The constantly elusive argument and the illustrative
quotations go on without a single reflective pause. For this reason
alone the reading of that work is a fatiguing process.
The author himself (I use his own words) "suspects" that what he has
written "may be theology after all." It may be. It is not my place
either to allay or to confirm the author's suspicion of his own work. But
I will state its main thesis: "That science regarded in the gross
dictates the spirituality of man and strongly implies a spiritual destiny
for individual human beings." This means: Existence after Death--that
is, Immortality.
To find out its value you must go to the book. But I will observe here
that an Immortality liable at any moment to betray itself fatuously by
the forcible incantations of Mr. Stead or Professor Crookes is scarcely
worth having. Can you imagine anything more squalid than an Immortality
at the beck and call of Eusapia Palladino? That woman lives on the top
floor of a Neapolitan house, and gets our poor, pitiful, august dead,
flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, spirit of our spirit, who have
loved, suffered and died, as we must love, suffer, and die--she gets them
to beat tambourines in a corner and protrude shadowy limbs through a
curtain.
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