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Miss Martineau, and by less respectable if equally gullible authorities. But, speaking merely as perplexed and
unconvinced students of argument and evidence, we cannot say that he removed the difficulties which have
been illustrated and described.
Table-turning, after what is called a 'boom' in 1853-60, is now an abandoned amusement. It is deserted, like
croquet, and it is even less to be regretted. But its existence enabled disputants to illustrate the ordinary
processes of reasoning; each making assertions up to the limit of his personal experience; each attacking, as
'superstitious,' all who had seen, or fancied they had seen, more than himself, and each fighting gallantly for
his own explanatory hypothesis, which never did explain any phenomena beyond those attested by his own
senses. The others were declared not to exist, or to be the result of imposture and mal-observation, and
perhaps they were.
The truly diverting thing is that Home did not believe in the other 'mediums,' nor in anything in the way of a
marvel (such as matter passing through matter) which he had not seen with his own eyes. Whether Home's
incredulity should be reckoned as a proof of his belief in his own powers, might be argued either way.
THE LOGIC OF TABLE-TURNING 111
Cock Lane and Common-Sense
THE GHOST THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION
Evolutionary Theory of the Origin of Religion. Facts misunderstood suggest ghosts, which develop into gods.
This process lies behind history and experience. Difficulties of the Theory. The Theory of Lucretius.
Objections Mr. Tyler's Theory. The question of abnormal facts not discussed by Mr. Tylor. Possibility that
such 'psychical' facts are real, and are elements in development of savage religion. The evidence for
psychical phenomena compared with that which, in other matters, satisfies anthropologists. Examples.
Conclusion.
Among the many hypotheses as to the origin of religion, that which we may call the evolutionary, or
anthropological, is most congenial to modern habits of thought. The old belief in a sudden, miraculous
revelation is commonly rejected, though, in one sense, religion was none the less 'revealed,' even if man was
obliged to work his way to the conception of deity by degrees. To attain that conception was the necessary
result of man's reflection on the sum of his relations to the universe. The attainment, however, of the
monotheistic idea is not now generally regarded as immediate and instinctive. A slow advance, a prolonged
evolution was required, whether we accept Mr. Max Müller's theory of 'the sense of the Infinite,' or whether
we prefer the anthropological hypothesis. The latter scheme, with various modifications, is the scheme of
Epicurus, Lucretius, Hume, Mr. Tylor, and Mr. Herbert Spencer. Man half consciously transferred his
implicit sense that he was a living and rational being to nature in general, and recognised that earth, sky, wind,
clouds, trees, the lower animals, and so on, were persons like himself, persons perhaps more powerful and
awful than himself. This transference of personality can scarcely be called the result of a conscious process of
reasoning. Man might recognise personality everywhere, without much more thought or argument than a
kitten exerts when it takes a cork or a ball for a living playmate. But consciousness must have reached a
more explicit stage, when man began to ask himself what a person is, what life is, and when he arrived at the
conclusion that life is a spirit. To advance from that conclusion; to explain all life as the manifestation of
indwelling spirits; then to withdraw the conception of life and personality from inanimate things, to select
from among spirits One more powerful than the rest, to recognise that One as disembodied, as superior, then
as supreme, then as unique, and so to attain the monotheistic conception, has been, according to the
evolutionary hypothesis, the tendency of human thought.
Unluckily we cannot study the process in its course of action. Perhaps there is no savage race so lowly
endowed, that it does not possess, in addition to a world of 'spirits,' something that answers to the conception
of God. Whether that is so, or not, is a question of evidence. We have often been told that this or the other
people 'has no religious ideas at all'. But later we hear that they do possess a belief in spirits, and very often
better information proves that, in one stage or other of advance or degradation, the theistic conception of a
Maker and Judge of the world is also present. Meanwhile even civilised and monotheistic peoples also admit
the existence of a world of spirits of the dead, of 'demons' (as in Platonism), of saints (as in Catholicism), of
devils, of angels, or of subordinate deities. Thus the elements of religion are universally distributed in all
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