Note 65 — Chapter X · MECHANISM
Reading edition
Spiritualist, however, is found as early as the middle of the seventeenth century; but it was employed in the sense of ‘fanatical’, etc., or with the more technical meaning of ‘one who supports ecclesiastical authority’. Its use as a purely philosophical designation seems to date from about the middle of the nineteenth century, and the modern “table-rapping” implication is later still. There is now a tendency to substitute spiritism, spiritist, ... in the latter sense.