\Spir"it*u*al*ism\, n.
1. The quality or state of being spiritual.

2. (Physiol.) The doctrine, in opposition to the
   materialists, that all which exists is spirit, or soul --
   that what is called the external world is either a
   succession of notions impressed on the mind by the Deity,
   as maintained by Berkeley, or else the mere educt of the
   mind itself, as taught by Fichte.

3. A belief that departed spirits hold intercourse with
   mortals by means of physical phenomena, as by rappng, or
   during abnormal mental states, as in trances, or the like,
   commonly manifested through a person of special
   susceptibility, called a medium; spiritism; the doctrines
   and practices of spiritualists.

         What is called spiritualism should, I think, be
         called a mental species of materialism. --R. H.
                                               Hutton.