VI. NEW BOOKS. Modern Spiritualism : A History and a Criticism. By FRANK POD- MORE. London : Methuen & Co., 1902. 2 vols. Vol. L, pp. xviii., 307 ; vol. ii., pp. xii., 374. MR. PODMORE'S book has, on the whole, met with so favourable a recep- tion in the daily and weekly press that it would be superfluous now to insist upon its very real merits. His style is easy, flowing, agreeable to a fault. His competence is undoubted. Few sources of information can have escaped his diligent search. He has brought together a mass of material which will be indispensable to all future students of the subject ; and if we are led to complain of what he has left undone, it is assuredly not from any want of gratefulness for what he has given us. The author's object is explained by his title. On the one hand he has to narrate the growth of Spiritualism as a religious system, to trace its descent from pre -existent beliefs, to explain the conditions which favoured its success. On the other hand, he seeks to determine how far the belief was justified. This he does, now by criticising accounts of the alleged phenomena upon which the belief was based, and setting forth their evidential shortcomings, now by pointing out the analogies between some of the phenomena of the mediumistic trance and such well-known features of hypnosis as automatisms, hypersesthesia, impersonation or more debatable phenomena such as telaesthesia and telepathy. In the earlier part of the book criticism goes hand in hand with narrative ; but the latter part is exclusively devoted to criticism. Hence a certain lack of continuity in the exposition, a want of symmetry in the plan. Book iv., on the Problems of Mediumship, is not so much a sequel to the previous books as a separate work, written from a different point of view. Certain typical mediums are chosen Eusapia Palladino, D. D. Home, Stainton Moses, Mrs. Piper the evidence as to whose phenom- ena is specially copious, detailed, or precise, and a critical attempt is made to appraise the value of the evidence. Book iv. is really a treatise on psychical research, and he fails to make clear the relation between a scientific investigation into the alleged facts and the system of belief connected with them. This treatment is a natural result of what is in our view the chief defect of Mr. Podmore's book. He has nowhere troubled to define the psychological nature of the spiritual- istic faith. To explain adequately the rise and growth of a religious belief it is of course needful to analyse the nature, first of belief in general, then of religious belief, and of the special religious belief in question. Two problems are to be distinguished : one of general, the other of social psychology ; and the former is anterior to the latter. Mr. Podmore does indeed undertake to explain how Spiritualism spread and prospered. But just because he does not tackle the anterior problem, he
