The religious movement of Spiritualism embraced progress as the hallmark of all existence on earth and in heaven. With the publication of On the Origin of Species, this devotion to improvement fell on difficult moral ground. Many Spiritualists sought to hasten the march of humanity through the intervention of eugenics. Understood as an ethical imperative that would improve the lots of both women and children, the alliance between the eugenics platform and Spiritualists betrayed the unwitting consequences of the politics of progress.
BannisterRC (1979) Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
2.
BraudeA (2001) Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, 2nd edn. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
3.
BrodieJF (1997) Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
4.
CarpenterE (1912) The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and Transfiguration. New York: Mitchell Kennerly.
5.
CaseyJ (2009) After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6.
CrabtreeA (1993) From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
7.
DarwinC (1861) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 3rd edn. London: John Murray.
8.
DarwinC (1871) The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Two volumes. New York: D. Appleton.
9.
FergusonC (2007) Eugenics and the afterlife: Lombroso, Doyle, and the Spiritualist purification of the race. Journal of Victorian Culture12(1): 64–85.
10.
GaltonF (1891) Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences. New York: D. Appleton.
11.
GilhamNW (2001) A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
12.
GutierrezC (2011) Plato’s Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
13.
HallerJSJr (1996) Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority 1859–1900, 2nd edn. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
14.
HallerJSJr (2010) Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind–Body Connection. West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation Press.
15.
HawkinsM (1997) Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat, 5th edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
16.
KentA (1857) Free Love: Or, a Philosophical Demonstration of the Non-exclusive Nature of Connubial Love. Published by the author.
17.
KlawS (1994) Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community. New York: Penguin.
18.
MalthusTR (1992 [1809]) An Essay on the Principle of Population. Two volumes. Washington City: Roger Chew Weightman.
19.
NoyesJH (1872) Essay on Scientific Propagation. Oneida, NY: published by the Oneida Community.
20.
OwenRD (1842) Moral Physiology; Or, a Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question. London: J. Watson.
21.
OwenRD (1889) Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott.
RockwellF (1912) The last of the great Victorians: A special interview with Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace. Millgate Monthly (August): 657–663.
24.
SharpLL (2006) Secular Spirituality: Reincarnation and Spiritism in Nineteenth-Century France. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
25.
ShuskoC (2015) Criticising the dead: Spiritualism and the Oneida Community. In: GutierrezC (ed.) Brill Handbook of Spiritualism and Channeling. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill.
26.
ToneA (2001) Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America. New York: Hill & Wang.
27.
WallaceAR (1875) Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. London: James Burns.
