Up to the time when I first became acquainted with the facts of Spiritualism, I was a confirmed philosophical sceptic … I was so thorough and confirmed a materialist that I could not at that time find a place in my mind for the conception of spiritual existence, or for any other agencies in the universe than matter and force.Footnote 1
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913)—famously known as the codiscoverer of evolution by natural selection—was a self-proclaimed skeptic of spiritualism before attending his first séance on 22 July 1865 at the home of a friend.Footnote 2 Like most men of science during the Victorian age, he did not believe that there was sufficient evidence available to confirm that spirits or psychical forces were real. This event in 1865 proved to be a transformative moment in Wallace's life, and his stance began to change. Over the course of the next year he immersed himself in the study of the supernatural, becoming a vocal proponent of modern spiritualism.Footnote 3 On 22 November 1866, Wallace wrote a letter to his friend the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95), about an exciting “new branch of anthropology” that he had been working on—the investigation of spirit phenomena. Wallace continued by inviting Huxley to join him on a Friday evening so that he too could witness the curious displays and perhaps contribute to this budding field of scientific enquiry.Footnote 4 Huxley rejected the invitation by stating, “I have half-a-dozen investigations of infinitely greater interest to me which any spare time I may have will be devoted.”Footnote 5 Wallace's exchange with Huxley brings to the fore a key problem that he faced as a proponent of spirit investigations—gaining scientific credibility.
Wallace believed that if he could go from being a skeptic to a convert, so too could other men of science. He argued that the key to achieving scientific legitimacy for spirit investigations was through the establishment of reliable witnesses and trustworthy evidence.Footnote 6 As Janet Oppenheim argued, Wallace “was convinced that the testimony of his own sense, combined with the records of countless other investigators over the centuries, provided an adequate empirical base on which to establish the validity of spiritualism.”Footnote 7 It was a cause that he was committed to for the remainder of his life, and to accomplish this goal he borrowed observational techniques from anthropology—a science that relied quite heavily on credible witnessing.Footnote 8 What it meant to observe something anthropologically for Wallace was not simply the physical act of looking at something; rather it was a much more nuanced process of collecting, analyzing and representing anthropological data.Footnote 9 It was a way of knowing and understanding the world through a specialized framework—what Daniela Bleichmar calls “visual epistemology.”Footnote 10
This paper will situate Wallace's spiritualist writings from his most significant book on the subject, Miracles and Modern Spiritualism (1875), against the backdrop of Victorian anthropology. It will examine how Wallace constructed his argument, and how he verified the trustworthiness of his evidence using theories and methods drawn from anthropology.Footnote 11 While much has been written on Wallace's inquiries into spirit phenomena, very little scholarship has taken seriously his remark about how his studies of spirits and psychical forces were a type of anthropology.Footnote 12 When connections are drawn between Wallace's twin interests in spiritualism and anthropology, it is usually to examine his research on extra-European conceptions of spiritualism.Footnote 13
While there is no doubt that many of the practices that Wallace used in his spirit investigations were shared by other sciences, most notably physics and natural history, it is telling that Wallace identified anthropology as being the best fit for developing his research program. It was fairly common during the middle of the nineteenth century for anthropologists to borrow techniques from the more established sciences. Physics, geology and natural history provided a means to an end for achieving more authority within the larger scientific community. Nevertheless, when methods from the physical and natural sciences were employed in Wallace's spirit investigations, they were typically reframed along anthropological lines.
Wallace's aim of aligning his spirit investigations to the practices of British anthropology fed into larger disciplinary discussions about the construction of reliable anthropological data. Most notably, Wallace—like many of his Victorian anthropological counterparts—grounded his research in a double commitment to firsthand observation and Baconian inductivism. His insistence on “fact-based,” experiential knowledge echoed the disciplinary rhetoric of the physician and speech therapist James Hunt (1833–69), who cofounded the Anthropological Society of London (ASL) in 1863, along with the orientalist, explorer and military officer Richard Francis Burton (1821–90).Footnote 14 It is hardly surprising that many of the methods and theories that Wallace imposed on his studies of spirit phenomena included core aspects of Hunt's anthropological vision. After all, Wallace was conducting much of the research for Miracles and Modern Spiritualism while he was regularly attending ASL meetings during the height of the anthropological schism of the 1860s. His spirit investigations were written at a time when he was engrossed in the debates and discussions on how to build a new anthropological science in Britain.Footnote 15
This was a key period in the disciplinary history of British anthropology, where two rival groups of researchers were vying for control of the race sciences. Much has been written about the anthropological schism of the 1860s in the secondary literature, and it is not necessary to examine the full details of the controversy here. It can be best described as a contest for cultural authority between two competing forms of scientific naturalism.Footnote 16 On the one hand, there were the anthropologists led by Hunt, who generally speaking promoted a form of polygenesis that was grounded in biological determinism, and emphasized directly observable “facts” to support its suppositions. On the other hand, there were the ethnologists led by Huxley at the Ethnological Society of London (ESL), who generally speaking promoted a form of monogenesis that was grounded in a mixture of older Prichardian historicism and newer Darwinian evolutionary theory.Footnote 17 During the course of this dispute—which raged between 1863 and 1871—both sides published several essays in the pages of their societies’ journals on the scope of their respective research fields. Although both camps claimed to be doing distinct forms of scientific investigation, there were many overlapping topics, theories and practices in their respective research programs.Footnote 18 Even the membership lists of the two societies contained many of the same names. The focuses of anthropology and ethnology during this period were quite broad, and for the most part comprised any study that examined the cultural and physical aspects of human groups. Eventually, after several attempts to reconcile the grievance, an agreement was reached, and in 1871 the two societies merged to form the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI). This new learned body brought together the methods and theories of researchers from both camps.Footnote 19
Underlying many of these disciplinary debates were discussions on how to observe something anthropologically or ethnologically, and this preoccupation maps onto Wallace's researches into spiritualism. The ability to observe spirit phenomena as a credible witness was a central concern for Wallace. In many respects it underscores the primary objective of his book Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. Like his peers at the ASL who were striving for proper recognition within the British scientific world, Wallace too was fighting for the scientific legitimacy of his spirit investigations. Anthropology provided a tactical blueprint for achieving this status. If Wallace was to prove scientifically that humans transcended into spirits upon death, then anthropology was the ideal discipline to anchor his spirit investigations in. After all, figures such as Hunt purported that anthropology was the only discipline to examine all aspects of human life, and for Wallace that would include the afterlife.Footnote 20 By bringing spiritualism into anthropology the discipline would be justly able to argue that it studied the “entirety” of human existence.
WALLACE AND THE MAKING OF A SPIRITUALIST AND ANTHROPOLOGIST
Our starting point is to take seriously Wallace's assertion that his study of spirits and psychical forces was a “new branch of anthropology.”Footnote 21 In order to determine why Wallace viewed his research as a type of anthropology, as opposed to physics, biology, or natural history, to name a few examples, it is necessary to map the core aspects of his spirit investigations against the key criteria for a study to be considered anthropological during the middle of the nineteenth century. These criteria can be synthesized as follows: first, it had to focus on humans (broadly construed); second, there should be some elements of historicism or evolutionism in it; third, it should use the Baconian method of induction; fourth, it should be derived from experiential knowledge based on directly observable “facts.” Wallace's spirit investigations tick each of these main boxes.Footnote 22
His twin interests in spiritualism and anthropology developed over a twenty-five-year period, and tracing this process allows for a more sophisticated understanding of Wallace's spirit investigations. Although he credits his first séance in 1865 as a transformative moment in redefining his views on spiritualism, Wallace had encountered what he believed to be supernatural phenomena much earlier in his life.Footnote 23 His first experience with supernatural forces occurred in 1844 when he was a schoolteacher in Leicester. It was there that Wallace witnessed the curious effects of mesmerism during a lecture delivered by the renowned phrenologist and mesmerist Spencer Timothy Hall (1812–85).Footnote 24 The spectacles that he had observed intrigued him, and Wallace set about conducting some rudimentary experiments with mesmerism on his students. He later recalled in Miracles and Modern Spiritualism that he was able to influence some of his students using techniques similar to those employed by Hall in his lecture.Footnote 25 These alleged “positive results” had a lasting impression on him, and as Martin Fichman has argued, Wallace's early research on mesmeric forces “predisposed him to remain open to claims relating to psychic phenomena.” Nevertheless, he was a skeptic for the time being.Footnote 26 Other incidents, such as near-death experiences during his travels to both South America in 1848–52 and the Malay archipelago in 1854–62, further exposed Wallace to what he believed to be supernaturalism. For example, Wallace stated,
At least three times within the last twenty-five years I have had to face death as imminent or probable within a few hours, and what I felt on those occasions was at most a gentle melancholy at the thought of quitting this wonderful and beautiful earth to enter on a sleep which might know no waking. In a state of ordinary health I did not feel even this. I knew that the great problem of conscious existence was one beyond man's grasp, and this fact alone gave some hope that existence might be independent of the organized body.Footnote 27
According to Wallace, nearly dying on these three occasions sensitized him to a feeling of a deeper existence beyond the mortal world—one that would be essential to his later “theory of spiritualism.”Footnote 28
It was also during Wallace's travels that the modern spiritualist movement arose. The first high-profile mediums were the American Fox sisters, Leah (1831–90), Margaret (1833–93) and Kate (1837–92). In 1848, while the siblings were living with their parents in Hydesville, New York, the two younger sisters Margaret and Kate allegedly began communicating with spirits through rapping.Footnote 29 News of these spirit communications spread quickly across the USA, Britain, and continental Europe. Within a few years more psychic mediums were coming to prominence through private and public performances. There was also a proliferation of spiritualist literature being published, and many popular lecturers on the subject toured North America and Europe. During the 1850s proponents of spiritualism were clearly on the ascent.Footnote 30 Wallace had been hearing about this social phenomenon while traveling abroad, and according to Fichman he was determined to investigate the matter himself upon returning to England.Footnote 31
While traveling through South America and the Malay archipelago, Wallace also developed a strong interest in ethnography and ethnology. Like most scientific travelers of the nineteenth century, Wallace immersed himself in travel literature, particularly accounts written by Europeans who had visited the same regions as him. Here Wallace was following a practice of informed reading that was an important preparatory exercise for journeys into relatively unknown lands.Footnote 32 It provided travelers with essential information on the peoples, plants, animals and landscapes they were going to confront abroad. Moreover, knowledge of these works made it possible for someone such as Wallace to establish himself as a credible observer of natural-history data.Footnote 33 It was also through traveling that Wallace's interests in ethnography and spiritualism began to intersect. His cross-cultural encounters with Indigenous peoples exposed him to various forms of spiritualism that would later influence his spiritualist beliefs, and, as Sherrie Lynne Lyons has argued, “Wallace's view of native people provides an important clue to his later conversion to the spiritualist hypothesis.”Footnote 34
For many early ethnologists, travel narratives provided a crucial source of data for their studies. These narratives contributed to a growing archive that made possible the verification, expansion and correction of ethnographic knowledge. One's reputation as a reliable scientific traveler was based on the ability to either confirm the earlier observations of travelers who had visited the region, or correct those reports based on newer information. In both cases direct experience was essential to this process.Footnote 35 Being able to state that the data were acquired firsthand added greatly to one's truth-claims. Impartiality was also an essential element of this process, and in many respects the method of verifying ethnographic observations was closely linked to what Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have termed “truth-to-nature” objectivity, where the accepted representation of a human group was a compilation of reports, or the archetype of a pattern within various accounts.Footnote 36
When substantiating the trustworthiness of his observations of spirit phenomena, or those of other witnesses whom he deemed credible, Wallace utilized similar ethnographic techniques. Although not explicitly mentioned in his writings, much of Wallace's analysis was influenced by the work of the German naturalist and traveler Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), who combined Baconian and Linnaean principles with his own ideas on how scientific travelers could systematically catalogue the natural world. Humboldt argued for a physique du monde—a universal natural science based on observational study, measurement and experimentation.Footnote 37
The verification of direct observations through the use of ethnographic methods was a core aspect of Wallace's later anthropological writings on spiritualism. These investigations were further enhanced by Wallace's knowledge of ethnological and anthropological theories. For instance, Wallace had read important ethnological works by the physicians James Cowles Prichard (1786–1848) and William Lawrence (1783–1867) while traveling throughout the world. Both men were seminal figures within the discipline, and outlined theoretical frameworks for studying human races.Footnote 38 Once Wallace returned to Britain in 1862 he joined the ESL, and when the ASL formed a year later, Wallace also began attending their meetings. This further immersed Wallace in discussions on how to do ethnological and anthropological research. His first major contribution to anthropological studies occurred in 1864 when he published what is widely considered to be the first anthropological work to apply Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms to humans.Footnote 39 It was clear that in the early 1860s, much of Wallace's scientific activity was grounded in ethnological and anthropological research. Thus, by the time Wallace attended his first séance in July 1865, he was primed for approaching the event as a skilled ethnographic observer. In many respects his later descriptions of his experiences at séances can be seen as a kind of ethnographic reporting, informed by his deep knowledge of ethnological and anthropological theories.
THE “THEORY OF SPIRITUALISM” AND EVOLUTIONISM
Miracles and Modern Spiritualism contained three substantially reworked versions of essays that Wallace had produced between 1866 and 1874.Footnote 40 As he immersed himself in the modern spiritualist movement, his knowledge deepened, and he was able to incorporate even more information from his readings of the extant spiritualist literature and from his personal experiences at séances. Thus the book represents the culmination and maturation of his early spirit investigations. In his book, Wallace recognized that the nature of his investigations meant that many of his readers would be skeptical of the genuineness of the phenomena he described.Footnote 41 He wrote, “Many of my readers will no doubt, feel oppressed by the strange and apparently supernatural phenomena here brought before their notice. They will demand that, if indeed they are to be accepted as facts, it must be shown that they form a part of the system of the universe, or at least range themselves under some plausible hypothesis.”Footnote 42 It was for this reason that Wallace carefully articulated a “theory of spiritualism.”Footnote 43 Through the conceptualization of his theory, Wallace believed that he was strengthening the scientific pronouncements of his research. Crucial to this process was grounding his spirit investigations in naturalistic laws, and providing conceivable explanations for psychical forces.Footnote 44 This enabled him to align his spiritualism with the core principles of scientific naturalism that was dominant during the period. It was a tactic that other ethnologists and anthropologists were using as they strove for recognition on the larger Victorian scientific scene. Wallace was following this approach. However, the version of scientific naturalism that he employed differed from the more biologically determined model of Hunt, and the Darwinian-inspired model of Huxley and other X Club members. Wallace was far less committed to hard-line verificationist assumptions, allowing him to be more receptive to extraordinary phenomena such as spirit and psychic forces.Footnote 45
At the crux of Wallace's theory was a fundamental principle that underlined all spiritualist phenomena—every human was made of two parts: the spirit and the material body. Wallace believed that the material body was the “machinery and instruments by means of which [humans] … act upon other beings and on matter,” and the spirit “feels, and perceives, and thinks.”Footnote 46 While the material body would eventually perish, the spirit was immortal. Once the spirit entered into the afterlife, it began a developmental process, which Wallace termed “progression of the fittest.”Footnote 47 It was a new form of human developmentalism that attempted to reconcile his evolutionary and anthropological ideas with his spiritualist ones.
Wallace wanted to map his theory of spiritualism onto his own evolutionary paradigm. The inclusion of evolutionism into ethnological and anthropological research was essential for many scientific naturalists during the 1860s and 1870s. Figures such as Huxley, who was president of the ESL during the 1860s; the archaeologist, entomologist and politician John Lubbock (1834–1913), who was the first president of the RAI; and Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917), who is widely regarded as the founder of cultural anthropology, and the first researcher in Britain to be appointed reader in anthropology, all trumpeted the importance of evolutionary theories for the advancement of the discipline.Footnote 48 Wallace was part of this general movement in anthropology, and it was an underlying theme in his first major contribution to anthropological research: his 1864 article, “On the Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of Natural Selection.”Footnote 49 Given that Wallace viewed the study of spirits and psychical forces as a type of anthropological pursuit, evolutionism also formed a key aspect of his strategy for ensuring that his spirit investigations gained acceptance within scientific circles.Footnote 50
For Wallace, nondirectional evolutionary processes, guided by natural selection, may have accounted for human diversity when studying the living, but upon death a different sort of evolutionary process began that was directional and progressive. He wrote,
The organic world has been carried on to a high state of development, and has been ever kept in harmony with the forces of nature, by the grand law of “survival of the fittest” acting upon every varying organizations. In the spirit world, the law of the “progression of the fittest” takes its place, and carries on in unbroken continuity …Footnote 51
According to Wallace the spirit was a mind without body that retained all the knowledge (both intellectual and moral) it had acquired during life, including the experiences, thoughts, feelings and tastes of the former self.Footnote 52 With this knowledge the spirit could progress through successive stages toward the highest level of enlightenment. That was humanity's true purpose. It was a theistic framework, and as Fichman has observed it “explicitly maintains that the Divine Being continues to sustain relations to His creation” even after death.Footnote 53 Because the spirit retained knowledge of its former self, Wallace argued, it was able to communicate with the living. How else would it be possible for spirits to verify their identities to living loved ones during séances?Footnote 54
Wallace's incorporation of a developmental model into his theory of spiritualism was an essential part of his aim to gain scientific legitimacy for his spirit investigations. Because it combined both familiar aspects of Darwinian evolution with monogenesis and progressivism, his theory of spiritualism could be incorporated into larger ethnological and anthropological discussions about human evolution. However, it moved beyond these discussions into new ground, and unlike the standard forms of monogenesis (or even polygenesis, for that matter) it provided an alternative framework that accounted not only for the evolution of the living, but also for the dead. Nevertheless, in order to support this spiritualist evolutionary paradigm, Wallace required data that proved the existence of spirits and psychical forces. This led him to an emphasis on “fact-based” knowledge and Baconian inductivism, further tying his spirit investigations to the techniques of ethnologists and anthropologists in the mid-Victorian period.
DIRECT OBSERVATION AND “FACT-BASED” KNOWLEDGE
When Hunt cofounded the ASL in 1863, he wanted anthropologists to distinguish themselves from ethnologists by prioritizing research that was based on direct observation and “fact-based” knowledge. One of the main criticisms that his opponents such as Huxley and Lubbock leveled at him was that it was unnecessary for there to be two disciplines that essentially studied the same materials. Hunt had to rationalize the formation of anthropology as being distinctly different to that of ethnology; and to substantiate the scientific criteria on which anthropologists based their analyses, he argued for the application of the Baconian method of induction.Footnote 55 Using Baconianism to strengthen the scientific pronouncements of a discipline was by no means distinct to anthropology, and many emerging disciplines in the nineteenth century appealed to Baconian principles as a way of gaining scientific legitimacy within the larger community.Footnote 56 It was primarily a rhetorical strategy, where the Baconian method of induction was championed as a means to knowledge. More often than not, though, the application of Baconian ideas was never fully implemented into research programs.Footnote 57
In the case of anthropology, Hunt asserted that Baconianism, with its emphasis on “facts,” was the most reliable way to do scientific research. He wrote,
It has been solely the application of this [Baconian] method which has given such weight to our deliberations and our deductions. Loyalty to facts with regard to … anthropology brought us face to face with popular assumptions, and the contest has resulted in victory to those who used the right method. Having then seen the advantage of conducting our investigations … according to the inductive method …Footnote 58
Under this model the Baconian method of induction was strategically used as the cornerstone of his anthropological framework. Observable “facts” such as anatomical and physiological data lay at the foundation of any good study of humans. There were three steps to using the Baconian method of induction. First, researchers were to collect materials and describe the “facts.” Second, they were to tabulate or classify the “facts” into three categories: (a) instances where a specific characteristic was observed, (b) instances where the characteristic was absent and (c) instances where a variation of the observed characteristic was present. Third, in light of what the tabulated materials demonstrated, researchers were to draw conclusions based on the data and determine which phenomena (physical or cultural) were connected to it, and which phenomena were not.
Even within the human sciences Hunt's emphasis on “fact-based” knowledge was not distinct, and despite his claims to the contrary ethnologists such Prichard and Lawrence had been using Baconian methods in their research programs for several decades prior to the emergence of anthropology. The only difference was that Hunt explicitly identified its importance, because he was attempting to legitimize his methodological approach as being more refined than the practices of the researchers who preceded him.Footnote 59 Tylor also used a similar “fact-based” argument in the opening pages of his magnum opus Primitive Culture (1871). Tylor was constructing an evolutionary model that traced the development of cultural attributes from what he believed to be the lowest stages of human societies to the most advanced. Because he was primarily working with nonphysical forms of data, he argued that it was essential to stockpile his “facts,” and show multiple examples of similar cultural phenomena. Such an approach would verify the trustworthiness of his evidence and support his suppositions. Tylor stated, “Should it seem to any readers that my attempt to reach this limit sometimes leads to the heaping up of too cumbrous detail, I would point out that the theoretical novelty as well as the practical importance of many of the issues raised make it most unadvisable to stint them of their full evidence.”Footnote 60
There is a similar sort of rhetoric in Wallace's Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. Like Hunt and Tylor, Wallace strategically argued that spirit investigations had to be grounded in firsthand knowledge and reliable “facts.” He placed great emphasis on direct observation, and he stated,
In this manner only could all sources of error be eliminated, and a doctrine of such overwhelming importance be established as truth. I propose now to inquire whether such proof has been given, and whether the evidence is attainable by any one who may wish to investigate the subject in the only manner by which truth can be reached—by direct observation and experimentation.Footnote 61
Wallace's visual epistemology, to borrow the term from Bleichmar, began with firsthand experience, and for him seeing was knowing.Footnote 62
Direct observation was only part of establishing the credibility of one's investigations. A single observation could be fabricated, erroneous or accidental. Therefore it had to be cross-compared against similar reports. Wallace wrote, “A single new and strange fact is on its first announcement, often treated as a miracle, and not believed because it is contrary to the hitherto observed order of nature.”Footnote 63 It was for this reason that Wallace insisted on finding multiple examples of similar accounts to verify the credibility of a single observation. If one of the “facts” from a collection of similar accounts were proven to be real, the rest, by extension, would also be taken as factual. Wallace argued, “If but one or two of them are proved to be real, the whole argument against the rest of ‘impossibility’ and ‘reversal of the laws of nature,’ falls to the ground.”Footnote 64
The influence of Baconianism is noticeable in Wallace's Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. As was the case with Hunt and others, Wallace organized his “facts” into groupings for analysis. For example, he sorted physical and mental spirit phenomena into different typologies. Each grouping included short descriptions to assist researchers in correctly identifying the types of phenomena that they were witnessing. Wallace believed that he was articulating a system that allowed for more accurate observations. If every spirit investigator used his system in their studies, it would create a standardized method, which in turn would make it easier to cross-compare reports. The replication of results would also be possible under such a model, which added further authority to the method.Footnote 65
Under “physical phenomena types,” Wallace included six categories: “simple physical phenomena,” such as sounds being produced without a known source, or people being moved without any human agency involved; “chemical,” where mediums could hold burning hot objects without getting hurt; “direct writing and drawing,” which allegedly included pencils and pens rising on their own; “musical phenomena,” where instruments played without any human intervention; “spiritual forms,” such as the appearance of ghost orbs or specters; and finally “spirit photographs,” which purported to include manifestations of ghosts in them.Footnote 66 There were five types of mental phenomena described in Wallace's system and they included “automatic writing,” when mediums wrote information down involuntarily; “seeing or clairvoyance,” such as premonitions or voice hearing; “trance speaking,” when a medium communicated the thoughts or feelings of a spirit; “impersonation,” which is closely linked to trance speaking, but is more about speaking or acting like the spirit; and finally “healing,” such as a medium detecting an unknown illness in a person.Footnote 67
Whereas physical phenomena did not necessitate a medium in order to occur, mental phenomena did. It was for this reason that Wallace argued that mental phenomena were usually considered less evidential by skeptics of spiritualism. He wrote, “The purely mental phenomena are generally of no use as evidence to non-spiritualists, except in those few cases where rigid tests can be applied.” Wallace continued by arguing that the two kinds cannot be separated so easily and that “they are so intimately connected with the physical series, and often so interwoven with them, that no one who has sufficient experience to satisfy him of the reality of the former, fails to see that the latter form part of the general system, and are dependent on the same agencies.”Footnote 68 For Wallace, proving the existence of spirit forces meant using all forms of data and seeing how the sum of the parts came together to show the reality of spiritualism.
Wallace's commitment to direct observation and “fact-based” knowledge was essential for establishing the credibility of his spirit investigations. Like Hunt and Tylor before him, he had to justify his “new branch of anthropology” as a legitimate scientific pursuit. It was not enough to have a comprehensive theory of spiritualism and a few examples of direct observations that purported to show genuine examples of spirit phenomena. Wallace asserted that proponents of spiritualism had to show that the sheer volume of credible witnesses collecting data on spirit forces was impossible to ignore, and therefore had to be taken seriously. He stated,
I maintain that the facts have now been proved, in the only way in which facts are capable of being proved—viz., by the concurrent testimony of honest, impartial, and careful observers. Most of the facts are capable of being tested by any earnest inquirer. They have withstood the ordeal of ridicule and of rigid scrutiny for twenty-six years, during which their adherents have year by year steadily increased, including men of every rank and station, of every class of mind, and of every degree of talent; while not a single individual who has yet devoted himself to a detailed examination of these facts, has denied their reality. These are characteristics of a new truth, not of a delusion or imposture. The facts therefore are proved.Footnote 69
In sum, the success of Wallace's methodological approach to achieving scientific legitimacy for his spirit investigations rested on the trustworthiness of his sources. The bulk of Miracles and Modern Spiritualism was devoted to establishing the credibility of his eyewitnesses, and once again ethnological and anthropological theories and methods were essential to this process.
CREDIBLE WITNESSING AND SPIRIT INVESTIGATIONS
Ethnographic reports from the narratives of travelers were the modus operandi of ethnological and anthropological research during the nineteenth century. Because most practitioners never left the shores of Europe, they were reliant on travelers for their data. Narratives provided essential information on the peoples who inhabited the world, and the personal testimony of someone who had seen different races directly in situ always had more authority than secondhand descriptions based on a priori knowledge. Ethnographies of Europe used similar techniques—especially when verifying personal testimonies from historical periods. Thus there was a long tradition in both ethnology and anthropology of establishing the credibility of firsthand observers. Figures such as Prichard, Lawrence, Robert Gordon Latham (1812–88), Hunt and Tylor all worked tirelessly to prove the accuracy and trustworthiness of their sources.Footnote 70 Wallace was building on this tradition in his spirit investigations, and he had a broad knowledge of both ethnological and anthropological methods from his participation at both the ESL and ASL during the 1860s.Footnote 71
There were several ways of establishing the reliability of a source in ethnology and anthropology. First, if the observer possessed comprehensive training in a field that was considered to be requisite to ethnology or anthropology, such as medicine or natural history, they were considered to be a credible witness. Similarly, if an observer had a sound knowledge of subjects such as law, physics or philosophy, they were also deemed trustworthy because of their analytical and discerning mind. Second, if there were multiple accounts that contained analogous information on the same objects, topics, events or peoples, they collectively reinforced the validity of one another. It was a sort of “collective empiricism”—to borrow the term from Daston and Galison.Footnote 72 Any inconsistency that appeared within the data set would be identified as atypical and subsequently removed. Third, if a researcher could reinforce the claims of other observers through their own similar firsthand experiences, this added further credibility to an account. Fourth, if multiple witnesses were present at the same incident, and produced corresponding reports, they too were deemed trustworthy observers. We see examples of all of these modes of verification in Wallace's spiritualist writings.Footnote 73
A reliance on personal testimonies to substantiate one's scientific suppositions was, of course, a tried and trusted method in most scientific disciplines. Practitioners in various fields regularly appealed to different forms of collective empiricism to support their research activities. However, Wallace gave particular credence to researchers working in the life sciences, because he believed that they were less predisposed to imposing set conditions onto the study of unexplained phenomena.Footnote 74 When it came to observing spirit activity, physicists could make important and valuable observations, but the analysis of these reports was left to scientists with more detailed understandings of the organic world. In a sense, we can think of this method as a two-part process. First, information had to be observed and recorded by credible witnesses. Second, the meaning of the phenomena that was witnessed in the reports had to be interpreted and explained by a researcher with a strong grounding in natural history and the human sciences. Because experiential knowledge of human societies was the backbone of ethnological and anthropological research, its practitioners were particularly well suited for synthesizing evidentiary materials of these kinds. This approach to making sense of observational accounts, which Wallace was employing in his spiritualist writings, was a staple of early armchair-based ethnological research.Footnote 75 Wallace saw himself as the quality controller of the data, weeding out any anomalous evidence, and highlighting examples that best supported his suppositions.
In Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, Wallace made a case for the credibility of his sources. He argued that despite the number of skeptics of spiritualism rising over an eighteen-year period (i.e. between the 1850s and 1870s), there was still a growth in the numbers of believers.Footnote 76 He asserted that the kinds of data, and the rigor of experimentation purporting to prove the existence of spirits and psychical forces, were improving, and much of this was the result of a general increase in the number and quality of reports that were produced by so-called respectable observers of spirit phenomena. Wallace stated,
I shall call chiefly persons connected with science, art, or literature, and whose intelligence and truthfulness in narrating their own observations are above suspicion; and I would particularly insist, that no objections of a general kind can have any weight against direct evidence to special facts, many of which are of such a nature that there is absolutely no choice between believing that they did occur, or imputing to all who declare they witnessed them, wilful and purposeless falsehood.Footnote 77
Wallace's avowal of the credibility of his sources was grounded in three key points: first, all of his witnesses were leaders in science, art or literature, and therefore represented some of the greatest minds known. Second, the reports were directly observed, and were not based on a priori assumptions. Wallace argued that this meant they were stronger sources of evidence. Third, because the information was acquired through firsthand experience, all of the observations were founded in “fact-based” knowledge. As sources of data, Wallace believed they should be considered of the highest caliber.
The pages of Miracles and Modern Spiritualism were littered with copious numbers of observations recorded by figures whom Wallace deemed credible witnesses of spirit phenomena. He was particularly favorable toward reports that described séances led by eminent mediums such as Kate Fox, Daniel Dunglas Home (1833–86), and Agnes Elisabeth Guppy (1838–1917). Each of these mediums was celebrated by spiritualists as possessing genuine psychic powers, and therefore attracted the attention of many high-profile spirit investigators (both skeptics and believers). There had been multiple attempts to detect fraudulent activities in the séances and performances of Fox, Home and Guppy, yet according to Wallace none of them had ever been caught cheating. It was for this reason that Wallace placed so much weight on the investigations that examined their alleged powers.
In the case of Fox, Wallace began by asserting that she was the first prominent medium of the modern spiritualist movement. Her powers were discovered at the age of nine when she and her sisters allegedly communicated with spirits at their family home in New York State.Footnote 78 Since then, Fox's career had blossomed, and she traveled around North America and Europe performing for both private and public audiences. Wallace argued that for twenty-six years “sceptic after sceptic, committee after committee, endeavored to discover ‘the trick;’ but if it were a trick this little girl baffled them all.”Footnote 79 By claiming that Fox had confounded skeptics for nearly three decades, Wallace was attempting to establish the legitimacy of her powers, but he did not stop there, and he included the reports of prominent spirit investigators who had observed and confirmed her mediumistic abilities firsthand.
One of those investigators was the Scottish American social reformer Robert Dale Owen (1801–77), who wrote two well-known works on spiritualism, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land between This World and the Next (1872). Owen had extensive experience investigating spirit phenomena and mediums, and he gained a reputation as a leading expert in the field.Footnote 80 Wallace recounted,
Mr. Owen had many sittings with Miss Fox for the purpose of test; and the precautions he took were extraordinary. He sat with her alone; he frequently changed the room without notice; he examined every article of furniture; he locked the doors and fastened them with strips of paper privately sealed; he held both the hands of the medium. Under these conditions various phenomena occurred, the most remarkable being the illumination of a piece of paper (which he had brought himself, cut of a peculiar size, and privately marked), showing a dark hand writing on the floor. The paper afterwards rose up on to the table with legible writing upon it, containing a promise which was subsequently verified.
Owen's authority as a credible observer of psychical forces was established through the following means: first, he had multiple sittings with Fox so that he could conduct tests several times in order to reproduce his results. Second, only Owen and Fox were in the room at the time of the experiments, thus ensuring that no other human agency could aversely influence the testing. Third, the room where the tests were to be undertaken was regularly changed without notice so that any possible manipulation of the space in advance of the experiments by Fox would be avoided. Fourth, many precautions were taken to limit Fox's ability to cheat during any of the tests. Despite Owen's comprehensive experience in detecting fraud, and all of the safeguards in place during the experiments, Fox was still able to produce spirit phenomena. Wallace believed that her powers were legitimate, and that Owen was a credible witness.
The Scottish publisher, naturalist and anonymous author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), Robert Chambers (1802–71), also had the opportunity to investigate Fox's psychical abilities with Owen during a visit to the USA in 1860.Footnote 81 Chambers had a keen interest in spiritualism, possessing a sound knowledge of the literature, and extensive experience attending séances during the 1850s, which strengthened the case for him being seen as a trustworthy observer.Footnote 82 Together Chambers and Owen conducted some tests on Fox to determine whether her psychical powers were genuine. Wallace described some of the safeguards that Chambers and Owen used during their tests with Fox to ensure that there was little opportunity for deceit. This included the use of gas lighting so that the room was fully visible during the tests, weighing down the séance table with a heavy steelyard so that it was too difficult to move without being detected, and insisting that Fox's hands were held over her head and not touching the table. Nevertheless, despite all of these precautions, Fox was allegedly able to produce remarkable supernatural feats.Footnote 83 Wallace remarked that these measures were similar to the ones used by the staunch skeptic of spiritualism the physicist Michael Faraday (1791–1867) during his investigations into table turning. According to Wallace, it was widely recognized by the scientific community that Faraday's experiments on spirit phenomena were reliable. This added further weight to the credibility of Chambers and Owen's claim, because if the method was deemed acceptable for Faraday's experiments, it should be acceptable for Chambers and Owen's experiments. In Faraday's case he showed that the phenomena were faked. For Wallace that did not matter, because Faraday was not an expert on spiritualism, nor had he attended sufficient séances. By contrast Chambers and Owen were regular attendees of séances, and knew the spiritualist literature well. Their experiential knowledge, combined with their experimental testing, made them more credible witnesses.Footnote 84
Another high-profile medium whom Wallace examined in Miracles and Modern Spiritualism was Home. As was the case with Fox, Home's psychical powers were allegedly discovered at an early age, and by the middle of the nineteenth century he was one of the most widely known mediums in the world. Spirit investigators regularly examined his amazing supernatural acts in order to determine whether or not his psychical powers were genuine.Footnote 85 One of the notable investigators to study Home's powers was the Scottish physicist and mathematician Sir David Brewster (1781–1868). Wallace included excerpts of Brewster's observations from a sitting with Home, showing examples of unexplainable phenomena. Brewster wrote, “The table actually rose from the ground when no hand was upon it,” and he continued by stating that “a small hand-bell was laid down with its mouth upon the carpet, and it actually rang when nothing could have touched it.”Footnote 86 Although he was a skeptic of supernaturalism, Brewster was unable to detect any fraud during his investigation of Home's psychical abilities. He was therefore left baffled by the events that he had witnessed. For Wallace this sort of evidence was particularly valuable in establishing the legitimacy of spirit phenomena. If a skeptic such as Brewster, who had an extensive background in physical sciences, was unable to detect any fraud, Home's powers must have been real. To add further credibility to Brewster's account, Wallace noted that the lawyer and politician Lord Henry Peter Brougham (1778–1868) was also present during the investigation, and he confirmed Brewster's report.Footnote 87
In an effort to assure his readers that Home was an honest and genuine medium, Wallace asserted that Home openly invited investigators to examine his powers, further showing that he had nothing to hide. Wallace remarked that the lawyer, journalist and publisher Edward William Cox (1809–79), and the chemist and physicist William Crookes (1832–1919), both investigated Home's powers and detected no deceitfulness. He wrote, “The powers of Mr. Home have lately been independently tested by Sergeant Cox and Mr. Crookes, and both of these gentlemen emphatically proclaim that he invites tests and courts examination.”Footnote 88 Both Cox and Crookes were reputable Victorian gentlemen, with backgrounds in law and science respectively. For Wallace, they were both credible witnesses. In each case Cox and Crookes observed what appeared to be authentic supernatural phenomena. For example, referring to Cox's experiments with Home, Wallace wrote,
Sergeant Cox, in his own house, has had a new accordion (purchased by himself that very day) play by itself, in his own hand, while Mr. Home was playing the piano. Mr. Home then took the accordion in his left hand, holding it with the keys downwards while playing the piano with his right hand, “and it played beautifully in accompaniment to the piano, for at least a quarter of an hour.”Footnote 89
Another notable medium to be discussed in Miracles and Modern Spiritualism was Guppy.Footnote 90 It was Wallace who had first discovered Guppy's psychical powers during a séance at his home in November 1866. He soon arranged regular sittings with the young medium so that he could repeat his tests and trace her development. He wrote that on one occasion he secretly tested Guppy's mediumistic abilities by “attaching threads or thin strips of paper beneath the claws [of a table], so that they must be broken if any one attempted to raise the table with their feet—the only available means of doing so.”Footnote 91 Yet despite this safeguard, the table still rose without any damage to the strips that Wallace had carefully placed beneath it. For Wallace, this was evidence in favor of genuine spirit phenomena.
Wallace's personal testimony was sprinkled throughout his book, and he included long excerpts of his observations from the many séances that he had attended. This was a key component of his strategy for establishing himself as a credible witness of spirit phenomena. It demonstrated not only that he was familiar with the literature on modern spiritualism, but also that he possessed direct experience engaging with psychical forces. The emphasis on experiential knowledge was essential for establishing himself as an expert. His examination of spirit phenomena at séances can be treated as a kind of ethnographic study, and, much as scientific explorers verified the trustworthiness of their ethnographic observations in travel narratives, through detailed discussions of their daily activities, Wallace was using a similar method in his writings. This process of outlining the details of an experiment transformed his readers into what Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer have called “virtual witnesses,” allowing them to acquire an almost firsthand knowledge of his investigations. It was therefore a core aspect of Wallace's visual epistemology.Footnote 92
One example that Wallace includes in his book is a description from his very first séance experience in July 1865. He wrote,
Sat with my friend, his wife, and two daughters, at a large loo table, by daylight. In about half an hour some faint motions were perceived, and some faint taps heard. They gradually increased; the taps became very distinct, and the table moved considerably, obliging us all to shift our chairs. Then a curious vibratory motion of the table commenced, almost like the shivering of a living animal. I could feel it up to my elbows. These phenomena were variously repeated for two hours. On trying afterwards, we found the table could not be voluntarily moved in the same manner without a great exertion of force, and we could discover no possible way of producing the taps while our hands were upon the table.Footnote 93
There are several important points to unpack from the passage. First, Wallace states that the séance was conducted during the day, making the room fully visible so that any deceitful activity by the medium could feasibly have been seen. Second, he was not alone, and there were multiple witnesses observing the same phenomena. Third, the spirit phenomena were repeated and sustained for a long period of time, making it possible for Wallace to carefully observe and take note of what he was witnessing. Fourth, all of the objects involved in the séance were inspected immediately afterward to determine whether any trickery was possible. The inclusion of sensory detail, such as the “vibratory motion of the table,” added a further layer of authenticity to Wallace's description, allowing for his readers to imagine the sensation on their own bodies.
Wallace continued to experiment with psychical forces, and he conducted repeated tests to determine whether or not he could consistently observe similar phenomena during séances. He stated,
On other occasions we tried the experiment of each person in succession leaving the table, and found that the phenomena continued the same as before, both taps and the table movement. Once I requested one after another to leave the table; the phenomena continued, but as the number of sitters diminished, with decreasing vigour, and just after the last person had drawn back leaving me alone at the table, there were two dull taps or blows, as with a fist on the pillar or foot of the table, the vibration of which I could feel as well as hear. No one present but myself could have made these and I certainly did not make them.Footnote 94
Once again we see that Wallace was not alone during the tests, and that there were other witnesses available to confirm his reports. By providing a step-by-step account of his experiments with table rapping, we see a further attempt by Wallace to demonstrate that he was a skilled spirit investigator, which reinforced his claim to being a credible witness.
Wallace's aim of developing a “new branch of anthropology” that was devoted to spirit investigations fundamentally relied on his ability to establish the trustworthiness of his evidence. He followed a long tradition in ethnology and anthropology of relying on the accounts of firsthand observers to substantiate his suppositions. He took great care in showing his readers how the sources that he used in his book were highly credible. Most of the accounts that Wallace used were by prominent investigators who possessed both a strong knowledge of the literature on spiritualism and extensive experience examining spirit phenomena at séances. He supported this information further with his own personal testimony from the séances that he had witnessed firsthand. With the so-called “facts” that he presented to his readers, Wallace hoped that he made a strong enough case for recognizing investigations of spirit phenomena as a genuine scientific pursuit that showed the reality of spirits and psychical forces.
CONCLUSION
With the publication of Tylor's Primitive Culture in 1871, there was a growing anthropological interest in the study of religion. Spiritualists became the subject of anthropological research, and they were characterized as practicing a “primitive” form of belief that was indebted to an age when all humans saw the world as being inhabited by spirits—what Tylor called “animism.”Footnote 95 This was not what Wallace had hoped for when he tried to establish the research field in the middle of the nineteenth century as a “new branch of anthropology,” and he subsequently became a vocal critic of Tylor's work.Footnote 96 He even published a scathing review of Primitive Culture in the popular review journal The Academy.Footnote 97 At the core of anthropology's criticism of spiritualism was a critique of the foundation of spirit investigations—a reliance on personal testimony.
By the turn of the twentieth century, Tylor's anthropological followers increasingly undermined the scientific practices of spirit investigators. In the “Preface” to the book Cock Lane and Common-Sense (1894), the anthropologist and folklorist Andrew Lang (1844–1912)—who studied under Tylor at Oxford—remarked,
When Anthropology first challenged the interpretation of myths given by Philologists, we were told that Anthropology relied on mere travellers’ tales. It was answered that the coincidence of report, in all ages and countries, and from all manner of independent observers, unaware of each other's existence, was a strong proof of general accuracy, while the statements of learned and scholarly men … confirmed the strange stories of travellers … [T]he same test of evidence, universally coincident, applied to many of the alleged [spirit] phenomena in this book.Footnote 98
Yet as Lang contended, personal testimony was still a problematic source of evidence. The onus of proof would never be fully satisfied. People on both sides of the debate would be influenced by their inherent biases, and proponents of spiritualism would likely accept evidence purporting to have witnessed genuine spirit phenomena, and skeptics would reject it. For Lang the question should not be whether spirits and psychical forces existed, but why people have either believed or disbelieved in spiritualism. Wallace's whole approach to investigating spirit phenomena was completely undermined by Lang, and any further attempt to make spiritualism a bona fide branch of anthropology was effectively ended. The focus would not be on determining the existence of spirits and psychical forces, but on understanding why different cultures believed or disbelieved in them.
This paper has taken seriously Wallace's claim that his investigations into spirit phenomena were a new kind of anthropological research. Taking Wallace's book Miracles and Modern Spiritualism as its starting point, it has shown how his theories and practices drew on larger disciplinary discussions about how to do ethnological and anthropological research during a period when the boundaries of the discipline were still being negotiated. Much emphasis has been put on the observational practices that Wallace employed in his studies, examining in detail how he established the credibility of his sources. By taking seriously the practices and theories that he used to legitimize his spirit investigations as a genuine scientific pursuit, an important story emerges on how nineteenth-century researchers constructed their truth-claims. This is particularly telling because spiritualism deals with nontraditional knowledge that runs counter to what has been deemed proper science.
Supernaturalism. as the word implies, goes against the accepted laws of nature; believers in spirit phenomena and psychical forces had to work extra hard to prove the reliability of their evidence.Footnote 99 Yet as Lang's remarks in 1894 remind us, the personal testimonies of observers who had witnessed spirit activities were an insufficient benchmark for laying the foundation of a new science. Although Wallace's efforts to make spirits and psychical forces a major topic in anthropological research ultimately failed, the methods and theories that he developed during this process took root elsewhere, and with the formation of the Society of Psychical Research in 1882, spirit investigations gained an organizational backing that helped to foster further studies into extraordinary phenomena.Footnote 100 Debates over the reality of the spirit hypothesis raged on. Examining Wallace's attempt to align his spirit investigations with anthropology sheds important light on the history of scientific observation, arguments over the evidentiary standards of scientific practice, and disciplinary formation in the nineteenth century.
