Can Wallaces embrace of spiritualism be attributed to a disillusionment with Owenist (i.e., the utopian socialist Robert Owen) ideals, as has sometimes been suggested?
This seems most unlikely to me–at least as expressed so simplistically. To begin with, it must be remembered that Wallace did not even become a full convert to socialism until 1889–some twenty years after his adoption of spiritualism–with his reading of Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward. One can actually make a much better case regarding the reverse association: that Wallace may have given up on trying to interest his colleagues in investigating spiritualism, and that this helped lead him toward socialism. The argument here is reasonably straightforward, and is easily documented: using subject data pulled from my OUP study on Wallace’s writings (Smith 1991), one finds that Wallace published only three socialism-related works before 1890 but 26 afterwards, whereas the parallel figures for his works on spiritualism total 45 and 51, respectively. My reading of the situation is that Wallace came to realize by the late-1870s, perhaps, that his efforts to promote spiritualis
Related Questions
- Can Wallaces embrace of spiritualism be attributed to a disillusionment with Owenist (i.e., the utopian socialist Robert Owen) ideals, as has sometimes been suggested?
- What does it meanwhen a Lutheran Pastor declares that evangelical pastors embrace a decision theology?
- What are the values I strive to embrace?
