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Arthur Hill. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + +h1,h2,h3 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + +h1 {line-height: 120%;} +h2 {margin-top: 2em; font-size: 120%; line-height: 150%;} +h3 {margin-top: 2em; font-size: 100%; line-height: 150%;} + +p.tp {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 150%; + margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 3em;} + +.f5 {font-size: 50%;} +.f7 {font-size: 70%;} +.f9 {font-size: 90%;} +.f12 {font-size: 120%;} +.f14 {font-size: 140%; line-height: 160%;} + +p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + +hr.l1 {width: 65%; margin-top: 4em; margin-bottom: 4em;} +hr.l2 {width: 30%; margin-top: 4em; margin-bottom: 4em;} + +table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} +td.col1 {text-align: left; padding-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em; + font-size: 80%;} +td.col2 {text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom; + font-size: 80%;} +td.col3 {text-align: right; padding-right: .5em; vertical-align: top;} +td.col4 {text-align: left; vertical-align: bottom;} + +.pagenum {position: absolute; left: 94%; font-size: 60%; text-align: right; + color: #999999; letter-spacing: 0; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;} + +.blockquot {margin: 1.5em 0 1.5em 0; font-size: 90%;} + +p.cap:first-letter {float: left; clear: left; margin: 0 .1em 0 0; + padding: 0; font-size: 400%; line-height: 80%;} + +.upper {text-transform: uppercase} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +abbr {border: none; text-decoration: none; font-variant: normal;} + +.rght {float: right; margin-right: 4em;} +.rght1 {float: right; margin-right: -2em; padding-bottom: 1em;} + +.in2 {margin-left: 2em;} + +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px; margin-top: 2em;} +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 85%;} +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} +.fnanchor {vertical-align: top; font-size: 75%; text-decoration: none;} + +.centered {text-align: center; display: table; max-width: 90%; margin: auto;} +.poem {text-align: left; font-size: 90%;} +.poem br {display: none;} +.poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0 1em 0;} +.poem span.i0a {display: block; margin-left: -.4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i6 {display: block; margin-left: 6em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + +.tnote {border: dashed 1px; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; + padding: .5em 1em .5em 1em; font-size: 80%;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Psychical Miscellanea, by J. Arthur Hill + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Psychical Miscellanea + Being Papers on Psychical Research, Telepathy, Hypnotism, + Christian Science, etc. + +Author: J. Arthur Hill + +Release Date: September 29, 2011 [EBook #37565] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSYCHICAL MISCELLANEA *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, eagkw and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1>Psychical Miscellanea<br /> +<i><span class="f5">Being Papers on</span><br /> +<span class="f7">Psychical Research, Telepathy,<br /> +Hypnotism, Christian Science, etc.</span></i></h1> + +<p class="tp"><span class="f7">BY</span><br /> +<span class="f14">J. ARTHUR HILL</span><br /> +<i>Author of “Psychical Investigations,” “Man is a Spirit,”<br /> +“Spiritualism; Its History, Phenomena and Doctrine,” etc.</i></p> + + +<p class="tp">NEW YORK:<br /> +<span class="f12">HARCOURT, BRACE & HOWE,</span><br /> +<span class="f9">1920</span> +</p> + +<hr class="l2"/> + +<p class="center"><i>Printed in England</i></p> + +<hr class="l2"/> + +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">Many</span> friends and correspondents have suggested +that I should republish a number of +articles which have appeared from time +to time in various quarters. The present volume +brings these articles together, with some which have +not appeared before.</p> + +<p>Each chapter is complete in itself, but there is more +or less connexion, for each deals with some aspect of +the subject to which I have given most attention +during the last twelve years—namely, psychical +research.</p> + +<p>I thank the editors of the <cite>Holborn Review</cite>, <cite>National +Review</cite>, <cite>World’s Work</cite>, and <cite>Occult Review</cite> for permission +to republish articles which have appeared in their +pages.</p> + +<p> +<span class="rght">J. A. H.</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Thornton,<br /></span> +<span class="smcap in2">Bradford.</span> +</p> + +<hr class="l2"/> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="10" summary="table of contents"> +<tr><td class="col1"> </td><td class="col2"><span class="f7">PAGE</span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">DEATH</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">PSYCHICAL RESEARCH; ITS METHOD, EVIDENCE, +AND TENDENCY</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">THE EVOLUTION OF A PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">DO MIRACLES HAPPEN?</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">THE TRUTH ABOUT TELEPATHY</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">THE TRUTH ABOUT HYPNOTISM</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">CHRISTIAN SCIENCE</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">JOAN OF ARC</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">IS THE EARTH ALIVE?</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="col1">RELIGIOUS BELIEF AFTER THE WAR</td><td class="col2"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + +<hr class="l1"/> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> + + +<h1>Psychical Miscellanea</h1> + +<h2>DEATH</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">Our</span> feelings with regard to the termination +of our earthly existence are remarkably +varied. In some people, there is an absolutely +genuine and strong desire for cessation of +individual consciousness, as in the case of John +Addington Symonds. Probably, however, this is met +with only in keenly sensitive natures which have suffered +greatly in this life. Such unfortunate people are +sometimes constitutionally unable to believe in anything +better than cessation of their pain. Anything +better than that is “too good to be true”, so much +too good that they hardly dare wish for it. Others, +who have had a happy life, naturally desire a continuance +of it, and are therefore eager, like F. W. H. +Myers, for that which Symonds dreaded. Others, +again, and these are probably the majority, have no +very marked feeling in the matter; like the good +Churchman in the story, they hope to enter into everlasting +bliss, but they wish you would not talk about +such depressing subjects. This seems to suggest that +they have secret qualms about the reality of the bliss. +Perhaps they have read Mark Twain’s <cite>Captain Stormfield’s +Visit to Heaven</cite>, and, though inexpressibly shocked +by that exuberant work, are nevertheless tinged with a +sneaking sympathy for its hero, who found the orthodox<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> +abode of the blest an unbearably dull place. The +harp-playing in particular was trying, and he had +difficulty in managing his wings.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, these people avoid the subject. As Emerson +says somewhere, religion has dealings with them +three times in their lives: when they are christened, +when they are married, and when they are buried. +And undoubtedly its main appeal is in the period prior +to this third formality, if they happen to have a longish +illness. The rich Miss Crawley, in <cite>Vanity Fair,</cite> is +typical of many. In days of health and good spirits, +this venerable lady had “as free notions of religion +and morals as Monsieur de Voltaire himself could +desire”; but when she was in the clutches of disease, +and even though in the odour of sanctity, so to speak—for +she was nursed by Mrs Reverend Bute Crawley, +who hoped for the seventy thousand pounds if she +could keep Rawdon and Becky off the doorstep—even +with this spiritual advantage she was in much +fear, and “an utter cowardice took possession of the +prostrate old sinner.”</p> + +<p>Well, let those laugh who will. As for me, I have +great sympathy with Miss Crawley. Probably those +who laugh, or are contemptuous of such cowardice, +are people who have not yet come to close quarters +with death—have not looked him, as the French say, +in the white of the eyes. Let them wait until that +happens. If they come back after that rencontre, +they will be a little more tolerant of the cowardice of +those whom they called weaker brethren.</p> + +<p>Fear of death may be divided into classes, according +to its cause, i.e., the intellectual state out of which it +seems to arise. It may be due to the expectation of +physical suffering; or, as in such cases as Cowper’s +and Dr Johnson’s, to expectation of what may happen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> +after death, in that undiscovered country from which +Hamlet said no traveller returned, though he had just +been talking with his father’s ghost, piping hot—as +Goldsmith has it in his Essay on Metaphor—from +Purgatory. In my own case, I think the fear is a little +of both. And I admit that in both directions the fear +is irrational. As to the physical part, it is probable +that when my time comes I shall depart without much +of what is usually called pain, for the heart seems +to be my weak place, and I may reasonably hope that +even though if attacked by other ailments, it will be +the heart that will give way. There will probably +be suffering through difficulty of breathing, and I +dread this somewhat, for I know how unpleasant it +has been in the attacks which I have survived. Still, +it can hardly be compared with the agonising pain of +many diseases. Rationally, then, I ought not to have +much fear on the physical side.</p> + +<p>On the spiritual side I confess with Oliver Wendell +Holmes that I have never quite got from under the +shadow of the orthodox hell. I had a Puritan upbringing, +not severe in its home theology I am thankful to +say, but involving attendance at an Independent Chapel +where the minister—a good man and no hypocrite—was +wont to preach very terrible sermons. I shall +never quite get over the baneful effect of those damnatory +fulminations. They branded my soul. They +caused me more pain than anything else has ever done +throughout my life—and this is saying a great deal. +They made me hate God. Remember, I was a defenceless +child. I knew of no other God. I thought +all decent people believed like those about me. I was +the only heretic—a rebel, an outlaw, an Ishmael. +Conceive, if you can, the agony of a sensitive child +struggling with that thought! Condemned to eternal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> +torment, with those who, in Dante’s terrible line, +“have no hope of death.” (“Inferno,” <abbr title="3">iii</abbr>, 46.)</p> + +<p>Then I fell in with O. W. Holmes’s Autocrat and +Professor, and found a friendly hand in the darkness. +It led me to Emerson and Carlyle; then I found +Darwin, Spencer, and the rest of them. My loneliness +was mitigated, but the seared place in my soul was +not healed, and never will be healed. I cannot read +the Inferno and Purgatorio of Dante without horror, +and thus the poetic beauty of those great cantos is +darkened for me. I cannot worship “God,” for +“God” is the fiend whose image was stamped into +my mind in its most plastic, most defenceless period. +Truly that early teaching has much to answer for. It +has poisoned a great part of my life. I suppose if I +could have “accepted” that Being as my God, +accepting also the sacrifice—the Blood—by which +that Being’s anger was supposed to be assuaged—I +suppose I should have been happy, feeling myself +“saved.” (But I have lately been surprised to find +how ineffective this belief can be. An acquaintance +of mine, an orthodox churchwoman who has no religious +doubts, and who talks much of the Bible, confesses +to “a fear of death which clouds even her brightest +moments”—an ever-present, unconquerable dread.) +However, I could not accept the dogma. Why, I +don’t know. Somehow my whole mind and heart +revolted against the entire plan of salvation. I never +believed any of it. I felt it could not be true. And +yet it tortured me. Illogical? Yes: human beings +are illogical. I am no exception. The Christian who +believes he will go to heaven is equally illogical in his +unwillingness to die.</p> + +<p>When or if we succeed in getting rid of hell, the +spiritual fear of death becomes less torturing, remaining<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> +only as a vague dread, as in Hamlet’s soliloquy. Bacon +says that we fear death as children fear to go in the dark. +In my own case, it is somewhat thus that the fear now +presents itself. The old hell-fear, though not utterly +obliterated, is becoming less all-swallowing. This +very desirable state of affairs is partly the result of the +conclusions to which I have been led by psychical +research. After many years of experiment and close +study, I can say that I know something about after-death +conditions. Not that I pretend to be able to +coerce other people into a similar belief, even if I wanted +to. Each must travel his own path. Moreover, +psychical research being a science, its results are not +more certain than those of other sciences. Alternative +theories in explanation of any phenomenon are always +possible. There is no such thing as knock-down +proof. But for my part I can say that I know—in +the same way that I know the truth of Mendeleef’s +law, or Avogadro’s law, or Dalton’s atomic theory—that +human beings do not become extinct when they +die, that they are often able to communicate with us +after that event, and that they are not in any orthodox +heaven or hell. My knowledge is based partly on a +lengthy and carefully-conducted series of sittings which +some intimate friends of mine have had with a +medium known to me; partly on my own results over +a period of several years of systematic investigation; +and partly on various curious experiences of psychic +friends of mine who are in no sense professional +mediums. (Details to some extent in my <cite>New Evidences +in Psychical Research</cite> (Rider, 1911) and <cite>Psychical Investigations</cite> +(Cassell, 1917.) I now believe, with the +Bishop of London, that a man is essentially the same +five minutes after death as he was five minutes before. +As the old woman says in <cite>David Copperfield</cite>, “death<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +doesn’t change us more than life”—no, nor as +much!</p> + +<p>The upshot is, of course, that my spiritual fear of +death has, I am thankful to say, almost vanished. +The lurid future has taken on a milder radiance.</p> + +<p>It is not that I want assuring of “happiness” in a +future state as compensation for misery in this. I +should be quite contented if I could be assured that +death is annihilation. It would at least be a cessation +of suffering; and that is much. I could agree with +Keats:</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0a">“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I have been half in love with easeful Death,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Called him soft names in many a muséd rhyme,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To take into the air my quiet breath.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now more than ever seems it rich to die,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To cease upon the midnight with no pain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad<br /></span> +<span class="i4">In such an ecstasy.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To thy high requiem become a sod!”<br /></span> +<span class="rght1">—(<cite>To the Nightingale</cite>)<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Easeful death—it is a good word. Keats knew +disease, and was content with prospect of ease; though +at the end there is a note of depression or despair at +the thought of becoming a “sod,” deaf and blind to +beauty.</p> + +<p>This reminds us of the attitude of other poets towards +the great problem. Tennyson is mildly optimistic +and placid; stretches, indeed, somewhat lame +hands of faith in his sorrowful moments when his +friend has died, but on the whole is healthily disposed; +friendly to the most cheerful way of looking at it; +inclined, with true British burliness, to make the best +of a bad job—a job which, after all, may not be so very +bad when we come to closer quarters with it. Afar, +death is the spectre feared of man; seen nearer, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> +may metamorphose into a beautiful Iris, sent by +heavenly mercy. And, afterwards, the new spiritual +state will probably be an improvement—Aeonian +evolution through all the spheres. Therefore, away +with all selfish mourning either about our own prospective +fate or that of those who have left us. Let us +hate the black negation of the bier:</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0a">“And wish the dead, as happier than ourselves<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And higher, having climb’d one step beyond<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our village miseries, might be borne in white<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To burial or to burning, hymned from hence<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With songs in praise of death, and crowned with flowers.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>No doubt Tennyson was to a very great extent able +to stay himself on the personal mystic experiences +described in his poem <cite>The Ancient Sage</cite>—experiences +which gave him a subjective assurance that death +was “a ludicrous impossibility”. Browning, characteristically +buoyant, was ready to face death with a +laugh; the fog in the throat will pass, the black +minute’s at end, then thy breast. In <cite>Prospice</cite> we +feel the eager sureness with which he looked forward +to rejoining her whose bodily presence had left him a +few months before. But even Browning’s cheery +salutation is outdone by Whitman. The American, +though acquainted with suffering as Browning was not, +and though apparently without much belief or interest +in personal survival, was almost uncannily friendly +to his own taking off. And it was not because he +suffered so greatly that he hailed release. It was more +the natural outcome of his joyous temperament, subdued +at the last to a kind of solemn exaltation. The +following stanzas were written with George Inness’ +picture <cite>The Valley of the Shadow of Death</cite> in mind:</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0a">“Nay, do not dream, designer dark,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou hast portray’d or hit thy theme entire;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by its confines, having +glimpses of it,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Here enter lists with thee, claiming my right to make a symbol too.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For I have seen many wounded soldiers die,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">After dread suffering—have seen their lives pass off with smiles,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I have watch’d the death-hours of the old; and seen the +infant die;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The rich, with all his nurses and his doctors;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And then the poor, in meagreness and poverty;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I myself for long, O Death, have breath’d my every breath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Amid the nearness and the silent thought of thee.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">“And out of these and thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I make a scene, a song (not fear of thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor gloom’s ravines, nor bleak, nor dark—for I do not fear thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor celebrate the struggle, or contortion, or hard-tied knot),<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the broad blessed light, and perfect air, with meadows, rippling +tides, and trees and flowers and grass,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the low hum of living breeze—and in the midst God’s beautiful +eternal right hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thee, holiest minister of Heaven—thee, envoy, usherer, guide +at last of all,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot called life,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>This is indeed a change from the idea of Death as +King of Terrors, as “spectre feared of man”. (<cite>In +Memoriam</cite>)</p> + +<p>The Greek idea, at its best, seems to have been half-way +between the two extremes. It regarded death +with more or less equanimity, as being certainly not +the greatest evil—no king of terrors—but merely an +emissary of greater Powers, to whose will we must bow, +though with dignity:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>“He that is a man in good earnest must not be so mean as to +whine for life, and grasp intemperately at old age; let him leave +this point to Providence.”—(Plato: <cite>Gorgias</cite>)</p> +</div> + +<p>Sophocles has the same thought, with an added +touch of Hamlet-like irritation about the slings and +arrows of outrageous fortune:</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0a">“It is a shame to crave long life, when troubles<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Allow a man no respite. What delight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bring days, one with another, setting us<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forward or backward on our path to death?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I would not take the fellow at a gift<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who warms himself with unsubstantial hopes;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But bravely to live on, or bravely end,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is due to gentle breeding. I have said.”—(<cite>Ajax</cite>)<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Cicero voices the same pagan feeling, in the contented +language of a rather tired, wise old man:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>“I look forward to my dissolution as to a secure haven, where I +shall at length find a happy repose from the fatigues of a long +voyage.”—(<cite>De Senectute</cite>)</p> +</div> + +<p>And was it not Cato—fine old Stoic—who, finding +his natural force abating, and accepting the hint +furnished by a stumble in the street, stooped and +kissed the ground: “Proserpine, I come!” and +went home, making a speedy end, unwilling to suffer +the indignity of disease and the shame of being served +in weakness? Modern opinion wisely reprobates +suicide, but there is something noble in the Roman +attitude, condemn it as we will. As a modern and +almost comic example of a modern Stoic’s attitude to +this same question of death we may cite the famous +lines of Walter Savage Landor:</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0a">“I strove with none, for none was worth my strife,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I warmed both hands before the fire of life,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It sinks, and I am ready to depart.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>“Strove with none”, indeed! As a matter of fact, +Landor strove with everybody. He was one of the +most quarrelsome men that ever lived. The only +man who could tolerate him was Browning. But +in his mellower moments, at least, he was “ready to +depart”, quietly acquiescing in the scheme of things. +To depart, note; not to be extinguished. And this +view is, all things considered, the most sane and wholesome +view of the great problem of Death. We did not +begin to live when we were born in this present tenement +of flesh; we shall not cease to live when we quit +it. ’Tis but a tent for a night, an interlude, a descent +into matter, a temporary incarnation for educative +purposes, of the soul or a part of it, as it pursues its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +lone way towards the ineffable goal. This life is but +a sleep and a forgetting;</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0a">“The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Death, then, is to be welcomed when it comes. We +must not run to meet it, or run from it; but we should +welcome it when God thinks fit to send it, His messenger. +The beautiful eternal right hand beckons, and the soul +gladly arises and departs, to “that imperial palace +whence it came”, or to fare forth on some “adventure +brave and new”.</p> +<hr class="l1"/> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>IF A MAN DIE,<br /> +SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN?</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">A friend</span> of mine tells me that psychical +articles are always interesting, “because +so many people die and go somewhere”. +Presumably, those who remain here feel a natural +curiosity as to where the departed have gone, partly +for the latter’s sake, and partly because they themselves +would like to know, so that they will know +what to expect when their own time comes.</p> + +<p>The teaching of religion on this point is admittedly +either rather vague, or, if definite—as with the Augustinian +theology—no longer credible. We have progressed +in sensitiveness and humanity, and can no longer +believe that a good God will inflict everlasting torment +in a lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, even +on the most wicked of His creatures. Still less can we +believe in such punishment being inflicted for the “sin +of unbelief”, for we now know well enough that +“belief”, being the net outcome of our total experience +and character, is not under the control of the will. +Consequently, a God who punished creatures for not +believing, when He knew all the time that He had so +constructed most of them that they could not believe, +would be either wicked or insane. This inability to +believe “to order” is plainly perceived if we reflect +on what our feelings would be if a Mohammedan implored +us to believe in Allah and in Allah’s Prophet, +as the only way of salvation. We should decline,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +saying perhaps that we knew better; but the real +reason of our disbelief would not lie in our knowledge +but in our general makeup. We could not believe +in Mohammedanism if we tried. We have grown +up in a different climate, and have taken a different +form.</p> + +<p>But, putting aside the vindictive hell-god of Augustine, +Tertullian, Calvin, and the rest—for not even an +earthly father would punish a child for ever—and +taking Christianity at its best, we do not find any very +specific eschatological teaching. And this very absence +is a good feature. If a man tries to be good merely +in order to avoid hell and gain heaven—in other words, +because it will pay—his goodness is not much of a +credit to him. It is only selfishness of a far-sighted +kind. Religion, on the other hand, when at its best, +seeks to influence character, not by threats and promises, +but by encouraging moods and attitudes and +habits of thought from which good actions will flow +spontaneously, without any profit-and-loss calculations. +Modern Christianity is therefore perhaps right in touching +much more lightly on the future state than was +customary in earlier centuries.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, we cannot repress a little curiosity. +People die and go somewhere, as my friend says. Where +do they go? Modern Religion having avoided definite +answer, we turn to Science. And Science, much as it +would surprise such fine old gladiators as Huxley +and Tyndall to hear it—has an answer, and an affirmative +one.</p> + +<p>Psychical research has, in my opinion, brought +together a mass of evidence strong enough to justify +the following conclusions. I do not say they are +“proved.” You cannot “prove” that the earth is +round, unless your hearer will at least study the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> +evidence. You cannot even prove to him that 2 plus +2 makes 4, if he refuses to add. Therefore I do not +say anything about proof. I say only that after many +years of careful study and investigation I am of +opinion that the evidence justifies the conclusions.</p> + +<p>(1) Telepathy is a fact. A mind may become +aware of something that is passing in another mind +at a distance, by means other than the normal sensory +channels. The “how” of the communication is +entirely unknown. The analogy of wireless telegraphy +of course suggests itself, but is misleading. The +ether-waves employed in wireless telegraphy are +physical pulses which obey the law of inverse squares; +telepathy shows no conformity with that law, and has +not been shown to be an affair of physical waves at all. +I believe that it is not a physical process; that it +occurs in the spiritual world, between mind and mind, +not primarily between brain and brain. And, if so—if +mind can communicate with mind independently +of brain—the theory of materialism at least is exploded. +If mind can act independently of brain, mind may +go on existing after brain dies.</p> + +<p>(2) Communications, purporting to emanate from +departed spirits, are sometimes so strikingly evidential +that it is scientifically justifiable to assume the agency +of a discarnate mind. For example, in a case known +to me, a “spirit” communicating through a non-professional +medium—a lady of means and position—referred +to a recipe for pomatum which the communicator +said she had written in her recipe book. No +one knew anything about it; but, on hunting up the +book, the deceased lady’s daughters found a recipe +for Dr Somebody’s pomade, which their mother had +evidently written shortly before her death. They +confirmed that “pomatum” was the word which their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +mother used. The points to be noted are: That the +medium was not a professional; that no one who knows +her has doubted her integrity; that she was not +acquainted with either the deceased lady or her +daughters; that the knowledge shown was not possessed +by any living (incarnate) mind, and is therefore +not explainable by telepathy; and, finally, that the +case was watched and reported on by one of our ablest +investigators—a lecturer at Newnham College—who +found no flaw in the evidence.<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> I repeat that I do not +claim this to be “proof”. I give it merely as an +illustration, and will give a few more detailed cases +in a later chapter. For the present I must be content +to say that the mass of evidence known to me justifies +the belief that minds survive what we call death.</p> + +<p>The question then arises: What is the nature of the +after life? And here we are faced with great difficulties. +We can ask the returning spirits, but we cannot +verify their statements. If my uncle John Smith +purports to communicate, I can test his identity by +asking him to tell me intimate family details which I +can verify by asking his widow, who still lives; +but I cannot thus check his statements about +his spiritual surroundings. Still, if he has proved his +identity—particularly if telepathy seems excluded—we +may perhaps feel fairly safe in accepting his other +statements as true, or at least in admitting their +possible truth. And of course we can obtain the +statements of many different spirits, and can compare +them. This has been done. The result is a striking +amount of uniformity. The various spirits agree, +on the main points.</p> + +<p>First of all, they are surprisingly unorthodox! They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +tell of no heaven or hell of the traditional kind. There +is no sudden ascent into unalloyed and eternal bliss for +the good—who, as Jesus pointed out, are not wholly +good—and no sudden plunge into eternal fires for the +bad—who, similarly, are not unqualifiedly bad. There +is much of bad in the best of us, and much of good in +the worst of us. Accordingly, the released soul finds +itself not very different from what it was while in the +flesh. It has passed into a higher class of the universal +school—that is all. Tennyson has the idea exactly:</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0a">“No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But through the Will of One who knows and rules—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And utter knowledge is but utter love—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Aeonian Evolution, swift or slow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thro’ all the Spheres—an ever opening height,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An ever lessening earth.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>I have said that this view is unorthodox, and so it +is, if compared with the orthodoxy of Calvin +or Edwards or Tertullian. But it is pleasant to +find that orthodoxy to-day is a different thing, and +that the Tennysonian notion is backed up in high +quarters. The Bishopric of London is the highest +ecclesiastical office in England, after the Archbishoprics +of Canterbury and York, and we find the present +Bishop of London (Dr Winnington-Ingram) speaking +as follows:</p> + +<p>“Is there anything definite about death in the Bible? +I believe there is. I think if you follow me, you will +find there are six things revealed to us about life after +death. The first is that the man is the same man. +Instead of death being the end of him, he is exactly +the same five minutes after death as five minutes before +death, except having gone through one more experience +in life. In the second place the character grows after +death; there is progress. As it grows in life so it grows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +after death. A third thing is, we have memory. ‘Son, +remember’, that is what was said to Dives in the other +world. Memory for places and people. We shall +remember everything after death. And with memory +there will be recognition; we shall know one another. +Husband and wife, parents and children. Sixthly, +we still take great interest in the world we have left”.</p> + +<p>The good Bishop gets all this out of the Bible, and +quite rightly. We hope no heresy-hunter will accuse him +of “selecting” his texts and ignoring the hell-fire ones.</p> + +<p>So far as earth-language can go, the foregoing +represents the probable truth regarding the after life. +If we inquire for details, we shall get nothing very +satisfactory. If we ask a spirit concerning what he +does—how he occupies himself—he will either say he +“cannot explain so that you will understand” or will +tell about living in houses, going to lectures, teaching +children, and the like. All this is obviously +symbolical. Any communications that a discarnate +entity can send must, to be intelligible to us, be in +human earth-language; and this language is based +on sense-experience. After death, experience is different, +for we no longer have the same bodily senses—eyes, +ears, etc.: consequently no explanation of the +nature of spiritual existence can be more than approximately +true; yet such expressions as living in +houses, going to lectures, and the like, may be as near +the truth as earth-language can get. If a bird tried to +describe air-life to a fish, the best it could do would +be to say it is something like water-life, but there is +more light, more ease of movement, more detail, more +things of interest and beauty. Of the wonders of sound—skylark’s +song, human choruses, instrumental symphonies—no +idea could be conveyed to the fish. Probably +our friends in the next stage of existence have,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> +in addition to the experiences which they can partly +describe, other experiences of which they can give us +absolutely no idea. They have been promoted. Their +interests and activities have become wider, their joys +greater. Yet they are the “same” souls, as the +butterfly is the “same” as the chrysalis from which it +has arisen. But to know exactly what it feels like to +be a butterfly, the caterpillar and chrysalis have to wait +Nature’s time. So must we.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> +<cite>Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research</cite>, vol. <abbr title="17 pages 181 to 183.">xvii, +pp. 181-3.</abbr> +</div></div> + +<hr class="l1"/> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>PSYCHICAL RESEARCH: ITS METHOD,<br /> +EVIDENCE, AND TENDENCY.</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">Spiritualism</span> and Psychical Research are to +the fore just now, and there is much newspaper +and vocal discussion, based for the most part +on ignorance, particularly as regards the violent +attackers of these things. It is desirable that exact +knowledge of the subject should become more general, +and in a recent volume I have tried to review the whole +subject impartially.<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>But there are many who in these stressful days have +no time for even one volume on this kind of thing, +and for them, or such of them as may read this, I have +tried in the present article to give an idea of what +psychical research is, on the spiritualistic side, omitting +the medical side which concerns itself with suggestive +therapeutics. The article was first written as a paper +which was read before a society of clergy in Bradford, +whose request for it was a significant and pleasing +indication that ministers are aware of the importance +of the subject. They are realising that psychical +research is a powerful support to religious faith, and +that its results provide comfort for the bereaved. We +live in a scientific age, and the sorrowing heart asks for +more than a text and an assurance that it is God’s will +and all for the best; it asks whether it is a fact that +the departed one still lives and knows and loves,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +whether it is well with him, and whether there will be +reunion “over there”. Psychical research enables +us to answer these questions in the affirmative. Science +is now backing up religion, and is providing ministers +with by far the best weapon against materialism and +so-called rationalism. It meets these negative ’isms +on their own ground, and does not need to take cover +under intuition or personal religious experience, which +are convincing only to the experient. I am not belittling +these; I am only saying that the phenomenal +evidence is more potent for the scientific type of mind, +and that a knowledge of this evidence is useful to those +who are defending religion.</p> + + +<h3>TELEPATHY</h3> + +<p>It is found by experiment that ideas can be communicated +from mind to mind through channels other +than the known sensory ones. Professor Gilbert +Murray of Oxford, probably the most famous Greek +scholar in this country, recently carried out some +interesting experiments of this kind in his own family. +He would go into another room, leaving his wife and +daughter to decide on something which they would +try to communicate to him on his return. They chose +the most absurd and unlikely things, but in a large +number of cases Professor Murray, by making his mind +as passive as possible and saying the first thing that +came into his head, was able to reproduce with startling +accuracy the idea they had in mind. For instance, +they thought of Savonarola at Florence and the people +burning their clothes and pictures and valuables. +Says Professor Murray: “I first felt ‘This is Italy’, +then, ‘this is not modern’; and then hesitated, when +accidentally a small tarry bit of coal tumbled out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +the fire. I smelt oil or paint burning and so got the +whole scene. It seems as though here some subconscious +impression, struggling up towards consciousness, +caught hold of the burning coal as a means of getting +through”.<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> On another occasion they thought of +“Grandfather at the Harrow and Winchester cricket +match, dropping hot cigar-ash on Miss Thompson’s +parasol.” Professor Murray’s guess, reported verbatim, +was: “Why, this is grandfather! He’s at a cricket match—why +it’s absurd: he seems to be dropping +ashes on a lady’s parasol.” Another time they thought +of a scene in a book of Strindberg’s which Professor +Murray had not read: a poor, old, cross, disappointed +schoolmaster eating crabs for lunch at a restaurant, +and insisting on having female crabs. Professor +Murray says: “I got the atmosphere, the man, the lunch +in the restaurant on crabs, and thought I had finished, +when my daughter asked: ‘What kind of crabs?’ +I felt rather impatient and said: ‘Oh, Lord, I don’t +know: female crabs.’ That is, the response to the +question came automatically, with no preparation, +while I thought I could not give it. I may add that +I had never before heard of there being any inequality +between the sexes among crabs, regarded as food.”</p> + +<p>This kind of evidence is not the best, because the +thoughts of members of one family run more or less +in similar grooves; though the experimenters recognised +this and chose unlikely things purposely. Other +investigators have sometimes used cards, drawing one +at random from a shuffled pack, looking at it, and the +percipient then trying to say what it is. The chance +of success is of course one in fifty-two, and the amount<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> +of success which we might expect by chance in any +series can be mathematically determined. In one +series of successful experiments conducted by Sir +Oliver Lodge the odds against an explanation by chance +alone were about ten millions to one. In ordinary +matters this would be regarded as proof.</p> + +<p>Other experiments of the same general character +have been carried out by Sir William Barrett, Professor +Sidgwick, and others, and details may be found in the +S.P.R. <cite>Proceedings</cite>. In most cases the idea comes into +the mind as an impression, but if the percipient is a +good visualiser it is sometimes seen almost externalised +as a hallucination. This leads us to the next step.</p> + +<p>If it is possible to convey to another mind—sometimes +so vividly that the thing is almost seen as if out +there in space—an image of scenes thought about, may +it not be possible to convey an image of oneself? This +idea occurred to a gentleman referred to by Myers as +Mr S. H. B. in his book <cite>Human Personality and Its +Survival of Bodily Death</cite>. Mr S. H. B., whom I know +by correspondence and whose brother I have known +personally for many years, decided that he would try +to make himself visible to two young ladies whom he +knew, and he concentrated his mind on the effort +just before going to bed. He willed to show himself +in their room at one o’clock in the morning. The +distance from his house to theirs was three miles. Next +time he saw them, a few days later, they told him they +had had a great fright: the elder sister had seen Mr +B.’s apparition, had screamed and awakened her little +sister, who also saw him. The time was one o’clock in +the morning. They told him this before he said +anything about his experiment, and they had no reason +to expect that he would try anything of the kind. +Both Mr B. and his brother are keen and successful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> +business men; Mr S. H. B. is now retired, his brother +is still the head of a large firm. I mention this because +some critics seem to have a notion that psychical +researchers are a crowd of long-haired poets or semi-lunatic +cranks.</p> + + +<h3>PHANTASMS OF THE DEAD</h3> + +<p>Now if a living man can by force of will project +a telepathic phantasm of himself, it is reasonable to +suppose that a dead man can do the same, if the so-called +dead man still exists; for telepathy does not +seem to be a physical process of ether-waves, does not +conform to the law of inverse squares or propagate +itself in all directions as physical forces do. It seems +to occur in the mental world, between mind and mind +rather than between brain and brain. Consequently, +telepathy from the dead is likely to be easier than from +the living, for they over there are not clogged with the +fleshly body. Certainly, however they may be explained, +there are many cases of the apparition of a +deceased person. The difficulty about accepting the +evidentiality of some of them is that if the percipient +knew that the person appearing was dead, the apparition +may be merely a subjective hallucination. And +even if the death was not known, it might be surmised, +and the apparition might be the result of expectancy +if the person appearing was known to be ill or in danger. +But there are some cases in which a certain amount +of detail is conveyed, rendering a subjective explanation +not very probable. For instance, Captain Colt had a +vision of his brother, in a kneeling position, with a +bullet wound in his right temple. He described the +vision to several people in the house before any news +came, so the case does not rest on his word alone. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +due time information arrived that his brother had been +killed. He had been shot through the right temple, +had fallen among a heap of others, and was found +in a kneeling position. In his pocket was a letter from +Capt. Colt asking him, if anything happened to him, +to make his presence known in the room in which as a +matter of fact the apparition was seen. The vision, +it was found, occurred a few hours after the death. +Mr Myers gives full details in <cite>Human Personality</cite>. +In this case the bullet-wound and the kneeling position +are points of correct detail which are hardly explicable +on a subjective theory. The best sceptical theory is +that the incident was telepathic, the wounded brother +sending out his telepathic message after being shot. +This is possible, but hardly probable; for death in the +case of a bullet-wound through the temple must be +almost instantaneous.</p> + +<p>Spontaneous cases of this kind and of this degree +of evidentiality are rare, but there is a large mass of +evidence of the same general character. The S.P.R. +once carried out an extensive inquiry, receiving answers +from 17,000 people, and tabulating the results in a +volume of the <cite>Proceedings</cite>. The final conclusion, +expressed in weighed and guarded words, was that +“Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person +a connexion exists which is not due to chance alone”. +This was signed, among other members of the Committee, +by Professor Sidgwick, whom Professor James +once called “the most exasperatingly critical mind +in England”. Some of the apparitions occur before +the person’s actual death, but usually in such cases +he is already unconscious and the spirit practically +free. As to those occurring after, the main difficulty +about admitting them as proof of survival is, as just +said, the possibility that although they may appear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +after the death of the person, the telepathic impulse +may have been sent out before, and may have remained +latent for some time in the mind of the percipient. +This has been carefully considered by investigators, +and in many cases there are reasons for regarding it +as an insufficient theory. On the whole, the evidence +tends more and more to suggest that in at least some +instances these happenings are due to the agency of a +discarnate mind. The proof is cumulative, and no +single case can be crucial. There is no coerciveness +about it, and each can invent his own hypothesis. But +those who have considered the subject most carefully +have come to the provisional conclusion that the agency +of the so-called dead is in some cases a reasonable, +and indeed the most reasonable, supposition. There +are of course many narratives of this kind in the Bible,<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> +the <cite>Lives</cite> of the Saints, and other literature, but these +records, being of pre-scientific date, and lacking the +corroborative testimony which we now require, are of +a lower order of evidentiality. The new evidence, +however, is throwing a backward light on many of these +ancient stories, and making them credible once more. +To me personally, the Bible is a much more living book +than it used to be. I believe that many things in it +which I used to regard as myths may have been facts.</p> + + +<h3>NORMAL CLAIRVOYANCE</h3> + +<p>There are instances, then, of people occasionally +having visions which seem to be in some way caused +by departed persons. Sometimes the percipient has +only one experience of the kind in his life; more often +he has several, for this seeing power is somehow temperamental—a +sort of gift, like the alleged second sight of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +the Highlander. It was well known to St Paul, as +his reference to “discerning of spirits” shows (<abbr title="first Corinthians 12">1 <i>Cor.</i>, xii</abbr>). +With some people the experience is fairly common. +And in a very few persons the gift is so strong +that it is to some extent under control. I say to some +extent, and I wish to use words very carefully and to +have them understood very clearly at this point. I +know several people, who by putting themselves into +a passive and receptive condition, but without any +trance state, can generally get evidential messages +from somewhere; that is, messages embodying facts +which the sensitive did not normally know. And some +of this matter seems to be due to telepathy from the +dead. But it cannot be done at will. I believe that +professional mediums who sit for all comers for a fee +are often, and indeed generally, quite honest people, +but that they cannot distinguish between their own +imaginations and what really comes through. Professor +Murray, when saying what came into his head, +did not know whether it was right or not; that is, +he did not know, until he was told, whether he had +really got the thing telepathically or whether it was an +idea thrown up by his own imagination. So with +professional mediums. They give out the ideas that +come to them, but as a rule they cannot distinguish; +and, the power not being entirely under control, there +is often a large mixture of their own imagination.</p> + +<p>I have, however, the good fortune to be acquainted +with a sensitive who has the unusual power of being +able to distinguish; and this is a great advantage, +rendering verbatim note-taking much easier, and eliminating +any necessity for balancing hits against misses. +If nothing comes, he sits silent or talks ordinarily. +If he gets anything, it is practically always correct. +The amount of his success varies, and he will not sit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> +for people in general. I know many people who have +asked him to visit them, offering handsome payment, +but he usually declines. He says he cannot do it to +order, and would be upset if he failed and caused disappointment. +He comes to me, however, because I +understand and always tell him that he need not worry +if he gets nothing. In fact the meeting is regarded +as a social call and not as a séance. We talk for a while +about ordinary things, and in half-an-hour or so, if +the medium can get his mind placid enough and is in +good trim generally, he will begin to see and describe +spirits present, often getting their names and all sorts +of details. These come for the most part in flashes, +and I take down every word he says, in shorthand, +without giving any help or indication as to whether +he is right or wrong. Sometimes in a whole afternoon +he will have only one or two of these gleams, and on +one occasion he got nothing. With conditions at their +best he will talk almost continuously for an hour, the +flashes following each other closely; and sometimes +a spirit will remain visible for several minutes, moving +about the room. About a dozen of these interviews are +described in detail in my book <cite>Psychical Investigations</cite>, +and other investigations of the same sensitive by two +very able friends of mine in another town are described +in <cite>New Evidences in Psychical Research</cite>.</p> + +<p>Perhaps one or two illustrative incidents may make +things clearer.</p> + +<p>The first time Wilkinson came to see me he said, +in the middle of ordinary talk, that he saw with me +the form of a woman who looked about fifty-four, and +whom he described, saying further that her name was +Mary. Taking up a piece of paper and a pencil, he +wrote in an abstracted manner the words “Roundfield +Place”. He looked at it, without reading it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +aloud, then said: “That will be a house”, and proceeded +to write something else. I got up to look, and +found “Roundfield Place. Yes” (the “Yes” written +in answer to his remark “That will be a house”) and +a signature “Mary”. Now it happens that my +mother’s name was Mary, that the description applied +to her, and that she died, in 1886, at Roundfield Place, +not the house to which Wilkinson came, whither we +removed in 1897. Other similar things were said, +about other deceased relatives, all true.</p> + +<p>In this kind of thing it is our duty to stick to known +causes before admitting unknown, and my first supposition +was that Wilkinson had primed himself with +information. He could have ascertained most of the +things by local inquiry, though it would not be very +easy, for my mother had been dead twenty-two years, +and only middle-aged or elderly people would remember +her. Further interviews with him, however, soon +carried me beyond the fraud theory—for holding which +I now apologise to him, feeling considerably ashamed—for +he gave me messages from many people whose +association with me I feel sure he did not know, and +also some family matter of a very private kind, characteristic +of the spirit who purported to be communicating, +but known to only four living people. I then +fell back on telepathy, assuming that the medium was +reading my mind. But, pursuing my investigations, +I received information which I did not know but +which turned out true. For example, Wilkinson on +one occasion described a Ruth and Jacob Robertshaw, +giving details about them and saying that Ruth had a +very spiritual appearance, with a sort of radiance about +her, indicating that she had been a very good woman, +and giving other particulars. All this meant nothing +to me, for the names were unknown. But, as I had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +on some other occasions found that spirits were described +who were relatives of my last visitor, I asked +the person who had last entered the room—except +inhabitants of the house—whether she had known +people of these names. It turned out that they were +connexions of hers with whom she had been in close +touch during life, and everything said by the medium +was correct. Now in the first place this incident ruled +out fraud, for Miss North’s visit had occurred three +days before, and Wilkinson would have had to have +detectives watching both doors of my house, from first +thing in the morning to the last thing at night, to find +out who my last visitor had been; or he would have +had to be in league with a servant or a neighbour, and +even thus could hardly have succeeded, for servants +are sometimes out—moreover, similar things have +happened during the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</i> of different servants—and +neighbours could not easily watch both doors +during dark winter evenings. Further, our neighbours +are friends of ours, non-spiritualists, and not acquainted +with Wilkinson. And, after getting to know who my +last visitor was, information about her deceased relatives +would have had to be hunted up. I could give +further reasons for believing that fraud was an untenable +hypothesis, but I must be brief. What, next, +about telepathy? Well, I had no conscious knowledge +of these people, so the medium could not have got his +information from my conscious mind. It is possible +to assume that I knew it subliminally, and that the +medium abstracted it from those hidden levels of my +mind. This is a guess, but a legitimate guess. It is +the guess that Miss Dougall (author of <cite>Pro Christo et +Ecclesia</cite>) makes in criticising this very incident in the +book of essays called <cite>Immortality</cite>, by Canon Streeter +and others. She suggests that on the occasion of Miss<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +North’s visit my mind had photographed the contents +of hers, without my knowing it, and that the medium +developed the photograph and read off the required +information. It may be so, but it seems to me far-fetched. +Miss Dougall, I may add, is a member of the +S.P.R., and her criticism is instructed criticism, worthy +of careful attention. But I cannot accept her theory, +which seems to me more wonderful and to require +more credulity than the spirit theory. For it is to be +observed that the assumed mind-reading is of a character +quite different from anything that has been +experimentally established. In telepathic experiments, +like those of Professor Murray, some incarnate person +is <em>trying</em> to communicate the thought. This is not the +case in my sittings with Wilkinson. I am not trying +to communicate anything to him; very much the +contrary. And I do not find, after long and careful +observation, any parallelism between what he says and +what I happen to be thinking about. There is, in +short, no evidence for the supposition that my mind is +read. The evidence points unmistakably to discarnate +agency—telepathy <em>from the dead</em>.</p> + + +<h3>TRANCE</h3> + +<p>The sort of thing I have described is usually known +as normal clairvoyance, because the sensitive is in a +normal state, not in trance. But there is a further +stage, into which, indeed, Mr Wilkinson sometimes +passes, in which there is a change of personality, and +a spirit purports to speak or write with the medium’s +organs. There is nothing weird or uncanny in the +procedure, nothing deathly or coma-like; the medium +usually sits up and even walks about, though some +trance mediums have to sit still and keep their eyes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +closed. I have had visits from many trance mediums; +and most of them have failed to get anything evidential—which +at least suggests their honesty, for they +could easily have obtained <em>some</em> information about +my deceased relatives. But the whole matter of trance +control is a thorny problem. Indubitably, evidence +of supernormal faculty is sometimes given in this state, +but we of the S.P.R. are divided as to what the control +really is. Some think it is a spirit, as claimed; others +think it is a secondary personality of the medium, as +in the remarkable case of split personality described +in Dr Morton Prince’s book <cite>The Dissociation of a +Personality</cite>. Mrs Sidgwick, widow of the Professor +and sister of Mr A. J. Balfour, has made a careful +psychological study of the case of Mrs Piper, given in +657 pages of <cite>Proceedings</cite>, vol. 28, and her conclusion +is that though telepathy from the dead is probably +shown, and certainly some kind of supernormality, +the controls themselves are dream-fragments of the +medium’s mind. I am not qualified to pronounce an +opinion on Mrs Piper, not having met her; but as +to the trance mediums I have experimented with, I +incline to agree with Mrs Sidgwick. I think it may be +a dodge of the subliminal to get the over-anxious normal +consciousness temporarily out of the way. But this +is a psychological detail, and a difficult one, requiring +much further study. From the psychical research +point of view Mrs Piper’s case may be studied in +<cite>Proceedings</cite>, <abbr title="volumes">vols.</abbr> 6, 8, 13, 16, and a few of the later +ones, or some idea of it can be got from Sir Oliver +Lodge’s <cite>Survival of Man</cite>. All the investigators were +convinced of either telepathy or something more. +Fraud was excluded by introducing sitters anonymously, +Dr Hodgson himself introducing over 150 +different people in this way, and taking careful notes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +I have experimented similarly with Wilkinson, introducing +people from distant places such as Middlesex +and Northumberland as well as from towns nearer home, +either under false names or with no names at all, and +being present myself to take notes. Friends of mine +have done the same thing. We were unanimously +sceptical to start with, probably more sceptical than +most of those who will read this paper, for we disbelieved +in survival itself. We are now convinced +that the fraud theory is out of the question, that at the +very least a complicated theory of mind-reading—including +the reading of the minds of distant and +unknown persons—must be assumed if the theory +of survival and communication is to be avoided.</p> + +<p>Of late years there has been a great development +in automatic writing among quite non-professional +mediums—private people who are members of the +S.P.R., as for instance the late Mrs Verrall, Classical +Lecturer at Newnham—and some noteworthy evidence +has been obtained. But it is too complex even to +summarise here. It seems to be the work of Gurney, +Hodgson, Myers, and Sidgwick, on the other side, for +different messages have come through different sensitives, +making sense when put together, and sense +characteristic of these departed leaders. This had +not been thought of, so far as we know, by any living +person, and it seems to eliminate telepathy from the +living, for the messages are not understood until the +bits are pieced together. The evidence fills several +volumes of our <cite>Proceedings</cite>, and students should read +them carefully.</p> + +<p>There are many other kinds of mediumship or psychic +faculty, and many volumes are in existence on each +phase; the library of the London Spiritualist Alliance +contains about 3,000. I have read about 500 of them,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +and would not recommend anyone else to do the same. +There is a great deal of rubbish among them, though +they are not all rubbish. The reading I recommend is +the <cite>Proceedings</cite> of the S.P.R., the writings of Sir +William Barrett, Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr W. J. Crawford, +and, above all, the great work of F. W. H. Myers, +<cite>Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death</cite>, +in the original two-volume edition. The abridged +one-volume edition omits many of the illustrative +cases. I do not think that conviction is to be achieved +by mere reading; books would never have convinced +me. But careful reading is perhaps sufficient to lead +a fairly tolerant mind to realise that there is something +here which must not be dismissed off-hand; something +which is worthy of investigation. That is as much as +we expect. Sir Oliver Lodge often says that we shall +do well if we succeed, in this generation, in modifying +the psychological climate, creating an atmosphere +more favourable to unprejudiced examination of the +facts. We have no desire for revolutions; we want +knowledge to grow slowly and surely. The S.P.R. has +been in existence only thirty-seven years, and the +subject is in its scientific infancy. Take the beginnings +of any one science—say, Chemistry, dating it somewhat +arbitrarily from Priestley or Dalton—and note +what a little way discovery had gone in a like period. +With increased numbers of workers the pace increases; +but in every science the progress at first must be slow. +In psychical research a good start has been made, and +the investigators seem to be certainly on the track +of something, whether their inferences are right in every +detail or not. And every advance in science has +extended our conceptions of this wonderful universe. +The heavens declare the glory of God in a tremendously +larger way than they did in the days of the old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +Ptolemaic astronomy, though man foolishly fought the +Copernican idea because it seemed to lessen our +dignity by making our earth a speck on the scale of +creation instead of the central body thereof. So with +all other phenomena, physical and psychical. We +may be sure that all discovery will be real revelation. +With this faith—a well-grounded faith—we need not +fear advance.</p> + + +<h3>RECENT CRITICISM</h3> + +<p>I add a few words, rather against my inclination, +about recent criticism of a kind which is hardly worthy +that name. Two books, one by Dr Mercier and one +by Mr Edward Clodd, have had a certain popularity, +mainly because they attacked, with a certain smartness +of phrase, the book of a greater man. “Raymond” +was being widely read and talked about, and its popularity +secured some success for these hostile books. +Curiously enough, even some of the clergy have quoted +approvingly some of the arguments of these rationalists, +no doubt much to the glee of Mr Clodd in particular. +Now I have said before that instructed criticism is +always welcome, for we may hope to learn something +from it. But Dr Mercier, on his own statement, +came new to the subject at the age of sixty-four, read +<cite>Raymond</cite> and <cite>The Survival of Man</cite>, and immediately +sat down to write a flippant book the publication of +which we hope he now regrets. Not only had he never +investigated for himself, but he was also ignorant of +the work of the S.P.R.</p> + +<p>As to Mr Clodd, his book is better-informed, +though frequently unfair. For instance, in his references +to me he is very careful to avoid any consideration +of the strong parts of my case. Like the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +famous theological professor, he looks the difficulties +boldly in the face—not <em>very</em> boldly—and passes on, +without speaking to them. He has obviously read +fairly widely, but where he does criticise in detail, he +always seizes on weak points and quietly ignores the +strong ones. As to personal investigation he is almost +entirely without experience. He says he attended a +séance about fifty years ago, but has forgotten most +of what happened! He says this, with a momentary +lapse from his usual cleverness—for it gives away his +case—in a letter to the April (1918) <cite>International Psychic +Gazette</cite>. In other words, he poses as an authority on a +branch of science of which he has no first-hand knowledge. +He criticises and dismisses airily the opinions +and investigations of those who have worked at the +subject for ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years; for it +is over forty years since Sir William Barrett brought +his experiments in telepathy before the British Association. +Mr Clodd is a Rationalist, and knows without +investigation that these things cannot be. He is as <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à +prioristic</i> as a medieval Schoolman, in spite of his +scientific pose. And his prejudices unfortunately +prevent him from seeking and studying the facts which +might lead him to other conclusions.</p> + +<p>I have not said anything about the S.P.R. itself, +but may here add a few remarks. Says its official +leaflet: “The aim of the Society is to approach these +various problems without prejudice or prepossession +of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned +inquiry which has enabled Science to solve +so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly +debated.… Membership of the Society does not imply +the acceptance of any particular explanation of the +phenomena investigated, nor any belief as to the +operation, in the physical world, of forces other than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> +those recognised by Physical Science”. In other +words, the Society has no creed, except that the subject +is worth investigating.</p> + +<p>The Society has well over 1,000 members, and is +growing steadily. It includes many famous men in +all walks of life, and indeed its membership list has +been said to contain more well-known names than any +other scientific society except the Royal Society +itself. Among the Vice-presidents are the Right +Honourables A. J. and G. W. Balfour, Sir William +Barrett, Sir Oliver Lodge, the late Bishop Boyd-Carpenter +and the late Sir William Crookes. The +President for the current year is Lord Rayleigh, probably +the greatest mathematical physicist now living.<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> +The President of the Royal Society (Sir J. J. Thomson) +is a member, also Professor Henri Bergson of Paris, +Dr L. P. Jacks (editor of <cite>The Hibbert Journal</cite>) and +innumerable other scientists and scholars whose names +are known to everyone.</p> + +<p>Finally let me assure you that the S.P.R. is so conservative +and suspicious that admission is almost as +difficult to obtain as membership of a high-class London +club. It is extremely anxious to keep out cranks and +emotional people of all sorts, and it requires any +applicant to be vouched for as suitable by two existing +members; and each application is separately considered +by the Council. The result is a level-headed +lot of members, and the maintenance of a sane and +scientific attitude and management.</p> + +<p>From the philosophic side it is sometimes urged +that we cannot reason from the phenomenal to the +noumenal, from the world of appearance to the world +of reality; that consequently nothing happening in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +the material world can prove the existence of a spiritual +one. But this is easily answered. We cheerfully +agree, with Kant, that a spiritual world cannot be +proved coercively and in such knock-down fashion +that belief cannot be avoided. But it can be proved +in the same way and to the same extent as many other +things which we believe and find ourselves justified +in believing. For instance, atoms and electrons and +the Ether of Space are not phenomenal; no one has +ever seen or heard or felt or smelt them; but we infer +their real existence from the behaviour of the matter +which does affect our senses. Again: we cannot +<em>prove</em> to ourselves that other human beings exist, or +even that an external world exists; my experience +may be a huge subjective hallucination. If I were +reading this paper I should not be able to prove to +myself that any other mind was present. Looking +around, I should receive certain impressions—sensations +of sight—and I should call certain aggregations +of these the physical bodies of beings like myself. From +the similarity of their structure and behaviour to the +structure and behaviour of my own body, I should +infer that they have got minds somehow associated +with them, as my mind is associated with my body. +But you could not prove it to me. If you got angry +with my obstinacy, and knocked me down, I should +experience painful sensations, but the existence of a +mind external to me—and an angry one—would still +be a matter of inference only. But we find that the +inference is justified. We find that it “works,” and +social life is possible. For the purposes, then, both +of science and of ordinary life, we do reason from +phenomenon to noumenon, from appearance to reality, +from attribute to substance; and our reasoning +justifies itself. I affirm, therefore, that the kind of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +proof which we as psychical researchers put forward +for the existence of and communication from discarnate +minds, is philosophically the same kind as the proof +we have of the existence of incarnate minds. If a +short and clear exposition of the point is required, free +from any psychical-research bias, I may refer inquirers +to the chapter on the Psychological Theory of an +External World in J. S. Mill’s <cite>Examination of Sir +William Hamilton’s Philosophy</cite>. Our evidence may be +insufficient to justify belief—in the opinion of many, +it is—and I blame no one for disbelieving; but it is +evidence. And if it sufficiently accumulates and improves +in quality, it may amount to a degree of proof +at least comparable with that concerning electrons, +which are now accepted as real by all physicists.</p> + +<p>One or two difficulties may here be briefly referred to:</p> + +<p>1. The appearance in Mrs Piper’s script of such +obvious dream-stuff as messages from Homer, Ulysses, +and Telemachus! These are of course absurdities, and +no psychical researcher regards them as anything else. +But they are no more absurd than many of our own +dreams, and we must remember that automatic writing +comes from the dream-strata of the medium’s mind, +these strata seeming to lie <em>between</em> our normal consciousness +and the spiritual world. Consequently messages +which really seem to come from beyond: <i>i.e.</i>, which +are evidential—are often mixed with subliminal +matter from the medium’s mind. As a communicator +once said: “The medium’s dreams get in my way.” +All this has to be allowed for, but in good mediums +there is not much of it. In my friend Wilkinson’s +case there is none, for he can distinguish. In Mrs +Piper’s case there is a little, but it does not invalidate +the huge mass of real evidence that has come. And +it at least testifies to her honesty, for no medium would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +pretend to get messages from people whom everyone +knows to be mythical—messages which are indeed +comic and therefore enable opponents to score points +with the general public by obvious witticisms.</p> + +<p>Huxley is often referred to, as having wisely declined +to investigate, knowing beforehand that it was all nonsense. +Huxley was busy with his own work, and, +believing <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à priori</i> that alleged psychical phenomena +were either fraud or self-delusion, naturally declined +to give any time to them. We need not regret his +decision, for he was doing work that was more important +than psychical investigation would have been, just +then. But he was wrong in his <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à priori</i> belief, or rather +unbelief. He had never seen any of these phenomena, +but that did not prove that they did not happen. A +native of mid-Africa may never have seen snow, +but that does not prove that no snow exists.</p> + +<p>And it happens that the Dialectical Society went +on with its task, appointing committees which investigated +without any paid medium. The majority +of the investigators were utterly sceptical at first; +they were practically all convinced at the finish. I +state this merely as a fact, not as a specially important +fact; for I find that beginners, when suddenly faced +with striking phenomena, are liable to go from the +extreme of unbelief to an extreme of belief. When one’s +materialistic scheme is exploded, there seems no +criterion left, and anything may happen. It usually +takes an investigator a year or two to adjust himself +and to learn to follow the evidence and not overshoot +it.</p> + +<p>Some people say: “But if communication is possible, +why cannot <em>I</em> communicate direct with my own departed +loved ones?” The question is seen on reflection, +however, to be easily answered. In the first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +place, we cannot communicate direct even with our +friends in the next town; we have to get the help of +postmen or telegraph clerks and the like. It is therefore +not at all surprising that an intermediary is +needed when they are removed further from our +conditions. Probably all of us have germs of psychic +faculty—though I have not yet discovered any in myself—somewhat +as we can all play or sing a little; +but the Paderewskis and Carusos are few. Similarly +with psychic faculty. Few have enough of it to communicate +for themselves. On the other hand, it is +much commoner than Carusos are; but of course, when +it occurs in a private person, that person does not +advertise the fact. Outsiders would either scoff, or +say “lunacy”, or crowd round asking for “sittings”, +out of curiosity. Consequently only sympathetic +intimates are told, or people who, like myself, are known +to be sympathetic investigators. Some of the most +remarkable sensitives in England at the present day +are of this private kind—people of education and +position—and they are not even spiritualists in the +sense of belonging to the spiritualist sect. They are +of various religious persuasions, and belong mostly +to rather orthodox bodies. There is nothing of the +crank about them; they are not Theosophists or +Christian Scientists or adherents of any other of what +the sergeant called “fancy religions.” I may say that +the most extraordinary experiences I have ever had +have been with a psychic of this kind. I have not +alluded to these experiences in my paper, because the +matter is private. But I just mention these things +because I find that psychic faculties are more common +than I once thought, and a sympathetic minister could +probably hear of private cases if he let his sympathy +and interest be known. But of course, if he is known to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> +have condemned the whole thing as Satanic—as Father +Bernard Vaughan does—or as lunacy, people with +psychic experiences will take very good care not to +tell him about them.</p> + +<p>As to details about the nature of the after-life, I +have no dogmatic opinions to offer. Probably it is +impossible for those over there to describe their experience +adequately, in our earthly terms. Such information +as we get must be largely symbolical, as +when mediums describe a specially good deceased +person as surrounded with radiance. I have several +times noticed that the relative “brightness” or +“radiance” of a spirit, as described by the medium, +has correctly indicated that spirit’s character, though +the medium had no normal knowledge whatever of +either the person’s character or even existence. But +though our information must probably be mainly +symbolical, I think we are justified in believing that +we begin the next stage pretty nearly where we leave +off here. There is no sudden jump to unalloyed bliss +for even such good people as you, no sudden plunge +to everlasting woe even for sinners like me. This, +I admit, is not in accordance with what I used to hear +from the pulpit twenty years ago. But it agrees with +what I read now of the opinions of such men as the +Bishop of London and Dr J. D. Jones; and other +clerical writers, such as Canon Storr in his <cite>Christianity +and Immortality</cite> and Dr Paterson Smyth in his +excellent <cite>Gospel of the Hereafter</cite> take the same view. +Our modern moral sense refuses to believe that a good +God will sentence any creature to everlasting pain; +and although it may be contended that man has free-will +and is therefore the arbiter of his own fate, it still +remains that God gave him that freedom, and therefore +still bears the ultimate responsibility. To retain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +belief in a God who can be loved and worshipped, I at +least must disbelieve in everlasting pain for anyone.</p> + +<p>And, added to this moral revolt, there has come a +war in which millions of young men have died before +their natural time. These young fellows, we feel, +are at least in most cases neither good enough for heaven +nor bad enough for hell. The sensible supposition +seems to be—and it is borne out by psychical facts—that +they have gone on to the next stage of life, which +to most or all of them is an improvement; that they +are busy and happy there; that they are still more or +less interested in and cognisant of our affairs; that +they will come to meet their loved ones when <em>they</em> +cross over—of this I have had much evidence—and +that they and humanity as a whole are travelling on +an upward path toward some goal at present inconceivable +to our small and flesh-bound souls.</p> + +<p>Some people have objected that psychical research +will substitute knowledge for faith. This is surely +a curious objection, and few will advance it. The +earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, and my +belief is that He wants us to learn all we can about +His handiwork. Nature is a book given to us by our +Father, for our good; study of it is a duty, neglect +of it is unfilial and wrong. Psychical research studies +its own particular facts in nature, and is thus trying +to learn a little more of God’s mind. It is not we, but +those who oppose us, who are irreligious.</p> + +<p>And as to this matter of faith; well, after we have +learnt all we can, there will still be plenty of scope left +for the exercise of faith in general, for our knowledge +will always be surrounded by regions of the unknown. +If anyone says that psychical research antagonises +<em>Christian</em> faith, I say most emphatically that on the +contrary it <em>supports</em> it. Christianity was based on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +Fact: the Resurrection and Appearances of Jesus. +Psychical-research facts are rendering that event +credible to many who have disbelieved it. Myers says +that in consequence of our evidence, everyone will +believe, a century hence, in that Resurrection; whereas, +in default of our evidence, a century hence no one +would have believed it. And to him, personally, +psychical research brought back the Christian faith +which he had lost.</p> + +<p>I hope that the facts and inferences which I have +very sketchily put before you will have made it clear +that there is some reality in the subject-matter of our +investigations, and that these latter powerfully support +a religious view of the universe. I believe that we +are giving materialism its death-blow; hence the wild +antagonism of such well-meaning but belated writers +as Mr Clodd. But we are not ourselves religious +teachers. That is your domain. You will use our +work and its results, as you use the work and results +of other labourers in the scientific vineyard. And I +think you will find ours specially helpful.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> +<cite>Spiritualism: Its History, Phenomena, and Doctrine</cite> (Cassell & +Co., Ltd.).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> +<cite>Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research</cite>, vol. 29, <abbr title="page">p.</abbr> 59. +(For brevity’s sake I shall hereinafter use the recognised initials +“S.P.R.” for the Society.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <cite>E.g.</cite>, +Moses and Elias on the Mount.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a> +<a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> +Lord Rayleigh’s lamented death has since occurred, July, 1919.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr class="l1"/> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>THE EVOLUTION OF A PSYCHICAL<br /> +RESEARCHER</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">Probably</span> few of us keep a diary nowadays. +I don’t. But I somehow got into the habit, +soon after I became interested in psychical +things, of jotting down in a notebook the conclusions +at which I had arrived—or the almost complete puzzlement +in which I found myself, as the case might be. +Glancing recently through these records of my pilgrimage, +it seemed to me that a sketch of it might be of some +interest or amusement to others.</p> + +<p>Professor William James says in his <cite>Talks to Teachers</cite> +that it is very difficult for most people to accept any +new truth after the age of thirty; and that indeed old-fogeyism +may be said to begin at twenty-five. It is +perhaps therefore not surprising that, coming fresh +to the subject at thirty-two—in 1905—I found the +struggle to psychical truth a very long and arduous +affair. Having been brought up on the ministrations +of a hell-fire-preaching Nonconformist pastor whose +theology made me into a very vigorous Huxleyan +agnostic, I was biased against anything that savoured +of “religion,” and moreover “spiritualism” was unscientific +and absurd. So I thought, in my ignorance; +for I knew nothing whatever of the evidence on which +spiritualistic beliefs are based.</p> + +<p>However, I fortunately ran up against hard facts +which soon cured me of negative dogmatism. I became +acquainted with a medium who satisfied me that she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +could diagnose disease, or rather her medical “control” +could, from a lock of the patient’s hair; and this without +any information whatever being given. Also +that the diagnosis often went beyond the knowledge +of the sitter, thus excluding telepathy from anyone +present or near. But this did not prove that the control +was a spirit, so I turned to other investigations.</p> + +<p>First, I set myself to “read up”. I feel sure that this +is the best course for beginners to adopt, after once +achieving real open-mindedness. It enables one to +investigate with proper scientific care when opportunity +arises, and with much better chance of securing good +evidence. Without this preparation, an investigator +has little idea how to handle that delicate machine +called a medium, and indeed no amount of reading +will entirely equip the experimenter, for there are +many things which only experience can teach. Also, +without this preparation, the investigator will be liable +either to give things away by talking too much, or will +create an atmosphere of suspicion and discomfort +by being too secretive. It takes some practice +to achieve an open and friendly manner while never +losing sight of the importance of imparting no information +that would spoil possible evidence. This of course +is desirable from the medium’s point of view as well as +that of the sitter. It is hard on a medium if, for example, +a really supernormally-got name does not count +because the sitter himself had let it slip.</p> + +<p>I think my reading began with <em>Light</em> and some of +Mr E. W. Wallis’s books, but I soon found my way to +the <cite>Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research</cite>, +and recognised that here was what I was seeking. I +cannot sufficiently express my admiration, which is as +great as ever, for such masterly pieces of evidence as, +for instance, Dr Hodgson’s account of sittings with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> +Mrs Piper, in volume 13. If we were perfectly logical +beings, without prejudice, that account ought to convince +anybody; certainly it ought to convince the +reader of the operation of <em>something</em> supernormal, and +it ought to go a long way towards excluding telepathic +theories and rendering the spirit explanation the +most reasonable one. But we are not logical beings. +We require to be battered for a long time by fact after +fact before we will admit a new conclusion. I remember +saying, as indeed I noted down in the diary +mentioned, that a few of these volumes, with Myers’s +<cite>Human Personality</cite>, left me in the curious position of +being able to say that, though I was not convinced, +I felt that logically I ought to be, for the evidence +seemed irrefragable. Then I read Crookes’ <cite>Researches +in the Phenomena of Spiritualism</cite>, and my logical +agreement was accentuated, for Sir William Crookes +was my scientific Pope, in consequence of my having +worked from his chemical writings, and having +an immense admiration for his mind and method. +But my actual inner conviction was not much +changed. Kant says somewhere that we may +test the strength of our beliefs by asking ourselves +what we would bet on them. At this point I had not +got to the stage of being prepared to bet much on the +truth of the survival of human beings or the possibility +of communicating with them if they did survive. I +thought the case was logically proved, but I didn’t +feel it in my bones, as the phrase goes. For this, +personal experience is necessary; at least it is for an +old fogey of over thirty, with my particular build of +mind.</p> + +<p>And I was fortunately able to get this experience. +One of the two best-known mediums in the North of +England, Mr A. Wilkinson, happened to live only a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +few miles away, though he was and is generally away +from home, speaking for spiritualist societies from +Aberdeen to Exeter, and being booked over a year +ahead. However, I was able to get an introduction +to him through friends who also carried out investigations +with him (described in my <cite>New Evidences in +Psychical Research</cite>), and since then, with intermissions +due mainly to ill-health, I have had friendly sittings +with him continuously. To him I owe my real convictions, +and for this I cannot adequately thank him. +Without his kindness I could never have achieved +certainty; for owing to a damaged heart I could not +get about to interview mediums, and there was no +other medium within reasonable distance. Besides, +Mr Wilkinson has stretched a point in my case, for +he does not give private sittings, preferring to confine +himself to platform work; and I suppose he makes +an exception in my case in view of my inability. I here +once more thank him for all he has done for me.</p> + +<p>At my first sitting with him he described and named +my mother and other relatives, whom he saw apparently +with me. I had no reason to believe that he had +any normal knowledge of these people; certainly I +had never mentioned them to him, and it was in the +last degree unlikely that anyone else had. My mother +had been dead twenty-two years, and was not at all a +prominent person. Moreover, he got by automatic +writing a signed message from her, giving the name of +the house in which we lived at the time of her death, +but which we had left eleven years later. This seemed +to be given by way of a test. At later sittings my father +and other relatives manifested, with names and identifying +detail, and the proof began to be almost coercive. +The evidence went beyond any possibility of the +medium’s normal knowledge, and was characteristic of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> +the different communicators in all sorts of subtle +ways. Telepathy alone remained as a possible alternative +to the spirit explanation. Then came a peculiar +phase, as if there were a definite plan on the part of +some of my friends on the other side for the purpose +of utterly convincing me by bringing evidence which +could not possibly be accounted for by any supposition +of a reading of my own mind. A spirit friend of mine +would turn up, bringing with him a spirit whom I had +never heard of, and saying that he was a friend of his; +and on inquiry I would find that it was so—and +sometimes it needed a great deal of inquiry, which +made it all the better evidence, for it showed how +difficult it would have been for the medium to obtain +the information; though indeed at this stage the +evidence had forced me past crude suspicions of that +sort. On other occasions unknown spirits would +appear, and I would find that they belonged to the +last visitor I had had. Several incidents of this kind +are described in my book <cite>Psychical Investigations</cite>. +After some years of this kind of experience I became +fully satisfied that the spirit explanation was the only +reasonable one. Some writers, like Miss Dougall in a +recent volume of essays called <cite>Immortality</cite>, invent a +complicated hypothesis according to which my mind +photographs the mind of a visitor and the medium on +his next visit develops and reads off the photograph; +but I confess that my credulity does not stand the +strain put upon it by such a hypothesis. Besides, I +have lately had—as if to get round even such tortured +theories as this—evidence giving details which have +not been known to any person I have ever met. I was +told to write to a certain friend of mine, father of the +ostensible communicator. The facts were unknown +even to him, but he was able to verify them completely;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> +and they were characteristic and evidential of the +identity of the ostensible communicator.</p> + +<p>If all my results were of the kind I have had through +Mr Wilkinson the case would, for me, be so utterly +and overwhelmingly proved that doubt would be +absurd. But this is too much to expect. I have +had many other mediums here, with varying success, +but nothing approaching Mr Wilkinson’s. In many +cases it is fairly obvious that the medium’s subliminal—or +the control’s imagination—has been doing part +of the business, no doubt unknown to the medium’s +normal consciousness. But in no case have I had any +indication of fraud. This seems sufficient answer +to Mr Edward Clodd’s credulous acceptance of the +theory of a Blue-Book and inquiry system which +enables mediums to post themselves up about likely +sitters. It would be the easiest thing in the world +for an imitation medium to learn enough about me to +give what would seem on the face of it a fairly “good” +sitting. But this is never the case. Either the medium +fails or he is so successful that normal knowledge is +ruled out. On Mr Clodd’s theory, I ought to have +neither of these extremes; I ought to have no failures, +and no results going beyond what inquiry could produce. +But I need not labour this point, for Mr Clodd +has recently confessed his almost absurd innocence +of any first-hand experience. In a letter to the +<cite>International Psychic Gazette</cite> for April, 1918, he said +he had been to a sitting about fifty years ago, but he +does not remember much about what happened! +Yet he sets up as an authority on this branch of experimental +science! It is like someone writing on +chemistry after being in a laboratory once, fifty years +ago.</p> + +<p>Some of my most curious experiences, concerning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +which I have not yet published anything in detail, +have been in connexion with crystal vision. I happen +to know a sensitive—not a professional medium or +even a spiritualist—who has physical-phenomena powers +of very unusual and indeed probably unique type. +Not only can she see in the crystal and get evidential +messages by writing seen therein, but the writing or +pictures are visible to anyone present. I have seen +them myself. As many as six people at a time, +myself among them, have seen the same thing, and +not one of the six was of suggestible type or had had +any hallucinations. All were middle-aged, except +one young lieutenant, and we were indeed a rather +exceptionally un-neurotic and stodgy lot. But though +the things seem objective—I am going to try to photograph +them, also the sensitive, in the hope of confirming +the Crewe phenomena—they are somehow more or +less influenced by the sensitive’s own mind, without +her conscious knowledge; for, <i>e.g.</i>, in one message, +purporting to come from my father, I was addressed +as Arthur, a name which would be natural to the +medium who knows me mostly from printed matter +and a few letters, but which is entirely inappropriate +in relation to my father. Yet a good deal of evidence +of identity has come through this sensitive, and this +“mixture” does not invalidate the case. Again, a +queer feature of this sensitive’s powers is that lost +objects are frequently found as a result of instructions +given in the crystal; and in many of these cases it +seems certain that the position of the lost object could +not have been known to any incarnate mind, or of +course it would not have been left there. In one case +it was a valuable ruby; in several others it was Treasury +notes. This sensitive also is a medium for very good +raps, which all present can hear quite distinctly and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> +which show intelligence, answering questions and so +forth.</p> + +<p>I have therefore reached the conviction that human +survival is a fact, that the life over there is something +like an improved version of the present one, and—a +comforting thought, supported by much of my evidence—that +we are met at death by those who have gone +before. Some of my more mystical friends, who have +not needed such prolonged jolting to get them out of +materialistic grooves, are rather bored with me for +dwelling so much on the evidence and on the nature +of the next state. They call it “merely astral”; as +for them, their minds soar in higher flights. One +friend, a sort of radical High Churchman, said to me +some time ago that he was “not interested in the +intermediate state”. But I rather think that he will +have to be. I may be wrong, but I suspect that, +whether they like it or not, these good people will +have to go through the intermediate state before they +get anywhere else. Good though they are, I do not +believe they are good enough for unalloyed bliss or +union with the Godhead. Such sudden jumps do not +happen. Progress is gradual. Indeed, I have noticed +lately that my High Churchman friend has shown much +more interest in these merely psychical things. Perhaps +he thinks he had better turn back and make sure +of the next state and its nature, perceiving that it is a +necessary bridge or “tarrying-place” (which is the +alternative reading for the “mansions” of our Father’s +house) on the way to the heaven which he quite rightly +aims at.</p> + +<p>As to the future of psychical science and opinion, +I feel sure that great things are now ahead. The war, +with the terrible amount of mourning it entails, has +quickened interest in the subject, and for millions of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> +people the question of survival and the next state +has become an urgent and abiding one. Their interest, +instead of being almost wholly on this side, is very +largely over there, whither their loved ones have gone. +Similarly with the soldiers who have come safely +through the war. All have lost friends, all have faced +the possibility of sudden or slow and painful death. +And probably all young people at present, and most +adults, have out-grown the crude beliefs of last century’s +orthodoxy with its everlasting hell, and are +ready for a more rational system. This is being supplied, +backed by scientific proof, by psychical research +and scientific spiritualism. It seems likely that the +religion of the best minds for the next half-century or +so, and perhaps onward, will be something like that +which Myers came to hold in his later years. It does +not much matter whether the spiritualist sect grows +as an institution or not. Many people will accept its +main belief without feeling it necessary to leave the +communion to which they already belong. It seems +certain that the idea itself will be the ruling idea in +many minds for a long time, and no doubt psychic +faculty will become much more common, for thousands +are now trying to develop it who never cared to try +before. Quite possibly the effort on both sides of +the veil, in consequence of so many premature deaths, +may bring about a closer communion between the two +sides than has ever been known hitherto. A great lift-up +of earthly thought would be the result, a perhaps +final emergence from the chrysalis stage of materialism; +and we shall then be near the time when, as the inspired +Milton makes his Raphael say:</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0a">“Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ethereal, as we, or may, at choice,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here or in heavenly Paradises dwell.”<br /></span> +</div></div></div> +<hr class="l1"/> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>DO MIRACLES HAPPEN?</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">Mr G. K. Chesterton</span>, with true journalistic +instinct, recently stimulated public +interest in himself and other worthy +things by engineering a discussion on “Do Miracles +Happen?” The debate furnished an opportunity +of harmlessly letting off steam, but apparently each +disputant “was of his own opinion still” at the +finish; though some of the newspapers thought that +the affirmative was proved, not by argument, but by +the actual occurrence of a miracle at the meeting—for +Mr Bernard Shaw was present, but remained silent! +Joking apart, however, these discussions are usually +rendered nugatory by each debater attaching a different +meaning to the word. To one of them, a “miracle” +involves the action of some non-human mind; to others +it is only a “wonderful” occurrence, which is the +strictly etymological meaning. It is only in the latter +sense that orthodox science has anything to say on the +subject.</p> + +<p>David Hume, in the most famous of his essays, says +that a miracle is “a violation of the laws of nature”, +which laws a “firm and unalterable experience has +established”. A century later, Matthew Arnold disposed +of the question in an even shorter manner. +“Miracles do not happen”, said he, in the preface to +<cite>Literature and Dogma</cite>. Modern science has, speaking +generally, concurred.</p> + +<p>But the two statements are not very satisfactory.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +It is true, no doubt, that miracles did not enter into the +experience of David Hume and Matthew Arnold; but +this does not prove that they have never entered +into the experience of anybody else. If I must disbelieve +all assertions concerning phenomena which I +have not personally observed, I must deny that the +sun can ever be north at mid-day, as indeed the Greeks +did (according to Herodotus), when the circumnavigators +of Africa came back with their story. But if I +do, I shall be wrong. (<cite>Histories</cite>, book <span class="smcap"><abbr title="4">iv</abbr></span>, “I for my part +do not believe them”, says even this romantic historian.)</p> + +<p>It is as unsafe to reject all human testimony to the +marvellous as it is to accept it all without question. +The modern mind has gone to the negative extreme, +as the medieval mind went to the other. Take for +instance the twenty-five thousand Lives of the Saints +in the great Bollandist collection. They are full of +miracles, of most incredible kinds; yet in those days +the accounts caused no astonishment. There was no +organised knowledge of nature, outside the narrow +orbit of daily life—and how narrow that was, we with +our facile means of communication and travel can +hardly realise. Consequently there was little or no +conception of law or orderliness in nature, and therefore +no criterion by which to test stories of unusual +occurrences. Anything might happen; there was no +apparent reason why it shouldn’t. One saint having +retired into the desert to lead a life of mortification, +the birds daily brought him food sufficient for his +wants; and when a brother joined him they doubled +the supply. When the saint died, two lions came and +dug his grave, uttered a howl of mourning over his +body, and knelt to beg a blessing from the survivor. +(<abbr title="compare">Cf.</abbr> the curious story of St Francis taming “Brother<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +Wolf”, of Gubbio, in chapter 21 of the <cite>Fioretti</cite>.) The +innumerable miracles in the <cite>Little Flowers</cite> and <cite>Life of +St Francis</cite> are repeated in countless other lives; saints +are lifted across rivers by angels, they preach to the +fishes, who swarm to the shore to listen, they are visited +by the Virgin, are lifted up in the air and suspended +there for twelve hours while in ecstasy they perceive +the inner mystery of the Most Blessed Trinity. Almost +every town in Europe could produce its relic which +has produced its miraculous cures, or its image that +had opened or shut its eyes, or bowed its head to a +worshipper. The Virgin of the Pillar, at Saragossa, +restored a worshipper’s leg that had been amputated. +This is regarded by Spanish theologians as specially +well attested. There is a picture of it in the Cathedral +at Saragossa. (Lecky, <cite>Rise and Influence of Rationalism +in Europe</cite>, vol. 1, page 141.) The saints were seen +fighting for the Christian army, when the latter battled +with the infidel. In medieval times this kind of thing +was accepted without question and without surprise.</p> + +<p>About the end of the twelfth century there came a +change. The human mind began to awake from its +long lethargy; began to writhe and struggle against +the dead hand of authority which held it down. The +Crusades, as Guizot shows, had much to do with the +rise of the new spirit, by causing educative contact +with a high Saracenic civilization. Men began to +wonder and to think. Heresy inevitably appeared, +and became rife. In 1208 Innocent <abbr title="3">III</abbr> established +the Inquisition, but failed to strangle the infant +Hercules. In 1209 began the massacre of the Albigenses, +which continued more or less for about fifty +years, the deaths being at least scores of thousands; +but the blood of the martyrs was the seed of further freedom +and enlightenment. Nature began to be studied,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +in however rudimentary a way, by Roger Bacon and +his brother alchemists. The Reformation came, weakening +ecclesiastical authority still further by dividing +the dogmatic forces into two hostile camps, and thus +giving science its chance. Galileo appeared, and did +his work, though with many waverings, for Paul <abbr title="5">V</abbr> +and Urban <abbr title="8">VIII</abbr> kept successively a heavy hand on +him; he was imprisoned at seventy, when in failing +health, and, some think, tortured—though this is +uncertain, and his famous <i lang="it" xml:lang="it">e pur si muove</i> is probably +mythical. More important still, Francis Bacon, teaching +with enthusiasm the method of observation and +experiment. The conception of law, of rationality +and regularity in nature, emerged; Kepler and Newton +laid down the ground plan of the universe, evolving +the formulæ which express the facts of molar motion. +Uniformity in geology was shown by Lyell, while +Darwin and his followers carried law into biological +evolution. Then man became swelled-headed; became +intoxicated with his successes. It had already been +so with Hume, and it became more so with his disciples. +Man treated his own limited experience as a criterion, +and denied what was not represented by something +similar therein. Especially was this the case when +alleged facts had any connection with religion. Religion +had tried to exterminate science, and it was natural +enough that, in revenge, science should be hostile to +anything associated with religion. Consequently, the +scientific man flatly denied miracles, not only such +stories as the rib of Adam and the talking serpent +(concerning which even a church father like Origen +had made merry in Gnostic days fifteen hundred years +before), but also the healing miracles of Jesus, which +to us are now beginning to look possible enough.</p> + +<p>This negative dogmatism is as regrettable as the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +positive variety. It is not scientific. Science stands +for a method, not for a dogma. It observes, experiments, +and infers; but it makes no claim to the possession +of absolute truth. A genuine science, +confronted with allegations of unusual facts, neither +believes nor disbelieves. It investigates. The solution +of the problem is simply a question of evidence. +Huxley in his little book <cite>Hume</cite>, and J. S. Mill in his +<cite>Essays on Religion</cite>, made short work of the “impossibility” +attitude. Says the former in <cite>Science and +Christian Tradition</cite>, page 197:</p> + +<p>“Strictly speaking, I am unaware of anything that +has a right to the title of an impossibility, except a +contradiction in terms. There are impossibilities +logical, but none natural. A ‘round square’, a ‘present +past’, ‘two parallel lines that intersect’, are +impossibilities, because the ideas denoted by the predicates +round, present, intersect, are contradictory +of the ideas denoted by the subjects square, past, +parallel. But walking on water, or turning water into +wine, are plainly not impossibilities in this sense”.</p> + +<p>No alleged occurrence can be ruled out as impossible, +then, unless the statement is self-contradictory. +Difficulty of belief is no reason. It was found difficult +to believe in Antipodes; if there were people on the +under side of the earth, “they would fall off”. But +the advance of knowledge made it not only credible +but quite comprehensible. People stick on, all over +the earth, because the earth attracts them more +powerfully than anything else does. Similarly with +some miracles. They may seem much more credible +and comprehensible when we have learned more. +Indeed, the wonders of wireless telegraphy, radio-activity, +and aviation are intrinsically as miraculous +as many of the stories in the world’s sacred writings.</p> + +<p>This is not saying, however, that we are to believe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +the latter <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">en bloc</i>. They must be taken individually, +and believed or disbelieved according to the evidence +and according to the antecedent probability or improbability. +The standing still of the sun (<i>Joshua</i>, <abbr title="10">x</abbr>) +does not seem credible to the scientific mind which +knows that the earth is spinning at the equator at the +rate of one thousand miles an hour and that any sudden +interference with that rotation would send it to smithereens, +with all the creatures on its surface. Of course, +a Being who could stop its rotation could perhaps also +prevent it from flying to smithereens; but we have +to extend the miracle in so many entirely hypothetical +ways that the whole thing becomes too dubious for +acceptance. It is simpler to look on the story as a myth.</p> + +<p>But such things as the clairvoyance of Samuel +(<abbr title="first samuel 10">I <i>Samuel</i>, x</abbr>), and even the Woman of Endor story, +are quite in line with what psychical research is now +establishing. And the healing miracles of Jesus are +paralleled, in kind if not in degree, by innumerable +“suggestive therapeutic” doctors. Shell-shock blindness +and paralysis are cured at Seale Hayne Hospital +and elsewhere in very “miraculous” fashion. And turning +water into wine is not more wonderful than turning +radium into helium, and helium into lead, which nature +is now doing before our eyes. These things, therefore, +have become credible, if the evidence is good enough. +Whether evidence nineteen hundred years old can be +good enough to take as the basis of serious belief is +another matter. Scientific method insists on a high +standard of evidence. We must be honest with ourselves, +and not believe unless the evidence satisfies +our intellectual requirements. But the modern and +wise tendency is to regard religion as an attitude +rather than as a belief or system of beliefs. It does +not stand or fall with the miracle-stories.</p> +<hr class="l1"/> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>THE TRUTH ABOUT TELEPATHY</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">The</span> amount of nonsense that is talked, and +apparently widely believed, about telepathy, +is almost enough to make one wish that the +phenomenon had not been discovered, or the word +invented. Without any adequate basis of real knowledge, +the “man in the street” seems to be accepting +the idea of thought-transference as an incontrovertible +fact, like wireless telegraphy—which latter is responsible +for a good deal of easy credence accorded to the former, +both seeming equally wonderful. But the analogy +is a false one. There is a great deal of difference between +the two. In wireless telegraphy we understand +the process: it is a shaking of the ether into pulses or +waves, which act on the coherer in a perfectly definite +way and are measurable. But in spite of much +loose talk about “brain-waves”, the fact is that we +know of no such thing. Indeed, there is reason to +believe that telepathy, if it is a fact at all—and I believe +it is—may turn out to be a process of a different +kind, the nature of which is at present unknown. For +one thing, it does not seem to conform to physical +laws. If it were an affair of ripples in the ether—like +wireless telegraphy—the strength of impact would +vary in inverse ratio with the square of the distance. +The influence would weaken at a known rate, as more +and more distance intervened between sender and +recipient. And this, in many cases at least, is not found +to be so, consequently Mr Gerald Balfour and other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> +leading members of the Society for Psychical Research +incline to the opinion that the transmission is not a +physical process, but takes place in the spiritual world.</p> + +<p>I have said that I believe in telepathy, yet I have +deprecated too-ready credence. What, then, are the +facts?</p> + +<p>The first attempt at serious investigation of alleged +supernormal phenomena by an organised body of +qualified observers was made by the London Society +for Psychical Research, which was founded in 1882 by +Henry Sidgwick (Professor of Moral Philosophy at +Cambridge), F. W. H. Myers and Edmund Gurney +(Fellows of Trinity), W. F. Barrett (Professor of Experimental +Physics at Dublin, and now Sir William), +and a few friends. The membership grew, and the list +now includes the most famous scientific names throughout +the civilised world. In point of prestige, the +society is one of the strongest in existence.</p> + +<p>The first important work undertaken was the collection +of a large number of cases of apparition, etc., +in which there seemed to be some supernormal agency +at work, conveying knowledge; as in the case of Lord +Brougham, who saw an apparition of his friend at the +moment of the latter’s death. The results of this +investigation were embodied in the two stout volumes +called <cite>Phantasms of the Living</cite> (now out of print, but +an abridged one-volume edition has recently been +edited by Mrs Sidgwick (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner +& Co., Ltd., 1919), and in Vol. <abbr title="10">x</abbr>. of the <cite>Proceedings</cite> +of the Society. As the outcome of this arduous investigation, +involving the collection and consideration of +about 17,000 cases and extending over several years +of time, the committee made the cautious but memorable +statement that “Between deaths and apparitions +of the dying person a connexion exists which is not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +due to chance alone”. This guarded statement was +carefully worded in order to avoid committing the +society to any definite (<i>e.g.</i> spiritualistic) interpretation. +Some of the apparitions occurred within twelve hours +before the death, some at the time of death, and some +a few hours afterwards. But these latter of course do +not prove “spirit-agency”—though indeed sometimes +they seem to render it probable—for the telepathic +impulse or thought may have been sent out by the +dying person, remaining latent—so to speak—until +the percipient happened to be in a sufficiently passive +and receptive state to “take it in”.</p> + +<p>Definite experimentation was also made, of various +kinds, <i>e.g.</i>, one person would be shown a card or diagram, +and another (blindfolded) would maintain a +passive mind, saying aloud what ideas “came into his +head”. Some of these experiments—which are still +required and should be tried by those interested in the +subject—indicated that the concentration of A’s mind +did indeed sometimes produce a reverberation in the +mind of B. In a series conducted by Sir Oliver Lodge, +the odds against the successes being due to chance +can be mathematically shown to be ten millions to +one.</p> + +<p>For this new fact or agency, Mr Myers invented the +word “telepathy” (Greek <i>tele</i>, at a distance, and +<i>pathein</i>, to feel), and defined it as “communication of +impressions of any kind from one mind to another, +independently of the recognised channels of sense”.</p> + +<p>But I wish to say, and to emphasise the statement, +that this transmission, though regarded as highly +probable by many acute minds, cannot yet be regarded +as unquestionably proved, still less as occurring in a +common or frequent way. We have all of us known +somebody who claimed to be able to make people<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +turn round in church or in the street by “willing” +them, but usually these claims cannot be substantiated. +It is difficult to eliminate chance coincidence. And +the folks who lay claim to these powers are usually +of a mystery-loving, inaccurate build of mind, and +therefore very unsafe guides. Moreover, how many +times have they “willed” without result?</p> + +<p>One reason why I deprecate easy credence, leaning +to the sceptical side though believing that the thing +sometimes happens, is, that there is danger of a return +to superstition, if belief outruns the evidence. If +the popular mind gets the notion that telepathy is +more or less a constant occurrence—that mind can +influence mind whenever it likes—there is a possibility +of a return to the witchcraft belief which resulted in +so many poor old women being burnt at the stake in +the seventeenth century. I prefer excessive disbelief +to excessive credulity in these things; it at least does +not burn old women because they have a squint and a +black cat and a grievance against someone who happens +to have fallen ill. Unbalanced minds are very ready +to believe that someone is influencing them. I have +received quite a number of letters from people (not +spiritualists) who, knowing of my interest in these +matters, got it into their foolish heads that I was trying +some sort of telepathic black magic on them. I had +not even been thinking about them. It was entirely +their own imagination. One of these people is now in +an asylum. I think she would probably have become +insane in any case—if not on this, then on some other +subject—but these incidents almost make me wish +that we could confine the investigation and discussion +of the subject to our own circle or society until education +has developed more balanced judgment in the +masses. But of course such a restriction is impossible.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +The daily press and the sensational novelists have got +hold of the idea. We must counteract the sensational +exaggerations, which have such a bad effect on unbalanced +minds, by stating the bare, hard facts. Here, as +elsewhere, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It +is the half-informed people who are endangered. The +remedy is more knowledge. Let them learn that, +though there is reason to believe that under certain +conditions telepathy is possible and real, there is nevertheless +no scientific evidence for anything in the nature +of “bewitching”, or telepathy of maleficent kind. +This cannot be too strongly insisted on. Let us follow +the facts with an open mind, but let us be careful not +to rush beyond them into superstition.</p> +<hr class="l1"/> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>THE TRUTH ABOUT HYPNOTISM</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">Various</span> popular novelists, such as George Du +Maurier in <cite>Trilby</cite>, and E. F. Benson in <cite>The +Image in the Sand</cite>, have taken advantage of the +possibilities which hypnotic marvels offer to the sensational +writer, and have put into circulation a variety of +exaggerated ideas. This is regrettable. Of course the +novelist can choose his subject, and can treat it as he +likes; it is the public’s fault if it takes fiction for fact, +or allows its notions of fact to be coloured or in any +way influenced by what is avowedly no more than +fiction.</p> + +<p>But it is certain that it is thus influenced. It is +therefore desirable that the public should be told from +time to time exactly what the scientific position is—what +the conclusions are, of those who are studying +the subject in a proper scientific spirit, with no aim save +the finding of truth. This will at least enable the public +to discriminate between fact and fiction, if it wants to.</p> + +<p>No doubt the phenomena in question have been often +discovered, forgotten, and rediscovered; but in modern +times the movement dates from Mesmer. Friedrich +Anton Mesmer was born about 1733 or 1734. In 1766 +he took his doctor’s degree at Vienna, but did not come +into public notice until 1773. In that year he employed +in the treatment of patients certain magnetic plates, +the invention of Father Hell, a Jesuit, professor of +astronomy at Vienna.</p> + +<p>Further experiments led him to believe that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> +human body is a kind of magnet; and that its effluent +forces could be employed, like those of the metal plates, +in the cure of disease. Between 1773 and 1778 he +travelled extensively in Europe, with a view to making +his discoveries better known. Also he sent an +account of his system to the principal learned bodies of +Europe, including the Royal Society of London, the Academy +of Sciences at Paris, and the Academy at Berlin.</p> + +<p>The last alone deigned to reply; they told him his +discovery was an illusion. Apparently they knew +all about it, without investigating. There is no dogmatism +so unqualified, no certainty so cocksure, as +that of complete ignorance.</p> + +<p>The method at first was probably a system of magnetic +passes or strokings of the diseased part by the hand of +the doctor. But, as the patients increased in number, +a more wholesale method had to be devised. Consequently +Mesmer invented the famous “<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">baquet</i>”. +This was a large tub, filled with bottles of water +previously “magnetised” by Mesmer.</p> + +<p>The bottles were arranged to radiate from the centre, +some of them with necks pointing away from it and +some pointing towards it. They rested on powdered +glass and iron filings, and the tub itself was filled with +water. In short, it was a sort of glorified travesty of +a galvanic battery. From it, long iron rods, jointed +and movable, protruded through holes in the lid. These +the patients held, or applied to the region of their +disease, as they sat in a circle round the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">baquet</i>. Mesmer +and his assistants walked about, supplementing the +treatment by pointing with the fingers, or with iron +rods, at the diseased parts.</p> + +<p>All this may seem, at first sight, very absurd. But +the fact remains that Mesmer certainly wrought cures. +And apparently he frequently succeeded in curing or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> +greatly alleviating, where other doctors had completely +failed. It is no longer possible for any instructed person +to regard Mesmer as a charlatan who knowingly deluded +the public for his own profit. His theories may +have been partly mistaken, but his practical results +were indubitable.</p> + +<p>It is also worth noting that he treated rich and poor +alike, charging the latter no fee. He was a man of +great tenderness and kindness of heart, devoted to the +cause of the sick and suffering; and the accounts of +his patients show the unbounded gratitude which they +felt towards him, and the respect in which he was held.</p> + +<p>The orthodox doctors, of course, felt otherwise. +They were envious and jealous of the foreign innovator +and his success. And his fame was too great to allow +of his being ignored. Consequently the Royal Society +of Medicine (Paris) appointed a commission to inquire +into the new treatment. The finding, of course, was +adverse. The investigators could not deny the cures, +but they fell back on the recuperative force of nature +(<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">vis medicatrix naturæ</i>) and denied that Mesmer’s treatment +caused the cure.</p> + +<p>Obviously, Mesmer, having treated his patients, +could not prove that they would not have recovered +if he had <em>not</em> treated them; so his critics had a strong +position. But, on the other hand, neither can an +orthodox doctor prove that <em>his</em> cures are due to <em>his</em> +treatment. If it is <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">vis medicatrix naturæ</i> in one case, +it may be the same in the other.</p> + +<p>Modern medicine is more and more coming to this +conclusion—is abandoning drugging as it abandoned +bleeding and cautery, and is leaving the patient to +nature. This is a significant fact.</p> + +<p>But there is good reason to believe that Mesmer’s +treatment was a real factor in his cures, for in many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +cases the patient had been treated by orthodox methods +for years without effect. Perhaps, as the doctors said, +it was “only the recuperative force of Nature”, but if +the doctors could not set that force to work, and +Mesmer somehow could, he is just as much entitled to +the credit of the cure as if he had done it by bleeding +or drugging. However, by one sort of persecution or +another, he was driven out of Paris, and more or less +discredited. After a visit to England, he retired to +Switzerland, where he lived in obscurity until his +death in 1815.</p> + +<p>The method was kept alive by various disciples, +such as the Marquis de Puységur, Dupotet, Deleuze, +and many more, but in an amateurish sort of way. +The first-named found that in one of his patients he +could induce a trance state which showed peculiar +features. In trance, the man knew all that he knew when +awake, but when awake he knew nothing of what had +happened in trance. This second condition thus seemed +to be equivalent to an enlargement of personality.</p> + +<p>Both in England and France the medical side came +to the front again, in the hands of Braid (a Manchester +surgeon who first used the term “hypnotism”, from +Greek <i>hypnos</i>, sleep, and whose book <cite>Neurypnology, or +the Rationale of Nervous Sleep</cite> was published in 1843), +Liébeault, Bernheim, Elliotson, and Esdaile.</p> + +<p>Elliotson and Esdaile still believed in a magnetic +effluence, but the idea was given up by Braid and the +“Nancy school” (the investigators who followed the +lines of Liébeault of Nancy), for it was found that +patients could be hypnotised without passes or strokings +or any manipulation. Braid told his patients +to gaze fixedly at a bright object, <i>e.g.</i>, his lancet. Liébeault +produced sleep by talking soothingly or commandingly +filling the patient’s mind with the idea of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +sleep. In some cases it was found that patients could +hypnotise themselves by an effort of will (this was +confirmed more recently by Dr Wingfield’s experiments +with athletic undergraduates at Cambridge), +and this disposed of the hitherto supposedly necessary +“magnetic effluence” from the operator.</p> + +<p>The most modern opinion is pretty much the same. +Dr Tuckey, who learnt his method from Liébeault himself, +and who practised for twenty years in the +West End of London, is convinced that the whole +thing is suggestion. So is Dr Bramwell, who shares +with Dr Tuckey the leading position among hypnotic +practitioners in England. The latter, it may be remarked, +was the first qualified medical man to write +an important book on the subject in English, after +Braid.</p> + +<p>The tendency now is to give suggestions without +attempting to induce actual trance. It is found with +many patients that if they will make their minds passive +and receptive, listening to the doctor’s suggestions +in an absent-minded sort of way, those suggestions—that +the health shall improve and the specified symptoms +disappear—are carried out. The explanation +of this is “wrapped in mystery”. No one knows +exactly how it comes about. But it seems to be somewhat +thus:</p> + +<p>The complicated happenings within our bodies, such +as the chemical phenomena known as digestion and the +physical phenomena such as blood circulation and +contraction of involuntary muscles, seem to imply +intelligence, though that intelligence is not part of the +conscious mind, for we do not consciously direct the +processes. They go on all the same—for example—when +we are asleep. Presumably, then, there is a +mental Something in us, which never sleeps, and which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> +runs the organic machinery. If we could get at this +Something, and give it instructions, a part of the +machinery which is working wrongly might get attended +to and put right. Unfortunately, the ordinary consciousness +is in the way. We cannot get at the mechanic +in the mill, because we have to go through the office, +and the managing director keeps us talking.</p> + +<p>Well, in hypnotic trance, or even in the preoccupied +“absent-minded” state, we get past the managing +director—who is asleep or attending to something else—into +the mill. We get at the man who really attends +to the machinery. We get past the normal consciousness, +and can give our orders to the “subconscious” +or “subliminal”—which means “below the threshold”. +In Myers’ phrase, suggestion is a “successful +appeal to the subliminal self”, but exactly how it comes +about, and why the patient usually cannot do it for +himself but has to have the suggestion administered by +a doctor, we do not know.</p> + +<p>Of course the word “suggestion” does not really +explain anything. It is a word employed to cover our +ignorance. Suggestive methods are as empirical as +Mesmer’s. In each case a successful appeal is made +to the recuperative forces of nature, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">vis medicatrix +naturæ;</i> but exactly how or why suggestion does it, +we know no more—or hardly any more—than we know +how and why Mesmer’s <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">baquet</i> did it. The fact remains, +however, that the thing is done. What we lack is +only a satisfactory theory.</p> + +<p>At one time it was thought that only functional +disorders could be relieved. But it is now recognised +that the line between functional and organic is an +arbitrary one. If we cannot find definite organic +change in tissue, we call the ailment functional; but +nevertheless some change there must be, though microscopic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> +or unreachable. Consequently even functional +disorders are at bottom organic; and, though of course +grave lesions produce the gravest disorders, there is no +<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à priori</i> impossibility in a hypnotic cure of even the +most radical tissue-degeneration.</p> + +<p>However, as a matter of practical fact, the +“mechanic” has his limitations, like the normal +consciousness. He is not omnipotent. Consequently +we cannot be sure of being able to stimulate him to +the extent of a cure. It depends on his knowledge +and power. But he can always do something, if we +can get at him. The chief difficulty is that in many +people he is inaccessible.</p> + +<p>For instance, I have many times submitted myself +to the treatment of Dr Tuckey and another medical +friend, without effect. I have each time tried my best +to help, making my mind as passive as I could; for +I was sure that if a suggestible stage could be reached, +some troublesome heart symptoms and insomnia could +be alleviated. But I was never able to reach a state +even approaching hypnosis. I suppose my normal +consciousness could not put itself sufficiently to sleep. +Being interested in the scientific aspect of the subject, +my consciousness watched the process and analysed +its own sensations, instead of “letting go” and subsiding +out of the way.</p> + +<p>As to the proportion of susceptible persons, observers +differ. Wetterstrand and Vogt hold that all sane and +healthy people are hypnotisable, and Dr Bramwell’s +results among strong farm labourers at Goole support +that view. Patients with nervous ailments are difficult +to hypnotise; out of one hundred such cases in his +London practice, Dr Bramwell only influenced eighty. +This is the percentage of susceptibles found by Drs +Tuckey and Bernheim also.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> + +<p>The insane are usually unhypnotisable, probably +because of their inability to concentrate their attention. +Out of the 80 per cent. of sane susceptibles, only a +small proportion go off into hypnotic sleep; ten +according to Tuckey, rather more according to the +experience of Bramwell, Forel, and Vogt. Most of the +susceptible, however, though retaining consciousness, +may be deprived of muscular control. For example, +if told that they cannot open their eyes, they find that +it is so.</p> + +<p>The various “stages” of hypnosis shade gradually +into each other, and classifications are not much good. +Charcot’s three stages of lethargy, catalepsy, and +somnambulism are now discredited as true stages. +In good subjects they are producible at will, and as +observed at the Salpêtrière they were almost certainly +due to training.</p> + +<p>I have no space for the quoting of detailed medical +cases, but it is desirable to emphasise the practical +facts and to make the subject as concrete as possible to +the reader, so I will quote just one, as illustration, +from Dr Bramwell’s contribution to <cite>Proceedings of the +Society for Psychical Research</cite>, vol. <abbr title="14">xiv</abbr>, page 99.</p> + +<p>“Neurasthenia; suicidal tendencies. Mr D——, +aged 34, 1890; barrister. Formerly strong and +athletic. Health began to fail in 1877, after typhoid +fever. Abandoned work in 1882, and for eight years +was a chronic invalid. Anæmic, dyspeptic, sleepless, +depressed. Unable to walk a hundred yards without +severe suffering. Constant medical treatment, including +six months’ rest in bed, without benefit. He +was hypnotised from June 2 to September 20, 1890. +By the end of July all morbid symptoms disappeared, +and he amused himself by working on a farm. He +can now walk forty miles a day without undue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +fatigue.” Similar cases are now being recorded in +the military hospitals. Soldiers make excellent +“subjects”.</p> + +<p>It has been much debated whether a hypnotised +person could be made to commit a crime. Probably +not; it is difficult to be quite sure, but the evidence +is on the negative side. True, a hypnotised subject +will put sugar which he has been told is arsenic into +his mother’s tea, but his inner self probably knows well +enough that it is only sugar. On the other hand, it is +certain that a hypnotiser may obtain a remarkable +amount of control over specially sensitive subjects, +particularly by repeated hypnotisations.</p> + +<p>I have seen hypnotised subjects who seemed almost +perfect automata, obeying orders as mechanically as +if they had no will of their own left. Certainly no one, +either man or woman, but particularly the latter, +should submit himself or herself to hypnotic treatment +except by a qualified person in whom full trust can be +reposed. And, even then, in the case of a woman +patient, it is well for a third person to be present.</p> + +<p>But the stories of the novelists, about subjugated +wills, hypnotising from a distance, and all the rest of +it, are quite without adequate foundation in fact. +There is very little evidence in support of hypnosis +produced at a distance, and in the one case where it did +seem to occur there had been repeated hypnotisations +of the ordinary kind, by which a sort of telepathic +rapport was perhaps established (Myers’ <cite>Human +Personality</cite>, vol. <abbr title="1">i</abbr>, page 524).</p> + +<p>Hypnotism against the will is a myth; except perhaps +in here and there a backboneless person who +could be influenced any way, without hypnosis or +anything of the kind. The Chicago pamphleteer who +wants to teach us how to get on in business by developing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> +a “hypnotic eye” is merely after dollars. It is +all bunkum.</p> + +<p>There is a sense, however, in which hypnotic treatment +can be a help in education and in strengthening +the character. Backward and lazy children could +probably be improved, and I know cases in which sleep-walking +and other bad habits have been cured by +suggestion. From this it is but a step to dipsomania, +which can often be cured. Dr Tuckey reports seventy +cures out of two hundred cases.</p> + +<p>F. W. H. Myers, to whose genius doctors as well as +psychologists owe their first scientific conceptions in +this domain, was extremely optimistic here. He held +that though we cannot expect to manufacture saints, +any more than we can manufacture geniuses, there is +nevertheless enough evidence to show that great things +could be done.</p> + +<p>“If the subject is hypnotisable, and if hypnotic +suggestion be applied with sufficient persistency and +skill, no depth of previous baseness and foulness need +prevent the man or woman whom we charge with +‘moral insanity’, or stamp as a ‘criminal-born’, +from rising into a state where he or she can work +steadily and render services useful to the community” +(<cite>Human Personality</cite>, vol. <abbr title="1">i</abbr>, page 199). Experiments +on hypnotic lines ought certainly to be carried out in +our prisons and reformatories. As to the formerly +alleged dangers of such experimentation—dangers of +hysteria, etc., alleged by the Charcot school which is +now seen to have been quite on a wrong tack—they +do not exist, if the operator knows his business.</p> + +<p>Says Professor Forel: “Liébeault, Bernheim, Wetterstrand, +Van Eeden, De Jong, Moll, I myself, and the +other followers of the Nancy school, declare categorically +that, although we have seen many thousands of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> +hypnotised persons, we have never observed a single +case of mental or bodily harm caused by hypnosis, +but, on the contrary, have seen many cases of illness +relieved or cured by it”. Dr Bramwell fully endorses +this, saying emphatically that he has “never seen an +unpleasant symptom, even of the most trivial nature, +follow the skilled induction of hypnosis” (<cite>Proceedings +of the Society for Psychical Research</cite>, vol. <abbr title="12">xii</abbr>, page 209).</p> + +<p>A proof that <em>intellectual</em> powers outside the normal +consciousness may be tapped by appropriate methods +is afforded by the remarkable experiments of Dr +Bramwell, on the appreciation of time by somnambules. +He ordered a hypnotised subject to carry out, after +arousal, some trivial action, such as making a cross +on a piece of paper, at the end of a specified period of +time, reckoning from the moment of waking. In the +waking state, the patient knew nothing of the order; +but a subliminal mental stratum knew, and watched +the time, making the subject carry out the order when +it fell due.</p> + +<p>The period varied from a few minutes to several +months, and it was stated in various ways, <i>e.g.</i> on one +occasion Dr Bramwell ordered the action to be carried +out in “24 hours and 2880 minutes”. The order was +given at 3.45 <span class="smcap">p.m.</span> on December 18, and it was carried +out correctly at 3.45 <span class="smcap">p.m.</span> on December 21. In other +experiments, the periods given were 4,417, 8,650, 8,680, +8,700, 10,070, 11,470 minutes.</p> + +<p>All were correctly timed by the subliminal stratum, +the action being promptly carried out at the due +moment. In the waking state the patient was quite +incapable—as most of us would be—of calculating +mentally when the periods would elapse. But the +hypnotic stratum could do it, and this shows that there +are intellectual powers which lie outside the field of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +normal consciousness. The argument could be further +supported by the feats of “calculating boys”, who can +sometimes solve the most complicated arithmetical +problems, without knowing how they do it. They let +the problem sink in, and the answer is shot up presently, +like the cooked pudding in the geyser.</p> + +<p>But these things are still in their infancy. Psychology +is working at the subject, but we do not yet +know enough to enable us to venture far in the direction +of practical application of hypnotic methods in +education. It seems likely, however, that further +investigation will yield knowledge which may be of +inestimable practical value in the training of minds, as +well as in the curing of mental and bodily disease.</p> +<hr class="l1"/> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>CHRISTIAN SCIENCE</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">It</span> has been said, as a kind of jocular epigram, that +the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor +Roman nor an empire. With similar truth it may +be said that Christian Science is neither Christian nor +science, in any ordinary sense of those words. Still, +perhaps we ought to allow an inventor to christen his +own creation, even if the name seems inappropriate or +likely to cause misunderstanding; and, Mrs Eddy +having invented Christian Science as an organised +religion—though, as we shall see, borrowing its main +features from an earlier prophet—we may admit her +right to give a name to her astonishing production. +In order that the personal equation may be allowed for, +the present writer begs to affirm that he writes as a +sympathetic student though not an adherent.</p> + +<p>Mary A. Morse Baker was born on July 16th, 1821, +of pious parents, at Bow, New Hampshire. Her father +was almost illiterate, rather passionate, a keen hand +at a bargain, and a Puritan in religion. All the Bakers +were a trifle cranky and eccentric, but some of them +possessed ability of sorts, though Mary’s father made +no great success in life. His daughter made up for +him afterwards.</p> + +<p>The first fifteen years of Mary Baker’s life were +passed at the old farm at Bow. The place was lonely, +the manner of life primitive, and education not a +strong point in the community. Mrs Eddy afterwards +claimed to have studied in her girlhood days Hebrew,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> +Greek, Latin, natural philosophy, logic, and moral +science! It was, however, maintained by her contemporaries +that she was backward and indolent, and +that “Smith’s <cite>Grammar</cite>, and as far as long division in +arithmetic”, might be taken as indicating the extent +of her scholarship. There is certainly some little +discrepancy here, and perhaps Mrs Eddy’s memory +was a trifle at fault. She made no claim to any +acquaintance with this formidable array of subjects +in the later part of her life, and it seems probable that +her contemporaries were right. Her physical +beauty, coupled with delicate health, seem to have +resulted in “spoiling”, for even as a child she dominated +her surroundings to a surprising extent.</p> + +<p>In 1843 she married George Glover, who died in +June, 1844, leaving her penniless. Her only child was +born in the September following. After ten years of +widowhood she married Daniel Paterson, a travelling +dentist. In 1866 they separated, he making some +provision for her. In 1873 she obtained a divorce +on the ground of desertion. In 1877 she married Asa +Gilbert Eddy, who died in 1882.</p> + +<p>So much for her matrimonial experiences, which may +now be dismissed, as they had no particular influence +on her character and career. To prevent confusion, +we will call her throughout by the name which is most +familiar to us and to the world.</p> + +<p>The chief event of Mrs Eddy’s remarkable life, the +event which put her on the road to fame and fortune, +occurred in 1862. This was her meeting with the +famous “healer”, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. This +latter was an unschooled but earnest and benevolent +man, who had made experiments in mesmerism, etc., +and who had found—or thought he had found—that +people could be cured of their ailments by “faith”.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +He therefore began to work out a system of “mind-cure”, +which he embodied in voluminous MSS. +Patients came to him from far and near, and he treated +all, whether they could pay or not. Quimby was much +above the level of the common quack, and his character +commands our respect. He was a man of great natural +intelligence, and was admirable in all his dealings +with family, friends, and patients.</p> + +<p>Mrs Eddy visited him at Portland in 1862, her aim +being treatment for her continued ill-health. She +claims to have been cured—in three weeks—though +it is clear from her later letters that the cure was not +complete. Still, great improvement was apparently +effected, for she had been almost bedridden, with some +kind of spinal or hysterical complaint, for eight years +previously. But Quimby’s effect on her was greater +mentally even than physically. She became interested +in his system, watched his treatment of patients, +borrowed his MSS., and mastered his teachings. In +1864 she visited him again, staying two or three months, +and prosecuting her studies. She now seemed to have +formed a definite desire to assist in teaching his system. +No doubt she dimly saw a possible career opening out +in front of her; though we need not attribute her +desire entirely to mere ambition or greed, for it is +probable that Quimby did a great amount of genuine +good, and his pupil would naturally imbibe some of +his zeal for the relief of suffering humanity.</p> + +<p>In 1866 Quimby died, aged sixty-four. His pupil +decided to put on the mantle of her teacher, but more +as propagandist and religious prophet than as healer. +In this latter capacity perhaps her sex was against her. +(Even now the average individual seems to have a sad +lack of confidence in the “lady doctor”!) But she +was poor, and prospects did not seem promising. For<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +some time she drifted about among friends—chiefly +spiritualists—preparing MSS. and teaching Quimbyism +to anyone who would listen. (She afterwards denied +her indebtedness to Quimby, claiming direct revelation. +“No human pen nor tongue taught me the science contained +in this book, <cite>Science and Health</cite>, and neither +tongue nor pen can overthrow it.”—<cite>Science and Health</cite>, +<abbr title="page">p.</abbr> 110, 1907 edition.)</p> + +<p>Though unsuccessful as healer (in spite of her later +claim to have healed Whittier of “incipient pulmonary +consumption” in one visit), she certainly had the +knack of teaching—had the power of inspiring enthusiasm +and of inoculating others with her ideas. In 1870 +she turned up at Lynn, Mass., with a pupil named +Richard Kennedy, a lad of twenty-one. Her aim +being to found a religious organisation based on +practical results (the prayer of faith shall heal the sick, +etc.), it was necessary to work with a pupil-practitioner. +Accordingly she and Kennedy took offices at Lynn, +and “Dr Kennedy” appeared on a signboard affixed to +a tree.</p> + +<p>Immediate success followed. Patients crowded the +waiting-rooms. Kennedy did the “healing” and Mrs +Eddy organised classes, which were recruited from the +ranks of patients and friends; fees, a hundred dollars +for twelve lessons, afterwards raised to three hundred +dollars for seven lessons. Before long, however, she +quarrelled with Kennedy, and in 1872 they separated, +but not before she had reaped about six thousand +dollars as her share of the harvest. It was her first +taste of success, after weary years of toil and stress +and hysteria and eccentricity. Naturally, like Alexander, +she sighed for further conquest. <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">L’appétit +vient en mangeant.</i> And, though in her fiftieth year, +she was now more energetic than ever.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p> + +<p>Her next move was the purchase of a house at 8, +Broad Street, Lynn, which became the first official +headquarters of Christian Science. In 1875 appeared her +famous book, <cite>Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures</cite>, +which was financed by two of its author’s friends. +The first edition was of a thousand copies. As it sold +but slowly, she persuaded her chief practitioner, Daniel +Spofford, to give up his practice and to devote himself +to advertising the book and pushing its sale. Since +then it has been revised many times, and the editions +are legion. Loyal disciples of the better-educated sort +have assisted in its rewriting, and it is now a very +presentable kind of affair as to its literary form. Most, +if not all, of the editions have been sold at a minimum +of $3.18 per copy, with <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">editions de luxe</i> at $5 or more, +and the author’s other works are published at similarly +high prices. All Christian Scientists were commanded +to buy the works of the Reverend Mother, and all successive +editions of those works. It is not surprising +that Mrs Eddy should leave a fortune of a million and a +half dollars. It may be mentioned here that she moved +from Lynn to Boston in 1882, thence to Concord (New +Hampshire) in 1889, and finally to a large mansion in a +Boston suburb which she bought for $100,000, spending +a similar sum in remodelling and enlarging. The +modern prophet does not dwell in the wilderness, +subsisting on locusts and wild honey. He—or she—has +moved with the times, and has a proper respect +for the almighty dollar and the comforts of civilisation.</p> + +<p>In 1881 was founded the Massachusetts Metaphysical +College. This imposingly-named institution never had +any special buildings, and its instructions were mostly +given in Mrs Eddy’s parlour, Mrs Eddy herself constituting +all the faculty. Four thousand students +passed through the “College” in seven years, at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +end of which period it ceased to exist. The fees were +usually $300 for seven lessons, as before. Few gold-mines +pay as well as did the “Metaphysical College”. +The fact does not at first sight increase our respect for +the alleged cuteness of the inhabitants of the States. +But, on further investigation, the murder is out. +Most of these students probably earned back by +“healing” much more than they paid Mrs Eddy. +Our respect for Uncle Sam’s business shrewdness +returns in full force.</p> + +<p>The experiment of conducting religious services had +been made by Mrs Eddy at Lynn in 1875, but the first +Christian Science Church was not chartered until 1879. +The Scientists met, however, in various public halls of +Boston, until 1894, when a church was built. This +was soon outgrown, and 10,000 of the faithful pledged +themselves to raise two million dollars for its enlargement. +The new building was finished in 1906. Its +auditorium holds five thousand people. The walls +are decorated with texts signed “Jesus, the Christ,” +and “Mary Baker G. Eddy”—these names standing +side by side.</p> + +<p>The following examples, culled almost at random, +will further show how great is her conviction that she +has the Truth, how vigorously she bulls her own stocks +(somehow, financial metaphors seem inevitable when +writing of Mrs Eddy):</p> + +<p>“God has been graciously fitting me during many +years for the reception of this final revelation of the +absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing”. +(<cite>Science and Health</cite>, <abbr title="page">p.</abbr> 107.)</p> + +<p>“I won my way to absolute conclusion through +divine revelation, reason and demonstration”. (<abbr title="ibidem, page"><i>Ibid.</i>, +p.</abbr> 109.)</p> + +<p>“To those natural Christian Scientists, the ancient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> +worthies, and to Christ Jesus, God certainly revealed +the Spirit of Christian Science, if not the absolute +letter”. (<abbr title="ibidem, page"><i>Ibid.</i>, p.</abbr> 483.)</p> + +<p>“The theology of Christian Science is truth; opposed +to which is the error of sickness, sin, and death, that +truth destroys”. (<cite>Miscellaneous Writings</cite>, <abbr title="page">p.</abbr> 62.)</p> + +<p>“Christian Science is the unfolding of true Metaphysics, +that is, of Mind, or God, and His attributes. +Science rests on principle and demonstration. The +Principle of Christian Science is divine”. (<abbr title="ibidem, page"><i>Ibid.</i>, p.</abbr> 69.)</p> + +<p>The following maybe quoted as an example of mixed +good and evil, with a certain flavour of unconscious +humour:</p> + +<p>“Hate no one; for hatred is a plague-spot that +spreads its virus and kills at last. If indulged, it +masters us; brings suffering to its possessor throughout +time, and beyond the grave. If you have been badly +wronged, forgive and forget: God will recompense +this wrong, and punish, more severely than you could, +him who has striven to injure you”. (<cite>Miscellaneous +Writings</cite>, <abbr title="page">p.</abbr> 12.)</p> + +<p>The advice is good, but it is not new. And Mrs +Eddy seemed to experience a special joy in the thought +that by leaving our enemies alone they will receive +from God a more effective trouncing than we with our +poor appliances could administer. The ideal Christian +would not want his enemies handed over to the +inquisitor—he would beg for them to be let off. “Father, +forgive them, for they know not what they do!” +That is the Christian attitude. It is perhaps too high +for ordinary mortals to attain to, but Mrs Eddy made +such high claims that we are entitled to judge her by +correspondingly high standards.</p> + +<p>The form of service in the various Christian Science +churches at first included a sermon. But Mrs Eddy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> +soon saw that this might introduce discord: for the +preachers might differ in their interpretations of +<cite>Science and Health</cite>. And Mrs Eddy above all things +aimed at unity in order to keep the control in her own +hands. Therefore, in 1895, she forbade preaching +altogether. The Bible and <cite>Science and Health, With +Key to the Scriptures</cite>, were to be read from, but no explanatory +comments were to be made. The services +comprise Sunday morning and evening readings from +these two books, with music; the Wednesday evening +experience meeting; and the communion service, once +or twice a year only. There is no baptismal, marriage, +or burial service, and weddings and funerals are never +conducted in Christian Science churches.</p> + +<p>As to church government, there was a nominal +board of directors, but Mrs Eddy had supreme power. +She could appoint or dismiss at will. The Church +was hers, body and soul. Probably no other religious +leader ever had such an unqualified sway. The Holy +Father at Rome is a mere figurehead in comparison +with the late Reverend Mother.</p> + +<p>In June, 1907, there were in all 710 branch churches. +Of these, twenty-five were in Canada, fourteen in +Britain, two in Ireland, four in Australia, one in South +Africa, eight in Mexico, two in Germany, one in Holland, +one in France, and the remainder in the States. +There were also 295 societies not yet incorporated +into churches. The total membership of the 710 +churches was probably about 50,000. (In <cite>Pulpit and Press</cite>, +<abbr title="page">p.</abbr> 82, Mrs Eddy puts the number at 100,000 to 200,000; +and this was in 1895. Some claim that the total number +of adherents is as high as a million. But these are +probably exaggerated estimates.) About one-tenth +of these make their living by their faith. Here we come +to the secret of Christian Science success.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p> + +<p>There are about 400 authorised Christian Science +“healers”, and many who practise without diploma +but not without pay. These people treat sick folks, +receiving fees. Their method is to assure the +patient that he is under a delusion in thinking himself +ill, that matter is an illusion, that God is All, etc. It +sounds very absurd. But the curious thing is that +many people have been cured by this treatment, and—naturally—these +people become ardent Christian Scientists. +It is by the practical application that Christian +Science as a religion lives and thrives. As to the kind +of diseases cured, the most extravagant claims are +made. In <cite>Miscellaneous Writings</cite>, <abbr title="page">p.</abbr> 41, Mrs Eddy +definitely states that “all classes of disease” can be +healed by her method. After careful sifting of much +evidence, however, Dr Myers and his brother (F. W. H. +Myers) found that no proof was forthcoming for the +cure of definite organic disease by Christian Science +methods. (<cite>Proceedings of the Society for Psychical +Research</cite>, vol. <abbr title="9, page"><span class="smcap">ix</span>, p.</abbr> 160; also <cite>Journal</cite>, vol. <abbr title="8, page"><span class="smcap">viii</span>, +p.</abbr> 247.) Undoubtedly they have been, and are continually, +efficient in relieving, and even curing, many +functional disorders which have resisted ordinary +medical treatment—and it must be remembered that +many functional derangements are as serious, subjectively, +as grave organic disease—and consequently +it is undeniable that Christian Science often does good. +But it is probable that the same amount of good, and +perhaps more, could be done by the hypnotic or suggestive +treatment of a qualified medical man, or perhaps +by other forms of “faith-healing”. The Christian +Scientist is using suggestion; but he couples it up with +religion, and thus, perhaps—with some people—succeeds +in driving the suggestion home with greater +force. It is noteworthy that similar attempts are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +now being made in other directions—witness the +Emmanuel movement in New York, the Faithists and +various “psycho-therapeutic” societies in England, +and the tendency in some quarters (Bishop of London) +to return to anointing and laying on of hands by +clergymen.</p> + +<p>Psychologically, Mrs Eddy is at least classified, +if not entirely explained, by one word—monoideism. +She was a person of one idea. These people, for whom +we usually have the simpler term of “crank”, are +common enough. I have no personal acquaintance +with the circle-squaring and perpetual-motion cranks +mentioned by De Morgan (<cite>The Budget of Paradoxes</cite>), +but I know a “flat-earth” crank, and am well acquainted +with a “British-Israelite” crank, who seems +to derive unspeakable joy—tempered only by his +failure to convert me—from the thought that we +Britishers are veritably the descendants of one or more +of the Lost Tribes. All these people are conscious of a +mission. They have had a revelation, and are anxious +to impart it. Their efforts may not be due to the +“last infirmity of noble mind”, still less to a lower +motive. They may just be built that way. The +majority of them, like my Lost-Tribes friend, get no +hearing because of the inflexible pragmatism of a +stiffnecked and utilitarian generation. “What difference +does it make whether we are the Tribes or not?” +asks the man in the street. And he passes on with a +shrug or a grin, according to temperament. This +terrible pragmatic test makes short work of many +amiable cranks. And it is just here that Christian +Science scores its point; for it cures physical disease, +thereby becoming intensely practical. Health is the +chief “good” of life. Anything that will restore it to +an ailing body commands immediate and universal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> +respect. Christian Science therefore appeals, on its +practical side, to the deepest thing in us—to the primal +instinct of self-preservation. Hence its success.</p> + +<p>It is possible to blame Mrs Eddy unjustly for her love +of power as such. She was not unique in this respect. +The difference is that Mrs Eddy succeeded while the +others have not, and are consequently not heard +of. My Lost-Tribes friend would be as autocratic +as anybody if he had the chance; but his motive would +not be greed of power, but rather the overmastering +desire to push his cause, to proselytise, to promulgate +his one idea, almost by force, if such a thing were +possible. Most of us know a few fanatics of this kind. +The objects of their devotion are varied—one is mad +north-north-west, another south-south-east—but all +suffer from a lack of balance, a lack of proper distribution +of interest. Of course, we may cheerfully admit +that we are all more or less specialists in our several +departments, and that the line between sanity and +insanity is rather arbitrary. We all seem more or less +mad to those who do not agree with us.</p> + +<p>The good and true part of Christian Science is its +demonstration of the influence of mind on body, and +of the usefulness of inducing mental states of an +optimistic character. It may, of course, be said that +we need no Mrs Eddy to tell us this. True, we don’t. +The great seers and poets have always taught optimism, +and the influence of mind on body was medically +recognised—more or less—long before even Quimby’s +time. But we must remember that different minds +need different treatment—need their nutriment and +stimulant in different forms, to suit the various mental +digestions and receptive powers. Consequently, though +we may prefer Browning for optimism and the doctors +for hypnotic therapeutics, we need not complain if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> +others prefer Mrs Eddy and her disciples. If they get +good from their way of putting things, and if that +good manifests itself in their character and life—in +their total reaction on the world—by all means let them +continue to walk in their chosen way. It would be +wrong to try to turn them. The system “works”; +therefore it is true for them. The tree is known by its +fruits. And the fruits of Christian Science are undoubtedly +often good. In this complex world nothing +is unmixedly good, and harm is no doubt done occasionally. +But, on the whole, it seems probable that Mrs +Eddy, with all her hysteria and morbidities and rancours +and queerness, has been a power for good in the +world. Her writings meet a want which some people +feel, or, rather, provide them with a useful impulse in +the direction of physical and spiritual regeneration. +If you can make a sick person stop brooding over his +ailments and worrying over things in general, you have +achieved something which enormously increases his +chance of recovery; and if you can make him turn all +his thoughts and energies in the direction of recovery, +and all his emotional powers in the direction of love and +goodwill to his fellow-men and towards God, there is +no limit to the powers which may be put in operation. +In spite of all our achievements in science—and they +have been great—we are only, as Newton said, picking +up pebbles on the sea-shore. Nature is boundless; we +can fix no limits to her powers. And we know so little, +really, about disease, that I am not at all prepared to +deny the Christian Science claims, even with regard to +organic disease. The distinction between organic +and functional is in our own inabilities, not in the +nature of the case; we call a disease “organic” when +we find definite tissue-change, and “functional” when +we do not; but in the latter case there must be some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> +organic basis, though too small perhaps to be discoverable—say +a lesion in a tiny nerve. Consequently +I regard the question of Christian Science cures as +entirely one of evidence. I keep an open mind. If I +come across enough evidence, I will believe that it can +cure tuberculosis of the lungs and other diseases, as +claimed, whether I can understand how it does it or +not. At present, like Dr Myers, I am not convinced; +but I have seen enough of Christian Science results +among my own friends to prevent me from denying +anything. I merely suspend judgment. But I do +believe that the power of the mind over the body is so +great that almost anything is possible; and I think +that the medical advance of the next half-century will +be chiefly in this hitherto neglected direction. I +happen to know that this, or something very near this, +was the strongly-held opinion of the late Professor +William James of Harvard, who, in addition to being +the most brilliant psychologist of his generation, was +also a qualified doctor of medicine.</p> +<hr class="l1"/> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>JOAN OF ARC</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">Great</span> results often flow from small causes. +Pascal said that if Cleopatra’s nose had +been shorter the history of the world would +have been different. Similarly it may be truly said that +if a peasant girl of Domrémy had not had hallucinations, +France would now have been a British province. +And it is curious to reflect that the Church which burnt +her as a heretic and sorcerer has her, and her only, to +thank for such hold as it still maintains on France, +for the latter would have become Protestant if England +had won. The Roman church now recognises this, +and has beatified the Maid. The next step will be +her canonisation as a saint. Thus does the whirligig +of Time bring its revenges.</p> + +<p>Jeanne d’Arc was born in the village of Domrémy +near Vaucouleurs, on the border of Champagne and +Lorraine, on January 6th, 1412. She was taught to +spin and to sew, but not to read or write, these accomplishments +being beyond what was necessary for people +in her station of life. Her parents were devout, and +she was brought up piously. Her nature was gentle, +modest, and religious, but with no physical weakness +or morbid abnormality—on the contrary, she was +exceptionally strong, as her later history proves.</p> + +<p>At or about the age of thirteen, Jeanne began to +experience what psychology now calls “auditory +hallucinations”. That is, she heard voices—usually +accompanied by a bright light—when no visible person<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +was present. This, of course, is a common symptom +of impending mental disorder; but no insanity developed +in Jeanne d’Arc. Startled she naturally was at +first, but continuation led to familiarity and trust. +The voices gave good counsel of a commonplace kind, +as, for instance, that she “must be a good girl and go +regularly to church.” Soon, however, she began to +have visions: saw St Michael, St Catherine, and St +Margaret; was given instructions as to her mission; +eventually made her way to the Dauphin; put herself +at the head of 6,000 men, and advanced to the relief +of Orleans, which was besieged by the conquering +English. After a fortnight of hard fighting the siege +was raised, and the enemy driven off. The tide of war +had turned, and in three months the Dauphin was +crowned King at Rheims, as Charles the Seventh.</p> + +<p>At this point Jeanne felt that her mission was accomplished. +But her wish to return to her family was +over-ruled by king and archbishop, and she took part +in the further fighting against the allied English and +Burgundian forces, showing great bravery and tactical +skill. But in November, 1430, in a desperate sally from +Compiegne—which was besieged by the Duke of Burgundy—she +fell into the enemy’s hands, was sold to +the English, and thrown into a dungeon at their headquarters +in Rouen.</p> + +<p>After a year’s imprisonment she was brought to +trial—a mock trial before the Bishop of Beauvais, +in an ecclesiastical court. Learned doctors of the +church did their best to entangle the simple girl in their +dialectical toils; but she showed a remarkable power +of keeping to her simple affirmations and of avoiding +heretical statements. “God has always been my Lord +in all that I have done”. But the trial was only +pretence, for her fate was already decided. She was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> +burnt to death, amid the jeers and execration of a +rabble of brutal soldiery, in a Rouen market-place on +May 30th, 1431.</p> + +<p>The life of the Maid supplies a problem which orthodox +science cannot solve. She was a simple peasant +girl, with no ambitions hankering after a career. She +rebelled pathetically against her mission. “I had +far rather rest and spin by my mother’s side, for this +is no work of my choosing, but I must go and do it, +for my Lord wills it.” She cannot be dismissed on the +“simple idiot” theory of Voltaire, for her genius in +war and her aptitude in repartee undoubtedly prove +exceptional mental powers, unschooled though she was +in what we call education. We cannot call her a mere +hysteric, for her health and strength were superb. +A man of science once said to an Abbé: “Come to the +Salpêtrière Hospital, and I will show you twenty +Jeannes d’Arc.” To which the Abbé responded: +“Has one of them given us back Alsace and Lorraine?”</p> + +<p>There is the crux, as Andrew Lang quietly remarked.</p> + +<p>The retort was certainly neat. Still, though the +Salpêtrière hysterics have not won back Alsace and +Lorraine, it is nevertheless true that a great movement +may be started, or kept going when started, by fraud, +hallucination, and credulity. The Mormons, for example, +are a strong body, but the origins of their faith +will not bear much criticism. <cite>The Book of Mormon</cite>, +handed down from heaven by an angel, is more than we +can swallow. No one saw its “metal leaves”—from +which Joseph Smith translated—except Joseph +himself. We have our own opinion about Joseph’s +truthfulness. Somewhat similarly with spiritualism. +The great movement is there, based partly on fact as +I believe, but supported by some fraud and much +ignorance and credulity. May it not have been somewhat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> +thus with Jeanne? She delivered France, and +her importance in history is great; but may not her +mission and her doings have been the outcome of +merely subjective hallucinations, induced by the +brooding of her specially religious and patriotic mind +on the woes of her country? The army, being ignorant +and superstitious, would readily believe in the supernatural +character of her mission, and great energy and +valour would follow as a matter of course—for a man +fights well when he believes that Providence is on his +side.</p> + +<p>That is the usual kind of theory in explanation of +the facts. But it is not fully satisfactory. How came +it—one may ask—that this untutored peasant girl +could persuade not only the rude soldiery, but also +the Dauphin and the court, of her Divine appointment? +How came she to be given the command of an army? +Surely a post of such responsibility and power would +not be given to a peasant girl of eighteen, on the mere +strength of her own claim to inspiration. It seems, at +least, very improbable.</p> + +<p>Now it seems (though the materialistic school of +historians conveniently ignore or belittle it) that there +is strong evidence in support of the idea that Jeanne +gave the Dauphin some proof of the possession of +supernormal faculties. In fact, the evidence is so +strong that Mr Lang called it “unimpeachable”—and +Mr Lang did not usually err on the side of credulity +in these matters. Among other curious things, Jeanne +seems to have repeated to Charles the words of a prayer +which he had made mentally, and she also made some +kind of clairvoyant discovery of a sword hidden behind +the altar of Fierbois church. Schiller’s magnificent +dramatic poem “<cite>Die Jungfrau von Orleans</cite>,” though +unhistorical in some details, is substantially accurate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +on these points concerning clairvoyance and mind-reading.</p> + +<p>As to the voices and visions, a Protestant will have +a certain prejudice with regard to the St Michael, +St Catherine, and St Margaret stories, though he may +very possibly be wrong in his disbelief. But, waiving +that, it may be true that some genuine inspiration was +truly given to the Maid from the deeper strata of her +own soul, and that these monitions externalised +themselves in the forms in which her thought habitually +ran. If she had been a Greek of two thousand years +earlier, her visions would probably have taken the form +of Apollo and Pallas Athene; yet they might equally +well have contained truth and good counsel, as did the +utterances of the Oracles.</p> + +<p>And, speaking of the Greeks, we may remember +that the wisest of that race had similar experiences. +Socrates—the pre-eminent type of sanity and mental +burliness—was counselled by his “daimon”; by a +warning Voice which, truly, did not give positive +advice like Jeanne’s, but which intervened to stop him +when about to make some wrong decision. Again—to +jump suddenly down to modern times—Charles +Dickens says in his letters that the characters of his +novels took on a kind of independent existence, and +that Mrs Gamp, his greatest creation, spoke to him +(generally in church) as with an actual voice. In fact, +all cases of creative genius, whether in literature, art, +or invention, are examples of an uprush from unknown +mental depths: the process is not the same as the +intellectual process of reasoning. In these cases, as +for instance with Socrates, Jeanne d’Arc, Dickens, the +deeper strata of the mind may be supposed to send up +thoughts so vigorously that they become externalised +as hallucinations; not necessarily morbid or injurious,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +though of course many hallucinations are undoubtedly +both. The inspiration rises from below the conscious +threshold. It is as if “given”; and the normal +conscious mind looks on in passive astonishment. +<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Alles ist als wie geschenkt</i>, says Goethe—and he knew, +if anybody did. A similar thing happens, on a more +ordinary plane, when a problem that has baffled the +working mind is solved in sleep. In short, the normal +consciousness is not all there is of us; there are levels +and powers below the threshold. And it seems likely +that the new psychology is on the track of a better +explanation of Socrates and Jeanne d’Arc, as well as +of the nature of genius in general, than has yet been +excogitated by the philosophers. Certainly these +things supply interesting material for study, and many +curious discoveries are now being made in this field +of research.</p> +<hr class="l1"/> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>IS THE EARTH ALIVE?</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">Some</span> of the ancients thought the earth was an +animal. It has its hard and soft parts, its +bone and flesh—rock and soil—as the Norse +cosmology pictured it; also its blood, of seas, rivers, +and the like. To a coast-dwelling people, the rhythmic +inflow and outflow of the tides would suggest a huge +slow blood-pulsation, or a breathing. And heat +increases with depth, in mine or cave; fire spouts from +Etna and Vesuvius; evidently the earth is hotter +inside than at the surface, as animals are hotter inside +than on their skins. Some such animal-notion was +held by Plato, and by some of the later Stoics; though +it does not seem to have been worked out in detail. +And the Greek, Indian, or Egyptian theology which +made the earth a goddess and the bride of Heaven or +the sun, is still more indefinite, or is crudely anthropomorphic +and primitive.</p> + +<p>Modern approximations have been chiefly in poetry, +and are pan-psychic rather than animistic; as in Pope’s +<cite>Essay on Man:</cite></p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All are but parts of one stupendous whole,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose body Nature is, and God the soul,<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>and in Wordsworth’s <cite>Tintern Abbey</cite> where the presence +which disturbs him with the joy of elevated thoughts +is felt to be the Spirit which has its dwelling in the light +of setting suns and the round ocean and the living air:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A motion and a spirit that impels<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All thinking things, all objects of all thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A lover of the meadows and the woods,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And mountains; and all that we behold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From this green earth; of all the mighty world<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of eye, and ear.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Emerson expresses the same thought in <cite>Pan</cite> and in +much of his prose—<cite>Nature</cite>, <cite>The Over Soul</cite>, <cite>Self-Reliance</cite>. +William James, in early days before his pluralistic +development, thought that an <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">anima mundi</i> thinking +in all of us was a more likely hypothesis than that +of “a lot of individual souls”; and Leibnitz, among +other metaphysical great ones, Spinozistically speaks +of “un seul esprit qui est universel et qui anime tout +l’univers”. Finally, to quote a modern of the moderns, +we find Mr H. G. Wells finely saying that “between +you and me as we set our minds together, and between +us and the rest of mankind, there is <em>something</em>, something +real, something that rises through us and is neither +you nor me, that comprehends us, that is thinking here +and using me and you to play against each other in +that thinking just as my finger and thumb play against +each other as I hold this pen with which I write”. +(<cite>First and Last Things</cite>, <abbr title="page">p.</abbr> 67.)</p> + +<p>But these various poets and thinkers, while suggesting +a soul-side of the material universe, have not ventured +to attribute spirits to specific lumps of matter +such as the planets. Science has banished those +celestial genii. Kepler and Newton substituted for +them the “bald and barren doctrine of gravitation”, +to the disgust of the theologically orthodox. It is +possible, however, that science did not banish these +planetary spirits, but only prevented us from seeing +them, by turning our eyes in another direction, towards +the laws according to which the material universe +works; as if we should become so absorbed in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +chemistry and physics of blood oxidation, digestion, +cerebral change, and the like, as to forget that the +human body has a consciousness associated with it. +It may be that we are too materialistic in our astronomy. +Perhaps Lorenzo was right, even about the music +of the spheres; and that our deafness, not their silence, +is the reason why we do not hear it.</p> + +<p>The nineteenth century produced a thinker who +revived the animistic idea in an improved form. He +elaborated it into a system of philosophy, welding into +it the discoveries of science, and leaving room for any +further advance in that direction. At the same time +he showed that his system was essentially religious, and +indeed quite consistent with Christianity in its best +interpretations. But his writings fell almost dead +from the press, for he was before his time. The +scientific men were materialists, and sneered at a +system which recognised a spiritual world; while +the orthodox Christians were scared by its evolutionary +method and its acceptance of Darwinism when the +latter arrived—for the philosophy preceded it—and +also by the novelty of some of its ideas.</p> + +<p>Gustav Theodor Fechner was born on April 19, 1801, +at Gross-Särchen in what is now Silesia, then under +the Elector of Saxony. He studied at Leipzig, and was +appointed professor of Physics at the University there, +in 1834. He conducted several scientific journals, +wrote text-books, translated Biot’s <cite>Physics</cite> (4 <abbr title="volumes">vols.</abbr>) +Thénard’s <cite>Chemistry</cite> (6 <abbr title="volumes">vols.</abbr>) and a work on cerebral +pathology; also edited an eight-volume <cite>Encyclopædia</cite> +of which he wrote about a third himself, lectured, and +made researches in electro-magnetism which injured +his eyesight. His chief scientific work, <cite>Elements of +Psycho-Physics</cite>, was published in 1859, additions being +made in 1877 and 1882. “Fechner’s Law”, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +fundamental law of psychophysics (that sensation +varies in the ratio of the logarithm of impression) is +now an internationally current term. Men like Paulsen +and Wundt do not hesitate to call Fechner master. +His chief philosophical work is <cite>Zend-Avesta</cite> (3 <abbr title="volumes">vols.</abbr>) +published in 1851, and rearranged and condensed in +<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Die Tagesansicht gegenüber der Nachtansicht</i> (1879); +but he published also many subsidiary volumes. Only +one of his works has appeared in English—the small +volume on <cite>Life After Death</cite>—and even this had to be +brought out by an American publisher! Yet Fechner +is, as Professor William James said, “a philosopher +in the great sense … little known as yet to English +readers, but destined, I am persuaded, to wield more +and more influence as time goes on”. (<cite>A Pluralistic +Universe</cite>, <abbr title="pages 135 and 149.">pp. 135, 149.</abbr>) The prophecy is already +beginning to come true.</p> + +<p>Fechner always begins with the known and indisputable, +arguing thence to the unknown. His method is +thus analogical and scientific. It is the only method +that a scientific generation will tolerate. Its results +may be disputed, but so can the results of science. +Even mathematics gives us no certainties, for something +must always be taken for granted. In philosophising +by analogy, we do at least keep in close touch with +experience; we do not evaporate the world into an +“unearthly ballet of bloodless categories”. And if +the analogies point mostly one way, with only weak +ones pointing the other, the result may be at least +acceptable as a working hypothesis, even if not “demonstrable”.</p> + +<p>Man is a living, thinking, feeling being. He is on +the surface of a nearly spherical body, which he calls +the earth, out of which his material part has arisen. +The elements of his body are the same as those in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> +earth. His carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen +are the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen of the +coal measures, soils, atmosphere, oceans, of the earth. +The calcium carbonate of his bones is the calcium +carbonate of her rocks as seen in cliffs at Flamborough +and Dover. He is bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh. +Sometimes he calls her Mother Earth, and involuntarily +speaks the truth in jest. In Siberia the Tartar word +for the earth is “Mamma”—a curious fact. Indeed, +the bond between the earth and her children is much +closer than in the case of a human mother and her +child; for we remain, all our lives, actually <em>part</em> of the +planet’s mass. If our bodies were suddenly annihilated, +the earth’s gravitative attraction would be +altered, and the whole solar system would have to +readjust itself to the slight diminution. We belong +to the earth. We are a film of cells on her skin. In +Piccadilly and the Bowery (and Throgmorton and +Wall Streets?) we are—alas!—an eczematous patch.</p> + +<p>But here it may be objected that man is more than a +mere body. Quite true. Man has experiences of an +order different from the material one. You cannot +express joy and sorrow by chemical equations or +number of foot-pounds. Even if there is a material +equivalent or necessary concomitant, of electrical or +chemical change in cerebral tissue or what not, the fact +of the non-material experience remains a reality. To +indicate this side of human life, we call it the spiritual +side. We say that man is matter and spirit, body and +soul. This is quite justifiable and right, whether we +can define the terms or not. Definition means explaining +a word by means of others that are better known. +And as we cannot get any closer to reality than our own +experience, which <em>is</em> reality to us, and as the two +words conveniently classify two great departments of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +experience, we justifiably say that we are soul and body. +Very well; the body, then, when we die, returns to +the earth, from which indeed it has not been severed, +except as being a point at which a special kind of +activity was manifested. What then of the soul? +Shall it not return to the earth-soul, as the body +returns to the earth-body?</p> + +<p>Man has arisen out of the earth. And can +the dead give birth to the living? Such an idea is +self-contradictory. If the Earth has produced us, it +cannot be really a mere dead lump, as nineteenth-century +materialistic science regarded it. It must +be alive. The fifteen hundred millions or so of human +beings who live on its surface like microscopic insects on +the body of an elephant, or like epidermis-cells on our +own bodies, constitute in their total weight and size +only an almost infinitesimal proportion of the earth’s +mass. The earth is 8,000 miles in diameter; if human +beings were so numerous that they could only stand up, +wedged together all over its surface, tropics and poles, +land and water—the latter covers seven-tenths of it—they +would only be like a skin 1⁄200,000th part of an inch +thick, on a globe a yard in diameter. The total mass of +all the living creatures on the earth’s surface, including +all animals and all vegetation, is almost inconceivably +small, as compared with the mass of the earth. Is it +not a trifle ludicrous to find some of these little creatures +looking down so condescendingly on the remainder +of the planet? Emerson was among the few who have +seen the joke, for in <cite>Hamatreya</cite> he satirises those who +boast of possessing pieces of the earth:</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Clear of the grave.<br /></span> +</div></div></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p> + +<p>And the earth sings:</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">They called me theirs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who so controlled me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet every one<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wished to stay, and is gone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How am I theirs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If they cannot hold me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But I hold them?<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>A very natural objection to the idea of the earth +being full of life and mind—as my body is full of +my life and my mind—is that the inorganic part of the +planet presents no evidence of such. It does not act +as if it were alive and conscious. But this begs the +whole question. If you decide beforehand that all +evidence for the existence of mind must be the sort of +phenomena exhibited by the things we call living, +the business is settled, and it is clear that the inorganic +kingdom is without consciousness. There is then +no sign of mind anywhere except in that infinitesimally +thin and indeed discontinuous skin which is made up of +living individuals on the earth’s surface. But is it +not somewhat presumptuous to dogmatise thus? +Why should mind always manifest itself in the same +way? Non-living matter does not show vital activities, +but it does show other activities, quite systematic and +non-chaotic and comprehensible ones. How could +“dead” matter have any activity at all? Even +Haeckel postulates a sort of mind in the atom, and we +have heard of “mind-stuff” before, from an equally +determined materialist. Indeed, how can we rationalise +the behaviour of phosphorus in oxygen but by +saying that the two elements like each other so well +that they rush to combine whenever possible? If +carbon has great “affinity,” showing a tendency to +combine with many atoms of other elements in various +complicated ways—at least as regards its favourite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> +types—it is reasonable to regard it as a much-loving +element—the polygamous Solomon of the elements. +If fluorine will have nothing to do with other substances—except +under protest, when persuaded by Miss +Hydrogen, whose gaiety and levity sometimes overcome +its sulkiness, bringing it also into the society of +calcium and one or two other metals—we must say +that fluorine is unsociable, morbidly self-centred, or +perhaps mystically disposed, like Thoreau, happy by +his pond, alone. Chemical affinity is the loves of the +elements.</p> + +<p>Rising to the next grade of complexity above atoms, +we find that molecular movements, visible in the apparently +representative Brownian movements of particles, +recall the fidget of a bunch of midges, and thereby +suggest a sort of life. They disobey the second law +of thermodynamics, rising in a lighter liquid, as midges +rise in the tenuous air. Of course no one can deny +that in the things we call living there are phenomena +not seen elsewhere, and some of these are quite probably +not understandable at all, in terms of measurement +or imagery, as we can understand the Brownian movements +by irregular bombardment of molecules. We +cannot understand the relation between a supposed +brain-change and the corresponding mental fact. +The two orders of being seem disjunctive. Perhaps +these things are too close to us to be understood; +perhaps we cannot understand life and consciousness +because we are ourselves alive and conscious—as we +cannot lift ourselves by pulling at our boot tops, and +cannot see our own faces because the eyes that see are +<em>in</em> the face that is to be seen. Still the distinction +between life at its lowest and non-life at its highest +(crystals?) is so small that we may yet effect a smooth +transition—may somehow see a continuity which now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +eludes us. And it seems likely that this will be effected +by an extension of the mind-idea down into the inorganic, +rather than by any explanation of life by physical and +chemical concepts.</p> + +<p>Again, on the larger scale, may not cohesion, as well +as chemical affinity, be a sort of affection; in this +case a kind of wide social friendship—the “adhesive +love” of Whitman, which is to supersede “amative +love”—as against the fierce and narrow loves of the +elements? A. C. Benson in <cite>Joyous Gard</cite> (<abbr title="page">p.</abbr> 128) +quotes a geologist who says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>It is not by any means certain that stones do not have a certain +obscure life of their own; I have sometimes thought that their +marvellous cohesion may be a sign of life, and that if life were withdrawn, +a mountain might in a moment become a heap of sliding +sand.</p> +</div> + +<p>Yes, and even in sand-grains there is cohesion of +particles, and in the smallest particles huge numbers +of molecules, and again—still smaller—atoms and +electrons. Something elusive yet tremendously potent +is still there, in the sand. It would be rash to call it +dead and mindless. There seems more sense in admitting +that there is something akin to what we know as +life and mind in ourselves, permeating the material +universe.</p> + +<p>And if—to come back to our own planet—if the +earth is a living organism, there will naturally be distribution +of function, as there is in our own bodies. +It would be absurd for the eye to deny life and perception +to ear or skin just because their mode of activity +is different. It is wiser to concede life and mind where-ever +there is action. In the present state of affairs, +not only do we get into difficulties by our rash assumption +that there is no mind without protoplasm (<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">ohne +Phosphor kein Gedanke</i>, as the old materialist too +boldly said), but we find it impossible to draw the line<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +between living and non-living. Drops of oil exhibit +amœboid movements, and at the lower end of life +the slime-mass becomes so undifferentiated as to be +very much in a borderland between the two states. +Probably non-living substances gradate into living +ones by imperceptible <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">differentiæ</i>, as man would be +found to gradate back into an anthropoid ape or something +of the kind if we could see all the stages. Nature +does not make jumps. Where she seems to do so, it is +only because we cannot see how she gets from one +place to another distant one. But when we scrutinise +the interspace, we see that there is a path. Nature +does not jump. She glides.</p> + +<p>It is on this line of thought that the disagreement +between the schools represented by Sir Edward Schäfer +and Dr Hans Driesch respectively may, perhaps, be +happily resolved. No doubt each may have to make +concessions. The mechanist must not claim that +mind is <em>only</em> an affair of nitrogenous colloids, for this +would be a large assumption built on a very small +foundation; no biologist, however much he knows +about nitrogenous colloids, can in any conceivable +sense explain his joy in a sunset or a symphony by +reference to those substances. Physical causes have +physical effects; to say that they cause anything +non-physical (<i>i.e.</i> mental) is really talking nonsense. +And, on the other hand, the vitalist must not deny +consciousness to non-protoplasmic Nature. Negations +are dangerous. It is extremely risky to say that a +Matterhorn has less spiritual significance—in itself +and for the whole, and not only for us—than a cretin +who wanders useless and unbeautiful about its lower +slopes. The activities of the two are different, that +is all we are justified in saying. True, the Matterhorn’s +are more calculable and predictable, but that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +does not prove unconsciousness. Human action also +is predictable to some extent. And the more wise +and unified a man is—the nearer he approximates to +ideal perfection—the more accurately we can predict +his response to a given stimulus. We might almost +argue, on these lines, that inorganic matter has a +certain superiority; for it is not capricious. It knows +what it wants to do, and does it; or at least—if this +is going too far—it does things, and does them <em>as if</em> +it knew very well what it wanted to do. To the same +conditions and stimuli it always responds in the same +way, like reflex action in living beings, and like association +in ordinary consciousness. Water always boils +punctually at 100°C., and freezes at 0°C., if the pressure +is 760mm. of mercury. “Canal” always makes me +think of Panama and Mars—though to other people +it might suggest Suez, their different experience having +given them other association-couplings. But any +one knowing me well, or knowing any one well, could +say almost certainly what associations “canal” would +have—what thought it will evoke. And the same +thing is true, to a less extent, of our actions. If a man +hits Jack Johnson, the latter will probably hit back. +Still more certain is it that no one will hit him unless +drunk or insane or in some sort of very exceptional +circumstances. If, on the other hand, somebody hits +me, the outcome is less certain. It will depend to a +greater extent on the result of reflection and judgment—perhaps +partly on my estimate of the other fellow’s +weight, age, training and science! Yet anyone knowing +me well, and perceiving the main conditions, could +predict with fair approach to accuracy what I should +do. Yet I am undoubtedly a conscious being. Some +actions of conscious beings, then, are predictable, if +we know the conditions. Indeed, in the mass, human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> +action is calculable with precision—witness the various +kinds of insurance. Why then deny consciousness +to the Matterhorn, because <em>all</em> its actions are calculable +and predictable? The difference is one of degree, not +kind. And indeed <em>are</em> all its actions predictable? +The fact is, they are only hypothetically so. We say +that they would be if we knew enough. But we might +say the same of the actions of a man. The truth is, +that if we say it of either we are arguing dangerously, +from our ignorance and not from our knowledge. It +is indeed as risky to say that we could predict the +Matterhorn’s actions <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">in toto</i>, as to say that we cannot +predict the man’s; for we are continually finding that +matter does things which we did not formerly suspect—<i>e.g.</i> +radio-activity. Clearly, we cannot predict all +the activities of the Matterhorn: many may depend +on undiscovered properties. So it seems that even if +some human actions, such as Newton’s discovery of +the law of gravitation and Milton’s <cite>Paradise Lost</cite> and +Spencer’s Synthetic Philosophy and Raphael’s Sistine +Madonna, are strictly unpredictable, it still does not +sufficiently differentiate us from the Matterhorn, which +on its part also has its unpredictabilities.</p> + +<p>As to what parts of matter have separate spirits—where +the Snowdon-spirit ends and the Moel Siabod +spirit begins, and so on—we need not trouble much +about that. This individualising of parts is a reasonable +supposition, but it is not necessary to press it. +Mr Maurice Hewlett has seen the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">genius loci</i> of a sunny +woodland landscape translated into human idiom as an +opulent Titianesque beauty (<cite>Lore of Proserpine</cite>), and +Manfred sees or feels a spirit of the Alps; but these +are details. The only thing that matters is the ensoulment +of the earth as a whole. No doubt its spirit-part +is divided up somehow, correspondent to its material<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> +conformation, as our spirits are divided from each +other. The division, however, is not a hermetic sealing +off. The universe is continuous. Indeed its parts +are inter-penetrative, for every particle influences +every other particle—and a thing cannot act where it is +not. Similarly, human beings are found to have modes +of communication other than those hitherto recognised +by orthodox science, and are somehow able to influence +others without regard to distance. We seem to be +connected with each other in the unseen, subliminal, +spiritual region. Our separateness is illusory. So +with individualisations of earth-features. They have +individual aspects, both on the physical and spiritual +side; but they are part of the one earth and its one +spirit, as we ourselves are. And that earth-spirit is +part of the universe-spirit or God, as the human spirit +is part of the earth-spirit.</p> + +<p>It is perhaps difficult, at first, to think of the earth +as having a life and consciousness of its own, for we +are located at little points, and do not see it whole, +nor do we see from the inside. We are like an eye +which looks at the body of which it forms a part, and +finds it difficult to believe in auditory, tactile, olfactory +experience; more difficult still to conceive of pure +thought, emotion, will. If the earth seems a dead +lump, however, think of the human brain. It is a +mere lump of whitish filaments, <em>seen from outside</em>. +But its inner experience is the rich and infinitely detailed +life of a human being. So also may the inner +experience of the earth be incomparably richer than +its outer appearance indicates to our external senses. +Objectively, our brains are part of the earth: subjectively, +<em>we see in ourselves a part of what the earth +sees in itself</em>.</p> + +<p>In thinking of the earth as an organised being, we +must guard against the error of the ancients who called<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> +it an animal. It is not an animal. It is a Being of a +higher character than any animal, for it includes all +animals and all human beings, comprising in its spirit +all their spiritual activities, and having its own activities +as well. We are to it, as our blood-corpuscles are to us; +and to think of the earth-spirit as being like our spirits +would be equivalent to a blood-corpuscle thinking of its +containing body as another corpuscle, only bigger. +Whereas the truth is that a man has feelings and cognitions +and purposes, and performs acts, which the +corpuscles cannot in the least comprehend. (Somewhat +similarly, a drop cannot have waves, or a small +celestial body an atmosphere; the lower cannot have +what the higher has, nor can it understand it.) The +corpuscle may know or believe that its conscience or +intuition is a sort of leakage down to it, of the mind +or will of its greater self (the voice of its God), and that +in so far as it does its duty according to its lights it is +assisting the purposes of that higher Being of which +it forms a part; and this faith is its highest wisdom. +So with us. Human duty, done sincerely according +to our lights, is furthering the purposes of the higher +Being in whom we live and move. This faith is our +highest wisdom concerning our relation to the earth-spirit. +We see, then, that there is a good deal of sense +in faith and intuition. They are rationally justified. +By them we are dimly in touch with the over-soul on +our inner side: not <em>really</em> dimly, for the connection +is close and real, but dimly to our normal consciousness. +The connection <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">via</i> intellect is an external, round-about +affair, necessary and useful, but different. We need +to cultivate both. This is the essence of the philosophy +of Bergson. There is more than one way of receiving +truth. Science is apt to overlook the intuitional way.</p> + +<p>On this conscience-side or moral aspect, the Fechnerian +idea is particularly fruitful and illuminating.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> +The analogy of our own mind is once more the key—the +mirror wherewith to view the greater landscape, +the village wherefrom to draw inferences about nations. +In childhood, the world is, as James said, a big, blooming, +buzzing confusion: sensations pour in quite unconnected; +the baby sees the moon, and stretches out +an arm to grab it, thus learning that it is not grabable. +It is only gradually that the child learns to associate +sounds with sights; to know what sounds indicate its +mother’s presence or proximity, and what sounds its +father’s. Gradually, individual experiences get linked +up and harmonised. Then other disjointednesses +arise. Foolish impulses war against better judgment +and parents’ advice, and the youth’s mind is “torn”, +as we say, very aptly describing the feeling. Growing +older and wiser, his mind becomes more unified and +consequently more calm. His powers are marshalled +and directed consciously at a goal or goals. Wayward +impulses are reined in. We feel that poise and strength +and wisdom are attained: never perfectly and ideally, +but at least to a considerable degree, as compared with +the earlier state.</p> + +<p>So with the earth-spirit. Being far greater than the +human subsidiary spirits, it is longer in coming to +maturity. Its elements are still largely at loggerheads +with each other. The nations war against each other, +and universal peace seems a long time in coming. But +steadily, steadily works the earth-spirit, and the +nations almost unconsciously—like somnambulists—carry +out its will. They are working, consciously or +unconsciously, towards universal at-one-ment. A +League of Nations has arisen, and the Federation of +the World is in sight. Union is the political watch-word. +Labour is combining throughout the world. +East is learning from West, and West from East.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +China sends her students to Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, +Harvard, and welcomes Western methods. India +repays our civilising with the poems of Tagore. In +trade, thousands of small businesses are unified in a +few great combines, preparing for some sort of Socialism. +Finance spreads its world-wide network. Science is +becoming international. The frontiers are melting; +coalescence, unity, harmony are being achieved. The +earth-spirit is reconciling its warring elements. When +it succeeds in the complete reconciliation; when the +era of universal peace and brotherhood shall dawn; +when it reaches its huge equivalent of the ripe, calm, +contented wisdom of human age—ah, then will come a +state of things which we can but dimly prefigure. But +it will come. The age of gold is in the future, not the +past. It is our duty and our privilege to hasten the +coming of this millennium. And even this is not the +end. We cannot conceive the things that shall be. +Eye hath not seen, or ear heard. Enough for us to +know the tendency, and to trust ourselves to it, actively +co-operating.</p> + +<div class="centered"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Before beginning, and without an end,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As space eternal, and as surety sure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is fixed a Power divine which moves to good,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only its laws endure.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">This is its touch upon the blossomed rose,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The fashion of its hand shaped lotus-leaves;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In dark soil and the silence of the seeds<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The robe of Spring it weaves.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">It maketh and unmaketh, mending all;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What it hath wrought is better than had been;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Slow grows the splendid pattern that it plans,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its wistful hands between.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">This is its work upon the things ye see:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The unseen things are more; men’s hearts and minds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The thoughts of peoples and their ways and wills,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those, too, the great Law binds.<br /></span> +<span class="rght1">—Sir Edwin Arnold, <cite>Light of Asia</cite>.</span><br /> +</div></div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p> + +<p>Is it asked: “Who is the Law-giver, and to what end +is the Law?” The question is foolish. Parts cannot +know wholes, and the whole does not want parts to be +anything but what they obviously are. Each fits +into its place, and can do useful work there. Let +it keep to tasks “of a size with its capacity”—as +à Kempis says—and leave the rest. “What doth the +Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy +and to walk humbly with thy God?”</p> +<hr class="l1"/> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>RELIGIOUS BELIEF AFTER THE WAR</h2> + + +<p class="cap"><span class="upper">There</span> is naturally and rightly a great deal of +anxiety in the minds of most thoughtful +people as to the state of religion after the +war. The old order seems to have come down in chaos +about our ears, and we are wondering what shape the +new building will take. Even our clergy, or some of +them, are honestly confessing that beliefs can never +be just the same again; to name only two things, +they feel that the literal acceptance of the non-resistance +doctrine is no longer unqualifiedly possible, as +many were formerly inclined to maintain; for the +aggression of Germany has made clear the necessity +of resisting evil; second, that the old Protestant +doctrine of immediate heaven or hell cannot satisfactorily +be applied to many of the millions of young +fellows who have gone over; some idea of more gradual +progress through an intermediate state seems more +reasonable. But will this be sufficient? Shall we +jog on again, after this world-shaking cataclysm, with +such a very microscopical trimming—such an almost +imperceptible sail-reefing—as this? Will not rather +the whole theological scheme have to be remodelled? +Can nations which have suffered as the belligerents +have suffered—even those at home, still more the +brave lads who have gone through experiences such as +they never dreamed of in their worst nightmares—can +these people, even if they wish, accept the old +scheme, or anything like it?</p> + +<p>I am not going to try to answer such a large question<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> +directly. Mr Wells has attempted something of the +sort in his book, <cite>God the Invisible King</cite>, and he prophesies +a religious revolution. It may come as he +thinks, but it is perhaps more probable that, in spite +of the most earth-shaking events, a certain continuity +of thought will be maintained. New religions are not +manufactured complete while you wait, like Pallas +emerging full-armed from the head of Zeus; or, if +they are, by such brilliant Olympians as Mr Wells, +they do not get themselves accepted. But there +probably will be enough of a change to be called +a very considerable thought-revolution, even allowing +for some inevitable continuity; and inasmuch as each +expression of opinion counts as a datum and as a +directive agency, I venture to make my prophecy. +And I avoid the negative side, also any argument as +to whether or why this or that particular doctrine will +become obsolete; I think it better to let obsolescent +beliefs drop quietly into their limbo, and to concern +ourselves with the living ones that will replace them.</p> + +<p>First and most important, the idea of God. We +have heard, over and over again, the pathetic cry: +“Why does God permit such things? Surely He must +be either not All-good or not Almighty?” And one +hears of men, even among the clergy, whose minds have +been clouded by this difficulty. Mr Wells solves the +problem in the fashion of J. S. Mill and the late William +James, by postulating a finite god, a good being who is +doing his best but who is struggling with a refractory +material. To many people this seems a helpful +notion, for it saves God’s goodness and gives a pleasurable +sense of being co-workers with Him in His effort +to improve things. But to many of us it is unsatisfactory. +Indeed, if one could say such a thing of the +author of <cite>Bealby</cite> and of the most genial of modern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> +philosophers, we might say that the finite-god idea seems +impossible to anyone with a sense of humour. Is it +not really rather ridiculous of us to decide so solemnly +that God is no doubt a good fellow but that He is having +a tough time of it in fighting Satan, and that there does +not seem to be any certainty of His winning? Perhaps +the idea appeals to adventurous spirits like Wells +and James because it has an air of being a sporting +event, and promises excitement; but, I repeat, +is it not a rather ridiculous proposition for us small +creatures to make? “Finite” and “Infinite” are +words; I am not sure that they have any very clear +meaning. As to “infinite” in particular, the idea is only +a negative one; we think of something finite, and then +say “it is not that”. But even of “finite”, can we +say that it has any useful clear meaning? The pen +with which I write this may be said to be finite, for I +can give its dimensions, and in many ways can define +the limits of its powers. But inasmuch as every particle +in it attracts every other particle of matter in the +universe, the little pen’s finiteness or infinity depends +on whether the universe itself is finite or infinite; +and that is a bigger question than our small wits can +settle. And if it is so with a pen, will it not be more so +with greater things?</p> + +<p>We measure things against the foot-rule of our own +selves. We can imagine something much greater than +those selves, both physical and spiritual. But when +it comes to conceiving the whole physical universe +of which we form an insignificant part, I do not feel +that we can know whether it is finite or not. It is too +big for our foot-rule. Even when dealing with the +distances of the stars, we realise that the billions of +miles which we can talk about so glibly do not convey +much to our minds. We can think of a distance of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> +few miles fairly clearly, recalling how long it takes us +to walk so far; but greater distances soon become +mere figures, not representing anything that we can +picture. And when we reach the conception of the +whole physical universe, we get quite out of our depth. +We do not know whether it is finite or infinite; we +know only that it is inconceivably greater than we are.</p> + +<p>So with the spirit which energises through it. Beginning +with what we know best, we find ourselves +acquainted with a world of mental phenomena bound +together in and by what we call our self. Whatever +we think of Hume’s argument that a mass of experiences +do not involve a soul that has them, it is reasonable +and useful to have a name for the active thing which +perceives and thinks and acts and feels, whether we +call it soul or spirit or mind or self or <i>x</i>. It is something +which maintains a sort of identity, in spite of +growth and change; and it is marked off from other +selves. John Smith has John Smith’s experiences, +not William Jones’s. This individual spirit energises +through each of our bodies. Of our own spirit we +have a very close knowledge, of other spirits we have a +rather more remote knowledge from inference; we +infer their states of mind from the states of body which +we observe, or from the material effects which they +cause in speaking or writing. Passing from the inferred +human spirits (inferred because certain lumps of matter +act in a way similar to that of the lumps which we call +our own bodies), we come to other and larger and very +different pieces of matter such as planets. It may +seem at the first glance an absurd idea, but I for one +cannot think of matter as dead, or of a whole planet +without any soul except what is in the human bodies +which make up an infinitesimal portion of its mass. +It seems to me that there must be some sort of mind<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> +energising through the planet-mass as my own mind +energises through my body-mass. And, carrying the +idea further, we arrive at a conception of the whole +universe as ensouled by a Being who in the material +immanent manifestation is the Logos of the Christian +doctrine, but who also transcends the material part as +indeed the Christian doctrine teaches. This spirit, +transcending the physical universe as well as energising +through it, is greater in comparison with our spirits than +the physical universe is in comparison with our bodies. +Therefore, once more, and to a greater degree, we are out +of our depth. To throw words like finite and infinite +at such a Being is to make ourselves ridiculous. It is +like a microbe sticking its own adjective-labels—if +it has any—on a man, whom the microbe’s vocabulary +as a matter of fact will not apply to. God is too great +for our measure. He is high as heaven; what canst +thou do? deeper than Sheol; what canst thou know? +The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and +broader than the sea—yea, than the whole universe +itself.</p> + +<p>This conclusion of Zophar the Naamathite, acquiesced +in by Job at the end of the argument, seems to some +minds an evaporation of God into an Absolute without +any human attributes. We feel the necessity or at +least the desirability of regarding Him as good, loving, +etc., and we shrink from any de-personalisation. But +there is a way out of the difficulty. God is incomprehensible, +as the Creed says; parts cannot comprehend +wholes. But there is something deep in us, call it +what you will, which tells us that our ideals of Good, +Truth, and Beauty are divine; are God in so far as +we are able to cognise Him. Good, true, beautiful +actions and thoughts are God manifested through our +personal limitations; they are rainbow colours broken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> +out of the pure white light of God. We do right to +worship them. They are the highest we can comprehend, +though we may reach lame hands of faith to the +apprehension of the Unconditioned. But this is a +very great mystery, revealed only to the mystic. And +it is a dangerous path, for by reaching “beyond good +and evil” we lose touch with humanity and with the +virtues we can exercise, risking the insanity to which +Nietzsche so logically succumbed. We may dimly +apprehend the Incomprehensible, but we must live +and work among comprehensibilities. That is what +we are here for. God is conceived by us—and rightly +so conceived—as Good, Truth, Beauty, though we can +see that as He really is He must transcend them. +Mr Wells’s distinction between the Finite God and the +Veiled Being is not an ultimate. The two are one, +seen as two because of our limitations. They are the +rainbow and its source. The sun cannot be looked +upon directly, but only when dimmed or reflected.</p> + +<p>Then as to immortality. The deaths of so many of +our best, and the sorrow thus brought into almost +every home, force this question into prominence. If +blank pessimism is to be avoided, many people feel that +they must have some assurance of the continued existence +of those who have made the supreme sacrifice—a +sacrifice at the call of duty, greater probably than +any sacrifice ever made by us of the older generation +who have lived in the smooth times of peace. We feel +that if these magnificent young lives have come to +nought, have been <em>wasted</em>, there is no rational religious +belief possible to us. Accordingly we inquire about +immortality. And, curiously enough, Science, which +in the last generation tended to deny or discredit +individual survival of bodily death, now gives a quite +opposite verdict. Psychical research brings forward<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> +scientific evidence for that welcome belief. It seems +too good to be true; but it is true. Public opinion +has not yet fully accepted it—nor is it well that opinion +should change too rapidly—for it was well drenched +in materialism during the heyday of physical science +and its astonishing applications in the latter part of the +nineteenth century, but the leaders of thought in almost +all branches—scientific, legal, literary, and what not—are +now admitting that the evidence is at least surprising, +and those who have studied it most are one by +one announcing that it is convincing. There are many +questions yet to solve, such as the nature and occupations +of the future life, concerning which there are +different views, and the problems may turn out to be +insoluble; but the main problem seems on the way +to be settled. The survival of human personality is a +fact. And the indications, so far as we have got, +suggest that the next stage is a life of opportunity, +work, progress, even more than the present one. There +is much to be thankful for in even this only incipient +revelation. It is salvation great and joyous, to those +reared amid unacceptable theories of a blank materialism +or the much more dreadful hell-doctrines of the +theologians.</p> + +<p>The religion of the coming time, then, seems likely +to be mainly based on these two articles, belief in God +in the way indicated, and belief in survival and progress +on the other side. Both beliefs are empirical, +and are thus in harmony with the temper of our time. +They begin with the things which are most real to us, +first the fact of conscious experience, then the external +world, and reason upward therefrom, instead of +beginning with metaphysical entities and attributes, +and reasoning down—and failing to establish contact +with the material world. Religious experience there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> +still may be, and this may give rise to quite new and +unexpected forms of belief or worship; but on the whole +the tendency of thought for the last three hundred +years has been increasingly empirical, and the success +of the method is likely to ensure its continuance. It +may be true that the ideal world is the more real—probably +it is—that out of thought’s interior sphere +these phenomenal wonders of the world rose to upper +air, as Emerson says; but for us in the present circumstances +the way back to universe-spiritualisation is +<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">via</i> experience (and mainly sense-presentations) carefully +observed and studied. If these scientific methods, +which are open to everybody, can lead to belief in God +and a spiritual world to which we pass at death, it +seems unnecessary to return to the bad old days when +sporadic experiences of this or that ecstatic, or logic-chopping +by this or that theologian, led to beliefs and +cults of widely differing character according to the +idiosyncracy of the writer. A method which is open +to all and the rules of which are agreed on will be likely +to yield something like unanimity. The churches +may yet form one fold, if they will; in which, with +variations to satisfy different æsthetic or symbolistic +needs, all souls may find the answer to their queries, +healing for their sorrow, and scope for their reverence +and love; in a word, salvation.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center f7">PRINTED BY THE ANCHOR PRESS LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX, ENGLAND.</p> + +<hr class="l1"/> + +<div class="tnote"><h3>Transcriber's Notes</h3> + + +<p>Punctuation has been corrected without note.</p> + +<p>The following printer’s errors have been corrected, on page</p> +<div class="left"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td class="col3">1</td><td class="col4">“neaking” changed to “sneaking” (tinged with a sneaking sympathy +for its hero)</td></tr> +<tr><td class="col3">49</td><td class="col4">“odject” changed to “object” (that the position of the lost object +could)</td></tr> +<tr><td class="col3">66</td><td class="col4">“comandingly” changed to “commandingly” (soothingly or commandingly +filling the patient’s mind)</td></tr> +<tr><td class="col3">81</td><td class="col4">“handing” changed to “handed” (would not want his enemies handed +over to)</td></tr> +<tr><td class="col3">90</td><td class="col4">“a” added (brutal soldiery, in a Rouen market-place)</td></tr> +<tr><td class="col3">90</td><td class="col4">“Salpètriêre” changed to “Salpêtrière” (Come to the Salpêtrière +Hospital, and I will show you)</td></tr> +<tr><td class="col3">97</td><td class="col4">“gegenbüer” changed to “gegenüber” (Die Tagesansicht gegenüber der +Nachtansicht)</td></tr> +<tr><td class="col3">98</td><td class="col4">“cerebal” changed to “cerebral” (chemical change in cerebral tissue +or what not)</td></tr> +<tr><td class="col3">100</td><td class="col4">“discontinous” changed to “discontinuous” (thin and indeed discontinuous +skin which).</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p>Otherwise oddities and inconsistencies of the original text have been +preserved, including the spelling of foreign names.</p> + +<p>The first name of Mesmer was Franz, not Friedrich.</p> + +<p>On page 37 a paragraph starts with point 1. There is no point 2.</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Psychical Miscellanea, by J. Arthur Hill + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSYCHICAL MISCELLANEA *** + +***** This file should be named 37565-h.htm or 37565-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/5/6/37565/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, eagkw and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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