ught that materialism had shot its bolt and that the
coming danger to religion was spiritualism, a subject on which, if I
remember right, he had written more than one paper. I asked him what led
him to that conclusion, and his reply was to ask me whether I had not
noticed the great increase in number of the items in second-hand book
catalogues--a form of literature to which we were both much
addicted--under the heading "OCCULT." Since the war, however, there can
be no doubt about the fact that spiritualism has made great strides. A
thousand pieces of evidence prove it. Look, for example, at the enormous
vogue of _Raymond_, a book of which I say nothing, out of personal
regard for its author and genuine respect for his honesty and
fearlessness. But I return to Sir Arthur Doyle's book, and we find him
assuring us that he is personally "in touch with thirteen mothers who
are in correspondence with their dead sons," and adds that in only one
of these cases was the individual concerned with psychic matters before
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 wonderful 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 particular 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 concerned.

Sir A. Doyle's book is the least convincing exposition of spiritu