Spiritualism - Evolution

Evolution

Spiritualists reacted with an uncertainy to the theories of evolution in the late 19th and early 20th century. Broadly speaking the concept of evolution fitted the spiritualist thought of the progressive development of humanity. At the same time however, the belief in the animal origins of man threatened the foundation of the immortality of the spirit, for if man had not been created, it was scarely plausible that he would be specially endowed with a spirit. This led to spiritualists embracing spiritual evolution.

The spiritualists' view of evolution did not stop at death. Spiritualism taught that after death spirits progressed to spiritual states in new spheres of existence. According to spiritualists evolution occurred in the spirit world “at a rate more rapid and under conditions more favourable to growth” then encountered on earth.

In a talk at the London Spiritualist Alliance, Rev. John Page Hopps (1834–1911) supported both evolution and spiritualism. Hopps claimed man had started off imperfect “out of the animals darkness” but will rise into the “angel’s marvellous light”, Hopps claimed man was not a fallen but a rising creature and that after death man would evolve on a number of spheres of existence to perfection.

Theosophy is in opposition to the spiritualist interpretation of evolution, theosophy teaches a metaphysical theory of evolution mixed with human devolution, spiritualists do not accept the devolution of the theosophists. To theosophy man starts in a state of perfection (see Golden age) and falls into a process of progressive materialization (devolution), developing the mind and losing the spiritual consciousness. After the gathering of experience and growth through repeated reincarnations humanity will regain the original spiritual state, which is now one of self-conscious perfection. Theosophists and Spiritualists were both very popular metaphysical schools of thought especially in the early 20th century and thus were always clashing in their different beliefs. Madame Blavatsky was critical of spiritualism, she distanced theosophy from spiritualism as far as she could and allied herself with eastern occultism.

The spiritualist Gerald Massey, claimed that Darwin's theory of evolution was incomplete:

The theory contains only one half the explanation of man's origins and needs spiritualism to carry it through and complete it. For while this ascent on the physical side has been progressing through myraids of ages, the Divine descent has also been going on – man being spiritually an incarnation from the Divine as well as a human development from the animal creation. The cause of the development is spiritual. Mr. Darwin's theory does not in the least militate against ours – we think it necessitates it; he simply does not deal with our side of the subject. He can not go lower than the dust of the earth for the matter of life; and for us, the main interest of our origin must lie in the spiritual domain.

Spiritualists believed that without spiritualism "the doctrine of Darwin is a broken link". The spiritualist Gerald Massey said "Spiritualism will accept evolution, and carry it out and make both ends meet in the perfect circle".

A famous medium who rejected evolution was Cora L. V. Scott, she dismissed evolution in her lectures and instead supported a type of pantheistic spiritualism.

Alfred Russel Wallace believed qualitative novelties could arise through the process of spiritual evolution, in particular the phenomena of life and mind, Wallace attributed these novelties to a supernatural agency. Later in his life, Wallace was advocate of spiritualism and believed in an immaterial origin for the higher mental faculties of humans, he believed that evolution suggested that the universe had a purpose, and that certain aspects of living organisms are not explainable in terms of purely materialistic processes, in a 1909 magazine article entitled The World of Life, which he later expanded into a book of the same name. Wallace argued in his 1911 book World of life for a spiritual approach to evolution and described evolution as “creative power, directive mind and ultimate purpose”. Wallace believed natural selection could not explain intelligence or morality in the human being so suggested that non-material spiritual forces accounted for these. Wallace believed the spiritual nature of man could not have come about by natural selection alone, the origins of the spiritual nature must originate “in the unseen universe of spirit”.

Oliver Lodge also promoted a version of spiritual evolution in his books Man and the Universe (1908), Making of Man (1924) and Evolution and Creation (1926). The spiritualist element in the synthesis was most prominent in Lodge’s 1916 book Raymond, or Life and Death which revived a large interest for public in the paranormal.