Of all the reproaches which modern Spiritualism, with the prospect it is thought to hold out of an individual temporal immortality, has had to encounter, there is none that we can less afford to neglect than that which represents it as an ideal essentially egotistical and borne.  True it is that our critics do us injustice through ignorance of the enlarged views as to the progress of the soul in which the speculations of individual Spiritualists coincide with many remarkable spirit teachings.  These are, undoubtedly, a great advance upon popular theological opinions, while some of them go far to satisfy the claim of Spiritualism to be regarded as a religion.  Nevertheless, that slight estimate of individuality, as we know it, which in one view too easily allies itself to materialism, is also the attitude of spiritual idealism, and is seemingly at variance with the excessive value placed by Spiritualists on the discovery of our mere psychic survival.  The idealist may recognise this survival; but, whether he does so or not, he occupies a post of vantage when he tells us that it is of no ultimate importance.  For he, like the Spiritualist who proclaims his “proof palpable of immortality,” is thinking of the mere temporal, self-regarding consciousness—­its sensibilities, desires, gratifications, and affections—­which are unimportant absolutely, that is to say, their importance is relative solely to the individual.  There is, indeed, no more characteristic outbirth of materialism than that which makes a teleological centre of the individual.  Ideas have become mere abstractions; the only reality is the infinitely little.  Thus utilitarianism can see in the State only a collection of individuals whose “greatest happiness,” mutually limited by nice adjustment to the requirements of “the greatest numbers,” becomes the supreme end of government and law.  And it cannot, I think, be pretended that Spiritualists in general have advanced beyond this substitution of a relative for an absolute standard.  Their “glad tidings of great joy” are not truly religious.  They have regard to the perpetuation in time of that lower consciousness whose manifestations, delights, and activity are in time, and of time alone.  Their glorious message is not essentially different from that which we can conceive as brought to us by some great alchemist, who had discovered the secret of conferring upon us and upon our friends a mundane perpetuity of youth and health.  Its highest religious claim is that it enlarges the horizon of our opportunities.  As such, then, let us hail it with gratitude and relief; but, on peril of our salvation, if I may not say of our immortality, let us not repose upon a prospect which is, at best, one of renewed labours, and trials, and efforts to be free even of that very life whose only value is opportunity.