[f. as prec. + -IST. Cf. F. spiritualiste, Sp. and Pg. espiritualista.]
1. One who regards things from a spiritual point of view or interprets them in a spiritual sense; one whose ideas or doctrines have a purely spiritual basis or tendency.
In early use sometimes with depreciatory force.
1649. H. Lawrence, Some Consid. Vind. Scriptures, 37. Certaine demands, which these pretended spiritualists will be sure to make to me.
1673. H. Hallywell, Acc. Familism, 19. Those high-flown Spiritualists the Quakers are of the same mind.
1716. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., II. 42. This is the great Rule the reform’d Order of the Protestant Spiritualists, call’d Quakers and others, seem to walk by.
1800. C. Butler, Life A. Butler, xii. Approved of by St. Francis of Sales and other spiritualists.
1845. G. Oliver, Coll. Biogr. Soc. Jes., 50. As a Spiritualist also, he must have been pre-eminent, judging from many of his letters now before me.
1865. Mill, Exam. Hamilton, 492. Proofs that the most sincere Spiritualists may consistently hold the doctrine of so-called necessity.
b. spec. (See quots. and cf. SPIRITUAL sb. 2 b.)
1716. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., II. 225. Those Montanists were call’d also Cataphrygians, Spiritualists, Apostolicks, [etc.].
1862. G. H. Townsend, Man. Dates, s.v., Spiritualists, called also the Zealous,… formed a portion of the great order of Franciscans, who, about 1245, under the name of Spiritualists, advocated the strict observance of the rule and vow of poverty, which had been one of their fundamental laws.
1882–3. Schaff, Encycl. Relig. Knowl., 832. The Spiritualists, as the severer party [of Franciscans] was called, were cruelly persecuted.
† 2. One who supports the spiritual or ecclesiastical authority as against the secular or temporal.
1651. Hobbes, Leviath., III. xxxix. 248*. That Governor must be one; or else there must needs follow Faction, and Civil war in the Common-wealth, between the Church and State; between Spiritualists, and Temporalists.
3. A believer in, or adherent of, spiritualism as a philosophical doctrine.
1836. I. Taylor, Phys. The. Anoth. Life, i. 15. The spiritualist will retain the advantage he has gained over his opponent [the materialist].
1876. P. G. Tait, Rec. Adv. Phys. Sci., i. (ed. 2), 25. Whether it show itself in the comparatively harmless folly of the spiritualist or in the pernicious nonsense of the materialist.
4. A believer in modern spiritualism or spiritism; a spiritist.
1859. Bartlett, Dict. Amer. (ed. 2), 435. Spiritualist, a believer in the doctrine of spiritualism.
1860. O. W. Holmes, Prof. Breakf.-t., i. 13. The Spiritualists have some pretty strong instincts to pry over.
1881. Froude, Short Stud., IV. II. 227. A spiritualist assured me that I could work a miracle myself if I had but faith.
5. attrib. or as adj. Spiritualistic.
1860. Farrar, Orig. Lang., i. 20. The violent reaction of the spiritualist school of the nineteenth century against the systematising scepticism of their predecessors.
1898. Watts-Dunton, Aylwin, X. i. (1899), 278. The studio of the famous spiritualist-painter.
