[f. SPIRITUAL a. + -ISM. Cf. F. spiritualisme, It. spiritualismo.]
1. The exercise of the mental or intellectual faculties, or their predominance over body. rare.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., II. viii. Savage Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is all.
2. Tendency towards, or advocacy of, a spiritual view or estimate of things, esp. as a leading principle in philosophy or religion.
1836. Lytton, Athens (1837), II. 408. The serene and lofty spiritualism of Anaxagoras.
1857. Robertson, Serm., Ser. III. i. (1857), 6. We find the Unitarian of the old school denouncing the spiritualism of the new and rising school.
1869. Seeley, Lect. & Ess., v. 133. Religion re-assumed its ancient Judaic form of austere and ardent spiritualism.
1884. W. S. Lilly, in Contemp. Rev., Feb., 264. The very source of [Dante’s] inspiration is the austere spiritualism of the Catholic creed.
b. A spiritual view or aspiration.
1850. Carlyle, Latter-d. Pamph., vii. (1872), 224. Like a set of grisly undertakers come to bury the dead spiritualisms of mankind.
c. Spiritual nature or quality.
1855. Milman, Lat. Chr., XIV. ii. (1864), IX. 96. Dante [could] represent such things with the most objective truth, yet without disturbing their fine spiritualism.
3. The belief that the spirits of the dead can hold communication with the living, or make their presence known to them in some way, esp. through a ‘medium’; the system of doctrines or practices founded on this belief. Cf. SPIRITISM.
Also specifically called modern spiritualism by way of distinction from sense 2.
1855. E. W. Capron (title), Modern Spiritualism: its Facts and Fanaticisms, its Consistencies and Contradictions.
1860. All Year Round, No. 66. 370/1. Witchcraft, demonology, possession, and the like, revived in the modest phrase of Spiritualism.
1878. T. Sinclair, Mount, 37. Spiritualism or, as its advocates name it now on both sides of the Atlantic, Spiritism.
1886. F. W. H. Myers, Phantasms of Living, I. Introd. p. lix. On this basis the creed of ‘Modern Spiritualism’ has been upbuilt.
4. Belief in the existence and influence of spiritual beings.
1871. Tylor, Prim. Cult., I. 385. The sense of Spiritualism in its wider acceptation, the general doctrine of spiritual beings, is here given to Animism.
