, merely because he cannot do so without wearing the face of shame.

From such slight and trivial beginning came the great movement--great because of the number which it comprised and of the sensation which attended its progress--that for more than forty years has alternately surprised, puzzled, disgusted and amused the world.

From so little a plant has grown a gigantic weed of deceit, corruption and fraud, nurtured upon the fattening l.u.s.t of money, and of the flesh.

What has developed from it is not alone a system of so-called communications through a puerile code of signals with an unseen world; but, as Dante describes, in his incomparable epic, forms of monstrosity which combine a hideous human semblance and a loathly animal foulness, so this venomous evil has become conglomerate in its hateful phases of delusion, and its petty sordidness and depravity.

Thus the Tuscan bard describes the spirit of fraud: