Stanley De Brath

Stanley De Brath
Born	10 October 1854
Died	20 December 1937(1937-12-20) (aged 83)
Occupation(s)	Civil engineer, spiritualist

Stanley De Brath (10 October 1854 – 20 December 1937) was a British civil engineer, psychical researcher and spiritualist.[1]

Career

Brath was born in Sydenham, Kent. He worked as a civil engineer in India for 17 years.[1] He was most well known for his book Psychic Philosophy as the Foundation of a Religion of Natural Law, published in 1896. Alfred Russel Wallace had written an introduction for the book and considered it of "great lucidity, a philosophy of the universe and of human nature in its threefold aspect of body, soul, and spirit". The book was expanded in 1908 and endorsed by Wallace in a prefatory note.[2]

Brath was a Christian and believed that both Christianity and spiritualism were compatible.[2]

Brath also translated a number of psychical research books into English. He translated Charles Richet's Thirty Years of Psychical Research (1923).[1]

He was the editor of Psychic Science a journal published by the British College of Psychic Science.[1]

His books were criticized by the scientific community. The sociologist Guy Benton Johnson ridiculed Psychical Research, Science, and Religion in a review as an anti-scientific work and only "grand-reading if you have a sense of humor."[3]

Publications

• The Foundations of Success: A Plea for Rational Education (1896)
• Psychic Philosophy as the Foundation of a Religion of Natural Law (1896, 1908) [under the pseudonym V. C. Desertis]
• Mysteries of Life: A Book for Boys and Girls (1916)
• Psychical Research, Science and Religion (1925)
• The Drama of Europe, Or, The Soul of History (1930)
• The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism (1930)

Translations

• Gustav Geley. From the Unconscious to the Conscious (1920).
• Gustav Geley. Clairvoyance and Materialisation: A Record of Experiments (1927)
• Charles Richet. Thirty Years of Psychical Research (1923)
• Ernesto Bozzano. Animism and Spiritism: A Reply to M. Sudre's Introduction à la Métapsychique Humaine (1932)

See also

• Charles Lakeman Tweedale

References

1. "Stanley De Brath, M.Inst.C.E." Geni.
2. Fichman, Martin. (2004). An Elusive Victorian: The Evolution of Alfred Russel Wallace. University of Chicago Press. pp. 302-303. ISBN 978-0226246130
3. Johnson, Guy B. (1927). Reviewed Work: Psychical Research, Science, and Religion. by Stanley de Brath. Social Forces 5: 531-532.