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PHILOSOPHY AND SPIRITUALISM¹

All religions of the world assert the existence of a future state for man, after the death of the physical body. Seers, prophets, poets, leaders and apostles have declared the fact of a world of spirits. But we have believed these assertions long enough on mere external testimony, the authority of individuals. Now comes the era of demonstration.² Every man must make the pilgrimage to regions of philosophy for himself. A vast world of knowledge exists, a Spirit Land, beyond the ken of physical eyes. It is now time to roll up the curtain hung between the origin and destiny of man. When we gaze upon the scenes which lie behind and comprehend the principles which uphold the superstructure of man's immortal spirit, we shall surely conceive a new love for life and a new religion whereby to honour Deity.

The most imperative need of the world is a new philosophy, which shall destroy the hatreds of the churches, systematise the sciences and render the truths

¹ See The Present Age and Inner Life, pp. 38-61, compared and reduced.
² Davis also speaks of Spiritualism as a great semi-miraculous movement, in which a divine truth is embodied. It teaches (1) that man is an organised mind or spirit, of which his physical body is a general representative; (2) that death is a physiological and chemical change, leaving the states of affection and intellect unaltered; (3) that the dynamical relations between this earth and the Spirit Land are perfect and intimate, which being so a departed person may return and hold converse with those in flesh.—The Great Harmonia, Vol. V, pp. 239, 249.

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of revelation as reasonable as the growth of vegetation. The Harmonial Philosophy purports to be a revelation of the structures, laws, orders and uses of the material and spiritual universe. It is a progressive exposition of the boundless system of Nature, addressed to the human instincts and understanding—it being premised that Nature signifies the entire system of all existences, the centre and circumference, the Eternal Cause and effect of the stupendous universe.

Among the highest truths developed by the Harmonial Philosophy is that of the soul's immortality. It brings evidences of man's eternal individuality out of the very rocks and mountains of Nature, and renders the problems of the future as certain as the results of mathematical calculation. Man is immortal upon principles as plain and natural as the common laws of organism and growth.¹ The human spirit is the focal organism of Nature, because all atoms, laws and essences expend themselves

¹ But it is insisted very truly elsewhere that—to be of any practical service—man's immortality must be felt in his religious nature and not merely understood by his intellectual faculties. It is possible for every man and woman, after coming under spirit culture, to feel through all their being the sublime truth that the perfected human soul can never be extinguished. Evidences which are worth anything are not outside, are not in table-manifestations, not in spiritual stories, not in ghostly anecdotes. True evidences come through two channels—intuition and reflection, being inward sources of wisdom. Every human mind contains its own evidence and holds a note on the bank of eternal life. Individual existence is the endorsement; intuition brings forth the treasure in advance. In a word, the soul itself holds the positive proof. The riches of the future world are lodged in us. Spiritualistic manifestations are destined to become a hundredfold more desirable, but they will be sought as illustrations of immortality rather than as evidences. Let it be realised positively that a man contains within himself the power of endless continuation, and he will look naturally for some correspondence with the other world. He will be in no sense surprised when he obtains communications, nor disappointed and failing in faith when it happens that they do not come. But a person who relies on external sources of knowledge, insensible to the inward fountains, is sure to be swept away when the sensuous evidences are wanting.—Penetralia, p. 160.

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in man's formation. So is the interior form rendered eternal, as it were, by a spiritual law of chemical affinity.

According to the natural laws of progress and development, the Spirit Land is revealed to our intellectual perception and harmonised with the oracles of intuition. The Harmonial Philosophy unfolds the magnificent order of the spiritual worlds with the same precision that it treats of the physical kingdoms of Nature; and so natural is this revelation that the mind accepts it, even as it concedes the existence of Jupiter and Saturn. The object is to manifest the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, to apply the laws of planets to individuals, to establish in human society the same harmonious relations that are found in the stellar world.

There is nothing in the whole realm of psychology so demonstrative of the hidden laws and slumbering forces of the human mind as the so-called Spiritual Manifestations. Man's nature is just beginning to declare its manifold resources, and there is no closing or bolting of those doors which lead to the interior nature of man, and thence to a new theology. The manifestations should be considered as a living demonstration of many truths unfolded by Harmonial Philosophy. They show, however, that the Divine cannot flow into human structures without participating in the imperfections of the latter. All revelations—though professing to descend from on high, freighted with the immaculate thoughts of the Supernal Spirit—bear the plainest evidence of having flowed from Heaven to earth—from the ideal to the actual—through imperfect and fallible channels. From a first investigation of these modern developments the sceptic returns with a persuasion that the manifestations are allied closely to the doings of jugglery. A second visit convinces him of the truths of mesmerism. The third satisfies him that psychology explains it all, and the fourth that it is referable to clairvoyance. But the fifth investigation dissipates his materialism and

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persuades him of the possibility of spiritual intercourse.

When the eye scans the whole ground occupied by these phenomena it is found—and is conceded by the best minds—that none but a spiritual solution can cover and explain them—even in their crude shape of sounds, vibrations and movements.¹ To affirm that the human brain can project an "odic force" sufficient to move heavy tables in such a manner that they respond intelligently to questions is to state a proposition which taxes human credulity far more than the spiritual solution of the whole matter. The simplest explanation of anything is most likely to be true, and this accepted a New Dispensation is upon us, even at the door. It has been long and very gradually coming—that good time when truth and peace, law and liberty shall reign supreme.

¹ Spiritualism is described elsewhere as, firstly, phenomenal or objective, and, secondly, as subjective and philosophical—meaning that it grows from the one to the other state. When the phenomena are certified as true a philosophy is derived therefrom.—The Great Harmonia, Vol. V, p. 249.