13 14 terious and known; faith in a life after death was not a trait of a materialist. His short story, “Selecting a Ghost,” released in 1883, critiqued the gullibility of people to put their trust in mediums. Doyle assessed that the paranormal was used as an opportunity for psychics to profit off of the trusting and vulnerable. Doyle, a doctor and a man of science, considered himself a rational empiricist (Beck 6). He embodied this deductive form of reasoning in his occupation, as well as in his questioning of Spiritualism. Experimentation and judging the evidence in favor of or against the ideology of Spiritualism was key to formulating his opinion on the matter. In 1887, Doyle was invited by his patient to witness his first séance. There, he observed tables moving on their own; Doyle, baffled by this odd encounter and finding no logistical explanation for the haunting, published his peculiar experience in the newspaper, Light (“Birth of Post-Materialism”). This was the same year Doyle published his first entry in the Sherlock Holmes franchise, A Study in Scarlet. Doyle repeatedly stated that Spiritualism weighed heavily on his mind while writing that novel (“Arthur Conan Doyle”). His pursuit of knowledge rampant, Doyle proceeded to dive further into contemporary supernatural history and reports of ghostly happenstances. Doyle told his audience of his exposure to the works of the judge from the United States, George Edmunds, and the zoologist, Russell Wallace. He concluded that Wallace, author of the autobiographical Modern Miracles, was “a colossal liar or else he must have been made a dupe by somebody, because the things he wrote about were almost incredible” (Doyle 2). After assessing Wallace’s accounts of the supernatural, he “began to ask myself whether it was not I who had got a soft spot somewhere, and I began to approach this investigation in a more humble spirit” (Doyle 2). Doyle was a skeptic, but, honoring the nature of his empirical reasonings, he then approached Spiritualism with an open mind and careful consideration. Doyle uses an ethical appeal to back up his assessments. He looked to his scholarly peers and inspirations. Highly regarded figures in the scientific community, such as the chemist, Sir William Crookes, built credibility for Doyle for the plausible existence behind spiritual manifestations. Crookes approached Spiritualism with cynicism and conducted numerous experiments. His most notable experiment was getting a pendulum, which was balanced downwards with heavy weights, to swing (Doyle 2-3). This was reported as a success. The study was surrounded by numerous eyewitnesses, including a doctor and an electrician, who verified the results of the test. The pivotal moment of Doyle’s lecture was when he spoke of Daniel Home, the man whose abilities as a medium officially convinced him to convert to Spiritualism. Doyle claims Home is someone who wanted to “break down the materialism which was the curse of the age” by “going to prove it by the exercise of powers” (Doyle 3). Day or night, Home would display his powers to those who were truthfully interested in the paranormal. Reportedly, there were hundreds of witnesses of Home’s mediumship throughout his lifetime. Unlike the countless frauds who were mediums (Doyle does not deny that most mediums were fakes driven by money and other worldly pursuits), Home chose to live in poverty and hold not onto material things, despite his acclaimed talents. According to Doyle’s research, Home did not try to capitalize on his endeavors. From this moment on, Doyle threw away his preconceptions of the paranormal and veered away from his materialist perspective. Since then, Doyle performed numerous experiments regarding the supernatural with a minimum of half a dozen witnesses always present, all often eliciting similar responses, according to Doyle (“Arthur Conan Doyle”). Wanting to gather sufficient data rather than leaving the metaphysical unquestioned, he viewed the séance procedure as scientific with the intent to study the results. Doyle announced his conversion in 1916 and would spread the word of Spiritualism across the world as he did in Connaught Hall. He argues religion must not be put “back two thousand years,” but should be used to embrace the concerns of the day: “The human race has probably never experienced such a time of stress as during the past few years and Spiritualism is a sign which is being sent to meet this great emergency” (Doyle 11). Following an era of intense industrialization in England, the ideals of Spiritualism that reject the material and look toward apparitions for answers (while not denouncing but encouraging scientific reasoning) was what many needed. This longing escalated after the devastation of World War I. Science and the spiritual do not have to be separate entities; Doyle suggests the supernatural should be studied and analyzed utilizing the latest technological innovations. Whether or not Spiritualism was a hoax or a philosophy that reigned popular among the scientific community by the 21st century, Arthur Doyle came to his conclusions based on the research and personal experiences he reflected deeply upon over the years. Logic rooted in deductive reasoning, Doyle never abandoned his early days as a doctor and a surgeon with methodical breakdowns. The complexity of Doyle’s evidence and detailed reports extend from the confines of this paper, and other notable figures of education (such as the previously aforementioned William Cookes) have examined the topic immensely as well. Spiritualism steadily grew out of popularity after Doyle died in 1930, but it is a path worth investigating, no matter how odd it sounds.
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