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Title: Apollonius
or, The present and future of psychical research
Author: Ernest Nathaniel Bennett
Release date: March 23, 2026 [eBook #78283]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1927
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78283
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APOLLONIUS ***
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.
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