Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death Part 50

Dr. Hodgson writes:--

The sh.e.l.l is a large Triton, about ten inches long. The piece of brick was wrapped in folds of soft paper and tucked deeply into the recess. Another piece of paper was then gummed around the sides of the sh.e.l.l in the interior, so as absolutely to prevent the piece of brick from falling out. When I received the sh.e.l.l from Mrs. Finney and looked into the interior and shook the sh.e.l.l violently, there was nothing to indicate that the sh.e.l.l contained anything but the piece of gummed paper.

The piece of brick in the sh.e.l.l weighs one and a half ounces, and the piece of brick retained by Mrs. Finney weighs about two and a quarter ounces. The sh.e.l.l with the piece of brick and paper wrapping weighs about eleven and a half ounces.

Mrs. Finney also forwarded me the letter written by her brother.

The sh.e.l.l and the pieces of brick and the letter are now all in my possession.

R. HODGSON.

We have a letter (in original) from the Rev. C. Y. de Normandie, of Kingston, Canada, to Mrs. Finney. "I expressed then," he says, speaking of a former note to Dr. Hodgson, which accidentally went astray, "that to the best knowledge I had of you and to my firm belief your word could be implicitly relied on. I felt confident that you would state a matter as you understood it, as you regarded it, without reference to the consequences; and that you would not be any more likely to be misled and deceived about a matter of that kind than others similarly situated."

APPENDICES

TO

CHAPTER IX

SCHEME OF VITAL FACULTY.

IX. A. The following scheme[231] is not put forth as expressing deliberate convictions, supported by adequate evidence. Its speculative character has, in fact, excluded it from my text, yet I hope that it may not be without its use. For many men the difficulty of belief is not so much in defect of trustworthy evidence as in the unintelligibility, the _incoherence_ of the phenomena described, which prevents them from being retained in the mind or a.s.similated with previous knowledge.

I have felt myself the full force of this objection, and I believe that some effort to meet it has become absolutely needful. Undoubtedly a record of facts without theories is the first essential. But the facts individually are like "stones that fall down from Jupiter,"--isolated marvels, each of which seems incredible until we have made s.h.i.+ft to colligate them all.

Let us begin, then, by taking the most generalised view possible of all these phenomena. They appear, at any rate, to depend upon the presence of living human beings; and they are therefore in some sense phenomena of _life_. If, then, they are phenomena of life, they must be in some way derived from, or must bear some a.n.a.logy to, the vital phenomena, the faculties and functions with which we are familiar in the experience of every day. Yet to say this brings us little nearer to our aim. Spirits may have ruled Mr. Moses' mind and body just as truly as our own conscious will rules our mind and body.[232] But the results which they produced were so different from any results which we can produce that it is hard to know where to begin the comparison. Is there not some middle term, some intermediate series, with which both these extreme series may have points of resemblance?

It is here that we ought to feel the advantage of previous discussions on man's own supernormal faculties,--on the powers of the Self below the threshold of ordinary consciousness. We have traced these powers in detail; we have noted the extension of the normal spectrum of consciousness beyond both red and violet ends, in response to subliminal control. Perhaps the profounder conception of the Self thus gained may help us to bridge over that gulf between the performances of the ordinary man and those of the so-called medium which heretofore has involved so difficult a leap. We may find that the spirit's power over the organism which it controls or "possesses,"--while possibly going much further than any subliminal power in the organism itself, as known to us,--may yet advance along similar lines, and receive explanation from hypnotic or telepathic phenomena. I will endeavour, then, to set side by side, in tabular form, the main heads of vital process or faculty as exercised (1) under normal or supraliminal control; (2) under subliminal and telepathic control; (3) under what is claimed as disembodied or spiritual control.

In arranging this scheme my first object is to bring all such phenomena as we actually have before us into intelligible connection; introducing by the way a few of the explanations given to Mr. Moses by his guides.

Those explanations, however, are for the most part slight and vague, and our experimental knowledge of the phenomena is, of course, merely nascent and fragmentary. My scheme, therefore, cannot aim at complete logical arrangement. It must involve both repet.i.tions and lacunae; nor can it be such as the physiologist would care to sanction. But it will, at least, be a first attempt at a connected schedule or rational index of phenomena apparently so disparate that the very possibility of their interdependence b even now constantly denied.

SYNOPSIS OF VITAL FACULTY

I.

FIRST SERIES:--PHENOMENA SUPRALIMINALLY CONTROLLED, OR OCCURRING IN ORDINARY LIFE.

1. Supraliminal or empirical consciousness; aware only of the material world through sensory impressions.

2. Physical nutrition, including respiration.

(_a_) Physiological and pathological processes and products.

3. Physical expenditure; action on material and etherial environment.

(_a_) Mechanical work done at the expense of food a.s.similated.

(_b_) Production of heat, odour, sound, chemical changes, as the result of protoplasmic metabolism.

(_c_) Production of etherial disturbances; as emission of light and generation of electrical energy.

4. Action on the incarnation of life on the planet.

(_a_) Reproduction, as physiological division.

5. Mental nutrition; sensory receptivity.

(_a_) Ordinary sense-perception.

(_b_) Memory.

6. Mental expenditure; response to stimuli.

(_a_) Intra-cerebral response; ideation.

(_b_) Emotion; will; voluntary innervation.

7. Modifications of supraliminal personality.

(_a_) Birth; as physiological individuation.

(_b_) Sleep; with dreams, as oscillations of the conscious threshold.

(_c_) Metamorphoses; as of insects and amphibians; and polymorphism, as of hydrozoa; multiplex personality.

(_d_) Death; as physiological dissolution.

II.

SECOND SERIES:--PHENOMENA SUBLIMINALLY CONTROLLED.

1. Subliminal consciousness; obscurely aware of the transcendental world, through telepathic and telaesthetic impressions.

2. Physical nutrition modified by subliminal control.

(_a_) Suggestion, self-suggestion, psycho-therapeutics.

(_b_) Stigmatisation.

3. Physical expenditure modified by subliminal control.

(_a_) Mechanical work modified by psychical integration or disintegration; hysteria.