Psychic Phenomena Part 11

"'I remember that Dr. Carpenter wrote some nonsense about that trip of yours along the side of the house in Ashley Place. I wrote to the _Medium_ to say that I was present as a witness. Now I don't think that any one who knows me would for one moment say that I was a victim to hallucination or any other humbug of the kind. The fact of your having gone out of the window and in at the other I can swear to.'"

"It seems, therefore, that the instance selected by Dr. Carpenter to prove the existence of a hallucination--by the exemption of one person present from the illusion--was of a very unfortunate kind; suggesting, indeed, that a controversialist thus driven to draw on his imagination for his facts must have been conscious of a weak case."[71]

It may be interesting, in concluding this brief examination into one branch of the great subject of "Spiritualism," to bring together a few of the impressions produced on the minds of some of the leading investigators. It should not be forgotten that the branch of the subject which we have been studying may be looked upon as representing the lowest steps only of a great staircase which ascends, until, to our gaze, it is lost in unknown infinite heights. It is only the foot of a ladder, to use another simile, resting on the material earth, which we have been considering; at most the two or three lowest rungs. But to the eyes of some, even now and here, glimpses of angels ascending and descending are visible.

Five names stand out prominently before all others among the earlier investigators of the last thirty years--Sir William Crookes and Professor W. F. Barrett, who are still with us; and Professor Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney, and F. W. H. Myers, who have gone. Sir William Crookes' work in other directions has been all-absorbing, so that all he has been able to tell us during the last few years, in relation to our present subject, is that he had nothing to add to, and nothing to retract from what he has said in the past. In his address as President of the British a.s.sociation in 1898, Sir William Crookes said, after referring to his work of thirty years ago:--

"I think I see a little further now. I have glimpses of something like coherence among the strange elusive phenomena, of something like continuity between those unexplained forces, and laws already known....

Were I now introducing for the first time these inquiries to the world of science, I should choose a starting-point different from that of old.

It would be well to begin with Telepathy; with the fundamental law, as I believe it to be, that thoughts and images may be transferred from one mind to another without the agency of the recognised organs of sense--that knowledge may enter the human mind without being communicated in any hitherto known or recognised ways."[72]

For Professor Barrett's present views the reader is referred to his address as President of the Society for Psychical Research delivered in January 1904.[73] It is full of interest, but is not easy to quote from.

Speaking of "spiritualistic phenomena," he says: "We must all agree that indiscriminate condemnation on the one hand, and ignorant credulity on the other, are the two most mischievous elements with which we are confronted in connection with this subject. It is because we, as a Society, feel that in the fearless pursuit of truth, it is the paramount duty of science to lead the way, that the scornful att.i.tude of the scientific world towards even the investigation of these phenomena is so much to be deprecated.... I suppose we are all apt to fancy our own power of discernment and of sound judgment to be somewhat better than our neighbours. But after all, is it not the common-sense, the care, the patience, and the amount of uninterrupted attention we bestow upon any psychical phenomena we are investigating, that gives value to the opinion at which we arrive, and not the particular cleverness or scepticism of the observer? The lesson we all need to learn is, that what even the humblest of men _affirm_, from their own experience, is always worth listening to, but what even the cleverest of men, in their ignorance, deny, is never worth a moment's attention."[74]

As regards Professor Sidgwick, the experimental work of the Society for Psychical Research soon convinced him that Thought-Transference, or Telepathy, was a fact. In an address in 1889, after speaking of the probabilities of testimony given being false, he says:--

"It is for this reason that I feel that a part of my grounds for believing in Telepathy, depending as it does on personal knowledge, cannot be communicated except in a weakened form to the ordinary reader of the printed statements which represent the evidence that has convinced me. Indeed I feel this so strongly that I have always made it my highest ambition as a psychical researcher to produce evidence which will drive my opponents to doubt my honesty or veracity; I think there are a very small minority who will not doubt them, and that if I can convince them I have done all that I can do: as regards the majority of my own acquaintances I should claim no more than an admission that they were considerably surprised to find me in the trick."[75]

I am not aware that Professor Sidgwick ever expressed any opinion as to the reality of the ordinary physical spiritualistic manifestations. It is clear that he believed a large proportion to have been fraudulently produced. As to some psychical phenomena, his convictions were very strong. For instance, in the final paragraph of the "Report on Hallucinations," which occupies the whole of the tenth volume of the _Proceedings_ of the Society, and to which he appended his name, these two sentences occur: "Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connection exists which is not due to chance alone. This we hold as a proved fact."[76] And Professor Sidgwick speaks of this as corroborating the conclusion already drawn by Mr. Gurney nearly ten years earlier.

Mr. Edmund Gurney's name stands next. His earthly work came to a sudden termination in 1888. "Phantasms of the Living" is his enduring memorial.

Although two other names are a.s.sociated with his on the t.i.tle-page, the greater part of the two volumes was written by him alone. For most of the views expressed Mr. Gurney is solely responsible. In a chapter devoted to "The Theory of Chance-Coincidence" as an explanation of the order of natural phenomena to which "Phantasms of the Living" belong, Mr. Gurney says:--

"Figures, one is sometimes told, can be made to prove anything; but I confess I should be curious to see the figures by which the theory of chance-coincidence could here be proved adequate to the facts. Whatever group of phenomena be selected, and whatever method of reckoning be adopted, probabilities are hopelessly and even ludicrously overpa.s.sed."[77]

This is the conclusion referred to above by Professor Sidgwick. With exclusively physical phenomena Mr. Gurney did not much concern himself.

The last of the five names mentioned is that of Mr F. W. H. Myers. The written testimony he has left behind enables us to obtain a much clearer view of his conclusions as a whole, than is attainable in the case of Professor Sidgwick and Mr. Gurney. The convictions which he came to in regard to the two most notable "mediums" in the history of modern spiritualism--D. D. Home and W. Stainton Moses--are evidence that he believed in most of the alleged phenomena being proved realities. These convictions are so important from such a careful and competent student of the subject that it is best to quote them in his own words. Of D. D.

Home he said: "If our readers ask us--'Do you desire us to go on experimenting in these matters, as though Home's phenomena were genuine?'--we answer 'Yes.'"[78] Of the phenomena which occurred in the presence of W. Stainton Moses, Mr. Myers said: "That they were not produced fraudulently by Dr. Speer or other sitters I regard as proved both by moral considerations and by the fact that they are constantly reported as occurring when Mr. Moses was alone. That Mr. Moses should have himself fraudulently produced them, I regard as both morally and physically incredible. That he should have prepared and produced them in a state of trance, I regard both as physically incredible, and also as entirely inconsistent with the tenour both of his own reports and of those of his friends. I therefore regard the reported phenomena as having actually occurred in a genuinely supernormal manner."[79]

At the same time Mr. Myers believed in the existence of a large amount of conscious and wilful fraud, especially in professional mediums.h.i.+p.

There will be no fitter conclusion to this volume than a few pa.s.sages from the last chapter, ent.i.tled "Epilogue," of "Human Personality," by Mr. F. W. H. Myers. To a large extent they are appropriate to the evidence presented in the preceding pages.

"The task which I proposed to myself at the beginning of this work, is now, after a fas.h.i.+on, accomplished. Following the successive steps of my programme, I have presented--not indeed all the evidence I possess, and which I would willingly present--but enough at least to ill.u.s.trate a continuous exposition.... Such wider generalisations as I may now add, must needs be dangerously speculative; they must run the risk of alienating still further from this research many of the scientific minds which I am most anxious to influence....

"The inquiry falls between the two stools of religion and science; it cannot claim support either from the 'religious world' or from the Royal Society. Yet even apart from the instinct of pure scientific curiosity (which surely has seldom seen such a field opening before it), the mighty issues depending on these phenomena ought, I think, to const.i.tute in themselves a strong, an exceptional appeal. I desire in this book to emphasise that appeal; not only to produce conviction, but also to attract co-operation. And actual converse with many persons has led me to believe that in order to attract such help, even from scientific men, some general view of the moral upshot of all the phenomena is needed....

The time is ripe for a study of unseen things as strenuous and sincere as that which Science has made familiar for the problems of earth."

Coming now to more definite considerations, Mr. Myers writes thus of Telepathy, lifting it on to an altogether higher plane: "In the infinite Universe man may now feel, for the first time, at home. The worst fear is over; the true security is won. The worst fear was the fear of spiritual extinction or spiritual solitude. The true security is in the telepathic law. Let me draw out my meaning at somewhat greater length. As we have dwelt successively on various aspects of Telepathy we have gradually felt the conception enlarge and deepen under our study. It began as a quasi-mechanical transference of ideas and images from one to another brain." This is ill.u.s.trated by the series of Thought-Transference Drawings; almost the only telepathic manifestation which strictly comes within the scope of our inquiry into physical phenomena. "Presently we find it a.s.suming a more varied and potent form, as though it were the veritable influence or invasion of a distant mind. Again, its action was traced across a gulf greater than any s.p.a.ce of earth or ocean, and it bridged the interval between spirits incarnate and discarnate, between the visible and the invisible world. There seemed no limit to the distance of its operation, or to the intimacy of its appeal....

"Love ... is no matter of carnal impulse or of emotional caprice....

Love is a kind of exalted but unspecialised Telepathy;--the simplest and most universal expression of that mutual gravitation or kins.h.i.+p of spirits which is the foundation of the telepathic law. This is the answer to the ancient fear; the fear lest man's fellows.h.i.+ps be the outward, and his solitude the inward thing.... Such fears vanish when we learn that it is the soul in man which links him with other souls; the body which dissevers even while it seems to unite.... Like atoms, like suns, like galaxies, our spirits are systems of forces which vibrate continually to each other's attractive power."

For the further working out of these thoughts the reader must be referred to Mr. Myers' book itself. After a few pages Mr. Myers proceeds:--

"Our duty [the duty of Psychical Researchers] is not the founding of a new sect, nor even the establishment of a new science, but is rather the expansion of Science herself until she can satisfy those questions, which the human heart will rightly ask, but to which Religion alone has thus far attempted an answer.... I see our original programme completely justified.... I see all things coming to pa.s.s as we foresaw. What I do _not_ see, alas! is an energy and capacity of our own, sufficient for our widening duty.... We invite workers from each department of science, from every school of thought. With equal confidence we appeal for co-operation to _savant_ and to saint.

"To the _savant_ we point out that we are not trying to pick holes in the order of Nature, but rather by the scrutiny of residual phenomena, to get nearer to the origin and operation of Nature's central mystery of Life. Men who realise that the ethereal environment was discovered yesterday, need not deem it impossible that a metethereal environment--yet another omnipresent system of cosmic law--should be discovered to-morrow. The only valid _a priori_ presumption in the matter, is the presumption that the Universe is infinite in an infinite number of ways.

"To the Christian we can speak with a still more direct appeal. You believe--I would say--that a spiritual world exists, and that it acted on the material world two thousand years ago. Surely it is so acting still. Nay, you believe that it is so acting still, for you believe that prayer is heard and answered. To believe that prayer is heard is to believe in Telepathy--in the direct influence of mind on mind. To believe that prayer is answered is to believe that unembodied spirit does actually modify (even if not storm-cloud or plague-germ) at least the minds, and therefore the brains, of living men. From that belief the most advanced 'psychical' theories are easy corollaries."

A few more lines in conclusion:--

"It may be that for some generations to come the truest faith will lie in the patient attempt to unravel from confused phenomena some trace of the supernal world;--to find thus at last 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' I confess, indeed, that I have often felt as though this present age were even unduly favoured;--as though no future revelation and calm could equal the joy of this great struggle from doubt into certainty;--from the materialism or agnosticism which accompany the first advance of Science into the deeper scientific conviction that there is a deathless soul in man. I can imagine no other crisis of such deep delight."

FOOTNOTES:

[66] _Proceedings S.P.R._, vol. ix. p. 252.

[67] The references to these contributions are: _Proceedings S.P.R._, vol. vi. pp. 98-127; _Journal S.P.R._, vol. vi. pp. 341-345, and vol.

ix. pp. 147-148; _Proceedings S.P.R._, vol. xiv. pp. 2-5. "Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism" will be found in the Libraries of the Society for Psychical Research, and of the London Spiritualist Alliance.

[68] "School Teaching and School Reform," by Sir Oliver Lodge, pp. 89, 90.

[69] _Proceedings S.P.R._, vol. xviii. p. 419.

[70] See "Hypnotism: Its History, Practice, and Theory," by J. Milne Bramwell, M.B., C.M., 1903, pp. 36-39.

[71] _Journal S.P.R._, vol. iv. pp. 108-109.

[72] _Proceedings S.P.R._, vol. xiv. p. 3.

[73] Ibid., Part XLVIII., 1s. (included in vol. xviii. pp. 323-351).

[74] _Proceedings S.P.R._, vol. xviii. pp. 340-341.

[75] Ibid., vol. vi. p. 5.

[76] _Proceedings S.P.R._, vol. x. p. 394.

[77] "Phantasms of the Living," vol. ii. p. 21.

[78] _Journal S.P.R._, vol. iv. p. 115.

[79] _Proceedings S.P.R._, vol. xi. pp. 24-25.

THE END