Initial commit of ebook 78283 filesHEADmain

6 files changed, 3669 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/78283-0.txt b/78283-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fe9950c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78283-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1389 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78283 ***
+
+
+
+
+                               APOLLONIUS
+
+                                 OR THE
+
+                           PRESENT AND FUTURE
+                         OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
+
+
+
+
+                               APOLLONIUS
+
+                                   OR
+
+                       The Present and Future of
+                           Psychical Research
+
+                                   BY
+                          E. N. BENNETT, M.A.
+               _Late Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford_
+
+
+            Κέρδος ἄν εἴη μήτε πιστεύειν μήτε ἀπιστεῖν πᾶσιν
+
+                       _Phil. Vit. Apoll. II, 45_
+
+
+                                NEW YORK
+                         E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+                            681 FIFTH AVENUE
+
+
+
+
+                 APOLLONIUS, COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY E. P.
+                      DUTTON & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS
+                  RESERVED. :: :: PRINTED IN U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+                               APOLLONIUS
+
+                                 OR THE
+
+                           PRESENT AND FUTURE
+                         OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
+
+
+
+
+Psychical research has in the last twenty-five years lived down the
+obloquy and suspicion which surrounded its earlier days, and secured an
+assured position as a recognized branch of scientific study. In nearly
+every European country and in the United States of America men of
+acknowledged eminence in their professions――philosophers, scientists,
+doctors, literary men――have devoted themselves to the earnest study of
+those obscure and baffling phenomena which form the subject matter of
+psychical research, though this field of scientific endeavour holds
+at present few allurements in the shape of personal advantage or
+reward, no appreciable endowments exist to facilitate such research,
+no professorial chairs are reserved for its devotees. The patient and
+unselfish toil of those men, who have given to psychical research years
+which otherwise might have brought them rich material gains, is based
+on their deep and abiding interest in the subject, and their frank
+endorsement of Schopenhauer’s words:
+
+    “The phenomena under discussion are, at least from a
+    philosophical standpoint, of all the facts presented to us by
+    the whole of experience without comparison the most important;
+    it is therefore the duty of every educated man to make himself
+    thoroughly acquainted with them.”
+
+Nevertheless, in spite of the recent emergence of psychical research
+into the clearer light of scientific tolerance and even encouragement,
+it must be admitted that its literary output has within recent years,
+as far as the English-speaking races are concerned, fallen far behind
+the brilliant and yet substantial work of its earlier pioneers. Few,
+if any, of our modern researchers in Great Britain have reached the
+high level attained by the works of, say, Myers, Gurney, Podmore,
+Professor and Mrs Sidgwick, and Professor James of Harvard. Nor again
+has any adequate progress been maintained in the experimental work
+which characterized the earlier history of the Society for Psychical
+Research. Our main evidence for telepathy is still the careful work of
+the Sidgwick group at Brighton, and little has been accomplished in
+the investigation of “physical phenomena” since the perplexities and
+disappointments of the Palladino experiments. In America the glory has
+indeed departed from a movement which was formerly illumined by the
+splendid work of William James, Hyslop, Hodgson, and Prince.
+
+On the other hand, if in Great Britain the earlier branches of
+experiment have to some extent been neglected, a vast amount of useful
+work has been accomplished since the death of Myers in the new field
+of “cross correspondence,”[1] which, in the opinion of some, may well
+prove to be the most productive of all our areas of research. On the
+Continent too experimental work of a high order has been developed
+during recent years, more especially in France and in Germany, the
+results of which have been given to the world in the writings of such
+men as Richet, Osty, Schrenck-Notzing, Tischner, Dessoir, Driesch, and
+others. The happy selection this year of Dr Driesch as President of the
+S. P. R. is a tribute to the fine work of himself and his countrymen.
+No better future could indeed be desired for psychical research than
+that it should occupy the serious attention of German scholars and be
+treated in accordance with the painstaking and efficient methods of
+German science.
+
+  [1] i. e. two mediums sitting widely apart, sometimes even in
+      different countries, receive different messages alleged to
+      come from the same discarnate personality. When taken
+      separately such messages may be obscure and meaningless;
+      when read in conjunction they present a clear and intelligible
+      meaning.
+
+But while the advance of psychical research on strictly scientific
+lines has to some extent fallen short of the hopes of our pioneers,
+an unprecedented development has taken place in the cruder and less
+critical forms of what is popularly known as “Spiritualism”. This
+increased interest in spiritualistic phenomena has been followed by
+a vast output of books devoted to the acceptance of the spiritist
+theory and generally characterized by the absence of scientific
+spirit or critical investigation. Thousands of persons who fully
+admit their acceptance of the “facts of spiritualism” and allege that
+they find in the teachings of the spiritualist creed guidance in life
+and consolation in death appear to be satisfied with a minimum of
+reason for the faith which is in them. Popular enthusiasm for occult
+experiences has produced no corresponding increase in the number of
+serious students. The valuable material accumulated with immense care
+in the _Proceedings_ of the Psychical Research Society is to a large
+extent unknown to and unexplored by the modern spiritualist, who
+professes to base his claims, if called upon to do so, on uncritical
+data derived from professional clairvoyants or his own automatic
+script. The result has been a veritable flood of alleged messages from
+another world which, in some cases, have been supplied to the Sunday
+newspapers by discarnate and obliging intelligences with the regularity
+of an editorial leader. The recognized spiritualist churches, “Lyceums”
+and similar organizations in Great Britain, 610 in number apart from
+independent societies and groups, possess a membership of at least
+54,000; and, despite the honourable efforts of many educated and
+enlightened spiritualists who are determined enemies of mediumistic
+fraud, a steady increase has taken place in the ranks of those
+pseudo-mediums who trade on the credulity of the public.
+
+At first sight this strange development might appear to be wholly out
+of keeping with the spirit of an age which may reasonably be described
+as materialistic. The appalling failure of organized Christianity to
+avert or shorten the War, the diseased growths which have fastened upon
+our music, art, and drama, the waste and extravagance in our social
+life, the cruel self-seeking of our international conduct――these and
+other influences of the War-period and its aftermath have provided a
+fitting inspiration for large sections of our population which appear
+to have little taste for much beyond the life-purpose of Mr. Wells’
+hero “to put one’s hands on the dibs, and have a good time.” But
+history has demonstrated in the case of individuals and nations alike
+that material and even intellectual progress does not necessarily
+eliminate superstition. The sceptical Julius Caesar crawled up the
+steps of the Capitol to avert the jealous wrath of the gods; the
+Renaissance was responsible for two centuries of witch-burning. And so
+we find that side by side with the weakening of moral and religious
+sanctions a widespread spirit of credulous and uncritical belief
+pervades the community. The vast developments in the circulation of
+cheap newspapers while adding enormously to the information of the
+public on current events, has also led our less educated citizens in
+general to accept what they see in print. During the War-fever even
+men of recognized position whose training might, one would think,
+have instilled into them some measure of intellectual caution, have
+exhibited amazing credulity. The late Bishop of Carlisle, and the
+Editor of _Punch_ are typical of thousands of our fellow-citizens,
+clerical and lay alike, who accepted without question such grotesque
+fabrications as the German “Corpse Factory” or the “Crucified
+Canadian.” Stories embodied in the _Bryce Report_ and similar
+publications were received without any misgiving or discrimination by
+ninety-nine per cent. of our population. The nebulous story of the
+singularly inefficient “Angels of Mons” formed the text of lay and
+ecclesiastical addresses. The national mind, carefully tutored by the
+fraud or stupidity of controlled journalism, was ready when the War
+ceased to exchange the material horrors of this world for the spiritual
+excitements of the next.
+
+The most powerful impulse, however, behind the new spiritualism has
+come from the staggering loss of human life in the Great War. Never
+before in the world’s history has the cry of human bereavement been so
+loud and bitter, for the vast majority of the millions who perished in
+the conflict were young men leaving behind them a heritage of sorrow
+incomparably greater than that which follows from the loss of the old,
+who in far greater numbers die every year in the ordinary course of
+nature. Nor has the poignancy of their grief for the loss of sons and
+brothers been lessened for those among the survivors who have reached
+the conviction that these vast armies of the world were led to the
+slaughter on false pretences, and that the soldiers died not, as most
+of them honestly believed, to promote justice, peace, and freedom, but
+to subserve the same vile motives of imperialist and commercial greed
+which have promoted every other modern war.
+
+In earlier ages the Christian religion did indubitably inspire in the
+minds of its adherents a genuine conviction of a life beyond the grave
+and a future recognition of those lost awhile. But Protestantism in its
+violent rejection of earlier tenets has so far attenuated the doctrine
+of a future existence that its harsh interdicts on prayers for the
+dead and its vague and inconsistent beliefs as to the state of the
+departed have to a large extent ceased either to attract or convince.
+At Omdurman the writer saw thousands of men advancing against the most
+terrific fire of the century’s warfare with the name of God upon their
+lips and real conviction of a future life in their hearts――but these
+men were not Christians. The carelessness, timidity, or corruption of
+the Churches have served to devitalize not only the ethical precepts
+of their Master but also that immortality which He brought to light.
+But, although the old springs of comfort have to a large extent ceased
+to flow, the needs of the human heart remain, and are turned to those
+fresh sources of assurance and consolation which are so lavishly
+offered by modern Spiritualism.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those who undertake the scientific consideration of psychic phenomena
+must realize the existence of certain initial difficulties specially
+attached to this branch of research. No form of scientific work is
+more exposed than this to the dangerous influence of the “personal
+equation” in the researcher. An astronomer might conceivably be
+prejudiced in his work on Mars by some _a priori_ tendency to regard
+that planet as the home of sentient beings, but the influence of such
+personal factors in scientific research may generally be regarded as
+almost negligible. When, however, we find ourselves in contact with
+psychic phenomena which indicate intelligence, it is often difficult to
+dissociate our conclusions as to the source of such intelligence from
+our other beliefs or disbeliefs. On an occasion famous in the annals
+of the Society for Psychical Research a sealed envelope containing
+a written statement by the late F. W. Myers was opened in order to
+test the accuracy of Mrs Verrall’s automatic ‘Myers’ script, which
+had previously claimed to reveal the words of the sealed message. I
+shall never forget the look of cruel disappointment which appeared on
+the faces of some of those present when the two messages were found
+to be dissimilar. On the other hand one of the party, a persistent
+opponent of the spiritist hypothesis, received the result with obvious
+satisfaction.
+
+That such preconceived hopes or opinions colour the general attitude
+of the devotees of popular and uncritical spiritualism is obvious.
+Given a dark room, a professional medium inadequately controlled or
+uncontrolled and a cardboard trumpet, the voice which comes through
+the trumpet is, to a large extent, accepted as that of a discarnate
+friend because the sitters are already convinced of a survival or
+earnestly desire to be so convinced. Even in the later work of
+psychical researchers of a higher order, men of intellectual eminence
+and scientific training, a certain relaxation of critical rigidity is
+sometimes noticeable. In these cases the lapse from earlier standards
+of evidence is no doubt due to the absolute conviction secured by long
+and critical investigations at some previous period. When already
+convinced intellectually by earlier experiences of the reality of the
+phenomena under investigation, even men of the mental calibre of a Sir
+William Crookes may almost insensibly deviate in subsequent discussions
+from the evidential standard of the investigations from which they
+derived their earlier conclusions.
+
+There exists another weakness of the human mind against which the
+psychical researcher must always be on his guard. Those perverse
+tendencies which are covered by the term ‘megalomania’ form a sinister
+factor which serves continually to warp the judgment and even, in
+some cases, the moral sense of those who lay claim to the possession
+of supernormal powers. It is doubtful whether this form of mental
+perversity, appearing often as a kind of kink in otherwise normal and
+regular minds, has ever been adequately recognized by those whose
+task it has been to collate the facts and estimate the validity of
+alleged psychic phenomena. Megalomaniac impulses, indeed, would appear
+to provide at any rate a partial explanation of many declarations
+about strange and startling occurrences outside the actual area of
+the _séance_ room. The writer, from personal experiences in several
+modern wars, including the last, and a careful study of war psychology
+and war-literature, has come to the conclusion that of the large
+number of atrocities which are alleged to disfigure the record of all
+civilized armies only a very small percentage ever occur at all. Some
+of these stories are certainly invented by Propaganda Departments,
+civil and military, whose members, in some instances, do not scruple
+to disseminate falsehoods in order to blacken the good name of an
+enemy people and so increase the ferocity and fighting efficiency of
+their own troops. But the bulk of these atrocity tales are due to the
+megalomaniac desire on the part of soldiers or civilians to recount
+thrilling and terrible events or pose as the actual participants in
+some gruesome episode. A civilian refugee or a wounded soldier in
+hospital (a normally truthful person) will sometimes invent in detail
+an atrocity story in order to impress an interrogator or a nurse and
+so secure for himself an amount of megalomaniac satisfaction. It is
+presumably the same curious impulse which brings to famous criminals
+in the dock offers of marriage from ordinarily decent and respectable
+women, or leads an obscure tourist to carve his initials on the
+Parthenon, or stimulates people to frenzied social effort in order to
+shake the hand of a royal personage, however commonplace his character
+or feeble his achievement.
+
+But if this form of mental perversion finds so many outlets in the
+course of everyday life, we may well expect it to flourish even more
+abundantly in the environment of psychic happenings. After all, what
+ordinary experience, however desirable, could vie in value and interest
+with the power to receive or convey actual messages from the dead? What
+ordinary scientific achievement could equal the exercise of a power
+which could secure the passage of matter through matter, bring about
+the levitation of a table without personal contact in defiance of the
+laws of gravitation, or cause the appearance of a materialized hand or
+even a full-length figure?
+
+The professional mediums who every Sunday, sometimes more frequently,
+conduct the spiritualist services in our towns are obviously regarded
+as persons of great importance and authority by their large audiences,
+and the consciousness of this, apart altogether from the fact of their
+fees, may stimulate them to supplement, if need be, the output of
+possibly genuine phenomena by an ever-ready supply of pseudo-messages
+and haphazard “delineations.” The humbler mediums, usually unpaid, who
+form the centre of thousands of “circles” in our working-class homes
+are invested with an importance and feel a mental exaltation quite
+foreign to the drabness of their ordinary surroundings and occupations.
+And here again if genuine powers of clairvoyance are inadequate or
+non-existent, this special form of spiritual pride will still provide
+a satisfactory flow of messages from the deceased buccaneer or Indian
+chief who acts as the “control.”
+
+It is difficult indeed to assign any limits to the intrusion of
+this singular influence in the domain of psychical research. In one
+remarkable instance a London barrister of recognized standing and
+enjoying a large income from his profession posed for some time in
+private circles as a physical medium. He claimed _inter alia_ the
+power of causing the partial levitation of a table by placing his
+hands on the top. Yet at a sitting conducted by members of the S. P.
+R. this gentleman was easily detected in the childish trick of having
+inserted inside his cuffs two small pieces of wood, which were thus
+introduced under the table’s edge! On another occasion I found during
+the investigation of a case in Hampshire that a maid-servant, possibly
+in collusion with her mistress, was producing luminous crosses by
+rubbing moistened matches on the furniture and walls――there being no
+conceivable motive for this transparent deception beyond the desire to
+be regarded as a successful “medium”. Much, if not all of the story
+of the Rev. Stainton Moses’ career can probably best be explained
+as an amazing example of spiritual megalomania. Such a theory of
+course involves the disagreeable conclusion that a clergyman and a
+public-school master, endowed with a kindly and generous disposition,
+must have spent years of his life in the systematic deception of
+his most intimate friends and, later on, of the public at large.
+Nevertheless, all said and done, the moral miracle in this astonishing
+case is, as Mr. Podmore suggested, more easy than the physical one.
+
+The extraordinary poltergeist cases――cases by no means infrequent and
+widely distributed――in which furniture is violently moved, windows and
+crockery smashed, and pictures thrown down, can usually be traced to
+the furtive trickery of little boys, or more commonly little girls,
+who do not scruple to destroy their parents’ property and peace of
+mind in order to secure for themselves the secret satisfaction of some
+megalomaniac impulse.
+
+Apart from the deliberate imposture, due more often than we suspect
+to the megalomaniac impulses referred to above, there is some ground
+for believing in the existence of a still more subtle form of apparent
+fraud. It is frequently asserted by mediums of repute that they
+are unable to do justice to themselves or exercise their gifts to
+good purpose because of the unsatisfactory influence of one or more
+sitters of an aggressively sceptical type, a curious parallel――be it
+said in all reverence――to the strange remark of the Evangelist that
+the miracles of Our Lord were sometimes actually prevented by the
+disbelief of His hearers.
+
+But may the disbelieving sitters, in some instances, go further
+than a mere hindrance of genuine phenomena and actually cause the
+production of trickery and fraud on the part of the medium? Given a
+medium susceptible to telepathic suggestion, and one or more sitters
+suspecting or convinced in advance that all they will witness at the
+_séance_ will be an exhibition of trickery, it is easy to see that
+telepathic suggestion of fraud, conscious or unconscious, from the
+minds of these sceptics may result in trickery which is primarily due
+not to the medium but to themselves. This risk is obviously accentuated
+when the medium falls (as, for example, in Mrs Piper’s case) into a
+cataleptic condition or some form of ordinary hypnosis.
+
+In any case it is confidently asserted by psychical researchers of
+capacity and experience that the same medium may be fraudulent at one
+moment and genuine at another. Such a thesis is doubtless hard of
+acceptance to ordinary men or women, however disposed they may be
+to an unprejudiced consideration of psychic phenomena; and it was,
+in fact, rejected by the original founders of the Psychical Research
+Society, who definitely refused to include within the area of their
+investigations the alleged phenomena of any medium once detected in
+the perpetration of fraud. Further experience, however, has apparently
+modified this once inflexible attitude, and at any rate a majority
+of the Council of the S. P. R. are now willing to hold experimental
+_séances_ with mediums against whom fraud has been openly alleged or
+actually proved. The writer shares the view of this majority, for, as
+far as he can judge from personal experience or the definite testimony
+of others, a medium like Eusapia Palladino was, sometimes, indubitably
+guilty of patent and childish trickery (which she would subsequently
+admit quite shamelessly), and at other times produced valid phenomena
+of amazing interest under the strictest test-conditions.
+
+We need not devote much time to the deliberate fraud and trickery
+which have always been admittedly associated with certain manifestations
+of mediumship and have frequently inspired such disgust and contempt in
+the minds of would-be investigators that they have abandoned the quest
+altogether. Those who have persevered in spite of discouragement know
+what it is to find oneself in uncomfortable and ill-ventilated rooms,
+holding the hands of unknown persons in the dark, tortured by the
+metallic music of a cheap gramophone, or compelled to join in discordant
+renderings of revivalist hymns or dreadful ditties like “Where is now
+the prophet Daniel?” And one realizes all the time that the music is
+meant to drown the noise caused by a fraudulent medium in wrapping
+himself in muslin or adjusting a false beard, and further that one will
+have to pay a guinea for this wretched exhibition! What researcher,
+again, has not experienced the boredom of public or private sittings for
+“delineations”, when a medium, after a few spasmodic twitchings, “passes
+under control” and proceeds to describe the appearance of the deceased
+relatives and friends of the members of a credulous audience, which will
+subsequently contribute to the “silver collection”? Who, too, has not
+reflected with amazement upon the staggering credulity of men and women
+who accept the delineated “old gentleman with white hair” or the “old
+lady with grey hair parted in the middle” as unquestionably their late
+father or mother; or, in a materializing _séance_, believe that the same
+piece of butter muslin waved in one direction is a lost grandparent and
+waved in another direction is a little child? Such wearisome and sordid
+experiences form the _via dolorosa_ of researchers, who are prepared
+to seek for gold even in the muddiest streams, and sometimes find
+it; for, even if ninety-five per cent. of the alleged phenomena are
+explicable by trickery or deception, the remaining five may defy all
+such explanations.
+
+The student of psychical research is confronted at the outset by a
+considerable volume of reasoned and unreasoned opposition. Persons
+who in other directions are entirely opposed to each other’s points
+of view combine for a common assault: uncompromising materialists
+and devout evangelical Christians form a strange alliance against
+what they vaguely describe as “spiritualism”. An even more curious
+dislike comes from large masses of our population who, without any
+deep convictions or reasoned arguments for their hostility, are
+irritated by a movement which appears to upset the even tenor of
+their mental conservatism. Even cultured people are not proof against
+this prejudice: at many dinner tables any sustained reference to the
+alleged phenomena of mediumship would be regarded as “bad form” and
+thoroughly objectionable. When the writer entered the House of Commons
+he was informed by the chairman of his Liberal Association that his
+membership of the Psychical Research Society would “do him harm in the
+constituency”. This unintelligent aversion to spiritual novelties,
+which almost wrecked the Salvation Army in its infancy, secured the
+triumph of the Dayton “fundamentalists,” and now, though happily with
+diminishing force, assails the study of clairvoyance or telepathy,
+seems analogous to that primitive instinct which impels wild birds to
+combine for the destruction of an exotic parrot which has escaped from
+its cage.
+
+Even as regards the more serious of his opponents, the apologist
+of psychical research is entitled to object at the start that
+comparatively few of these are adequately equipped for their task. It
+is lamentable that our hostile critics have for the most part scarcely
+taken the trouble to understand our position or furnish themselves with
+more than a quite superficial knowledge of the facts. What a sorry
+figure would be cut by most of our lay and ecclesiastical opponents
+were they set an examination paper on the evidences accumulated by the
+Psychical Research Society, to go no further! One of the best known
+opponents of the phenomena of mediumship has admitted that he has never
+made any personal investigation of the claims of any prominent medium,
+British or foreign, and a _brochure_ distributed to his audience
+exhibits an amazing ignorance of the subject matter against which his
+platform diatribes are directed. There is another reason for popular
+hostility. Much of the fraud which admittedly exists is of a peculiarly
+heartless character, for its exponents derive their resources largely
+from bereaved men and women who fly to spiritualism for tidings of
+their lost ones and for solace in their grief. The natural indignation
+felt against such traffickers in human sorrow undoubtedly predisposes
+many superficial critics to assume in their haste that all public
+mediumship is fraudulent.
+
+Apart from the more or less unintelligent prejudices of the public
+generally, the scientific investigation of the phenomena of mediumship
+is hampered by the professional antagonisms of the Church and the Law.
+The menace of legal proceedings, while a terror to the fraudulent,
+is also a deterrent to the supply of genuine phenomena. Mediums are
+usually persons of a very sensitive and nervous temperament, and
+the fact that at any moment a Mrs Leonard is liable to the same
+legal procedure and the same conviction as the most insignificant
+fortune-teller is not conducive to the regular supply of those
+supernormal facts which form the subject-matter of scientific psychical
+research. From time to time, and apparently by concerted action, legal
+proceedings are set on foot by the authorities against public mediums.
+The requisite evidence is furnished by detectives or journalists
+who have secured sittings with the defendants, and the prosecution
+takes place under an Act of George IV, directed against “vagabonds”
+and “fortune-tellers”. Our magistrates usually maintain on these
+occasions that the essential part of the legal offence is the medium’s
+claim to “foretell the future”, and this is apparently accentuated
+and aggravated by the “intention to deceive” or the acceptance of
+money or reward. During an epidemic of legal medium-baiting in
+1917, men and women were sentenced to heavy fines, up to £50, or
+imprisonment, because of their claims to foretell the future. Yet
+a little reflection might have caused our magistrates to remember
+that all the official representatives of organized religion are
+regularly engaged in foretelling the future and are paid――and quite
+rightly――for their services in this respect. The so-called “sport”
+of the race-course is――as many of us know to our cost――built upon an
+elaborate and extensive system of prophecy for payment――whether the
+forecasts are made in the columns of the most respectable newspapers
+or in the circulars of professional tipsters. Nor, indeed, can one
+wholly dissociate those manifold pledges which disfigure our political
+elections from the same suspicion; for these prophetic anticipations
+are made in order to win votes and so secure the social and pecuniary
+rewards which result from electoral success.
+
+Some of the magistrates who tried and condemned these mediums displayed
+a pitiable ignorance of the whole subject of psychic phenomena. Almost
+anybody indeed appears to be considered competent to dogmatize about
+theological or psychic matters without any credentials in the shape
+of adequate study or experience. The following extract from the well
+known “Brockway” case serves to illustrate the mental equipment of a
+magistrate for a trial of this character:
+
+    “The Rev. G. H. St. John Mildmay stated that he had had two
+    sittings with the defendant and was amazed that she could tell
+    him names that he had written in a paper which was then folded
+    up and held in her hand.... He was convinced that she was
+    perfectly genuine.
+
+    _Magistrate_: You have, I suppose, seen conjurors taking
+        cards out of people’s hair and such things? (_Laughter_).
+
+    _Witness_: There was nothing resembling that.”
+
+A subsequent reference by one of the witnesses to the possible
+influence of “lying spirits” was followed by this edifying dialogue:
+
+    “_Mr. Barker_ (_prosecuting Counsel_): I object to such
+        ridiculous questions.
+
+    _Mr. Wild_ (_for the defence_) asked the magistrate to rule
+    whether such a question was ridiculous.
+
+    _The Magistrate_ (_with emphasis_): I certainly think it is
+        ridiculous.
+
+    Mr. Wild then said――with justice――that it was evidently waste
+    of time to go on, and left the Court.”
+
+The antagonism of the Christian Churches, a _damnosa hereditas_ from
+the unspeakable records of past centuries, is now a waning force,
+chiefly confined to the ranks of what the late Dean Rashdall rather
+roughly called “the inferior clergy”. There are some exceptions. The
+distinguished Dean of St. Paul’s, a devoted student of the obsolete
+fantasies of Neoplatonic philosophy, seems quite unable to dissociate
+the serious study of psychic phenomena from the fraudulent banging of
+tambourines or the wearing of false wigs. He is ready to consider the
+unsupported assertions of Plotinus, that that third-century mystic on
+one occasion enjoyed some form of beatific vision in the “contemplation
+of the One”; but on the other hand the more recent and infinitely
+better supported testimony of a Lombroso, Crookes, or William James
+as to the occurrence of a psychical or clairvoyant phenomenon is
+contemptuously ignored. Now and again sincere representatives of
+medieval Christianity like Lord Hugh Cecil are to be found who ban the
+_séance_-room because they are convinced that clairvoyance is a form of
+necromancy and ‘controls’ like Mrs Piper’s “Phinuit” or Mrs Leonard’s
+“Feda” demoniacal agencies totally unfit for Christian intercourse.
+The more general and more enlightened attitude of at any rate the
+Anglican Church is embodied in the _Report_ of the bishops at the
+Lambeth Conference of 1920:
+
+    “We say without hesitation that we welcome scientific
+    investigation: we recognize the patience and the skill with
+    which members of the Psychical Research Society examine the
+    mass of evidence of all kinds submitted to them, and above
+    all the unmistakable desire to safeguard the inquiry against
+    illusion or fraud, to arrive at truths, and to interpret
+    scientific facts correctly.”
+
+Yet side by side with this moderate and reasonable resolution we find
+that the Conference registered a very strong warning against “the habit
+of recourse to _séances_ and mediums”. Here again is revealed once
+more the ignorance of many well-meaning and able critics who possess a
+merely superficial acquaintance with the subject. How, for example, can
+we study scientifically the phenomena of clairvoyance without recourse
+to clairvoyant mediums? Such an embargo would――to go no further――have
+robbed us of the profoundly interesting records of Mrs Piper’s
+trance-mediumship, or the striking results contained in Dr Osty’s
+volumes. One might almost as well approve of the scientific study of
+anatomy and forbid recourse to the dissecting-room.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this point, and in view of the admitted imperfections which mark
+the course of our inquiry into supernormal phenomena――the fraud and
+credulity and malobservation which so easily beset our work――the
+question may fairly be asked: “Has psychical research really any
+future?”
+
+To such a query I have no hesitation in giving an emphatic “Yes.”
+One may go further and say that at no period since the subject was
+seriously studied have we had better reasons for such an answer. Within
+the last few years a veritable revolution has occurred in the general
+attitude of science towards the phenomena of the universe. In the
+light of Einstein’s discoveries the dogmatism of the materialist has
+become obsolete. The old scientific outlook has been undermined and
+superseded by scientists themselves. Atoms and electrons are no longer
+regarded as ultimate realities. According to Professor Eddington,
+“there is nothing to prevent the assemblage of atoms forming the brain
+from being itself a thinking machine in virtue of that nature which
+physics leaves undetermined and undeterminable.” Not only the ‘laws of
+Nature’ but space and time and the great globe itself may conceivably
+be mental phenomena, themselves the creations of mind. And so it has
+come to pass that such an utterance as Professor Clifford’s: “The
+Universe is made of ether and atoms and there is no room for ghosts”
+remains only a fragment of an outworn scientific creed. The division
+of the external world into a material world and a spiritual world is
+now held by scientists to be superficial. No inherent impossibility
+rules out of court the possible manifestations of other minds than
+ours, functioning apart from our own brains and bodies. “We may
+doubt,” says Professor Eddington, “whether there is any branch of
+knowledge from which exact science is excluded”: there _is_ “room for
+ghosts,” and room for other supernormal phenomena hitherto ignored or
+denied by scientists in general. The fact of telepathy indicates the
+existence of other methods of mental communion outside the recognized
+channels of sense, and for that reason is rejected _a priori_ by
+some of the more conservative representatives of science. “Such a
+direct transmission of ideas from one mind to another” writes Dr
+Jodl, “without any perceptible physical method of communication would
+indicate the presence of a crack in the very foundations of all our
+views on nature, and, if proved, would lead us to a complete revision
+of fundamental principles.” Dr Henning declares that “psycho-physics,
+yes, even psychology, as a science, must be utterly wrecked before we
+have recourse to telepathy.” How different in tone is the statement
+of one of the most acute among our younger thinkers, Professor Broad
+of Cambridge[2], who not only tolerates the existence of a spiritual
+world but postulates the actual necessity of a “psychic factor” in
+order to provide a coherent explanation of the universe and ourselves.
+
+  [2] _The Mind and its Place in Nature_, 1925.
+
+Since the advent, then, of a new scientific revelation the field lies
+open for further work and further advances in psychical research. No
+longer denied access to the precincts of orthodox science or received
+with a dubious welcome, the professed student of supernormal phenomena
+can claim and receive a definite status as the representative of an
+acknowledged branch of scientific study. But in realizing this, he must
+realize too the responsibilities of a position so assured. Two objects
+must be permanently kept in view――the accumulation of fresh facts, and
+the exercise of rigid control and accuracy in our experiments.
+
+In the discovery of new material we are, of course, faced by the
+irritating and disappointing character of the phenomena with which
+we deal. They are often spasmodic, sporadic, irregular. They do not
+occur in any fixed sequence nor can they be predicted. Even when
+our experiments yield obvious success, we are ignorant of what the
+conditions of such success may be: no satisfactory experimental control
+of these wayward phenomena seems at present feasible. If they are
+reached through the channels of mediumship, we are again exposed to the
+varying and uncertain influences exercised by the physical or mental
+condition of the medium at the moment. It is quite clear that these
+‘sensitives’ are in almost all cases persons of a definitely neurotic
+or hysterical temperament; indeed, if we can ever establish the actual
+connection between these pathological conditions and the production of
+supernormal phenomena we shall have gone a long way in unravelling the
+tangled skeins of psychical research. The discovery and classification
+of fresh psychic facts may mean the expenditure of long and tedious
+hours, but without the renewed exercise of “_recherche lente,
+persévérante, obstinée_” we cannot hope to convince ourselves or to
+speak with our enemies in the gate. In this department of research more
+than all others our facts soon become more or less obsolete, or at any
+rate lose their compelling force. No one now alludes to the careful
+mechanical safeguards against fraud devised by Sir William Crookes
+in the eighties. Our generation has almost forgotten the convincing
+experiments in telepathy carried out by the Sidgwicks and Professor
+Barrett, and no longer quotes the Stainton Moses phenomena which Myers
+accepted. The call is for the production of fresh data collected by
+our own contemporaries. Without therefore troubling ourselves unduly
+for the time being with explanations and theories about the facts,
+without intruding into the work the will to believe or disbelieve, let
+us devote ourselves to experiment and empirical facts. Surely among
+the thousand members of the Society for Psychical Research, to go no
+further, enough recruits could be found to supplement adequately by
+their own unselfish efforts the splendid work of our own pioneers in
+Great Britain and America.
+
+Further, in the process of accumulating and systematizing our facts
+we must accept as an axiom of unquestioned validity that natural
+and normal causes must be eliminated before we have recourse to
+the supernatural or supernormal. In other words, we must regard it
+as _prima facie_ more probable that the medium is consciously or
+unconsciously fraudulent or that the sitters are the victims of
+credulity or malobservation than that men and women possess a capacity
+for acquiring knowledge or influencing matter which transcends the
+recognized facts of ordinary experience. Our course then as psychical
+researchers is clear. We must exercise such drastic and complete
+control over the whole course of our experiments as to render deception
+an unthinkable hypothesis. That such methods of control exist and can
+be applied is indubitable: that they are occasionally absent from
+_séances_ conducted by scientific and educated persons must equally be
+admitted.
+
+Podmore revealed several defects in the alleged safeguards against
+fraud accepted in certain experiments with Florence Cook and even D.
+D. Home; and quotes a serious instance of careless description in the
+record of the famous experience of the London Dialectical Society with
+the latter medium: where the statement that “the room was illumined
+by moonlight” is shewn from the calendar (as in the parallel of Sir
+John Moore’s burial) to have been incorrect. In more recent times the
+conditions observed in Warsaw and in Paris with the mediums Kluski and
+Gujik have been sometimes unsatisfactory. Nor can any impartial critic,
+in view of the surprisingly lax conditions which prevailed, necessarily
+accept the widely recorded successes of Professor Gilbert Murray in
+thought-transference as manifestations of anything abnormal or unusual.
+In the case of any less distinguished performer it would have been
+difficult to regard such experiments, in the absence of any repetition
+of them under test conditions, as worth the serious consideration of a
+scientific body.
+
+The collection of fresh facts is, to a large extent, conditioned by
+the supply of sensitives and by the provision of adequate funds for
+such research. Apart from the existing opportunities provided by
+University chairs of Mental Science, Mental Philosophy and the like,
+which have already contributed largely to this study when held by
+men like McDougall, James, Schiller, and Broad in Great Britain and
+America, private generosity will always apparently be ready to assist
+in some measure the experimental work of psychical research. The most
+serious obstacle arises not from the absence of monetary assistance
+but from the fact that the feelings entertained towards one another
+by the warring sects of religion are reflected in the rivalries and
+disputes of the societies engaged in the study of psychic phenomena.
+That regular supply of sensitives which is required for an adequate
+collection of empirical facts is seriously hindered by the violent
+animosities of leaders who fight over the bodies of well-known mediums
+and sometimes tempt them, like football professionals, by the dangerous
+offer of a higher fee.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+If we accept the view that psychical research holds ample promise of a
+useful future, we may next consider the various lines of our advance.
+
+Any serious study of psychical research demands as its first essential
+a knowledge of the results secured from a careful consideration of
+telepathic phenomena. Many researchers would, indeed, maintain that
+their investigations need not extend beyond these limits. They regard
+telepathy, once scientifically established, as a working hypothesis
+which will cover the whole field of those abnormal phenomena which
+form our subject-matter. From this point of view, apparitions,
+clairvoyance, crystal-visions, even the physical phenomena of the
+_séance_-room――these and other abnormal happenings can be explained
+by the exercise in one shape or another of the transference of human
+thought and volition outside the ordinary channels of sense.
+
+Those who hold that thought-transference is the solvent of all our
+perplexities in psychical research may point to the fact that down
+the centuries one marvel after another appears to have been directly
+attributable to this cause. A useful monograph might be written on
+this fascinating theme. To go no farther, it is easy to see how the
+miracles recorded in Biblical and ecclesiastical literature, and the
+amazing records of witchcraft and sorcery, may to a large extent be
+brought within the compass of the telepathic solution.
+
+No serious attempts to investigate the conditions or results of
+thought-transference appear to have been undertaken before the middle
+of last century. It was not indeed until 1876 that Sir William Barrett
+really initiated the careful and scientific study of telepathic
+phenomena which has been continued by the Society for Psychical
+Research in England and on the Continent by Boirac, Osty, Tischner, and
+many other distinguished savants. The results obtained have been, it is
+true, questioned and criticized at every turn by certain scientists who
+deny that telepathy is either proven or indeed possible. Professor Jodl
+(quoted by Tischner) goes so far as to say: “Such a direct transmission
+of ideas from one mind to another, without any perceptible physical
+method of communication, would indicate the presence of a crack in
+the very foundations of all our views on Nature.” “Psycho-physics”,
+writes Dr Henning, “yes, even psychology as a science must be utterly
+wrecked before we have recourse to telepathy.” It is, however, useless
+to indulge in mere _a priori_ refutations or, in the case of telepathic
+experiments, to concentrate on the failures and ignore the successes.
+It is of course impossible within the very narrow space-limits of this
+little book to furnish any detailed reference of such experiments.
+Suffice it to say that evidence varied, cumulative and irresistible now
+exists which has established telepathy as a scientific fact.
+
+The study of telepathic phenomena suggests the interesting question
+whether telepathy is a psychic factor of permanent and regular
+character or whether it represents merely the dying embers of a once
+more active force. Can the transference of human thought apart from
+physical media be developed and systematized on such a scale as to
+suggest immense possibilities in the human relationships of the
+future? Or will such development be inevitably retarded by the fact
+that telepathy is a dying sense to be classed with various obscure
+eccentricities of the human body which serve merely as vestigial
+landmarks in the long history of the race? Despite the alluring
+possibilities of the first suggestion, indications certainly exist
+which lend colour to the pathetic belief that research has only
+discovered this force in the evening of its existence.
+
+This view of telepathy as a “rudimentary survival” seems to be
+strengthened by the admitted fact that manifestations of telepathy
+are far more certain and more striking when the percipient is under
+hypnotic suggestion; for, if it be the subliminal self which rises
+above the threshold in hypnotic slumber and obeys the suggestion of
+the agent’s mind, this is itself in all probability a manifestation of
+race-experience rather than that of the individual. The everyday self,
+the product of normal experience, is influenced to a much slighter
+degree by hypnotic suggestion than that mysterious entity, the
+secondary self, trailing its clouds of precarnate existence.
+
+In the dim recesses of our race-history our pithecoid ancestors in
+default of language may well have possessed telepathic powers for the
+communication of their simple ideas, which powers have gradually been
+rendered less necessary as language developed, and may ultimately,
+unless stimulated and exercised, finally perish from atrophy. Such a
+theory would be illustrated by those stories which are furnished by
+reliable travellers and missionaries with reference to the amazing
+transmission of news which at times appears to take place amongst
+native races of a low level of civilization under circumstances which
+preclude any opportunity for normal methods of communication.
+
+Nor, again, is it easy to avoid the conclusion that some form of
+telepathy exists among various forms of animal life. The “homing
+instinct” of the cat and the pigeon, and bewildering facts connected
+with the flight of birds of passage, inexplicable from any ordinary
+laws of experience, may conceivably be examples of a form of telepathy
+infinitely more regular and efficient than the fitful manifestations
+on the part of _homo sapiens_ which engage the attention of psychical
+researchers. It is not easy to find any ordinary explanation for the
+immediate rush of a scattered herd of cattle to any available shelter,
+when one of their number has been struck by the noiseless warble-fly.
+Or when I watch the curving flight of the beautiful ruffs and reeves
+round a Norwegian lake――the absolutely simultaneous rise, the
+instantaneous wheel of the whole flock in the fraction of a second――or,
+again, when I see hundreds of starlings rise together and afterwards
+return to their trees in complete unison, I find it difficult to regard
+these charming incidents as due to normal or even abnormal sight or
+hearing, and wonder whether here again some rudimentary but efficient
+form of telepathy may not be at work.
+
+Can we go further, and suggest that some of the baffling phenomena
+of heredity and instinct may ultimately find their origin in the
+telepathic transference of thought? We accept the word ‘instinct’ as
+an adequate explanation of the habits of sentient creatures, but it
+explains nothing. Every manifestation of instinct is obviously due to
+volition, however rudimentary――is, in other words, a mental as distinct
+(so far as such distinction goes) from a physical phenomenon. It is
+difficult to trace an “instinctive” movement to material spermatozoa
+or germ-cells. “The burnt child dreads the fire” as the result of
+its own experience, but no experience taught the baby how to use its
+lips at its first meal, any more than it taught the chicken how to
+escape from the eggshell. The “collective experience of the race”, the
+alleged source of these phenomena, may sooner or later be recognized as
+the telepathic transference from the mind of the parents of concepts
+derived from the previous telepathy of successive generations. It
+may appear at first sight fantastic to suggest that the mechanically
+exact habits of a mother-wasp may be the result of mental telepathy,
+but after all this seems a better _vera causa_ than the wasp’s-egg, a
+minute fraction of matter which can explain nothing in the realms of
+thought or of volition.
+
+Charcot’s telepathic suggestion of a hot iron by the application
+of a wooden ruler elicited a cry of agony, and produced a blister
+filled with lymph on the percipient’s arm; other experiments at the
+Salpêtriêre and elsewhere raised weals and other stigmata on human
+bodies. Can it be that this same mysterious and powerful force may come
+to be accepted as at any rate a partial solution of the vexed question
+of heredity? A baby is born with marked physical characteristics of
+its father or mother. During its prenatal existence you have two
+main factors: the minds of the parents on the one side, on the other
+the mind of the unborn child. The future of the little being lying
+under her heart forms the constant thought of the expectant mother.
+She thinks of it as reproducing certain characteristics of herself
+or of the husband she loves; the husband applies his thoughts in the
+same direction: and such concentrated suggestion, consciously or
+unconsciously conveyed, may serve to shape the child’s body as well as
+its mind, in accordance with the maternal or paternal hopes and desires.
+
+Well established as it is in the simpler forms of direct communication
+between agent and percipient, telepathy is sometimes called upon to
+explain the whole series of phenomena which are grouped under such
+heads as clairvoyance, psychometry, crystal-gazing, automatic writing,
+etc. The more or less public exhibitions of alleged clairvoyance
+which form the central feature of innumerable spiritualist services
+in this and other countries do not, as a rule, furnish convincing
+indications of supernormal activity. I have never myself seen any
+public “trance-speaker” who, despite the conventional twitchings
+and contortions which herald the ingress of the Red Indian or other
+spirit-control, did not appear to be in complete possession of his or
+her normal consciousness. But the prolonged and careful investigations
+of Mrs Piper’s mediumship and those more recently undertaken with
+continental clairvoyants by Drs Tischner, Osty, and others, stand on
+a very different footing. In the face of the accumulated evidence
+furnished by such research, those who rely on telepathy as the
+universal solvent of psychic difficulties must often falter where they
+firmly stood. Leaving for the moment all the concrete evidence derived
+from experiments with the British Mrs Leonard or continental mediums
+like “Mrs van B.”, or Mademoiselle de Berly, the records of the Piper
+_séances_ form a rich store of evidential facts. Amid all the various
+deceptions and failures of the quaint “Dr Phinuit” or the more precise
+“George Pelham,” detailed and accurate messages are found, some of
+which appear inexplicable by any conceivable exercise of telepathy
+between living persons.
+
+Nor again can the agency of living minds always furnish a satisfactory
+explanation in the rare but indubitable cases of prevision or
+precognition exhibited by clairvoyance. From what source come those
+precise statements made from time to time by trustworthy mediums,
+under strict test-conditions, with respect to certain articles placed
+in their hands? Clairvoyance of this type, often called psychometry,
+might almost suggest the validity of Fechner’s theory of “odylic”
+influences, which may appear less fantastic in an age when the dividing
+line between matter and mind is becoming theoretically obsolete.
+Moreover, to psychometry, once accepted as a scientific fact, an
+interesting corollary would attach; for, if mere contact with a man’s
+cravat can produce from the medium a detailed and accurate account of
+the suicide of an unhappy prisoner who had worn the cravat, masonry
+and woodwork might in the same inscrutable fashion be responsible for
+suggesting the auditory and visual phenomena of a “haunted house.” Some
+well-attested cases exist in which alteration of structure in a house
+has been followed by the cessation of the “hauntings.”
+
+If telepathy from the living breaks down when called upon to explain
+all the facts of clairvoyance, there exists another explanation which
+has received the enthusiastic support of those investigators who, while
+they reject transference between normal minds, point enthusiastically
+to the alleged efficiency of the “secondary” or “subliminal” self.
+Fascinating descriptions are given of this “mysterious Mr Hyde which
+lurks in each of us,” this subconscious mind working in the inner
+sanctum, as director and controller, while the normal work-a-day self
+transacts the conventional business of life in the open shop. The
+amazing performances of a “calculating boy,” the sudden conversion of a
+Bunyan or a Paul, the supreme genius of a Shakespeare or a Handel, are
+alike referred to that comprehensive source of all things supernormal,
+the secondary self! This subliminal self can, we are assured, furnish
+a sensitive with information which otherwise could not possibly be
+possessed by any other living person. It can not only explore the dim
+recesses of past experience but foretell with accuracy the events of
+the future. Driven from the outer trenches of telepathic defence, some
+modern protagonists of psychical research find, as they think, an
+impregnable stronghold in the limitless efficiency of the subliminal
+self. The _soi-disant_ George Pelham may convince his friends that he
+is what he claims to be, but he is only a manifestation of Mrs Piper’s
+subconscious self――in other words, George Pelham in Mrs Piper. If a
+medium announces in England the death in battle of an officer hours
+before the bad news has even reached his battalion’s base, this (if not
+a ‘happy shot’) is merely a striking instance of those abnormal powers
+of cognition possessed by the medium’s subliminal consciousness.
+
+Can this hypothesis bear the heavy strain put upon it? After all
+the phrase “subliminal self”, “unconscious mind”――call it what you
+will――embodies nothing at all beyond a hypothesis. Nobody has yet
+demonstrated the existence of such a division of the mind attached
+to each living personality, or defined its qualities or capacities.
+There are indubitably certain depths in the human mind which may be
+reached by the processes of psycho-analysis, but in these cases there
+appears to be no compelling reason for any bewildering thesis of two
+or more distinct minds attached to the same human organism. There may
+be diversities of mental operation, but the same mind: the θεός and
+θηρίον can form a composite mentality capable of moral excellence on
+the one hand, and on the other exposing to the Freudian probe the lower
+levels of a non-moral animal existence.
+
+Not only have we failed to prove conclusively the existence or
+determine the activities of an entity so improbable _a priori_ as a
+second self, but this popular hypothesis cannot always justify itself
+by fitting the facts, unless indeed we are prepared to assign to such
+an additional human mind a considerable measure of omniscience. How
+much further do we get by declaring that such intelligences as Phinuit,
+George Pelham, or Feda are mere manifestations of a medium’s “secondary
+self”?
+
+The messages which we receive from clairvoyant experiments with
+entranced or controlled mediums, table tiltings, planchette, ouija
+boards, etc., present a bewildering congeries of good sense and
+stupidity, relevancy and irrelevancy, truth and falsehood, sobriety and
+flippancy. Such communications possess two marked characteristics.
+They display intelligence, however low the level of that intelligence
+may sink; and they invariably claim to proceed from the surviving
+minds of dead men and women, or at any rate from discarnate beings or
+“spirits”.
+
+These messages fall into two classes; in the first place, the most
+important of them, which offer evidential matter either spontaneously
+or in compliance with a sitter’s request. In such dark and unaccustomed
+paths the thoughtful researcher must walk warily and form his judgments
+dispassionately. Suffice it to say that persons of real ability and
+calm judgment are to be found who are intellectually convinced that
+in certain instances the agencies which have communicated with them
+through mediums are actually what they claim to be, the surviving
+personalities of dead friends or relatives. I found it difficult during
+some sittings under an assumed name with Mrs Piper to resist the
+belief that I was being addressed by two lost friends, so amazing was
+the relevancy of a single message in the one case, and the force of
+accumulated details in the other. Of a communication through the same
+medium given to his sister-in-law for transmission to himself Professor
+William James of Harvard writes as follows:
+
+    “The point is that the message is an allusion to a matter
+    known (so personal is it to myself) to no other individual in
+    the world but me――not possibly either to the medium or to my
+    sister-in-law; and an allusion so pertinent and intimate, and
+    tender and helpful, and yet so unhelped by any actual earthly
+    knowledge on anyone’s part, that it quite astounds as well
+    as deeply touches me. If the subject of the message had been
+    conceivably in my sister-in-law’s mind, it would have been an
+    interesting but not infrequent case of telepathy; but as I say
+    it could not possibly have been, and she only transmits it to
+    me after the fact not even understanding it.”
+
+The second group of messages possess little or no evidential value with
+regard to the personal survival of individuals, though they too always
+claim to proceed from “spirits” of some kind. Trivial, vulgar, and
+unworthy as they often are, these communications cannot be ignored by
+the student of psychical research. When we have eliminated trickery,
+collusion and self-deception from these experiments, there remains a
+residuum of communications more or less intelligent which obviously do
+not proceed from the normal consciousness of either sitter or medium;
+in most cases, indeed, there is no medium employed, for the messages
+are spelt out through movements of a table or an instrument of the
+planchette type.
+
+Many of these messages are of a perplexing character. Some show
+indications of a rather colourless goodwill, others are freakish and
+deceptive with a flavour of feeble practical joking. Occasionally they
+are blasphemous or indecent. A very common feature is the giving of
+addresses connected with the sitter or with the former life of the
+alleged spirit-communicator. Full names of individuals, the names of
+streets and the numbers of houses are freely given. Nevertheless, in
+nearly every instance it is found that the facts as given are partially
+or entirely inaccurate. The whole procedure is baffling and obscure. If
+on the one hand the false information is due to the conscious action
+of any of the sitters, why does not the person in question take the
+trouble to provide a more complete deception? How easy it would be for
+such devotees of trickery to equip themselves with a stock-in-trade
+of really accurate names and addresses from any list of obituary
+notices contemporary or of older date. If these tiresome and misleading
+statements proceed from the subliminal consciousness of the sitter or
+medium, it is obvious that this entity is unable to secure various
+simple items of current information; and in that case, again, what is
+the motive of such transparent deception?
+
+Nor, indeed, if the subliminal consciousness be accepted as the
+source of such perplexing messages, can we feel altogether happy in
+the possession of a secondary self or subconscious mind which is
+admittedly guilty in many instances of trickery, evasion, flippancy,
+deliberate and often cruel deception. Any clouds of glory that such a
+self may have trailed behind it are at times sadly tarnished, nor is
+the conviction either agreeable or inspiring that we harbour within
+us a force capable of præternatural knowledge and amazing achievement
+and yet characterized at times by conduct which the ordinary mind of
+any decent person would utterly condemn; for such a secondary self is
+frequently exhibited as “repressed, conative, infantile, unreasoning,
+predominantly sexual” and, one may add, sometimes fraudulent and
+usually non-moral. So many difficulties, indeed, appear to be involved
+in connecting these messages with any conscious activity that some
+investigators take refuge in the view that they consist only of the
+“stuff that dreams are made of,” proceeding from the lumber-room of the
+mind, and no more fraudulent or immoral than the elusive vagaries and
+incongruities of some fantastic dream.
+
+One other source of the perplexing messages under discussion remains
+for our consideration. There is, as we have said, a feature common
+to them all: they invariably claim to proceed from disembodied
+personalities.
+
+If the devotees of the ‘subliminal self’ hypothesis persist in
+bringing these agencies also within the broad compass of the human
+mind, conscious or unconscious, it may, I suppose, be urged that the
+claim to discarnate existence put forward by these _animulae vagulae,
+blandulae_, is a delusion which is built upon the accumulated mental
+experience of the human race, always believing, or striving to believe
+in a life beyond the grave. From the dim recesses of our racial history
+this pathetic protest against annihilation has, as it were, become
+a stereotyped portion of the human mind, and so it comes to pass
+that while the normal self may reject a personal survival, faint and
+fleeting echoes of the primaeval faith still rise from the depths of
+the unconscious self.
+
+If it really be the case, however, as suggested above, that no activity
+of the human mind, whether normal or subliminal, can furnish an
+adequate explanation of the communications in question, we are left
+to face the facts and ask ourselves whether, after all, the claim put
+forward by the agencies involved may not be a valid one, viz., that
+they are what they invariably allege themselves to be, the product of
+discarnate intelligences. It is easy for those unacquainted with the
+accumulated phenomena of automatic writing, the planchette and ouija
+boards, and so on, to sneer at such an interpretation of the facts.
+But sneers have often dogged the earlier footsteps of scientific
+enterprise, and in any case――sneers or no sneers――the scientific
+researcher must, if he can, provide a solution of the phenomena which
+in this department of his work are so abundant and so easily repeated,
+that nothing else is needed beyond a careful sifting of the material,
+and above all, a mind as free as possible from any conscious bias
+towards either a normal or supernormal explanation. Once it is accepted
+that modern science does not necessarily preclude the existence of
+intelligences independent of those associated with the functions of the
+human brain, we may frankly admit that the theory of spirit-agencies
+in the case of these erratic messages does at least fit the facts. The
+existence would seem to be suggested of those alleged unseen entities,
+sometimes described as “elementals,” an order of low-grade spirits,
+able and apparently eager to communicate with us. The presence of such
+beings around us has, in earlier centuries, been widely accepted by a
+veritable _consensus gentium_; and the general characteristics of the
+communications in many a table-tilting or planchette experiment would
+seem to correspond closely to those of the fairies, efrits, demons,
+gnomes, “little folk,” _et hoc genus omne_――an intermixture of good
+humour and mischief coupled with a limited intelligence and the almost
+complete absence of any moral standard.
+
+Before leaving the subject of telepathy, one more reference to this
+force as the origin of psychic phenomena must be briefly considered.
+The well-known “Census of hallucinations” conducted by the Society for
+Psychical Research revealed the fact that (a) 9.9 per cent. of the
+17,000 persons questioned declared that they had at one time or another
+seen an apparition, (b) that very few recognizable phantasms were seen
+after the lapse of one year from the day of death, (c) that of the
+veridical cases the vast majority coincided more or less accurately
+with the moment of death. Modern research has also revealed a fact
+never before established, that phantasms of the living are far more
+frequent and generally far better attested than those of the dead.
+In summary, it may be claimed that men and women with sound minds in
+sound bodies do occasionally see phantasms of both living and dead
+persons under circumstances which entirely preclude malobservation
+or deception. No fact could, indeed, be better established than that
+ghosts are seen now as they have been seen all down the ages. What,
+however, is new in respect to this interesting phenomenon is the modern
+explanation that a ghost is a subjective impression conveyed to the
+mind of A by a conscious or unconscious suggestion from the mind of
+B. Deeply interesting as are the well-established and comparatively
+numerous telepathic images conveyed from the living to the living,
+these do not lead us outside the range of ordinary telepathic activity:
+
+    “There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave
+     To shew us this.”
+
+But what are we to say to similar phantasms when the person they
+represent has passed through the gates of Death? With the special
+significance of these cases we shall deal later.
+
+It seems clear, then, that the student of psychic phenomena will
+find many promising lines of research in the ample field covered by
+telepathy, clairvoyance, and the varied activities of motor automatism.
+Fresh facts must be accumulated and sifted, fresh efforts made to
+co-ordinate such facts and discover the laws through which they work.
+Nevertheless, there remains another area of supernormal activities
+which cannot be neglected――the physical phenomena alleged to occur from
+time to time, almost invariably in the presence and apparently through
+the mediumship of certain individuals. In this obscure region, however,
+the opportunities for fraud have been so great, the detection of
+trickery so frequent, and the general character of the mediums often so
+indifferent, that, even with the experiences of a quarter of a century
+behind them, many careful and able researchers find it difficult to
+give any definite opinion either for or against the existence of such
+startling phenomena as “materialization,” “ectoplastic” extrusions from
+the body, or the movement of material objects without physical contact
+(telekinesis). The only excuse for offering my own personal views is
+the fact that I have over a long period of years had sittings with some
+of the world’s best known “physical” mediums including Mrs Corner (née
+Florence Cook), Eusapia Palladino, Eva C. (Marthe Béraud) and Willi
+Schneider, and a considerable number of less known sensitives, and I am
+unable to endorse the opinion recently suggested by a body of able and
+experienced German investigators, Drs Gulat-Wellenburg and Rosenbusch
+and Graf v. Klinckowstroen, that no scientific evidence exists for the
+occurrence of physical phenomena. On one occasion I have witnessed the
+production of a complete, visible and tangible figure which certainly
+was not the medium herself: that it was a confederate――the only
+other normal possibility――was ruled out by elaborate and convincing
+precautions. Despite the open readiness of Eusapia Palladino to cheat
+when left without control, many of the positive results secured through
+the mediumship of this Neapolitan peasant-woman under test-conditions
+appear to defy any normal explanation. The sceptic has still to explain
+how after a searching examination, medical and otherwise, Eva C. under
+stringent conditions of control and observation was able to exude from
+her body solid and fluid masses of so-called ectoplasm, the existence
+of which was duly recorded by photography. No reliable evidence exists
+to disprove the claim made on behalf of D. D. Home, that he was never
+detected in any kind of mediumistic fraud, and much of the evidence
+resulting from the personal experience of cultured and educated persons
+with this medium is staggering in its completeness. “On that very
+hearthrug where you are standing,” said the late Sir William Crookes,
+F.R.S., to me, “I saw Home raised eighteen inches from the ground in
+broad daylight and verified the phenomenon _visu et tactu_.” “I do not
+say,” remarked this same great scientist on another occasion, “that
+these things are possible――I only say they happened.”
+
+Telekinesis (the movement of material objects without personal
+contact) in full light has been attested by men of unimpeachable
+honesty and acknowledged ability――like Professors William James,
+Lombroso, Schiaparelli, and Richet. Mr Dingwall quotes two axioms of
+the professional conjurer――_Never tell your audience beforehand what
+you are going to do_, and _Never perform the same trick twice on the
+same evening_. But Mdlle Tomczyk of Warsaw repeated the same form of
+telekinesis more or less continuously for six years. Is it conceivable
+that throughout that period various groups of educated and experienced
+investigators should have utterly failed to detect the use, say, of
+threads or filaments however fine? It is childish and unscientific to
+ignore sound testimony and regard every account which comes to hand of
+supernormal physical phenomena as little else than the tale of an idiot
+signifying nothing.
+
+There is indeed ample work in this dark and dubious region for those
+who have time, patience, and opportunity for the investigation of the
+rare cases of well attested physical mediumship. In view, however, of
+the more immediate results of real value which may be secured from a
+study of the subjective phenomena of psychical research it is obvious
+that, unless a physical medium is willing sooner or later to submit
+himself frankly and honestly to every reasonable test proposed by the
+best scientific minds, it is comparatively useless for a researcher to
+spend his limited time in inconclusive sittings for the alleged marvels
+of telekinesis or materialization.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have sketched the main lines upon which the psychic student of
+to-day is working, and the question which remains is simply _Cui bono_?
+What is the practical, or even the theoretical value of our research?
+Several adequate replies may, I think, be given.
+
+The results secured by psychic research in Great Britain and various
+other countries possess, first of all, a real historical value. The
+attested phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance, and physical mediumship
+throw a clear light upon many dark corners of the past.
+
+The Sibylline and other oracles uttered by the entranced priestesses
+of old, and many of the features of medieval magic, have their
+unmistakable counterparts in the experiences of modern mediumship. The
+appalling records of the most devilish machinery ever devised for the
+torture of mankind, the witchcraft persecutions (not of the Dark Ages
+but of the Renaissance), possess an added horror when one realizes that
+the offences alleged against the nine million persons burnt to death in
+two centuries were to a large extent the outcome of psychic forces and
+conditions whose character was totally unknown to either the victims or
+their tormentors.
+
+The sacred books of Christianity and other religions speak of visible
+and audible phenomena of supernormal character which have their obvious
+analogues in the psychic experiences of our own days. The messages
+revealed in the shining Urim and Thummim, the quaint telepathy of
+Jacob’s sheep-farming, the phantasm and the voice at Endor――these
+things appear no longer as the isolated happenings of a remote and
+dissimilar past or of a special dispensation. In the pages of the New
+Testament, too, the healing touch for the sick, the rescue of the
+possessed, the experiences of the first Eastertide on the way to Emmaus
+or on the Galilean beach, the testimony of the “five hundred brethren
+at once,” the sudden conversion on the Damascus road――such records
+are indeed “worthier of all men to be believed” because they are no
+longer relegated to a far-off “age of miracles” but are repeated and
+exemplified in the phenomena of modern research.
+
+Apart, however, from the question of historical interest, is it too
+much to hope that we may sooner or later succeed in controlling
+and utilizing to a vastly greater degree than at present those new
+forces which our researches have brought to light? Mr. H. G. Wells,
+in a prophetic page of _When the Sleeper Awakes_ pictures a Harley
+Street of the future occupied by the consulting-rooms of telepathic
+specialists, and there can be little doubt that the valuable work even
+now accomplished in cases of nervous derangements and mental pathology
+by suggestion, hypnotic or otherwise, is capable of still further
+expansion as fuller information accumulates and earlier prejudices
+subside.
+
+The employment of suggestion in the education of the young is a field
+at present almost unexplored, although suggestion is so obvious
+a factor in the “endless imitation” of childhood. The increased
+application of psycho-analytic methods may in the future not only
+relieve to an infinitely greater extent the maladies and distresses of
+the ordinary individual, but revolutionize our attitude towards the
+criminal. Just as the treatment of hysteria has already advanced far
+beyond the beatings and cold douches of our grandparents’ days, so do
+our methods of handling the criminal become ever more curative than
+penal; nor is it probable that fifty years hence civilized nations will
+still regard the rope or the electric chair as the only possible fate
+even for the murderer.
+
+In another direction psychical research may stretch out a helping
+hand to reinvigorate the failing forces of religion. The structure
+of organized Christianity to-day exhibits all the signs of gradual
+but inevitable decay. Even of those who may be willing to render
+lip-service to the formulae of orthodoxy few ever enter a church or
+chapel. The forces of Christianity appear to exercise little control
+over domestic politics, and none at all over the international conduct
+of the nations, which so often displays a complete contempt for the
+precepts of either religion or morality. While the organized religion
+of Christ has still a message for the individual and can still guide
+His faithful followers in life and cheer them in the hour of death,
+the despairing cry of the Saxon chronicler might well be uttered over
+the masses of “Christian” mankind to-day: “Christ and His saints
+sleep.” Faced with such hard facts, thoughtful men are beginning to
+realize that some reconsideration and restatement of the Christian
+position is inevitable. In such enterprise valuable data would be
+provided by the results of scientific psychical research. One of our
+best known psychologists has indeed gone so far as to declare that no
+other power than psychic research can hope to arrest the advancing
+forces of materialism. The acceptance of the fact that communications
+and influences can reach us which are manifestly not the product of
+human minds nor conveyed through the ordinary channels of sense would
+stultify any _a priori_ denial of the possibility of that “spiritual
+communion” which is an essential feature of religion.
+
+In the second place, psychical research is, in the view of many,
+already able to endow with a measure of precision and certainty those
+vague and tremulous promises of a future life which are offered by
+the Churches. Owing to the rapid decay of religious forces in the
+western world this vital doctrine of a personal survival has for the
+vast majority even of so-called Christians lost any real significance.
+In answer to the query “Do you desire a future life whatever the
+conditions may be?” which appeared in a questionnaire circulated by
+the American Branch of the S. P. R. in 1900, “noes” numbered no less
+than 78 per cent. of the total replies received (3321)――many taking
+the form of “not at all,” “not in the least,” “never think about
+it.” And although the results of an investigation within such narrow
+limits cannot be regarded as decisive, it is probable that the note
+of scepticism or indifference which runs through the majority of the
+replies reflects to a large extent the attitude towards a personal
+survival adopted by the average man or woman of the present day.
+
+Against the advancing tide of unbelief or indifference the modern
+presentation of religion seems wellnigh helpless. Nevertheless, if
+this spirit of blank negation or complete indifference continues to
+make headway, it is difficult to see how either moral or religious
+sanctions can retain their authority. If annihilation be our fate,
+any moral guidance of the Universe must appear to many minds almost
+inconceivable. And if the moral guidance of the whole collapses,
+schemes of morality for the parts become a _reductio ad absurdum_: the
+Divine sanctions of the Sermon on the Mount are replaced by systems of
+glorified Police Regulations imposed by the shifting decrees of a human
+majority.
+
+Within the narrow limits at our disposal we can only indicate very
+briefly the main lines along which psychic research may serve to
+establish the fact of a survival. The cumulative effect of the evidence
+offered is very great and may avail――in Glanville’s words of old――“to
+secure some of the out-works of religion and regain a parcel of ground
+which bold infidelity hath invaded.”
+
+(1) Various forms of automatism and certain well attested physical
+phenomena indicate the existence of discarnate intelligences.
+
+(2) Telepathy proves that thought can be conveyed apart from the
+ordinary channels of sense, and, if telepathy be accepted as the
+cause of apparitions of the living, it would seem that the dead whose
+phantasmal forms appear to us are also capable of volition. The
+apparition (seen simultaneously by two witnesses) of a dead mother
+bending over the cot of her dying child “with a look of infinite love
+and tenderness” is deeply significant. Of even greater evidential value
+are the well-attested accounts of apparitions seen by dying children or
+their young brothers and sisters who were present at the deathbed.
+
+(3) Many of the communications which reach us from tried and tested
+mediums, like Mrs Piper, appear to be what they claim to be, actual
+messages from deceased persons.
+
+(4) It is virtually impossible to attribute some of the
+‘cross-correspondences’ recorded by the S. P. R. to any other agency
+but the conscious and detailed activity of a discarnate personality.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so our patient work continues. The men and women who forty years
+ago served faithfully as the pioneers of modern psychical research
+have nearly all passed away. There can be little doubt that they had
+pitched their hopes too high. So deep was the devotion inspired by
+these new labours, so large the mass of facts offered by a veritable
+cloud of contemporary witnesses, that leaders like Myers and Sidgwick
+and Gurney hoped with confidence that in their own days the compelling
+force of the facts they had gathered would bring intellectual
+conviction and change the whole outlook of mankind. Such clear
+certainty came to few men in the ranks of these pioneers themselves
+and most of them died “seeing the promises from afar but not having
+attained unto them.” But fresh recruits have filled the gaps in our
+line, fresh channels of research have been opened up, and fresh facts
+recorded: modern science tends rather to clear our path than to close
+it, and the light of that earlier hope still shines brightly. Amid the
+limitless possibilities of the next fifty years――great developments in
+surgery, bio-chemistry, television, lighting, and transport――it may be
+that not the least of the discoveries which glorify the new age will
+come from the scientific results of psychical research. “Hardly as
+yet,” said William James a year before he died, “has the surface of the
+facts called ‘psychic’ begun to be scratched for scientific purposes.
+It is through following these facts, I am persuaded that the greatest
+scientific conquests of the coming generation will be achieved. _Kühn
+ist das Mühen, herrlich der Lohn!_”
+
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+ Transcriber’s Notes:
+
+ ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+ ――Obvious punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently
+   corrected.
+
+ ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
+
+ ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78283 ***
diff --git a/78283-h/78283-h.htm b/78283-h/78283-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e4b542
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78283-h/78283-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,2264 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
+
+    <title>
+      Apollonius | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+
+    <style>
+
+/* DACSoft styles */
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+/* General headers */
+h1 {
+    text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+/* Chapter headers */
+h2 {
+    text-align: center;
+    font-weight: bold;
+    margin: .75em 0;
+}
+
+div.chapter {
+    page-break-before: always;
+}
+
+.nobreak {
+    page-break-before: avoid;
+}
+
+/* Indented paragraph */
+p {
+    margin-top: .51em;
+    margin-bottom: .49em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    text-indent: 1em;
+}
+
+/* Unindented paragraph */
+.noi {text-indent: 0em;}
+
+/* Centered unindented paragraph */
+.noic {
+    text-indent: 0em;
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+/* Non-standard paragraph margins */
+.p2 {margin-top: 2em;}
+
+.p4 {margin-top: 4em;}
+
+/* Horizontal rules */
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: 33.5%;
+    margin-right: 33.5%;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+hr.tb {
+    width: 35%;
+    margin-top: 1em;
+    margin-bottom: 1em;
+    margin-left: 32.5%;
+    margin-right: 32.5%;
+}
+
+hr.chap {
+    width: 65%;
+    margin-left: 17.5%;
+    margin-right: 17.5%;
+}
+
+@media print {
+    hr.chap {
+        display: none;
+        visibility: hidden;
+    }
+}
+
+/* Physical book page and line numbers */
+.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+    /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+    position: absolute;
+    right: 3%;
+/*    left: 92%;  */
+    font-size: x-small;
+    font-style: normal;
+    font-weight: normal;
+    font-variant: normal;
+    text-align: right;
+    color: gray;
+} /* page numbers */
+
+/* Blockquotes */
+blockquote {
+    margin-top: 1em;
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+    margin-bottom: 1em;
+}
+
+/* Alignment */
+.right    {text-align: right;}
+
+/* Small fonts and lowercase small-caps */
+.smfont {
+    font-size: .8em;
+}
+
+/* Images */
+img {
+    max-width: 100%; /* no image to be wider than screen or containing div */
+    height:auto;     /* keep height in proportion to width */
+}
+
+.figcenter   {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;
+    page-break-inside: avoid;
+    max-width: 90%; /* div no wider than screen, even when screen is narrow */
+}
+
+/* Footnotes and sidenotes */
+.footnote         {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
+
+.footnote .label  {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;}
+
+.fnanchor {
+    vertical-align: super;
+    font-size: .65em;
+    text-decoration: none;
+    white-space: nowrap;
+}
+
+/* Poetry */
+.poetry {
+    display: block;
+    text-align: left;
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;}
+
+.poetry .verse {
+    padding-left: 3em;
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+/* Poetry indents */
+.poetry .indent0 {padding-left: 3em;}
+.poetry .indent1 {padding-left: 3.5em;}
+
+/* Transcriber's notes */
+.tnote {
+    background-color: #E6E6FA;
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+    padding: 0.5em;
+}
+
+.tntitle {
+    font-size: 1.25em;
+    font-weight: bold;
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+/* Title page borders and content. */
+.subtitle {
+    font-size: 1.5em;
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+.halftitle {
+    font-size: 1.25em;
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+.author {
+    font-size: 1.25em;
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+/* Advertisement formatting. */
+.adauthor {
+    font-size: 1.25em;
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+/* Hanging indent. */
+.hang {
+    text-indent: -2em;
+    padding-left: 2em;
+}
+
+    </style>
+</head>
+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78283 ***</div>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter" id="cover">
+  <img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="book cover" title="book cover">
+</figure>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="noi halftitle">APOLLONIUS<br>
+<small>OR THE<br>
+PRESENT AND FUTURE<br>
+OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH</small></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h1 class="nobreak">APOLLONIUS</h1>
+
+<p class="noic">OR</p>
+
+<p class="noi subtitle">The Present and Future of<br>
+Psychical Research</p>
+
+<p class="p2 noic">BY</p>
+
+<p class="noi author">E. N. BENNETT, M.A.</p>
+
+<p class="noic"><i>Late Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford</i></p>
+
+<p class="p4 noic">Κέρδος ἄν εἴη μήτε πιστεύειν μήτε ἀπιστεῖν πᾶσιν</p>
+
+<p class="right"><i>Phil. Vit. Apoll. II, 45</i></p>
+
+<p class="p4 noi adauthor">NEW YORK<br>
+E. P. DUTTON &amp; COMPANY<br>
+681 FIFTH AVENUE</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="noic">APOLLONIUS, COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY E. P.<br>
+DUTTON &amp; COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS<br>
+RESERVED. :: :: PRINTED IN U. S. A.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p>
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="APOLLONIUS">
+    APOLLONIUS
+    <br>
+    <small>OR THE
+    <br>
+    PRESENT AND FUTURE<br>
+    OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH</small>
+  </h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span></p>
+
+<p class="p2">Psychical research has in the last twenty-five
+years lived down the obloquy and suspicion
+which surrounded its earlier days, and secured
+an assured position as a recognized branch of
+scientific study. In nearly every European
+country and in the United States of America
+men of acknowledged eminence in their professions—philosophers,
+scientists, doctors, literary
+men—have devoted themselves to the
+earnest study of those obscure and baffling
+phenomena which form the subject matter of
+psychical research, though this field of scientific
+endeavour holds at present few allurements
+in the shape of personal advantage or reward,
+no appreciable endowments exist to facilitate
+such research, no professorial chairs
+are reserved for its devotees. The patient and
+unselfish toil of those men, who have given
+to psychical research years which otherwise
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span>might have brought them rich material gains,
+is based on their deep and abiding interest in
+the subject, and their frank endorsement of
+Schopenhauer’s words:</p>
+</div>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“The phenomena under discussion are, at
+least from a philosophical standpoint, of all
+the facts presented to us by the whole of experience
+without comparison the most important;
+it is therefore the duty of every educated
+man to make himself thoroughly acquainted
+with them.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, in spite of the recent emergence
+of psychical research into the clearer
+light of scientific tolerance and even encouragement,
+it must be admitted that its literary output
+has within recent years, as far as the English-speaking
+races are concerned, fallen far
+behind the brilliant and yet substantial work
+of its earlier pioneers. Few, if any, of our
+modern researchers in Great Britain have
+reached the high level attained by the works of,
+say, Myers, Gurney, Podmore, Professor and
+Mrs Sidgwick, and Professor James of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>Harvard. Nor again has any adequate progress
+been maintained in the experimental
+work which characterized the earlier history
+of the Society for Psychical Research. Our
+main evidence for telepathy is still the careful
+work of the Sidgwick group at Brighton, and
+little has been accomplished in the investigation
+of “physical phenomena” since the perplexities
+and disappointments of the Palladino
+experiments. In America the glory has indeed
+departed from a movement which was formerly
+illumined by the splendid work of William
+James, Hyslop, Hodgson, and Prince.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, if in Great Britain the
+earlier branches of experiment have to some
+extent been neglected, a vast amount of useful
+work has been accomplished since the death of
+Myers in the new field of “cross correspondence,”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
+which, in the opinion of some, may
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>well prove to be the most productive of all our
+areas of research. On the Continent too experimental
+work of a high order has been developed
+during recent years, more especially in
+France and in Germany, the results of which
+have been given to the world in the writings
+of such men as Richet, Osty, Schrenck-Notzing,
+Tischner, Dessoir, Driesch, and others.
+The happy selection this year of Dr Driesch as
+President of the S. P. R. is a tribute to the fine
+work of himself and his countrymen. No
+better future could indeed be desired for
+psychical research than that it should occupy
+the serious attention of German scholars and
+be treated in accordance with the painstaking
+and efficient methods of German science.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="noi"><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> i. e. two mediums sitting widely apart, sometimes
+even in different countries, receive different
+messages alleged to come from the same discarnate
+personality. When taken separately such messages
+may be obscure and meaningless; when read in conjunction
+they present a clear and intelligible meaning.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>But while the advance of psychical research
+on strictly scientific lines has to some extent
+fallen short of the hopes of our pioneers, an
+unprecedented development has taken place
+in the cruder and less critical forms of what is
+popularly known as “Spiritualism”. This increased
+interest in spiritualistic phenomena has
+been followed by a vast output of books devoted
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>to the acceptance of the spiritist theory
+and generally characterized by the absence of
+scientific spirit or critical investigation.
+Thousands of persons who fully admit their
+acceptance of the “facts of spiritualism” and
+allege that they find in the teachings of the
+spiritualist creed guidance in life and consolation
+in death appear to be satisfied with a
+minimum of reason for the faith which is in
+them. Popular enthusiasm for occult experiences
+has produced no corresponding increase
+in the number of serious students. The valuable
+material accumulated with immense care
+in the <cite>Proceedings</cite> of the Psychical Research
+Society is to a large extent unknown to and
+unexplored by the modern spiritualist, who
+professes to base his claims, if called upon to
+do so, on uncritical data derived from professional
+clairvoyants or his own automatic
+script. The result has been a veritable flood
+of alleged messages from another world
+which, in some cases, have been supplied to the
+Sunday newspapers by discarnate and obliging
+intelligences with the regularity of an editorial
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>leader. The recognized spiritualist churches,
+“Lyceums” and similar organizations in Great
+Britain, 610 in number apart from independent
+societies and groups, possess a membership of at
+least 54,000; and, despite the honourable efforts
+of many educated and enlightened spiritualists
+who are determined enemies of
+mediumistic fraud, a steady increase has taken
+place in the ranks of those pseudo-mediums
+who trade on the credulity of the public.</p>
+
+<p>At first sight this strange development might
+appear to be wholly out of keeping with the
+spirit of an age which may reasonably be described
+as materialistic. The appalling failure
+of organized Christianity to avert or shorten
+the War, the diseased growths which have
+fastened upon our music, art, and drama, the
+waste and extravagance in our social life, the
+cruel self-seeking of our international conduct—these
+and other influences of the War-period
+and its aftermath have provided a fitting inspiration
+for large sections of our population
+which appear to have little taste for much beyond
+the life-purpose of Mr. Wells’ hero “to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>put one’s hands on the dibs, and have a good
+time.” But history has demonstrated in the
+case of individuals and nations alike that material
+and even intellectual progress does not
+necessarily eliminate superstition. The sceptical
+Julius Caesar crawled up the steps of the
+Capitol to avert the jealous wrath of the gods;
+the Renaissance was responsible for two centuries
+of witch-burning. And so we find that
+side by side with the weakening of moral and
+religious sanctions a widespread spirit of credulous
+and uncritical belief pervades the community.
+The vast developments in the circulation
+of cheap newspapers while adding
+enormously to the information of the public on
+current events, has also led our less educated
+citizens in general to accept what they see in
+print. During the War-fever even men of
+recognized position whose training might, one
+would think, have instilled into them some
+measure of intellectual caution, have exhibited
+amazing credulity. The late Bishop of Carlisle,
+and the Editor of <cite>Punch</cite> are typical of
+thousands of our fellow-citizens, clerical and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span>lay alike, who accepted without question such
+grotesque fabrications as the German “Corpse
+Factory” or the “Crucified Canadian.” Stories
+embodied in the <cite>Bryce Report</cite> and similar publications
+were received without any misgiving
+or discrimination by ninety-nine per cent. of
+our population. The nebulous story of the
+singularly inefficient “Angels of Mons”
+formed the text of lay and ecclesiastical addresses.
+The national mind, carefully tutored
+by the fraud or stupidity of controlled journalism,
+was ready when the War ceased to exchange
+the material horrors of this world for
+the spiritual excitements of the next.</p>
+
+<p>The most powerful impulse, however, behind
+the new spiritualism has come from the
+staggering loss of human life in the Great
+War. Never before in the world’s history has
+the cry of human bereavement been so loud and
+bitter, for the vast majority of the millions
+who perished in the conflict were young men
+leaving behind them a heritage of sorrow incomparably
+greater than that which follows
+from the loss of the old, who in far greater
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>numbers die every year in the ordinary course
+of nature. Nor has the poignancy of their
+grief for the loss of sons and brothers been
+lessened for those among the survivors who
+have reached the conviction that these vast
+armies of the world were led to the slaughter
+on false pretences, and that the soldiers died
+not, as most of them honestly believed, to promote
+justice, peace, and freedom, but to subserve
+the same vile motives of imperialist and
+commercial greed which have promoted every
+other modern war.</p>
+
+<p>In earlier ages the Christian religion did indubitably
+inspire in the minds of its adherents
+a genuine conviction of a life beyond the grave
+and a future recognition of those lost awhile.
+But Protestantism in its violent rejection of
+earlier tenets has so far attenuated the doctrine
+of a future existence that its harsh interdicts
+on prayers for the dead and its vague and inconsistent
+beliefs as to the state of the departed
+have to a large extent ceased either to attract or
+convince. At Omdurman the writer saw
+thousands of men advancing against the most
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>terrific fire of the century’s warfare with the
+name of God upon their lips and real conviction
+of a future life in their hearts—but these
+men were not Christians. The carelessness,
+timidity, or corruption of the Churches have
+served to devitalize not only the ethical precepts
+of their Master but also that immortality
+which He brought to light. But, although the
+old springs of comfort have to a large extent
+ceased to flow, the needs of the human heart
+remain, and are turned to those fresh sources
+of assurance and consolation which are so lavishly
+offered by modern Spiritualism.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="p2">Those who undertake the scientific consideration
+of psychic phenomena must realize the
+existence of certain initial difficulties specially
+attached to this branch of research. No form
+of scientific work is more exposed than this to
+the dangerous influence of the “personal equation”
+in the researcher. An astronomer might
+conceivably be prejudiced in his work on Mars
+by some <em>a priori</em> tendency to regard that planet
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>as the home of sentient beings, but the influence
+of such personal factors in scientific research
+may generally be regarded as almost
+negligible. When, however, we find ourselves
+in contact with psychic phenomena which indicate
+intelligence, it is often difficult to dissociate
+our conclusions as to the source of such intelligence
+from our other beliefs or disbeliefs.
+On an occasion famous in the annals of the
+Society for Psychical Research a sealed envelope
+containing a written statement by the
+late F. W. Myers was opened in order to test
+the accuracy of Mrs Verrall’s automatic
+‘Myers’ script, which had previously claimed
+to reveal the words of the sealed message. I
+shall never forget the look of cruel disappointment
+which appeared on the faces of some of
+those present when the two messages were
+found to be dissimilar. On the other hand one
+of the party, a persistent opponent of the
+spiritist hypothesis, received the result with
+obvious satisfaction.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>That such preconceived hopes or opinions
+colour the general attitude of the devotees of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>popular and uncritical spiritualism is obvious.
+Given a dark room, a professional medium inadequately
+controlled or uncontrolled and a
+cardboard trumpet, the voice which comes
+through the trumpet is, to a large extent, accepted
+as that of a discarnate friend because
+the sitters are already convinced of a survival
+or earnestly desire to be so convinced. Even
+in the later work of psychical researchers of a
+higher order, men of intellectual eminence and
+scientific training, a certain relaxation of critical
+rigidity is sometimes noticeable. In these
+cases the lapse from earlier standards of evidence
+is no doubt due to the absolute conviction
+secured by long and critical investigations at
+some previous period. When already convinced
+intellectually by earlier experiences of
+the reality of the phenomena under investigation,
+even men of the mental calibre of a Sir
+William Crookes may almost insensibly deviate
+in subsequent discussions from the evidential
+standard of the investigations from which they
+derived their earlier conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>There exists another weakness of the human
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>mind against which the psychical researcher
+must always be on his guard. Those perverse
+tendencies which are covered by the term
+‘megalomania’ form a sinister factor which
+serves continually to warp the judgment and
+even, in some cases, the moral sense of those
+who lay claim to the possession of supernormal
+powers. It is doubtful whether this form of
+mental perversity, appearing often as a kind of
+kink in otherwise normal and regular minds,
+has ever been adequately recognized by those
+whose task it has been to collate the facts and
+estimate the validity of alleged psychic phenomena.
+Megalomaniac impulses, indeed, would
+appear to provide at any rate a partial explanation
+of many declarations about strange and
+startling occurrences outside the actual area of
+the <em>séance</em> room. The writer, from personal
+experiences in several modern wars, including
+the last, and a careful study of war psychology
+and war-literature, has come to the conclusion
+that of the large number of atrocities which are
+alleged to disfigure the record of all civilized
+armies only a very small percentage ever occur
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>at all. Some of these stories are certainly
+invented by Propaganda Departments, civil and
+military, whose members, in some instances, do
+not scruple to disseminate falsehoods in order
+to blacken the good name of an enemy people
+and so increase the ferocity and fighting efficiency
+of their own troops. But the bulk of
+these atrocity tales are due to the megalomaniac
+desire on the part of soldiers or civilians to recount
+thrilling and terrible events or pose as
+the actual participants in some gruesome episode.
+A civilian refugee or a wounded soldier
+in hospital (a normally truthful person) will
+sometimes invent in detail an atrocity story in
+order to impress an interrogator or a nurse and
+so secure for himself an amount of megalomaniac
+satisfaction. It is presumably the same
+curious impulse which brings to famous criminals
+in the dock offers of marriage from
+ordinarily decent and respectable women, or
+leads an obscure tourist to carve his initials on
+the Parthenon, or stimulates people to frenzied
+social effort in order to shake the hand of a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>royal personage, however commonplace his
+character or feeble his achievement.</p>
+
+<p>But if this form of mental perversion finds
+so many outlets in the course of everyday life,
+we may well expect it to flourish even more
+abundantly in the environment of psychic happenings.
+After all, what ordinary experience,
+however desirable, could vie in value and interest
+with the power to receive or convey
+actual messages from the dead? What ordinary
+scientific achievement could equal the exercise
+of a power which could secure the passage
+of matter through matter, bring about the levitation
+of a table without personal contact in defiance
+of the laws of gravitation, or cause the
+appearance of a materialized hand or even a
+full-length figure?</p>
+
+<p>The professional mediums who every Sunday,
+sometimes more frequently, conduct the
+spiritualist services in our towns are obviously
+regarded as persons of great importance
+and authority by their large audiences,
+and the consciousness of this, apart altogether
+from the fact of their fees, may stimulate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>them to supplement, if need be, the output
+of possibly genuine phenomena by an ever-ready
+supply of pseudo-messages and haphazard
+“delineations.” The humbler mediums,
+usually unpaid, who form the centre of
+thousands of “circles” in our working-class
+homes are invested with an importance and
+feel a mental exaltation quite foreign to the
+drabness of their ordinary surroundings and
+occupations. And here again if genuine
+powers of clairvoyance are inadequate or non-existent,
+this special form of spiritual pride
+will still provide a satisfactory flow of messages
+from the deceased buccaneer or Indian
+chief who acts as the “control.”</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult indeed to assign any limits to
+the intrusion of this singular influence in the
+domain of psychical research. In one remarkable
+instance a London barrister of recognized
+standing and enjoying a large income from his
+profession posed for some time in private
+circles as a physical medium. He claimed
+<i lang="la">inter alia</i> the power of causing the partial levitation
+of a table by placing his hands on the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>top. Yet at a sitting conducted by members
+of the S. P. R. this gentleman was easily detected
+in the childish trick of having inserted
+inside his cuffs two small pieces of wood, which
+were thus introduced under the table’s edge!
+On another occasion I found during the investigation
+of a case in Hampshire that a maid-servant,
+possibly in collusion with her mistress,
+was producing luminous crosses by rubbing
+moistened matches on the furniture and walls—there
+being no conceivable motive for this
+transparent deception beyond the desire to be
+regarded as a successful “medium”. Much, if
+not all of the story of the Rev. Stainton Moses’
+career can probably best be explained as an
+amazing example of spiritual megalomania.
+Such a theory of course involves the disagreeable
+conclusion that a clergyman and a public-school
+master, endowed with a kindly and generous
+disposition, must have spent years of his
+life in the systematic deception of his most intimate
+friends and, later on, of the public at
+large. Nevertheless, all said and done, the
+moral miracle in this astonishing case is, as Mr.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>Podmore suggested, more easy than the physical
+one.</p>
+
+<p>The extraordinary poltergeist cases—cases
+by no means infrequent and widely distributed—in
+which furniture is violently moved, windows
+and crockery smashed, and pictures
+thrown down, can usually be traced to the furtive
+trickery of little boys, or more commonly
+little girls, who do not scruple to destroy their
+parents’ property and peace of mind in order
+to secure for themselves the secret satisfaction
+of some megalomaniac impulse.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the deliberate imposture, due
+more often than we suspect to the megalomaniac
+impulses referred to above, there is
+some ground for believing in the existence of a
+still more subtle form of apparent fraud. It is
+frequently asserted by mediums of repute that
+they are unable to do justice to themselves or
+exercise their gifts to good purpose because of
+the unsatisfactory influence of one or more
+sitters of an aggressively sceptical type, a
+curious parallel—be it said in all reverence—to
+the strange remark of the Evangelist that the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>miracles of Our Lord were sometimes actually
+prevented by the disbelief of His hearers.</p>
+
+<p>But may the disbelieving sitters, in some instances,
+go further than a mere hindrance of
+genuine phenomena and actually cause the production
+of trickery and fraud on the part of
+the medium? Given a medium susceptible to
+telepathic suggestion, and one or more sitters
+suspecting or convinced in advance that all
+they will witness at the <em>séance</em> will be an exhibition
+of trickery, it is easy to see that telepathic
+suggestion of fraud, conscious or unconscious,
+from the minds of these sceptics
+may result in trickery which is primarily due
+not to the medium but to themselves. This risk
+is obviously accentuated when the medium falls
+(as, for example, in Mrs Piper’s case) into a
+cataleptic condition or some form of ordinary
+hypnosis.</p>
+
+<p>In any case it is confidently asserted by
+psychical researchers of capacity and experience
+that the same medium may be fraudulent
+at one moment and genuine at another. Such
+a thesis is doubtless hard of acceptance to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>ordinary men or women, however disposed
+they may be to an unprejudiced consideration
+of psychic phenomena; and it was, in fact, rejected
+by the original founders of the Psychical
+Research Society, who definitely refused to
+include within the area of their investigations
+the alleged phenomena of any medium once detected
+in the perpetration of fraud. Further experience,
+however, has apparently modified this
+once inflexible attitude, and at any rate a majority
+of the Council of the S. P. R. are now
+willing to hold experimental <em>séances</em> with
+mediums against whom fraud has been openly
+alleged or actually proved. The writer shares
+the view of this majority, for, as far as he
+can judge from personal experience or the
+definite testimony of others, a medium like
+Eusapia Palladino was, sometimes, indubitably
+guilty of patent and childish trickery
+(which she would subsequently admit quite
+shamelessly), and at other times produced valid
+phenomena of amazing interest under the
+strictest test-conditions.</p>
+
+<p>We need not devote much time to the deliberate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>fraud and trickery which have always
+been admittedly associated with certain manifestations
+of mediumship and have frequently
+inspired such disgust and contempt in the
+minds of would-be investigators that they have
+abandoned the quest altogether. Those who
+have persevered in spite of discouragement
+know what it is to find oneself in uncomfortable
+and ill-ventilated rooms, holding the
+hands of unknown persons in the dark, tortured
+by the metallic music of a cheap gramophone,
+or compelled to join in discordant
+renderings of revivalist hymns or dreadful
+ditties like “Where is now the prophet Daniel?”
+And one realizes all the time that the music
+is meant to drown the noise caused by a fraudulent
+medium in wrapping himself in muslin or
+adjusting a false beard, and further that one
+will have to pay a guinea for this wretched exhibition!
+What researcher, again, has not experienced
+the boredom of public or private
+sittings for “delineations”, when a medium, after
+a few spasmodic twitchings, “passes under
+control” and proceeds to describe the appearance
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>of the deceased relatives and friends of
+the members of a credulous audience, which
+will subsequently contribute to the “silver collection”?
+Who, too, has not reflected with
+amazement upon the staggering credulity of
+men and women who accept the delineated
+“old gentleman with white hair” or the “old
+lady with grey hair parted in the middle” as
+unquestionably their late father or mother; or,
+in a materializing <em>séance</em>, believe that the same
+piece of butter muslin waved in one direction
+is a lost grandparent and waved in another
+direction is a little child? Such wearisome and
+sordid experiences form the <i lang="it">via dolorosa</i> of researchers,
+who are prepared to seek for gold
+even in the muddiest streams, and sometimes
+find it; for, even if ninety-five per cent. of the
+alleged phenomena are explicable by trickery
+or deception, the remaining five may defy all
+such explanations.</p>
+
+<p>The student of psychical research is confronted
+at the outset by a considerable volume
+of reasoned and unreasoned opposition. Persons
+who in other directions are entirely opposed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>to each other’s points of view combine
+for a common assault: uncompromising materialists
+and devout evangelical Christians
+form a strange alliance against what they
+vaguely describe as “spiritualism”. An even
+more curious dislike comes from large masses
+of our population who, without any deep convictions
+or reasoned arguments for their hostility,
+are irritated by a movement which appears
+to upset the even tenor of their mental
+conservatism. Even cultured people are not
+proof against this prejudice: at many dinner
+tables any sustained reference to the alleged
+phenomena of mediumship would be regarded
+as “bad form” and thoroughly objectionable.
+When the writer entered the House of Commons
+he was informed by the chairman of his
+Liberal Association that his membership of the
+Psychical Research Society would “do him
+harm in the constituency”. This unintelligent
+aversion to spiritual novelties, which almost
+wrecked the Salvation Army in its infancy,
+secured the triumph of the Dayton “fundamentalists,”
+and now, though happily with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>diminishing force, assails the study of clairvoyance
+or telepathy, seems analogous to that
+primitive instinct which impels wild birds to
+combine for the destruction of an exotic parrot
+which has escaped from its cage.</p>
+
+<p>Even as regards the more serious of his opponents,
+the apologist of psychical research is
+entitled to object at the start that comparatively
+few of these are adequately equipped for their
+task. It is lamentable that our hostile critics
+have for the most part scarcely taken the
+trouble to understand our position or furnish
+themselves with more than a quite superficial
+knowledge of the facts. What a sorry figure
+would be cut by most of our lay and ecclesiastical
+opponents were they set an examination
+paper on the evidences accumulated by the
+Psychical Research Society, to go no further!
+One of the best known opponents of the
+phenomena of mediumship has admitted that
+he has never made any personal investigation
+of the claims of any prominent medium, British
+or foreign, and a <em>brochure</em> distributed to his
+audience exhibits an amazing ignorance of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>subject matter against which his platform diatribes
+are directed. There is another reason
+for popular hostility. Much of the fraud
+which admittedly exists is of a peculiarly heartless
+character, for its exponents derive their resources
+largely from bereaved men and women
+who fly to spiritualism for tidings of their
+lost ones and for solace in their grief. The
+natural indignation felt against such traffickers
+in human sorrow undoubtedly predisposes
+many superficial critics to assume in their haste
+that all public mediumship is fraudulent.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the more or less unintelligent
+prejudices of the public generally, the scientific
+investigation of the phenomena of mediumship
+is hampered by the professional antagonisms
+of the Church and the Law. The menace of
+legal proceedings, while a terror to the fraudulent,
+is also a deterrent to the supply of genuine
+phenomena. Mediums are usually persons of a
+very sensitive and nervous temperament, and
+the fact that at any moment a Mrs Leonard
+is liable to the same legal procedure and the
+same conviction as the most insignificant
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>fortune-teller is not conducive to the
+regular supply of those supernormal facts
+which form the subject-matter of scientific
+psychical research. From time to time, and apparently
+by concerted action, legal proceedings
+are set on foot by the authorities against public
+mediums. The requisite evidence is furnished
+by detectives or journalists who have
+secured sittings with the defendants, and the
+prosecution takes place under an Act of George
+IV, directed against “vagabonds” and
+“fortune-tellers”. Our magistrates usually
+maintain on these occasions that the essential
+part of the legal offence is the medium’s claim
+to “foretell the future”, and this is apparently
+accentuated and aggravated by the “intention
+to deceive” or the acceptance of money or reward.
+During an epidemic of legal medium-baiting
+in 1917, men and women were sentenced
+to heavy fines, up to £50, or imprisonment,
+because of their claims to foretell
+the future. Yet a little reflection might have
+caused our magistrates to remember that all
+the official representatives of organized religion
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>are regularly engaged in foretelling the
+future and are paid—and quite rightly—for
+their services in this respect. The so-called
+“sport” of the race-course is—as many of us
+know to our cost—built upon an elaborate and
+extensive system of prophecy for payment—whether
+the forecasts are made in the columns
+of the most respectable newspapers or in the
+circulars of professional tipsters. Nor, indeed,
+can one wholly dissociate those manifold
+pledges which disfigure our political elections
+from the same suspicion; for these prophetic
+anticipations are made in order to win votes
+and so secure the social and pecuniary rewards
+which result from electoral success.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the magistrates who tried and condemned
+these mediums displayed a pitiable ignorance
+of the whole subject of psychic phenomena.
+Almost anybody indeed appears to be
+considered competent to dogmatize about theological
+or psychic matters without any credentials
+in the shape of adequate study or experience.
+The following extract from the well
+known “Brockway” case serves to illustrate
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>the mental equipment of a magistrate for a
+trial of this character:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“The Rev. G. H. St. John Mildmay stated that he
+had had two sittings with the defendant and was
+amazed that she could tell him names that he had
+written in a paper which was then folded up and held
+in her hand.... He was convinced that she was
+perfectly genuine.</p>
+
+<p class="noi hang"><i>Magistrate</i>: You have, I suppose, seen conjurors
+taking cards out of people’s hair and
+such things? (<i>Laughter</i>).</p>
+
+<p class="noi hang"><i>Witness</i>: There was nothing resembling that.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>A subsequent reference by one of the witnesses
+to the possible influence of “lying spirits”
+was followed by this edifying dialogue:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class="noi hang">“<i>Mr. Barker</i> (<i>prosecuting Counsel</i>): I object to such
+ridiculous questions.</p>
+
+<p class="noi"><i>Mr. Wild</i> (<i>for the defence</i>) asked the magistrate to
+rule whether such a question was ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p class="noi hang"><i>The Magistrate</i> (<i>with emphasis</i>): I certainly think
+it is ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wild then said—with justice—that it was evidently
+waste of time to go on, and left the Court.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The antagonism of the Christian Churches,
+a <i lang="la">damnosa hereditas</i> from the unspeakable records
+of past centuries, is now a waning force,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>chiefly confined to the ranks of what the late
+Dean Rashdall rather roughly called “the inferior
+clergy”. There are some exceptions.
+The distinguished Dean of St. Paul’s, a devoted
+student of the obsolete fantasies of Neoplatonic
+philosophy, seems quite unable to dissociate
+the serious study of psychic phenomena
+from the fraudulent banging of tambourines
+or the wearing of false wigs. He is ready to
+consider the unsupported assertions of Plotinus,
+that that third-century mystic on one occasion
+enjoyed some form of beatific vision in the
+“contemplation of the One”; but on the other
+hand the more recent and infinitely better supported
+testimony of a Lombroso, Crookes, or
+William James as to the occurrence of a psychical
+or clairvoyant phenomenon is contemptuously
+ignored. Now and again sincere representatives
+of medieval Christianity like Lord
+Hugh Cecil are to be found who ban the
+<em>séance</em>-room because they are convinced that
+clairvoyance is a form of necromancy and ‘controls’
+like Mrs Piper’s “Phinuit” or Mrs
+Leonard’s “Feda” demoniacal agencies totally
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>unfit for Christian intercourse. The more
+general and more enlightened attitude of at
+any rate the Anglican Church is embodied in
+the <cite>Report</cite> of the bishops at the Lambeth
+Conference of 1920:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“We say without hesitation that we welcome
+scientific investigation: we recognize the patience and
+the skill with which members of the Psychical Research
+Society examine the mass of evidence of all
+kinds submitted to them, and above all the unmistakable
+desire to safeguard the inquiry against illusion
+or fraud, to arrive at truths, and to interpret scientific
+facts correctly.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Yet side by side with this moderate and
+reasonable resolution we find that the Conference
+registered a very strong warning against
+“the habit of recourse to <em>séances</em> and mediums”.
+Here again is revealed once more the ignorance
+of many well-meaning and able critics who
+possess a merely superficial acquaintance with
+the subject. How, for example, can we study
+scientifically the phenomena of clairvoyance
+without recourse to clairvoyant mediums?
+Such an embargo would—to go no further—have
+robbed us of the profoundly interesting
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>records of Mrs Piper’s trance-mediumship, or
+the striking results contained in Dr Osty’s
+volumes. One might almost as well approve
+of the scientific study of anatomy and forbid
+recourse to the dissecting-room.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="p2">At this point, and in view of the admitted
+imperfections which mark the course of our
+inquiry into supernormal phenomena—the
+fraud and credulity and malobservation which
+so easily beset our work—the question may
+fairly be asked: “Has psychical research
+really any future?”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>To such a query I have no hesitation in giving
+an emphatic “Yes.” One may go further
+and say that at no period since the subject
+was seriously studied have we had better reasons
+for such an answer. Within the last few
+years a veritable revolution has occurred in
+the general attitude of science towards the
+phenomena of the universe. In the light of
+Einstein’s discoveries the dogmatism of the
+materialist has become obsolete. The old
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>scientific outlook has been undermined and superseded
+by scientists themselves. Atoms
+and electrons are no longer regarded as ultimate
+realities. According to Professor Eddington,
+“there is nothing to prevent the assemblage
+of atoms forming the brain from being
+itself a thinking machine in virtue of that
+nature which physics leaves undetermined and
+undeterminable.” Not only the ‘laws of Nature’
+but space and time and the great globe
+itself may conceivably be mental phenomena,
+themselves the creations of mind. And so it
+has come to pass that such an utterance as
+Professor Clifford’s: “The Universe is made
+of ether and atoms and there is no room for
+ghosts” remains only a fragment of an outworn
+scientific creed. The division of the
+external world into a material world and a
+spiritual world is now held by scientists to be
+superficial. No inherent impossibility rules
+out of court the possible manifestations of
+other minds than ours, functioning apart
+from our own brains and bodies. “We may
+doubt,” says Professor Eddington, “whether
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>there is any branch of knowledge from which
+exact science is excluded”: there <em>is</em> “room for
+ghosts,” and room for other supernormal phenomena
+hitherto ignored or denied by scientists
+in general. The fact of telepathy indicates the
+existence of other methods of mental communion
+outside the recognized channels of sense,
+and for that reason is rejected <em>a priori</em> by
+some of the more conservative representatives
+of science. “Such a direct transmission of
+ideas from one mind to another” writes Dr
+Jodl, “without any perceptible physical method
+of communication would indicate the presence
+of a crack in the very foundations of all our
+views on nature, and, if proved, would lead us
+to a complete revision of fundamental principles.”
+Dr Henning declares that “psycho-physics,
+yes, even psychology, as a science,
+must be utterly wrecked before we
+have recourse to telepathy.” How different
+in tone is the statement of one of the
+most acute among our younger thinkers, Professor
+Broad of Cambridge&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>, who not only
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>tolerates the existence of a spiritual world but
+postulates the actual necessity of a “psychic
+factor” in order to provide a coherent explanation
+of the universe and ourselves.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="noi"><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> <cite>The Mind and its Place in Nature</cite>, 1925.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Since the advent, then, of a new scientific
+revelation the field lies open for further work
+and further advances in psychical research. No
+longer denied access to the precincts of orthodox
+science or received with a dubious welcome,
+the professed student of supernormal phenomena
+can claim and receive a definite status
+as the representative of an acknowledged
+branch of scientific study. But in realizing
+this, he must realize too the responsibilities of
+a position so assured. Two objects must be
+permanently kept in view—the accumulation
+of fresh facts, and the exercise of rigid control
+and accuracy in our experiments.</p>
+
+<p>In the discovery of new material we are, of
+course, faced by the irritating and disappointing
+character of the phenomena with which we
+deal. They are often spasmodic, sporadic,
+irregular. They do not occur in any fixed
+sequence nor can they be predicted. Even when
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>our experiments yield obvious success, we are
+ignorant of what the conditions of such success
+may be: no satisfactory experimental control
+of these wayward phenomena seems at present
+feasible. If they are reached through the
+channels of mediumship, we are again exposed
+to the varying and uncertain influences exercised
+by the physical or mental condition of
+the medium at the moment. It is quite clear
+that these ‘sensitives’ are in almost all cases
+persons of a definitely neurotic or hysterical
+temperament; indeed, if we can ever establish
+the actual connection between these pathological
+conditions and the production of supernormal
+phenomena we shall have gone a long
+way in unravelling the tangled skeins of psychical
+research. The discovery and classification
+of fresh psychic facts may mean the expenditure
+of long and tedious hours, but without
+the renewed exercise of “<i lang="fr">recherche lente,
+persévérante, obstinée</i>” we cannot hope to convince
+ourselves or to speak with our enemies
+in the gate. In this department of research more
+than all others our facts soon become more or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>less obsolete, or at any rate lose their compelling
+force. No one now alludes to the careful
+mechanical safeguards against fraud devised
+by Sir William Crookes in the eighties. Our
+generation has almost forgotten the convincing
+experiments in telepathy carried out by the
+Sidgwicks and Professor Barrett, and no longer
+quotes the Stainton Moses phenomena which
+Myers accepted. The call is for the production
+of fresh data collected by our own contemporaries.
+Without therefore troubling ourselves
+unduly for the time being with explanations
+and theories about the facts, without intruding
+into the work the will to believe or disbelieve,
+let us devote ourselves to experiment
+and empirical facts. Surely among the thousand
+members of the Society for Psychical
+Research, to go no further, enough recruits
+could be found to supplement adequately by
+their own unselfish efforts the splendid work
+of our own pioneers in Great Britain and America.</p>
+
+<p>Further, in the process of accumulating and
+systematizing our facts we must accept as an
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>axiom of unquestioned validity that natural
+and normal causes must be eliminated before
+we have recourse to the supernatural or supernormal.
+In other words, we must regard it as
+<em>prima facie</em> more probable that the medium is
+consciously or unconsciously fraudulent or that
+the sitters are the victims of credulity or malobservation
+than that men and women possess
+a capacity for acquiring knowledge or influencing
+matter which transcends the recognized
+facts of ordinary experience. Our course then
+as psychical researchers is clear. We must exercise
+such drastic and complete control over
+the whole course of our experiments as to
+render deception an unthinkable hypothesis.
+That such methods of control exist and can be
+applied is indubitable: that they are occasionally
+absent from <em>séances</em> conducted by scientific and
+educated persons must equally be admitted.</p>
+
+<p>Podmore revealed several defects in the
+alleged safeguards against fraud accepted in
+certain experiments with Florence Cook and
+even D. D. Home; and quotes a serious instance
+of careless description in the record of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>the famous experience of the London Dialectical
+Society with the latter medium: where
+the statement that “the room was illumined by
+moonlight” is shewn from the calendar (as in
+the parallel of Sir John Moore’s burial) to have
+been incorrect. In more recent times the conditions
+observed in Warsaw and in Paris with
+the mediums Kluski and Gujik have been sometimes
+unsatisfactory. Nor can any impartial
+critic, in view of the surprisingly lax conditions
+which prevailed, necessarily accept the
+widely recorded successes of Professor Gilbert
+Murray in thought-transference as manifestations
+of anything abnormal or unusual. In
+the case of any less distinguished performer
+it would have been difficult to regard such experiments,
+in the absence of any repetition of
+them under test conditions, as worth the serious
+consideration of a scientific body.</p>
+
+<p>The collection of fresh facts is, to a large
+extent, conditioned by the supply of sensitives
+and by the provision of adequate funds for such
+research. Apart from the existing opportunities
+provided by University chairs of Mental
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>Science, Mental Philosophy and the like, which
+have already contributed largely to this study
+when held by men like McDougall, James,
+Schiller, and Broad in Great Britain and
+America, private generosity will always apparently
+be ready to assist in some measure the
+experimental work of psychical research. The
+most serious obstacle arises not from the absence
+of monetary assistance but from the fact
+that the feelings entertained towards one another
+by the warring sects of religion are reflected
+in the rivalries and disputes of the
+societies engaged in the study of psychic phenomena.
+That regular supply of sensitives
+which is required for an adequate collection of
+empirical facts is seriously hindered by the
+violent animosities of leaders who fight over
+the bodies of well-known mediums and sometimes
+tempt them, like football professionals, by
+the dangerous offer of a higher fee.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="p2">If we accept the view that psychical research
+holds ample promise of a useful future, we
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>may next consider the various lines of our
+advance.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Any serious study of psychical research demands
+as its first essential a knowledge of the
+results secured from a careful consideration of
+telepathic phenomena. Many researchers would,
+indeed, maintain that their investigations
+need not extend beyond these limits. They
+regard telepathy, once scientifically established,
+as a working hypothesis which will cover the
+whole field of those abnormal phenomena
+which form our subject-matter. From this
+point of view, apparitions, clairvoyance, crystal-visions,
+even the physical phenomena of the
+<em>séance</em>-room—these and other abnormal happenings
+can be explained by the exercise in one
+shape or another of the transference of human
+thought and volition outside the ordinary
+channels of sense.</p>
+
+<p>Those who hold that thought-transference
+is the solvent of all our perplexities in psychical
+research may point to the fact that down the
+centuries one marvel after another appears to
+have been directly attributable to this cause.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>A useful monograph might be written on this
+fascinating theme. To go no farther, it is easy
+to see how the miracles recorded in Biblical
+and ecclesiastical literature, and the amazing
+records of witchcraft and sorcery, may to a
+large extent be brought within the compass of
+the telepathic solution.</p>
+
+<p>No serious attempts to investigate the conditions
+or results of thought-transference appear
+to have been undertaken before the middle of
+last century. It was not indeed until 1876
+that Sir William Barrett really initiated the
+careful and scientific study of telepathic phenomena
+which has been continued by the Society
+for Psychical Research in England and
+on the Continent by Boirac, Osty, Tischner, and
+many other distinguished savants. The results
+obtained have been, it is true, questioned and
+criticized at every turn by certain scientists who
+deny that telepathy is either proven or indeed
+possible. Professor Jodl (quoted by Tischner)
+goes so far as to say: “Such a direct transmission
+of ideas from one mind to another,
+without any perceptible physical method of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>communication, would indicate the presence of
+a crack in the very foundations of all our
+views on Nature.” “Psycho-physics”, writes Dr
+Henning, “yes, even psychology as a science
+must be utterly wrecked before we have recourse
+to telepathy.” It is, however, useless
+to indulge in mere <em>a priori</em> refutations or, in
+the case of telepathic experiments, to concentrate
+on the failures and ignore the successes.
+It is of course impossible within the very narrow
+space-limits of this little book to furnish
+any detailed reference of such experiments.
+Suffice it to say that evidence varied, cumulative
+and irresistible now exists which has established
+telepathy as a scientific fact.</p>
+
+<p>The study of telepathic phenomena suggests
+the interesting question whether telepathy is a
+psychic factor of permanent and regular
+character or whether it represents merely the
+dying embers of a once more active force.
+Can the transference of human thought apart
+from physical media be developed and systematized
+on such a scale as to suggest immense
+possibilities in the human relationships of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>future? Or will such development be inevitably
+retarded by the fact that telepathy is a dying
+sense to be classed with various obscure eccentricities
+of the human body which serve merely
+as vestigial landmarks in the long history of the
+race? Despite the alluring possibilities of the first
+suggestion, indications certainly exist which
+lend colour to the pathetic belief that research
+has only discovered this force in the evening
+of its existence.</p>
+
+<p>This view of telepathy as a “rudimentary
+survival” seems to be strengthened by the admitted
+fact that manifestations of telepathy
+are far more certain and more striking when
+the percipient is under hypnotic suggestion;
+for, if it be the subliminal self which rises
+above the threshold in hypnotic slumber and
+obeys the suggestion of the agent’s mind, this
+is itself in all probability a manifestation of
+race-experience rather than that of the individual.
+The everyday self, the product of normal
+experience, is influenced to a much slighter
+degree by hypnotic suggestion than that mysterious
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>entity, the secondary self, trailing its
+clouds of precarnate existence.</p>
+
+<p>In the dim recesses of our race-history our
+pithecoid ancestors in default of language may
+well have possessed telepathic powers for the
+communication of their simple ideas, which
+powers have gradually been rendered less necessary
+as language developed, and may ultimately,
+unless stimulated and exercised, finally
+perish from atrophy. Such a theory would be
+illustrated by those stories which are furnished
+by reliable travellers and missionaries with
+reference to the amazing transmission of news
+which at times appears to take place amongst
+native races of a low level of civilization under
+circumstances which preclude any opportunity
+for normal methods of communication.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, again, is it easy to avoid the conclusion
+that some form of telepathy exists among various
+forms of animal life. The “homing instinct”
+of the cat and the pigeon, and bewildering
+facts connected with the flight of birds of
+passage, inexplicable from any ordinary laws
+of experience, may conceivably be examples of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>a form of telepathy infinitely more regular and
+efficient than the fitful manifestations on the
+part of <i lang="la">homo sapiens</i> which engage the attention
+of psychical researchers. It is not easy to
+find any ordinary explanation for the immediate
+rush of a scattered herd of cattle to any available
+shelter, when one of their number has
+been struck by the noiseless warble-fly. Or
+when I watch the curving flight of the beautiful
+ruffs and reeves round a Norwegian lake—the
+absolutely simultaneous rise, the instantaneous
+wheel of the whole flock in the fraction of a
+second—or, again, when I see hundreds of
+starlings rise together and afterwards return
+to their trees in complete unison, I find it
+difficult to regard these charming incidents as
+due to normal or even abnormal sight or hearing,
+and wonder whether here again some
+rudimentary but efficient form of telepathy
+may not be at work.</p>
+
+<p>Can we go further, and suggest that some
+of the baffling phenomena of heredity and instinct
+may ultimately find their origin in the
+telepathic transference of thought? We accept
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>the word ‘instinct’ as an adequate explanation
+of the habits of sentient creatures, but it
+explains nothing. Every manifestation of instinct
+is obviously due to volition, however
+rudimentary—is, in other words, a mental as
+distinct (so far as such distinction goes) from
+a physical phenomenon. It is difficult to trace
+an “instinctive” movement to material spermatozoa
+or germ-cells. “The burnt child dreads
+the fire” as the result of its own experience,
+but no experience taught the baby how
+to use its lips at its first meal, any
+more than it taught the chicken how
+to escape from the eggshell. The “collective
+experience of the race”, the alleged source of
+these phenomena, may sooner or later be recognized
+as the telepathic transference from the
+mind of the parents of concepts derived from
+the previous telepathy of successive generations.
+It may appear at first sight fantastic to suggest
+that the mechanically exact habits of a mother-wasp
+may be the result of mental telepathy,
+but after all this seems a better <i lang="la">vera causa</i> than
+the wasp’s-egg, a minute fraction of matter
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>which can explain nothing in the realms of
+thought or of volition.</p>
+
+<p>Charcot’s telepathic suggestion of a hot iron
+by the application of a wooden ruler elicited a
+cry of agony, and produced a blister filled
+with lymph on the percipient’s arm; other experiments
+at the Salpêtriêre and elsewhere
+raised weals and other stigmata on human bodies.
+Can it be that this same mysterious and powerful
+force may come to be accepted as at any
+rate a partial solution of the vexed question of
+heredity? A baby is born with marked physical
+characteristics of its father or mother. During
+its prenatal existence you have two main
+factors: the minds of the parents on the one
+side, on the other the mind of the unborn child.
+The future of the little being lying under her
+heart forms the constant thought of the expectant
+mother. She thinks of it as reproducing
+certain characteristics of herself or of the
+husband she loves; the husband applies his
+thoughts in the same direction: and such concentrated
+suggestion, consciously or unconsciously
+conveyed, may serve to shape the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>child’s body as well as its mind, in accordance
+with the maternal or paternal hopes and desires.</p>
+
+<p>Well established as it is in the simpler forms
+of direct communication between agent and
+percipient, telepathy is sometimes called upon
+to explain the whole series of phenomena which
+are grouped under such heads as clairvoyance,
+psychometry, crystal-gazing, automatic writing,
+etc. The more or less public exhibitions of
+alleged clairvoyance which form the central
+feature of innumerable spiritualist services in
+this and other countries do not, as a rule, furnish
+convincing indications of supernormal activity.
+I have never myself seen any public
+“trance-speaker” who, despite the conventional
+twitchings and contortions which herald the ingress
+of the Red Indian or other spirit-control,
+did not appear to be in complete possession of
+his or her normal consciousness. But the prolonged
+and careful investigations of Mrs
+Piper’s mediumship and those more recently
+undertaken with continental clairvoyants by
+Drs Tischner, Osty, and others, stand on a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>very different footing. In the face of the accumulated
+evidence furnished by such research,
+those who rely on telepathy as the universal
+solvent of psychic difficulties must often falter
+where they firmly stood. Leaving for the
+moment all the concrete evidence derived from
+experiments with the British Mrs Leonard or
+continental mediums like “Mrs van B.”, or
+Mademoiselle de Berly, the records of the
+Piper <em>séances</em> form a rich store of evidential
+facts. Amid all the various deceptions and
+failures of the quaint “Dr Phinuit” or the
+more precise “George Pelham,” detailed and
+accurate messages are found, some of which
+appear inexplicable by any conceivable exercise
+of telepathy between living persons.</p>
+
+<p>Nor again can the agency of living minds
+always furnish a satisfactory explanation in the
+rare but indubitable cases of prevision or precognition
+exhibited by clairvoyance. From
+what source come those precise statements
+made from time to time by trustworthy mediums,
+under strict test-conditions, with respect
+to certain articles placed in their hands? Clairvoyance
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>of this type, often called psychometry,
+might almost suggest the validity of Fechner’s
+theory of “odylic” influences, which may appear
+less fantastic in an age when the dividing line
+between matter and mind is becoming theoretically
+obsolete. Moreover, to psychometry, once
+accepted as a scientific fact, an interesting corollary
+would attach; for, if mere contact with
+a man’s cravat can produce from the medium
+a detailed and accurate account of the suicide
+of an unhappy prisoner who had worn the
+cravat, masonry and woodwork might in the
+same inscrutable fashion be responsible for suggesting
+the auditory and visual phenomena of
+a “haunted house.” Some well-attested cases
+exist in which alteration of structure in a house
+has been followed by the cessation of the
+“hauntings.”</p>
+
+<p>If telepathy from the living breaks down
+when called upon to explain all the facts of
+clairvoyance, there exists another explanation
+which has received the enthusiastic support of
+those investigators who, while they reject
+transference between normal minds, point enthusiastically
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>to the alleged efficiency of the
+“secondary” or “subliminal” self. Fascinating
+descriptions are given of this “mysterious Mr
+Hyde which lurks in each of us,” this subconscious
+mind working in the inner sanctum, as
+director and controller, while the normal work-a-day
+self transacts the conventional business
+of life in the open shop. The amazing performances
+of a “calculating boy,” the sudden conversion
+of a Bunyan or a Paul, the supreme
+genius of a Shakespeare or a Handel, are alike
+referred to that comprehensive source of all
+things supernormal, the secondary self! This
+subliminal self can, we are assured, furnish a
+sensitive with information which otherwise
+could not possibly be possessed by any other living
+person. It can not only explore the dim
+recesses of past experience but foretell with
+accuracy the events of the future. Driven
+from the outer trenches of telepathic defence,
+some modern protagonists of psychical research
+find, as they think, an impregnable stronghold
+in the limitless efficiency of the subliminal self.
+The <i lang="fr">soi-disant</i> George Pelham may convince
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>his friends that he is what he claims to be,
+but he is only a manifestation of Mrs Piper’s
+subconscious self—in other words, George Pelham
+in Mrs Piper. If a medium announces in
+England the death in battle of an officer hours
+before the bad news has even reached his battalion’s
+base, this (if not a ‘happy shot’) is
+merely a striking instance of those abnormal
+powers of cognition possessed by the medium’s
+subliminal consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Can this hypothesis bear the heavy strain
+put upon it? After all the phrase “subliminal
+self”, “unconscious mind”—call it what you
+will—embodies nothing at all beyond a hypothesis.
+Nobody has yet demonstrated the
+existence of such a division of the mind attached
+to each living personality, or defined its
+qualities or capacities. There are indubitably
+certain depths in the human mind which may
+be reached by the processes of psycho-analysis,
+but in these cases there appears to be no compelling
+reason for any bewildering thesis of two or
+more distinct minds attached to the same human
+organism. There may be diversities of mental
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>operation, but the same mind: the θεός and
+θηρίον can form a composite mentality capable
+of moral excellence on the one hand, and
+on the other exposing to the Freudian probe
+the lower levels of a non-moral animal existence.</p>
+
+<p>Not only have we failed to prove conclusively
+the existence or determine the activities of
+an entity so improbable <em>a priori</em> as a second
+self, but this popular hypothesis cannot always
+justify itself by fitting the facts, unless indeed
+we are prepared to assign to such an additional
+human mind a considerable measure of omniscience.
+How much further do we get by
+declaring that such intelligences as Phinuit,
+George Pelham, or Feda are mere manifestations
+of a medium’s “secondary self”?</p>
+
+<p>The messages which we receive from clairvoyant
+experiments with entranced or controlled
+mediums, table tiltings, planchette,
+ouija boards, etc., present a bewildering congeries
+of good sense and stupidity, relevancy
+and irrelevancy, truth and falsehood, sobriety
+and flippancy. Such communications possess
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>two marked characteristics. They display intelligence,
+however low the level of that intelligence
+may sink; and they invariably claim to
+proceed from the surviving minds of dead men
+and women, or at any rate from discarnate
+beings or “spirits”.</p>
+
+<p>These messages fall into two classes; in the
+first place, the most important of them, which
+offer evidential matter either spontaneously or
+in compliance with a sitter’s request. In such
+dark and unaccustomed paths the thoughtful
+researcher must walk warily and form his
+judgments dispassionately. Suffice it to say that
+persons of real ability and calm judgment are
+to be found who are intellectually convinced
+that in certain instances the agencies which
+have communicated with them through
+mediums are actually what they claim to be, the
+surviving personalities of dead friends or relatives.
+I found it difficult during some sittings
+under an assumed name with Mrs Piper to
+resist the belief that I was being addressed by
+two lost friends, so amazing was the relevancy
+of a single message in the one case, and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>force of accumulated details in the other. Of
+a communication through the same medium
+given to his sister-in-law for transmission to
+himself Professor William James of Harvard
+writes as follows:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>“The point is that the message is an allusion to a
+matter known (so personal is it to myself) to no
+other individual in the world but me—not possibly
+either to the medium or to my sister-in-law; and an
+allusion so pertinent and intimate, and tender and
+helpful, and yet so unhelped by any actual earthly
+knowledge on anyone’s part, that it quite astounds
+as well as deeply touches me. If the subject of the
+message had been conceivably in my sister-in-law’s
+mind, it would have been an interesting but not
+infrequent case of telepathy; but as I say it could
+not possibly have been, and she only transmits it
+to me after the fact not even understanding it.”</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The second group of messages possess little
+or no evidential value with regard to the personal
+survival of individuals, though they too
+always claim to proceed from “spirits” of some
+kind. Trivial, vulgar, and unworthy as they
+often are, these communications cannot be
+ignored by the student of psychical research.
+When we have eliminated trickery, collusion
+and self-deception from these experiments,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>there remains a residuum of communications
+more or less intelligent which obviously do not
+proceed from the normal consciousness of
+either sitter or medium; in most cases, indeed,
+there is no medium employed, for the messages
+are spelt out through movements of a table or
+an instrument of the planchette type.</p>
+
+<p>Many of these messages are of a perplexing
+character. Some show indications of a rather
+colourless goodwill, others are freakish and
+deceptive with a flavour of feeble practical joking.
+Occasionally they are blasphemous or
+indecent. A very common feature is the giving
+of addresses connected with the sitter or
+with the former life of the alleged spirit-communicator.
+Full names of individuals, the
+names of streets and the numbers of houses are
+freely given. Nevertheless, in nearly every
+instance it is found that the facts as given are
+partially or entirely inaccurate. The whole
+procedure is baffling and obscure. If on the
+one hand the false information is due to the
+conscious action of any of the sitters, why does
+not the person in question take the trouble to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>provide a more complete deception? How easy
+it would be for such devotees of trickery to
+equip themselves with a stock-in-trade of really
+accurate names and addresses from any list of
+obituary notices contemporary or of older date.
+If these tiresome and misleading statements
+proceed from the subliminal consciousness of
+the sitter or medium, it is obvious that this entity
+is unable to secure various simple items
+of current information; and in that case, again,
+what is the motive of such transparent deception?</p>
+
+<p>Nor, indeed, if the subliminal consciousness
+be accepted as the source of such perplexing
+messages, can we feel altogether happy in the
+possession of a secondary self or subconscious
+mind which is admittedly guilty in many instances
+of trickery, evasion, flippancy, deliberate
+and often cruel deception. Any clouds of
+glory that such a self may have trailed behind
+it are at times sadly tarnished, nor is the conviction
+either agreeable or inspiring that we
+harbour within us a force capable of præternatural
+knowledge and amazing achievement and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>yet characterized at times by conduct which the
+ordinary mind of any decent person would
+utterly condemn; for such a secondary self is
+frequently exhibited as “repressed, conative,
+infantile, unreasoning, predominantly sexual”
+and, one may add, sometimes fraudulent and
+usually non-moral. So many difficulties, indeed,
+appear to be involved in connecting these
+messages with any conscious activity that
+some investigators take refuge in the view
+that they consist only of the “stuff that dreams
+are made of,” proceeding from the lumber-room
+of the mind, and no more fraudulent or
+immoral than the elusive vagaries and incongruities
+of some fantastic dream.</p>
+
+<p>One other source of the perplexing messages
+under discussion remains for our consideration.
+There is, as we have said, a feature common
+to them all: they invariably claim to proceed
+from disembodied personalities.</p>
+
+<p>If the devotees of the ‘subliminal self’ hypothesis
+persist in bringing these agencies also
+within the broad compass of the human mind,
+conscious or unconscious, it may, I suppose, be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>urged that the claim to discarnate existence
+put forward by these <i lang="la">animulae vagulae, blandulae</i>,
+is a delusion which is built upon the accumulated
+mental experience of the human race,
+always believing, or striving to believe in a
+life beyond the grave. From the dim recesses
+of our racial history this pathetic protest
+against annihilation has, as it were, become
+a stereotyped portion of the human mind, and
+so it comes to pass that while the normal self
+may reject a personal survival, faint and fleeting
+echoes of the primaeval faith still rise from
+the depths of the unconscious self.</p>
+
+<p>If it really be the case, however, as suggested
+above, that no activity of the human mind,
+whether normal or subliminal, can furnish an
+adequate explanation of the communications
+in question, we are left to face the facts and
+ask ourselves whether, after all, the claim put
+forward by the agencies involved may not be
+a valid one, viz., that they are what they invariably
+allege themselves to be, the product
+of discarnate intelligences. It is easy for those
+unacquainted with the accumulated phenomena
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>of automatic writing, the planchette and ouija
+boards, and so on, to sneer at such an interpretation
+of the facts. But sneers have often
+dogged the earlier footsteps of scientific enterprise,
+and in any case—sneers or no sneers—the
+scientific researcher must, if he can, provide
+a solution of the phenomena which in this
+department of his work are so abundant and so
+easily repeated, that nothing else is needed beyond
+a careful sifting of the material, and
+above all, a mind as free as possible from any
+conscious bias towards either a normal or supernormal
+explanation. Once it is accepted that
+modern science does not necessarily preclude
+the existence of intelligences independent of
+those associated with the functions of the
+human brain, we may frankly admit that the
+theory of spirit-agencies in the case of these
+erratic messages does at least fit the facts. The
+existence would seem to be suggested of those
+alleged unseen entities, sometimes described as
+“elementals,” an order of low-grade spirits, able
+and apparently eager to communicate with us.
+The presence of such beings around us has, in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>earlier centuries, been widely accepted by a
+veritable <i lang="la">consensus gentium</i>; and the general
+characteristics of the communications in many
+a table-tilting or planchette experiment would
+seem to correspond closely to those of the
+fairies, efrits, demons, gnomes, “little folk,”
+<i lang="la">et hoc genus omne</i>—an intermixture of good
+humour and mischief coupled with a limited
+intelligence and the almost complete absence of
+any moral standard.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving the subject of telepathy, one
+more reference to this force as the origin of
+psychic phenomena must be briefly considered.
+The well-known “Census of hallucinations”
+conducted by the Society for Psychical Research
+revealed the fact that (a) 9.9 per cent.
+of the 17,000 persons questioned declared that
+they had at one time or another seen an apparition,
+(b) that very few recognizable phantasms
+were seen after the lapse of one year from the
+day of death, (c) that of the veridical cases the
+vast majority coincided more or less accurately
+with the moment of death. Modern research has
+also revealed a fact never before established,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>that phantasms of the living are far more frequent
+and generally far better attested than those
+of the dead. In summary, it may be claimed
+that men and women with sound minds in
+sound bodies do occasionally see phantasms of
+both living and dead persons under circumstances
+which entirely preclude malobservation
+or deception. No fact could, indeed, be better
+established than that ghosts are seen now as
+they have been seen all down the ages. What,
+however, is new in respect to this interesting
+phenomenon is the modern explanation that a
+ghost is a subjective impression conveyed to
+the mind of A by a conscious or unconscious
+suggestion from the mind of B. Deeply interesting
+as are the well-established and comparatively
+numerous telepathic images conveyed
+from the living to the living, these do not
+lead us outside the range of ordinary telepathic
+activity:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">To shew us this.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But what are we to say to similar phantasms
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>when the person they represent has passed
+through the gates of Death? With the special
+significance of these cases we shall deal later.</p>
+
+<p>It seems clear, then, that the student of
+psychic phenomena will find many promising
+lines of research in the ample field covered by
+telepathy, clairvoyance, and the varied activities
+of motor automatism. Fresh facts must
+be accumulated and sifted, fresh efforts made
+to co-ordinate such facts and discover the
+laws through which they work. Nevertheless,
+there remains another area of supernormal activities
+which cannot be neglected—the physical
+phenomena alleged to occur from time to time,
+almost invariably in the presence and apparently
+through the mediumship of certain individuals.
+In this obscure region, however, the
+opportunities for fraud have been so great,
+the detection of trickery so frequent, and the
+general character of the mediums often so indifferent,
+that, even with the experiences of a
+quarter of a century behind them, many careful
+and able researchers find it difficult to give any
+definite opinion either for or against the existence
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>of such startling phenomena as “materialization,”
+“ectoplastic” extrusions from the
+body, or the movement of material objects without
+physical contact (telekinesis). The only
+excuse for offering my own personal views is
+the fact that I have over a long period of years
+had sittings with some of the world’s best
+known “physical” mediums including Mrs
+Corner (née Florence Cook), Eusapia Palladino,
+Eva C. (Marthe Béraud) and Willi
+Schneider, and a considerable number of less
+known sensitives, and I am unable to endorse
+the opinion recently suggested by a body of
+able and experienced German investigators,
+Drs Gulat-Wellenburg and Rosenbusch and
+Graf v. Klinckowstroen, that no scientific evidence
+exists for the occurrence of physical phenomena.
+On one occasion I have witnessed the
+production of a complete, visible and tangible
+figure which certainly was not the medium
+herself: that it was a confederate—the only
+other normal possibility—was ruled out by
+elaborate and convincing precautions. Despite
+the open readiness of Eusapia Palladino to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>cheat when left without control, many of the
+positive results secured through the mediumship
+of this Neapolitan peasant-woman under test-conditions
+appear to defy any normal explanation.
+The sceptic has still to explain how after
+a searching examination, medical and otherwise,
+Eva C. under stringent conditions of control
+and observation was able to exude from her
+body solid and fluid masses of so-called ectoplasm,
+the existence of which was duly recorded
+by photography. No reliable evidence exists to
+disprove the claim made on behalf of D. D.
+Home, that he was never detected in any kind
+of mediumistic fraud, and much of the evidence
+resulting from the personal experience of cultured
+and educated persons with this medium
+is staggering in its completeness. “On that
+very hearthrug where you are standing,” said
+the late Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., to me,
+“I saw Home raised eighteen inches from the
+ground in broad daylight and verified the phenomenon
+<i lang="la">visu et tactu</i>.” “I do not say,” remarked
+this same great scientist on another
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>occasion, “that these things are possible—I only
+say they happened.”</p>
+
+<p>Telekinesis (the movement of material objects
+without personal contact) in full light has
+been attested by men of unimpeachable honesty
+and acknowledged ability—like Professors
+William James, Lombroso, Schiaparelli, and
+Richet. Mr Dingwall quotes two axioms of
+the professional conjurer—<em>Never tell your audience
+beforehand what you are going to do</em>,
+and <em>Never perform the same trick twice on the
+same evening</em>. But Mdlle Tomczyk of Warsaw
+repeated the same form of telekinesis more or
+less continuously for six years. Is it conceivable
+that throughout that period various groups
+of educated and experienced investigators
+should have utterly failed to detect the use, say,
+of threads or filaments however fine? It is
+childish and unscientific to ignore sound testimony
+and regard every account which comes
+to hand of supernormal physical phenomena as
+little else than the tale of an idiot signifying
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>There is indeed ample work in this dark
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>and dubious region for those who have time,
+patience, and opportunity for the investigation
+of the rare cases of well attested physical
+mediumship. In view, however, of the more
+immediate results of real value which may be
+secured from a study of the subjective phenomena
+of psychical research it is obvious that,
+unless a physical medium is willing sooner or
+later to submit himself frankly and honestly to
+every reasonable test proposed by the best
+scientific minds, it is comparatively useless for
+a researcher to spend his limited time in inconclusive
+sittings for the alleged marvels of
+telekinesis or materialization.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="p2">We have sketched the main lines upon which
+the psychic student of to-day is working, and
+the question which remains is simply <i lang="it">Cui bono</i>?
+What is the practical, or even the theoretical
+value of our research? Several adequate replies
+may, I think, be given.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The results secured by psychic research in
+Great Britain and various other countries possess,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>first of all, a real historical value. The
+attested phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance,
+and physical mediumship throw a clear light
+upon many dark corners of the past.</p>
+
+<p>The Sibylline and other oracles uttered by
+the entranced priestesses of old, and many of
+the features of medieval magic, have their unmistakable
+counterparts in the experiences of
+modern mediumship. The appalling records
+of the most devilish machinery ever devised
+for the torture of mankind, the witchcraft
+persecutions (not of the Dark Ages but of the
+Renaissance), possess an added horror when
+one realizes that the offences alleged against
+the nine million persons burnt to death in two
+centuries were to a large extent the outcome
+of psychic forces and conditions whose
+character was totally unknown to either the
+victims or their tormentors.</p>
+
+<p>The sacred books of Christianity and other
+religions speak of visible and audible phenomena
+of supernormal character which have their
+obvious analogues in the psychic experiences of
+our own days. The messages revealed in the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>shining Urim and Thummim, the quaint telepathy
+of Jacob’s sheep-farming, the phantasm
+and the voice at Endor—these things appear no
+longer as the isolated happenings of a remote
+and dissimilar past or of a special dispensation.
+In the pages of the New Testament, too, the
+healing touch for the sick, the rescue of the
+possessed, the experiences of the first Eastertide
+on the way to Emmaus or on the Galilean
+beach, the testimony of the “five hundred
+brethren at once,” the sudden conversion on the
+Damascus road—such records are indeed
+“worthier of all men to be believed” because
+they are no longer relegated to a far-off “age of
+miracles” but are repeated and exemplified in
+the phenomena of modern research.</p>
+
+<p>Apart, however, from the question of historical
+interest, is it too much to hope that we
+may sooner or later succeed in controlling and
+utilizing to a vastly greater degree than at
+present those new forces which our researches
+have brought to light? Mr. H. G. Wells, in a
+prophetic page of <cite>When the Sleeper Awakes</cite>
+pictures a Harley Street of the future occupied
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>by the consulting-rooms of telepathic specialists,
+and there can be little doubt that the valuable
+work even now accomplished in cases of nervous
+derangements and mental pathology by suggestion,
+hypnotic or otherwise, is capable of still
+further expansion as fuller information accumulates
+and earlier prejudices subside.</p>
+
+<p>The employment of suggestion in the education
+of the young is a field at present almost
+unexplored, although suggestion is so obvious a
+factor in the “endless imitation” of childhood.
+The increased application of psycho-analytic
+methods may in the future not only relieve to
+an infinitely greater extent the maladies and
+distresses of the ordinary individual, but revolutionize
+our attitude towards the criminal. Just
+as the treatment of hysteria has already advanced
+far beyond the beatings and cold
+douches of our grandparents’ days, so do our
+methods of handling the criminal become ever
+more curative than penal; nor is it probable
+that fifty years hence civilized nations will still
+regard the rope or the electric chair as the only
+possible fate even for the murderer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span></p>
+
+<p>In another direction psychical research may
+stretch out a helping hand to reinvigorate the
+failing forces of religion. The structure of organized
+Christianity to-day exhibits all the
+signs of gradual but inevitable decay. Even of
+those who may be willing to render lip-service
+to the formulae of orthodoxy few ever enter a
+church or chapel. The forces of Christianity
+appear to exercise little control over domestic
+politics, and none at all over the international
+conduct of the nations, which so often displays
+a complete contempt for the precepts of either
+religion or morality. While the organized religion
+of Christ has still a message for the individual
+and can still guide His faithful followers
+in life and cheer them in the hour of
+death, the despairing cry of the Saxon chronicler
+might well be uttered over the masses of
+“Christian” mankind to-day: “Christ and His
+saints sleep.” Faced with such hard facts,
+thoughtful men are beginning to realize that
+some reconsideration and restatement of the
+Christian position is inevitable. In such enterprise
+valuable data would be provided
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>by the results of scientific psychical research.
+One of our best known psychologists
+has indeed gone so far as to declare
+that no other power than psychic research
+can hope to arrest the advancing forces
+of materialism. The acceptance of the fact
+that communications and influences can reach us
+which are manifestly not the product of human
+minds nor conveyed through the ordinary channels
+of sense would stultify any <em>a priori</em> denial
+of the possibility of that “spiritual communion”
+which is an essential feature of religion.</p>
+
+<p>In the second place, psychical research is, in
+the view of many, already able to endow with
+a measure of precision and certainty those
+vague and tremulous promises of a future life
+which are offered by the Churches. Owing to
+the rapid decay of religious forces in the western
+world this vital doctrine of a personal survival
+has for the vast majority even of so-called
+Christians lost any real significance. In answer
+to the query “Do you desire a future life whatever
+the conditions may be?” which appeared
+in a questionnaire circulated by the American
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>Branch of the S. P. R. in 1900, “noes” numbered
+no less than 78 per cent. of the total
+replies received (3321)—many taking the
+form of “not at all,” “not in the least,” “never
+think about it.” And although the results of
+an investigation within such narrow limits cannot
+be regarded as decisive, it is probable that
+the note of scepticism or indifference which
+runs through the majority of the replies reflects
+to a large extent the attitude towards a personal
+survival adopted by the average man or
+woman of the present day.</p>
+
+<p>Against the advancing tide of unbelief or indifference
+the modern presentation of religion
+seems wellnigh helpless. Nevertheless, if this
+spirit of blank negation or complete indifference
+continues to make headway, it is difficult to see
+how either moral or religious sanctions can retain
+their authority. If annihilation be our fate,
+any moral guidance of the Universe must appear
+to many minds almost inconceivable. And
+if the moral guidance of the whole collapses,
+schemes of morality for the parts become a
+<i lang="la">reductio ad absurdum</i>: the Divine sanctions
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>of the Sermon on the Mount are replaced by
+systems of glorified Police Regulations imposed
+by the shifting decrees of a human
+majority.</p>
+
+<p>Within the narrow limits at our disposal we
+can only indicate very briefly the main lines
+along which psychic research may serve to
+establish the fact of a survival. The cumulative
+effect of the evidence offered is very great and
+may avail—in Glanville’s words of old—“to
+secure some of the out-works of religion and
+regain a parcel of ground which bold infidelity
+hath invaded.”</p>
+
+<p>(1) Various forms of automatism and certain
+well attested physical phenomena indicate
+the existence of discarnate intelligences.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Telepathy proves that thought can be
+conveyed apart from the ordinary channels of
+sense, and, if telepathy be accepted as the cause
+of apparitions of the living, it would seem that
+the dead whose phantasmal forms appear to us
+are also capable of volition. The apparition
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>(seen simultaneously by two witnesses) of a
+dead mother bending over the cot of her dying
+child “with a look of infinite love and tenderness”
+is deeply significant. Of even greater
+evidential value are the well-attested accounts
+of apparitions seen by dying children or their
+young brothers and sisters who were present at
+the deathbed.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Many of the communications which
+reach us from tried and tested mediums, like
+Mrs Piper, appear to be what they claim to be,
+actual messages from deceased persons.</p>
+
+<p>(4) It is virtually impossible to attribute
+some of the ‘cross-correspondences’ recorded
+by the S. P. R. to any other agency but the conscious
+and detailed activity of a discarnate personality.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="p2">And so our patient work continues. The
+men and women who forty years ago served
+faithfully as the pioneers of modern psychical
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>research have nearly all passed away. There
+can be little doubt that they had pitched their
+hopes too high. So deep was the devotion inspired
+by these new labours, so large the mass
+of facts offered by a veritable cloud of contemporary
+witnesses, that leaders like Myers
+and Sidgwick and Gurney hoped with confidence
+that in their own days the compelling
+force of the facts they had gathered would
+bring intellectual conviction and change the
+whole outlook of mankind. Such clear certainty
+came to few men in the ranks of these
+pioneers themselves and most of them died
+“seeing the promises from afar but not having
+attained unto them.” But fresh recruits have
+filled the gaps in our line, fresh channels of research
+have been opened up, and fresh facts
+recorded: modern science tends rather to clear
+our path than to close it, and the light of that
+earlier hope still shines brightly. Amid the
+limitless possibilities of the next fifty years—great
+developments in surgery, bio-chemistry,
+television, lighting, and transport—it may be
+that not the least of the discoveries which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>glorify the new age will come from the scientific
+results of psychical research. “Hardly as
+yet,” said William James a year before he
+died, “has the surface of the facts called
+‘psychic’ begun to be scratched for scientific
+purposes. It is through following these facts,
+I am persuaded that the greatest scientific conquests
+of the coming generation will be
+achieved. <i lang="de">Kühn ist das Mühen, herrlich der
+Lohn!</i>”</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap">
+<div class="tnote">
+<p class="noi tntitle">Transcriber’s Notes:</p>
+
+<p class="smfont">Obvious punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently
+   corrected.</p>
+
+<p class="smfont">Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.</p>
+
+<p class="smfont">Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78283 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/78283-h/images/cover.jpg b/78283-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e358cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78283-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c72794
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83654f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78283
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78283)