f an individual temporal immortality, has had to
encounter, there is none that we can less afford to neglect than that
which represents it as an ideal essentially egotistical and borne. True
it is that our critics do us injustice through ignorance of the enlarged
views as to the progress of the soul in which the speculations of
individual Spiritualists coincide with many remarkable spirit teachings.
These are, undoubtedly, a great advance upon popular theological
opinions, while some of them go far to satisfy the claim of Spiritualism
to be regarded as a religion. Nevertheless, that slight estimate of
individuality, as we know it, which in one view too easily allies itself
to materialism, is also the attitude of spiritual idealism, and is
seemingly at variance with the excessive value placed by Spiritualists
on the discovery of our mere psychic survival. The idealist may
recognise this survival; but, whether he does so or not, he occupies a
post of vantage when he tells us that it is of no ultimate importance.
For he, like the Spiritualist who proclaims his "proof palpable of
immortality," is thinking of the mere temporal, self-regarding
consciousness--its sensibilities, desires, gratifications, and
affections--which are unimportant absolutely, that is to say, their
importance is relative solely to the individual. There is, indeed, no
more characteristic outbirth of materialism than that which makes a
teleological centre of the individual. Ideas have become mere
abstractions; the only reality is the infinitely little. Thus
utilitarianism can see in the State only a collection of individuals
whose "greatest happiness," mutually limited by nice adjustment to the
requirements of "the greatest numbers," becomes the supreme end of
government and law. And it cannot, I think, be pretended that
Spiritualists in general have advanced beyond this substitution of a
relative for an absolute standard. Their "glad tidings of great joy"
are not truly religious. They have regard to the perpetuation in time
of that lower consciousness whose manifestations, delights, and activity
are in time, and of time alone. Their glorious message is not
essentially different from that which we can conceive as brought to us
by some great alchemist, who had discovered the secret of conferring
upon us and upon our friends a mundane perpetuity of youth and health.
Its highest religious claim is that it enlarges the horizon of our
opportunities