which is known as spiritualism, or perhaps more suitably, spiritism.
Crookes now found himself before a special order of happenings which
seemed to testify to a world other than that open to our senses;
physical matter here showed itself capable of movement in defiance of
gravity, manifestations of light and sound appeared without a physical
source to produce them. Through becoming familiar with such things at
seances arranged by his mediumistic acquaintance, he began to hope that
he had found the way by which scientific research could overstep the
limits of the physical world. Accordingly, he threw himself eagerly
into the systematic investigation of his new experiences, and so became
the father of modern scientific spiritism.

Crookes had hoped that the scientists of his day would be positively
interested in his researches. But his first paper in this field, 'On
Phenomena called Spiritual', was at once and almost unanimously
rejected by his colleagues, and as long as he concerned himself with
such matters he suffered through their opposition. It passed his
understanding as a scientist why anything should be regarded in advance
as outside the scope of scientific research. After several years of
fruitless struggle he broke off his investigations into spiritism,
deeply disillusioned at his failure to interest official science in it.
His own partiality for it continued, however (he served as President of
the Society for Psychical Research from 1896-9), and he missed no
opportunity of confessing himself a pioneer in the search for the
boundary-land between the worlds of matter and spirit. Through all his
varied scientific work the longing persisted to know more of this land.

Just as Crookes had once sought to investigate spiritism
scientifically, so in his subsequent scientific inquiries he was always
something of a spiritist. He admitted, indeed, that he felt specially