HUXLEY ON SPIRITUALISM.

Evening Star, Issue 2823, 6 March 1872, Page 3

HUXLEY ON SPIRITUALISM.

professor Huxley, obo ■> '.i,-: u»' itosi to ateitjt o7i one ot the ! bakct-ioai sfoeitty s ci mini ifcrct-s on spirt tua i*m, .■■cut the loifowiiig answer :—“ 1 regret that I am unable to accept the invitation of the Council of the Dialectic il Society to co-operate with a committee for the investigation of ‘ spiritualism aud for two reasons. In the first place I have no time for such an inquiry, which would involve much trouble and, unless it were unlike all enquiries of that kind I have known, much annoyance. In the second place I take no interest in the subject. The only case of ‘ spiritualism’ I have had the opportunity of examining into for myself was as gross an imposture as ever came under my notice. But suppose the phenomena 1o be genuine—they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with the faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the nearest cathedral town, 1 should decline the privilege, having better things to do. And if the folks in the spiritual world do not talk more wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, 1 put them in the same category. The only good 1 can see in a demonstration of the truth of ‘ spiritualism ’ is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a ‘ medium,’ hired at one pound one shilling a seance.”