SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE JAMES H.HYSLOP 6561 Cornell University Library BF1031.H99 S4 Science and a future life, by James H. H oiin 3 1924 028 951 270 The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028951270 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE BY JAMES H.HTSLOP,Ph.D.,ll.D. FORMERLT PROFESSOR OF ETHICS AND LOGIC IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HERBERT B. TURNER & CO. BOSTOIS^ - - - 1905 Copyright, 190S, By Herbert B. Tubnee & Co. Entered at Stationers' Hall London Piiblished May igos George French Boston DEDICATED TO Dr. IRlcbart) Hobgson WHOSE PATIENT AND UNREQUITED RESEARCHES FIRST BROUGHT ME TO THE CONCLUSIONS HERE DEFENDED AND FOR WHICH I WISH TO HOLD HIM IN GRATEFUL MEMORY AND AC- KNOWLEDGMENT PREFACE The elaborate Reports of the Society for Psychical Research seldom get beyond the shelves of its mem- bers, and it is possible that few of this class read them with any such care and patience as students are made to bestow upon Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel. I know one prominent member who had my own lengthy report on his table for six months without knowing what it was about. If those who profess allegiance to the work do no better than this what can we expect of the Philistines? Of course it is hard to blame any one for this, because this is a busy world and there is too much to read. But I remark the fact to indi- cate the difficulties in the way of interesting even the best minds on so intricate a subject as this. I have endeavored in the present volume to sum- marise the most important of the Society's work, more especially with reference to such matter as might claim to bear upon the problem of a future life. I have accepted Mr. Podmore's book on Apparitions and Thought Transference as sufficiently illustrative of supernormal phenomena not claiming to be spirit- istic and do not duplicate its material. I have also perhaps discussed the Piper Case more than does M. Sage in his admirable summary, because I wished to reach a class of English readers who may wish a fuller resume of the general work. The chief ques- tions which I wished to cover and which are not fully covered in M. Sage's book are found in Chapters III, viii SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE XII, and XIII. I have not intended that the book should satisfy the more exacting scientific standards, but serve the purpose of inducing the scientific psy- chologist to go to the detailed records where his de- mands may be better satisfied, and give the general reader some conception of the complexity of the prob- lem with which we have to deal. Hence I have only given samples of the facts which are accessible for the student, and many of the most important are too intri- cate to justify using the space necessary to make their cogency perceptible. I have, therefore, limited my- self to the best and the most easily intelligible type, and students who wish to know more must either go to other and more detailed records or make personal investigations. This work is for the reader who is more interested in explanation than in wearisome de- tails. The chapters summarising the Piper Case may seem unnecessarily long and tedious. But I could not dis- cuss so large a theory as the spiritistic without afford- ing intelligent people some idea of the amount and complexity of the material with which any explanatory theory has to contend. The present work is also a part of the sequel to a work on philosophy which is in the press and will appear some time later. The remaining part of the sequel is another Report on mediumistic phenomena which is ready for press but can be published only as a work of scientific detail. The work of which these are the sequel discusses the general problems of knowl- edge and metaphysics without any attempt to solve them by adducing scientific facts as proof. It con- PREFACE ix siders the proof of a future life as the desideratum for making a solution of metaphysical problems pos- sible. I mention it because I think that the question of the survival of personality is not an isolated prob- lem without philosophic associations or meaning, but is most fundamental to the integrity and utility of all philosophies. It is high time that investigations of this kind should be endowed as are many others of less impor- tance. There is no use to talk about the follies of human nature in this field, as that will be admitted and urged as a sufficient reason for an organised effort to protect men from delusion, and if any such truth as the conservation of personal consciousness should be added to the indestructibility of matter and the con- servation of energy we should have laid a foundation for the meaning of the cosmos which is not the pre- vailing one of scientific men. They will spend mil- lions in North Pole expeditions, in deep sea dredging for a new fish, in biological inquiries to show a pro- toplasmic source of life, and in astronomic observa- tions that lead only to speculation about planetary life, in short anything to throw light on man's origin, but not a cent to ascertain with any scientific assur- ance a word about his destiny. Men are quite will- ing under the pressure of fact to admit their origin from the brutes, but persist in a pride that does not seem compatible with that ancestry. I understand that a hundred thousand dollars a year are spent by our colleges for athletic sports, but no boast is made of what is spent for the solution of moral, social and religious problems. We are so infatuated with the X SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE ramifications of materialism that a leading paper can solemnly propose the need of twenty-five millions to dig a well twelve miles deep merely to satisfy the curiosity of the geologist about the earth's strata! Why an investigation which promises as much protec- tion against illusion as it does for beliefs that are the only force that is capable of solving the social prob- lem, if soluble at aU, cannot receive as much support as the more ridiculous efforts of men, it is hard for a moralist to understand. James H. Htslof. New York. CONTENTS CHAPTES PAGE I. ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH ... 1 II. GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS ni. THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE IV. HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE . . V. INCIDENTS FROM THE ENGLISH REPORT 134 VI. DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT . Vn. DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT VIIL PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS 212 rX. THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS . . . X. THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS . . . XI. DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS . . XIL CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE "COMMUNI- CATIONS" XIIL ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS . . 21 73 113 165 194 245 267 287 306 341 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE CHAPTER I OKIGIN OP PSYCHIC EESEAECH There was a time when it was necessary to apologize for the work of psychic research. It is no longer necessary before intelligent people. The steady in- fluence of time and progress has brought a certain type of facts in human experience into respectable recognition, though the hopes and expectations of many have not been realised. It was, of course, impos- sible to escape ridicule at its inception. The interest of the average human mind in the immortality of the soul, taken with the influence of scepticism and ma- teriahsm to discredit the belief, and the allegations that there were numerous facts proving a future life against belief, offered an opportunity to investigate the matter scientifically. But the same conditions also offered the knave and the adventurer a fine chance to prey upon the dupes that lend a ready ear to the marvelous. In aU ages this condition has produced the same effect, until the mass of fraud and delusion was suflScient to dispossess the probability that there was anything else of interest to science. But in more respectable quarters a residuum of facts survived in spite of untoward circumstances and by patient and courageous effort the movement to investigate them has been justified, if only it sufficed to expose the 1 2 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE dangers of the human mind in the presence of illusion. Much of this it has done and it requires no other laurels for its pains. Apparently, however, it has opened a mine, which, if it does not supply all that human nature hopes, will certainly extend the bound- aries of knowledge. In the inception of the movement it was impossible, from the nature of many claims made by the naive mind, to evade the consideration of a future life and the alleged evidence for it. There were many alleged phenomena that cannot present any relevant claims to being evidence of such an outcome to the present, ai;d. hence the work might have been limited to the study of these obscure and perhaps dubious facts. But both relevant and irrelevant phenomena were so artictilated with each other and associated with the belief in the existence of spirits and their influence in the physical world that the challenge had to be accepted and the issue fought out along scientific lines, whether the task were reputable or not. Fortunately it has per- formed its work with credit and commands such re- spect that ridicule is no longer the temper of any except those who have refused to investigate. The question of immortality, which had been relegated to the limbo of illusions and dreams can be discussed again, at least in the old philosophic manner, and many look hopefully to scientific method to effect what philosophic speculation cannot do. This fact will justify the present book. There are many influences that create and many that modify man's interest in a future life. It would require a long chapter to discuss them, and whatever ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 3 the result it would not affect the problem before us at present. The one fact of importance is the gen- eral tenacity which the belief in immortality has had for so many of the human race in aU periods and conditions of its development, and especially during the prevalence of Christianity. But whatever the in- fluences that have given rise to the belief; whatever the agencies that modify it; and whatever the con- ceptions that have incidentally become associated with it, there have been two main streams of tendency to originate the movement of psychic research whose fate has inevitably connected it with the problem of con- scious survival after death. The first of these tend- encies has been the destructive influence of materialism and scepticism. These have dominated the thinking of the present age, perhaps, more than any other. The second has been the existence of a large body of facts which, whether false or genuine, have suggested to an anxious race the occurrence of at least sporadic communications with discarnate spirits. A brief ex- amination of both these influences will make quite intelligible the movement which was organised to investigate the claims of the supernormal. I shall examine the first of these tendencies briefly, namely, the growth of scepticism and materialism, which are the result of criticism and investigation within the territories of philosophy, theology, and physical science. Their effect is proportioned to the expectations which had been created by religion. It was the influence of Christianity that intensified the interest in a future life, an interest that was both individual and social, while its adoption of the polit- 4 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE ical methods of emperialism in the organisation of both civil and ecclesiastical institutions availed to con- vert the western world to its way of thinking. The doctrine of immortality was first proclaimed by it to the poor, that class which had been ground to pieces by social and political tyranny and left without hope by the materialism of Epicurus and his followers. The passion and enthusiasm with which this class seized the belief is evidence of the function which it might serve in their lives, and its association with the idea of human brotherhood created a leaven which has survived eighteen centuries of religious and polit- ical debauchery. At its rise civilisation was on the way to the grave. The outlook which had driven the Stoic from public life and induced the Neo-Platon- ists to favor ascetic habits made it appear that the great ideals of the race were setting in thunder clouds. The proclamation, therefore, of an immortal destiny for all, beyond the touch of pain and sorrow, humbling the rich and proud and exalting the poor and lowly, was well calculated to instill new hope and inspiration in personal and social morality. It actually did so, and the belief in immortality became the central in- fluence in the reconstruction of later civilisation. Some of the ancients accepted the doctrine, as we find in Pindar, Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, and others, but it was not an idea which subordinated, as it did in Chris- tianity, all other conduct to itself. It took the Chris- tian doctrine of limited probation and eternal punish- ment to effect this. Greco-Roman civilisation suffered from the loss of the belief in its later periods, but much less than modem civilisation will suffer from ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 5 this loss, because the belief had little relation to social morality in pagan antiquity. In Christianity, how- ever, the individual's interest in it was heightened by the character of the happiness held in prospect for faith, obedience, and virtue, and by the social im- portance ascribed to it by its relation to human brotherhood and the various moralities involved in that conception. For various reasons the belief became the central one in the Christian system, though after the stories which first occasioned the doctrine had lost their force the existence of God obtained the prior importance as a condition of guaranteeing or support- ing the probability of a future life on other grounds than the story of a resurrection, or for the purpose of making such a story credible. However this may be, political and religious agencies gave the belief in survival after death an interest that apparently sus- tained the whole integrity of our moral system and certainly affected the destinies of democracy. When the belief thus became fixed and determinative of social and individual morality, it is easy to see what the dis- turbance would be if the belief were subjected to the scrutiny which has dissolved so many convictions of the past. The sceptical movement affecting the belief in a future life began with the Renaissance, the Greco- Roman revival, and was unconsciously encouraged by the Protestant Reformation which was in fact an organised distrust of the authority of the church, though it did not at first fully realise the tendencies that it had turned loose. Various other influences, especially the rise and growth of physical science, gave 6 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE a powerful impulse to scepticism and in a short time gave such an impetus to materialism that it has ever since governed the tendencies of nearly all scientific thought. The mechanical philosophy of Descartes and the pantheistic philosophy of Spinoza were either the expression or the originators of this new tendency, and prevailed right in the camp of the spiritualists. Newtonian gravitation substituted " natural " for " supernatural " agencies in the movements of the solar and stellar systems. Chemistry revealed a plas- tic conception of matter not dreamed of before and employed in its explanations internal forces as myste- rious as miracles in their operation and yet derobed of all association with the divine. Darwinian evolu- tion did for time what Newtonian gravitation did for space and so naturalised the phenomena of cosmic change as gravitation did that of collocation. Inven- tion and discovery, directed by the triumphs of phy- sical science, have so increased man's mastery of na- ture and so multiplied the conveniences and pleasures of living that even a Dantean or a Miltonic Paradise can offer only inferior attractions to our hopes and expectations. Men do not seek salvation in a world better than the present, but either feel satisfied with what they have accomplished or expect to realise some- thing better in the present than any imaginable future can offer them. The fascinations of a future life which had thrilled the hopes of those who had to con- sider the present as a vale of tears and a habitation only for sin and sorrow now appear tame and unin- teresting to all of us after the achievements of science and invention. In the religious world biblical criti- ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 7 cism and historical studies, along with the decline of the belief in the " supernatural," have almost driven into oblivion the mediaeval conception of life and destiny. Inspiration and authority have either drifted into desuetude or survive only as poetic and metaphorical attempts to save fine emotion. The old and melancholy seriousness with which life was con- templated by our forefathers has been supplanted by a cheerful and epicurean temper with perhaps Madame de Maintenon's maxim about the future as a motto, " after us the deluge." But the chief among the influences that have in- trenched materialism until it is almost impossible to dislodge it has been the progress of physiology and psychiatry. The investigations in this field have shown such a relation between the organism and the phenomena of consciousness that it is difficult to con- ceive them as anything but functions of the brain and perishable with it. Accident and disease so disturb the integrity of consciousness that we can hardly im- agine it anything but one of the activities of the nerv- ous system. A fall or a blow or a disease may reduce the man to an unconscious condition, and some local injury may result in the symptoms of insanity. A hearty meal may end in a nightmare and intemperance in deliria. So dependent is normal consciousness upon the healthy condition of the organism that conscious- ness itself seems to be a function like that of digestion or circulation, and if it be so conceived its termination at death is a foregone conclusion. The fact that, aside from the claims of psychic research, there is no trace of consciousness apart from living organisms 8 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE appears overwhelming to the average mind. Could we trust the evidence that an occasional traveler re- turns from that undiscovered country we might feel otherwise about the silence of the grave in most cases. But we are sceptical of anything that is not the com- mon experience of the race and in the true scientific spirit demand that we shall have evidence that individ- ual consciousness shall be found capable of existing independently of the organism, if we are to abandon the claims of materialism. But this is either wanting or is present in such dubious forms and quantities that we seem safe in questioning its real appearance at all, and the natural conclusions of physiology and psy- chiatry seem confirmed by the evidential situation of general experience. Philosophy is bankrupt in a con- dition of this kind. It has always relied upon deter- mining the nature of a thing in order to support its conclusions, and has not yet learned to study the prob- lem in the light of scientific facts. The older method of deciding the Issue has thus been discredited and the believer is left either to his instincts and irrational processes for the maintenance of his convictions or to scepticism if he cannot apply scientific method to his problem. But just as the victory seemed to come within the reach of materialism faith has had her Nemesis in the attention which a long despised class of facts received. The whole history of human interest in mental phe- nomena had been confined to their normal manifesta- tions and the abnormal and unusual occurrences were discarded as unworthy of any consideration except from the medical student and from him only to be ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 9 cured or prevented. But as science will leave no stone unturned in her task of discovery and has always found her best rewards in the investigation of residual phenomena, it was natural that the junction of sci- entific curiosity ^nd of religious hope should be the organisation of psychic research. The phenomena that invited it were of long stand- ing. They were comparatively sporadic and were as much despised as they were sporadic. But they rep- resented several types of human experience that chal- lenged interest and investigation. They have been classified as apparitions, telepathy, and clairvoyance, not as explanations of the facts, but as names for facts demanding somewhat separate explanations. Per- haps other types of unusual phenomena are noticeable in the accounts of them during the history of civilisa- tion. But mixed with them were many phenomena that could not claim any more remarkable character than the abnormal and it was long before the claims of the supernormal could be distinguished from those of the abnormal. The facts, however, which have had a long history and which finally succeeded in chal- lenging attention were numerous. The first of these and perhaps the oldest is apparent in the witchcraft of ancient and modern times. Mixed up with hysteria and insanity this was probably often associated with phenomena of a more important char- acter and may have occasionally connected with what is now known as mediumship. Much of it was most probably what we should now call secondary person- ality or double consciousness, and probably also much of it insanity. But it is possible also that some of it 10 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE contained sporadic instances of supernormal phenom- ena. The history of it does not seem to show clearly what the phenomena were, but only the kind of treat- ment which its victims received at the hands of church and state, and this in both ancient and modern times. It is probable that the ancient oracles were a class which we can easily recognise as a mixture of shrewd adventurers and genuine mediumistic persons. It is not now easy to decide in any case what they were. What has come down to us about them savors so much of those phenomena that represent shrewd knowledge of weak human nature, guessing, oracular and am- biguous utterances that it is almost impossible to suppose that anything supernormal was ever associ- ated with them. Fraud and illusion are the charac- teristics which it is most natural to attribute to them, and the evidence that any of them were more than this is so scanty and inconclusive that only experts would conjecture the possibility that occasional instances were supernormal. The article on Witchcraft in the Encyclopcedia Britannica will give some idea of what occurred in this connection during the middle ages, and it was no doubt represented mainly by fraud, superstition, de- lusion, and insanity. The frequent laws enacted against it even in ages when the rulers themselves were superstitious attest that it must have been either fraud or insanity or both. From what we know in recent times it is probable that there were more interesting psychological phenomena associated with it, but it is quite as probable that their occurrence in credible and ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 11 respectable quarters, as is now the fact, was concealed for various reasons prudential and otherwise. It is in modern times, however, that the evidence of phenomena that are more perplexing to science has been more abundant, and it has not been their super- normal character that has perplexed the scientist in all cases. There have been abundant phenomena that have no other interest than that of abnormal psychol- ogy whose problems are associated with the most im- portant issues of philanthropy as well as science. But before they were clearly understood they appeared to many as representing facts inexplicable by any or- dinary hypotheses. In the process of time, however, the claims of the supernormal have been greatly re- duced. The whole wide field comprises fraud, delu- sion, jugglery, hysteria, hallucinations, insanity, secondary personality, somnambulic and hypnotic phenomena, chance coincidence, alleged telepathy and clairvoyance, mediumistic phenomena, and the alleged movement of physical objects without contact or so- called telekinesis. The residual phenomena having any significance for the supernormal in this vast mass of data is perhaps comparatively small in quantity, but they have sufficed to invoke serious attention from intelligent men. They have been such as remarkable coincidences, apparitions of dying or deceased per- sons, such as Lord Brougham's experience, apparitions of living persons, such as those of G. J. Romanes, the evolutionist contemporary and friend of Charles Dar- win, and that of Mr. Andrew Lang, the literary critic. Then there is the larger class of mediumistic phenom- ena of which those of Mrs. Piper are a type. The IS SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE Phrnitasms of the Livmg in two volumes and the Census of Hallucmations in one volume show hun- dreds of coincidental experiences and apparitions which have a scientific interest on any theory of them, and are certainly suggestive of supernormal phenom- ena whether they prove them or not. They are of the type that must have existed by the thousand before any attempt was made to investigate them, and there are evidences that they did exist in such numbers. It does not matter what the explanation of them is. They may all be due to hallucination, chance coinci- dence, malobservation of facts, illusions of memory or other natural causes. It is not their real or appar- ent significance for the supernormal that constitutes their whole value. They have a most important value even on the supposition that they are none of them supernormal. It is quite as important to prevent our being fooled in the interpretation of such phenomena as it is to prove the facts supernormal. Protection against illusion is as great a service to the race as the establishment of transcendental truths. Hence I am referring to the phenomena that have suggested in- vestigation without implying that they are necessarily more than the ordinary coincidences that we explain quite naturally. But I am also trying to indicate a type of facts that at least appear to be more and which it is quite natural for the ordinary mind to interpret as it does in favor of a " supernatural " world. I cannot give any elaborate account of the real or alleged mediumistic cases that have excited much speculation in the past and which have had their in- ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 13 fluence in stimulating investigation. I must leave to the reader the task of looking them up. Mr. Pod- more's Modern Spiritualism, in two volumes, will give a sufficient account of very many of them, good and bad alike, to make any discussion of them unnecessary in this summary introduction. But I may refer to a few of the more celebrated of them very briefly. One of the most remarkable was Andrew Jackson Davis. There seems to have been no secure evidence of any normal dishonesty in the man, whatever we may think or conjecture about subconscious delinquencies. Much of his work, or all of it, was done in a trance and parts of it were carefully recorded and published. I do not myself see adequate evidence of anything supernormal in any of it, but there was certainly much in his experiences that challenged scientific investiga- tion. There was then the work of Judge Edmunds which represented some interesting experiments and experiences. No scientific man today would accept them as proof of the hypothesis which Mr. Edmunds believed, though this would not be discredited on any grounds of Mr. Edmunds' lack of intelligence or hon- esty. We simply know the phenomenon of secondary personality today where he did not, and we exact more stringent conditions for the proof of the nature of our phenomena than he apparently employed in what he reports. But with or without defects his work was such as should have invited investigation sooner than it came. Cahagnet's case was also most interesting and seems to have received some such attention and detailed records for a part of the work as similar instances should have obtained. His phenomena rep- 14 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE resent alleged communications with living persons at a distance and also with the deceased, and perhaps alleged clairvoyance. Mr. Podmore thinks that some of the facts might have been telepathic, but I am not sure that it is necessary to suppose more than second- ary personality for the more striking incidents re- corded. But whatever we think of his case, there were undoubtedly interesting phenomena for psychology there, and such as certainly excuse the interpretation which less scientific ages gave to similar facts. I need hardly mention Immanuel Swedenborg, whose experi- ences aroused the attention of Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, and influenced him to write his Dreams of a Ghostseer and to defend the possibility of the spiritistic theory of such phenomena. But probably the most important of those which I wish to mention was the Rev. William Stainton Moses. He was educated at Oxford University and became a minister for some years in the Church of England. His health becoming affected he obtained a mastership at University College School. Through the influence of his friend, Dr. Speer, he became inter- ested in Spiritualism and soon developed mediumistic powers himself, whatever this term may mean. He was very sceptical of these phenomena at first, but finally became convinced that he was the medium of communication with a spirit world and gave the rest of his life to the cause, being for a long time editor of Light, the English representative of the Spiritualistic movement. No one has ever questioned the man's normal integrity and probity. He was never a pro- fessional medium and had scrutinised his own experi- ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 16 ences for a long time before he yielded to the spiritis- tic conclusion, and this only in response to phenomena well calculated to tempt any mind. Some account of his experiences that convinced him and his friends was published by himself in a work entitled Spirit IdeVf tity, and in another volume which he called Spirit Teachings. Illustrations of what these works repre- sented have been republished by the Society for Psy- chical Research in its Proceedings, and in the work of Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, entitled Humam, Person- ality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. The data which convinced Mr. Moses of the truth of Spiritualism were the result of automatic writing through his own hand. He kept a note book always present and when he felt an unaccountable impulse to write he took out his ever ready journal and thus kept a record of his experiences. Whatever we may think of them they are of the kind to demand the most patient scientific inquiry, and the man's honesty was so unquestioned that intelligent men, when they knew the facts and the manner of his receiving them, could not refuse them attention, though they might not agree with his interpretation of them. They are of remarkable interest to the psychologist on any theory whatever of their origin. It was the scandal of not investigating such phe- nomena, and especially the respectability of those ex- perienced by Mr. Moses and known to several leading men in England, that led to the founding of the So- ciety for Psychical Research. This was organised in 1882 with Prof. Henry Sidgwick, of Cambridge Uni- versity, England, as the President. Among the Vice- 16 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE Presidents were Mr. Arthur J. Balfour, now Prime Minister of England ; Prof. W. F. Barrett, Professor of Experimental Physics in the Royal College of Sci- ence for Ireland ; Prof. Balfour Stewart, Professor of Natural Philosophy, Owens' College, Manchester ; Mr. Richard H. Hutton, Editor of The Spectator; Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the brother-in-law of Charles Darwin, and the Rev. Stainton Moses, mentioned above. Among other co-operators were Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, Mr. Edmund Gumey, and Mr. Frank Podmore. There soon followed in co-operation with these such men as Sir Oliver Lodge, F. R. S. ; Sir Wilham Crookes, F. R. S. ; Prof. William James, of Harvard University; Prof. S. P. Langley, of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. ; Lord Raleigh, the Marquis of Bute, the Bishop of Ripon, Dr. Milne Bramwell, Prof. J. J. Thompson, F. R. S. ; Prof. Charles Richet, of the Physiological Institute in Paris ; Prof. Max Dessoir, of the University of Berlin, and perhaps hundreds of others with similar standing in the scientific world. I have no space to mention more than those best known. The Council of the Society issued a prospectus in which it explained the object of the organisation in the following language: " It has been widely felt that the present is an op- portune time for making an organised and systematic attempt to investigate that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical, and Spiritualistic. ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 17 " From the recorded testimony of many competent witnesses, past and present, including observations re- cently made by scientific men of eminence in various countries, there appears to be, amidst much illusion and deception, an important body of remarkable phe- nomena, which are prima facie inexplicable on any recognised hypothesis, and which, if incontestably es- tablished, would be of the highest value." Following this was a statement of the subjects en- trusted to special committees for investigation. They define the phenomena that it was intended to study : " 1. An examination of the nature and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon another, apart from any gener- ally recognised mode of perception. " 2. The study of hypnotism, and the forms of so-called mesmeric trance, with its alleged insensibility to pain ; clairvoyance and other allied phenomena. " 3. A critical revision of Reichenbach's re- searches with certain organisations called ' sensitive,' and an inquiry whether such or- ganisations possess any power of perception beyond a highly exalted sensibility of the recognised sensory organs. " 4. A careful investigation of any reports, rest- ing on strong testimony, regarding appari- tions at the moment of death, or otherwise, or regarding disturbances in houses reputed to be haunted. " 5. An inquiry into the various physical phe- 18 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE nomena commonly called Spiritualistic ; with an attempt to discover their causes and gen- eral laws. " 6. The collection and collation of existing ma- terials bearing on the history of these sub- jects." In the course of its career the Society has issued 18 volumes of Proceedings, and 11 volumes of a Jour- nal. The Proceedings are occupied with reports, articles, and discussions on the various topics indicated in the prospectus and questions of allied importance, including methods of fraud and jugglery, coinci- dences, guessing, testimony, evidence, etc. The first attention seems to have been given to those phenomena which suggested " mind reading " or telepathy, as it was afterward called technically. The reports of ex- periments on this subject extended through eleven vol- umes of the Proceedings and represent a very impres- sive mass of evidence favorable to the hypothesis. There have been various opinions in regard to its value, some accepting it as conclusive and others sus- pending judgment for further experimentation. But probably none can deny that the material at least makes out a case demanding serious attention from scientific men, and that, if telepathy at least is not ad- mitted, much more than this will have to be accepted to explain a part of the Society's records. The study of apparitions and dream coincidences resulted in two large volumes by Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore. They comprise three general types of phenomena, dream coincidences and waking coincidences that may reasonably be referred to tel- ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 19 epathy for an explanation, if explanation it be, and apparitions of living and dying persons. Appari- tions of persons some time deceased were excluded from the account, because it was the design of the authors to admit only those which might be explicable by telepathy, while those not so easily explicable by telepathy might be referable to other more natural causes. There were elaborate experiments on telep- athy published between the same covers in order to render that explanation of spontaneous coincidences more probable. Several able essays on hallucinations were also included in the work, as necessary to throw light upon the assumed telepathic apparitions. The record and discussion of phantasms of the dead were taken up by Mr. Myers in the Proceedings of the Society. In the Proceedings also the same subject was occupied with a Census of Hallucinations, as it was called, and the conclusion of the authors was that the coincidental apparitions involved were not due to chance alone. No positive explanation was offered. The results of the Society's work have been rep- resented in some independent productions taken from its recorded material. The first of these were Ap- paritions and Thought Transference, and Aspects of Psychical Research both by Mr. Frank Podmore and abbreviated accounts of what is contained in the Society's Proceedings. The most important work, however, and representing the best results in the whole field to which the Society devoted its endeav- ors, was the work of Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, published after his death and consisting of two large go SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE volumes. It is entitled Hv/mcm Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. Much of its matter re- lates rather to abnormal than to supernormal psy- chology, so that its title conceals the width of its scope. It will probably prove, however, to be a more or less epoch-making work in its field, no matter what may become of its conclusions. Less important productions have been stimulated in all directions by the work of the Society. They cannot be mentioned here as a part of its immediate history, though they are the real result of the in- quiry. The monumental part of its work is in its Proceedings, a character that it will not lose even though the suggested conclusion never mature. They represent the first scientific attempt to introduce intel- ligent investigation into what was before no better than folklore. It may result in collating nothing more, but even if it effects nothing else it will have laid the basis for protecting the human mind against illusions and for educating it in the habit of sus- pending judgment until the evidence for any special belief is adequate, and this function is the chief service of science and its method. CHAPTER II GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS It is not my purpose to discuss at any length the general problems and results of psychic research, as that is foreign to the main object of this book. But in order to show that there has been no pre- possession in the conduct of the work to bias it for spiritistic investigations it will be necessary to show that its interests extended far beyond the proof of any such a belief. Its original plan contemplated investigation into the phenomena of SpirituaHsm as this was distinctly avowed, but it had no disposition to accept a brief for this doctrine, though it had the true scientific willingness to consider its claims fairly and impartially. Spiritism, however, was only a part of its territory, and might even have been rejected if some of the facts that came within the purview of its inquiries had not made it imperative to admit the possibility of survival after death. It is probable that the society conducted its investigations in a man- ner and with reference to phenomena that would not excite any misapprehensions in regard to its intellec- tual tendencies. But this was a justifiable prudence in the face of prejudices which were quite as con- temptible as were supposed to characterise a bias to- ward Spiritualism. Besides it was a help to bridging a scientific chasm that the supernormal, if it existed at all, should first be found between living minds • 21 22 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE instead of between the dead and the living. The last was by far the more difficult of the two problems, if not impossible. Consequently the wisest course was to investigate first the non-spiritistic phenomena, partly as a necessity of scientific method and partly as a judicious means for disarming criticism. 1. Telepathy The first problem which the Society attacked was that of "telepathy" as it was later called. This term had to be coined after using the expression " thought reading " for a time to indicate the super- normal acquisition of knowledge by some transmis- sion of one person's thoughts to another. Evidently the organisers of the Society had happened upon some striking coincidences, claimed by common people to represent spirit communication, but which were not in the least evidential of this view, though they might indicate something unusual to science. But the very suspicion that such a thing as thought transference might be possible was a demand for experiment to test the matter, as experiment is the last resort of science in the answering of its questions. Experi- ment gives an opportunity to determine the conditions for obtaining the phenomena, at least such conditions as would make the facts more evidential than spon- taneous coincidences. Those conditions must shut out guessing, inference, and suggestion, to say noth- ing of excluding all sensory information of the or- dinary kind. The evidence in favor of the existence of thought transference, therefore, must be extraor- GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 23 dinarily protected against suspicion from the influ- ence of defective conditions, and in this brief account of the work of the Society it will have to be taken for granted that the experimenters, whose results I shall quote, were careful enough to make their facts suggestive at least, and any doubts about it will have to seek relief In the study of the detailed records. The first series of experiments to test the claims of telepathy seem very impressive from the illustrations given in the Society's reports. The most striking of their experiments consisted of various figures drawn by the person wishing to transmit his thought and of their real or attempted reproduction by the person who did the " thought reading." As in the parlance of the experimenters, we shall call the person sending the thought the agent and the person receiving it the percipient. Some care was taken to avoid the choice of figures familiar enough to cause coincidence from the chances of the guessing habit. That is to say, if the figures chosen should be ordinary simple geo- metrical figures, such as a circle or a triangle, the danger that the percipient would think of the same figure as the agent would be so great as to rob a coincidence of evidential significance in a theory of causes. This sort of precaution had to be taken throughout the whole system of experiments in the history of the Society's work, and there was even an experiment to show that this " guessing habit " alone will produce some Interesting coincidences. But in the experiments first attempted to test the existence of telepathy this danger was fairly well avoided by more or less complications of figures and the choice 24 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE of unusual variations from familiar forms. The successes were very favorable to the supposition of telepathy. Muscle reading was undoubtedly shut out, and if we could eliminate entirely the scepticism which can base itself on the possibility of a signal code between the agents and percipients we could feel more confidence in the results. In the experi- ments of the first year this objection can at least be apparently made to their conclusiveness, though the committee was convinced that the agent and percip- ient were perfectly honest and that the conditions excluded the existence of a signal code. In the case of two of the subjects, the McCreery sisters, there was a later confession that they had been guilty of a certain amount of signalling. It is important, how- ever, to remember that the committee placed no value on any of the results in which this signalling was possible and that the experiments which they did value were such that this signalling was not possible. But it is important to remark in view of such cases that it is extremely difiicult to satisfy the scientific man of evidence for telepathy until we have elim- inated all such possibilities. It is so often found that various motives operate in apparently the most inno- cent persons to play tricks and the conditions have to be most stringent to eliminate all sorts of conscious or even unconscious intimations. It would surprise the ordinary person to learn how simple a code of signals will suffice to communicate all sorts of com- plicated information. I have no reason whatever to believe that fraud of any kind discredited the most important of the results GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 25 in the cases which I have been considering. But it is so important to be on the alert for its possibility that we must reckon with that contingent factor in making up our minds on such matters. I see no reason for believing in telepathy unless it can give credentials as unassailable as any other scientific truth, and the fact that the earlier experiments were not considered completely satisfactory even by the original experimenters is one that admonishes cau- tion as well as it vindicates the sobriety and scientific spirit of the committee. The next report by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie with other " subjects " is still more impressive than the first year's experiments. Greater precautions were observed against the possibility of collusion. Not that there was any reason to suspect it, but that the important point in the proof is not the honesty of the subjects but the impossibility of collusion between agent and percipient, if they are not the parties lay- ing claim to telepathic phenomena. Mr. Guthrie prescribed satisfactory conditions against signalling in his experiments both as regards the nature of the things chosen to be communicated and the variety of ways by which he excluded all ordinary sources of information. A very careful study of the whole of his report would show that, if fraud be suspected, Mr. Guthrie himself would have to bear the accusation and not the subjects with which he experimented. I shall give two illustrations of one type of experi- ment by Mr. Guthrie. They are not designed to prove, but only to illustrate the type of phenomena which are given to suggest telepathy as an explana- 26 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE tion. The reader will have to go to the original report to examine the whole case. " One evening," says Mr. Guthrie, " I called Miss E. and a friend of mine, Mr. Lee, out of the room, and requested them to assist me in imagining the large stained glass rose-window in the transept of Westminster Abbey, opposite to which Miss E., Miss R., and I had been sitting at the service the same afternoon. I then asked Miss R. to say what object we were thinking of. After a while she said, ' I cannot tell what you are looking at, but I seem to be sitting in Westminster Abbey, where we were this afternoon.' After another interval she said, ' I seem to be looking at a window,' and again, ' I think it is the window in the chancel with the figures.' When afterwards told which window it was, she said that she did not see any window distinctly, and certainly not the rose-window thought of. " I next proposed another subject, and decided up- on something which had struck our attention in a lamp shop in New Bond Street, a lighted lamp with a stuffed monkey clinging to it — the lamp at the same time revolving, and the monkey moving a cocoa- nut, which was suspended from its foot. This exper- iment took a very long time and was only partially successful. First Miss R. said she thought of a cat or it might be a dog. After a while she said it was something long, dark, and hanging — describing the size and shape pretty well with her hands. Then she said that she saw something hanging straight down, and moving up and down. After the removal of the blindfolding, she looked at the gas chandelier. GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 27 and said, ' Was it not that? ' and then immediately, ' No, it was not that — it was a lamp and it was lighted.' Asked if the cat she saw had anything to do with the lamp she said ' No.' " The chief value of this last experiment lies in its approximation to the real things thought of, and this sort of failure or half success was a very frequent phenomenon in these and other trials. Their impor- tance lies in their evidence of subjective influences on the transmitted thought or images and their appar- ent incompatibility with any form of fraud, even though that be conceded as possible in the case. The experiments with drawn figures under very good test conditions showed remarkable successes, and failures with half successes. The percipients were blindfolded and the drawings made in another room and not in the presence of the percipient. The draw- ing was placed on a stand behind the percipient and a board placed between the percipient and the figure drawn. The agent sat gazing at the drawing until the percipient had an impression. The picture was then taken away and concealed, the subject's blindfold removed, then a reproduction of the impression made in drawing by the percipient. The coincidences in many cases are so accurate that one can hardly resist the conviction that telepathy is proved by them. Prof. Barrett reported in the same year some very good illustrations of similar diagrams apparently transmitted telepathically by other percipients alto- gether. Under similar conditions Mr. Guthrie reported the next year a large and complicated series of experi- 28 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE ments having much the same results as those which I have indicated and containing certain interesting characteristics like reversion and delayed perciplence that tell decidedly in favor of the genuineness of the phenomena. No summary of the facts will suf- fice to indicate their force or value on any theory of them. The reader must go to the original records, if he wish to appreciate either side of the controversy in the problem. In the next number of the Proceedings (Vol. IV) Max Dessoir, of the University of Berlin, reported some interesting illustrations of the transfer of dia- grams in which he himself and two friends were the experimenters and without other subjects, so that the collusion and fraud must be attributed to them, if any one wishes to question the character of the re- sults. With dishonesty eliminated the results are very suggestive and are apparently far beyond any- thing that chance might produce. The next year Prof. Charles Richet, of the Physio- logical Institute in Paris, published in the Proceed- ings (Vol. V) a very long memoir of experiments, not only confirming the general conclusion most nat- ural from the experiments of Mr. Guthrie and others, but also contributing new evidence in support of thought tranference and suggesting that the faculty for this might be denominated "lucidlte," or what we would perhaps call " clairvoyance " in its popular significance, and representing, as he claimed, mental processes different from our normal consciousness. I have no judgment to pass on this view of the condi- GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 29 tions of the alleged telepathy. The most important feature of his memoir is the record of diagrams in- volved in the experiments and that afford very impres- sive evidence of very unusual modes of obtaining the thoughts of others. Some careful experiments by two Frenchmen, M. A. Schmoll and M. J. E. Mabire, of the diagrammatic type are recorded and tend to confirm the same con- clusion. Then the next year a very long and careful set of experiments by Prof. Henry Sidgwick and Mrs. Sidgwick in cooperation with Mr. G. A. Smith with four different percipients while they were m the hypnotic trance. No satisfactory summary of these experiments is possible, and we must be content with the general conclusion of Prof. Sidgwick that chance was not sufficient to account for the successes. Baron Von Schrenk-Notzing of Munich the next year reported a series of experiments containing dia- grammatic and other illustrations of thought trans- ference, and Dr. A. Blair Thaw, of New York City, the following year reported a no less striking set of experiments, Mrs. Thaw generally acting as the per- cipient, so that outside parties with one exception, that of a friend, were not involved in the problem of evidence. In one set Dr. Thaw himself was the percipient and Mrs. Thaw the agent. I give a few illustrations of the results, but without the in- tention that they shall be considered as proving but only as confirming the natural interpretation of other experiments. The report is abbreviated. " 1st Object. Silk pincushion, in form of Orange- so SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE Red Apple, quite round. Percipient: A Disc. When asked what color, said Red or Orange. When asked what object, named Pmcushion. " 2nd Object. A short lead pencil, nearly covered by nickel cover. Never seen by percipient. Percipi- ent : Something white or light. A Card. I thought of Mr. Wyatt's silver pencil." Then some experiments with colors chosen at ran- dom were performed after a number of successful trials in telling numbers: Chosen. Bright Red Light Green Yellow Bright Yellow Dark Red Dark Blue Orange 1st Guess. Bright Red. Light Green. Dark Blue Bright Yellow. Blue Orange Green 2nd Guess. Yellow. Dark Red. Dark Blue. Heliotrope. Whatever may be thought of these, the coinci- dences are very striking and suggestive, especially when taken collectively. In the Proceedings for the same year (Vol. VIII) Mrs. Sidgwick, wife of Prof. Henry Sidgwick of Cambridge University, England, and Miss Alice Johnson continued the experiments which have been mentioned above. These experiments are notable for their care and precautions against the objections to which earlier trials were exposed, especial care being taken to choose images that were not familiar to the lives of the percipients, so as to exclude the influence GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 31 of natural guessing as much as possible. In one set of trials to transfer mental images there are sum- marised 126 experiments. The successes are more than 26''^, the number of wrong guesses 56^, and the number in which no impression is felt more than 17\ But the 126 cases are divided into two classes, those in which percipient and agent were in the same room and those in which they were not in the same room. In the former there were 71 experiments and in the latter 55. Of the 71, when agent and percipient were in the same room, the successes were 45.3%, the wrong impressions 38^, and the instances in which no impression occurred 18%. Of the 55, when agent and percipient were not in the same room, only 4% were successes, just 80% wrong impressions, and 16^ without any impression. But this mathematical account gives no adequate conception of the suggest- iveness of the coincidences because it does not reckon with the complexity of the incidents involved, a com- plex incident counting no more than a simple one, and all of them treated as if they represented only a single factor in the mental image chosen when, in fact, these factors were often numerous and not nec- essarily suggestive of each other. When viewed in this way the successes seem much more striking. But it is interesting to remark an apparent obstacle in distance to the supposed telepathic transmission. There were also recorded 107 experiments at- tempting to produce anaesthesia and rigidity in a selected finger by mental suggestion. Of these 58.8% were successes, 37.4^ failures, and nearly 4^^ partial successes. This result, however, appears more im- 32 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE portaijt when you remember that the selection of the finger was made* arbitrarily from both hands, so that there were ten fingers to be counted in the chances of success, or failure. There have been numerous other experiments at thought transference, but I shall not summarise them. In recent years the Society has not published many results of a labored kind and there seems to be no attempts anywhere to test the claims of the hypothe- sis any further. In the Phantasms of the Living there is a large number of spontaneous coincidences which certainly resemble what is claimed for telep- athy, at least in many instances, and they may have their weight. But they can never be so evidential as experimental incidents, and we cannot easily deter- mine the mental setting in which they occur. The observers are not always persons with a scientific training, and in the course of time memory is likely to play havoc with the incidents which it is necessary to know in order to estimate the facts at their right value. At the same time, there are so many Inci- dents well attested and corroborated by independent testimony that they certainly seem to indicate a causal nexus of some kind in the coincidences re- corded, whatever we may choose to regard this causal influence. This brief summary of the data supposed to in- dicate the existence of telepathy can, of course, give no idea of its weight or value, or whether it is to have any or not. I have tried only to give some conception of the care with which the hypothesis has been tested, and if the scientific man feels that I have GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 33 done this too favorably I can only refer him to the original records and their details for the correction of this real or apparent overestimation on my part. One thing can be said of the experiments that can- not be questioned. They were as carefully performed as any scientific man could have made them at that time. Many of them were instrumental in the dis- covery of delicate influences on the mind that were not previously suggested to psychology. The proc- ess of protecting experimentation against difficul- ties and objections to telepathic transmission was one of gradual growth, and in spite of early defects in evidential experiments there are none which have not presented valuable contributions to human knowl- edge. It is probable that men will differ in regard to the force of the Society's evidence in favor of telepathy. Some will ridicule it without examination, perhaps more especially physicists who have been accustomed to deal with experiments where, if success is attained at all, it wiU be so uniform and so easily confirmed by others that there wiU be no doubt of the result. This class of critics and objectors can be neglected. Some after reading the evidence will probably say not proven, and concentrate objections on failures and the mathematical interpretation of the phenom- ena. They may be right, and I shall not dogmatise against this claim, though I think that it would not be hastily made where there were no prejudices to influence the student. Some will admit the force of the evidence and suspend judgment until more facts are forthcoming. But I think that the fairminded 34 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE reader of the records who studies them patiently, as he would any other record of scientific facts, would admit, with Prof. Stout of St. Andrew's University, that at least a good case had been made out for further investigation, and it is quite pos- sible that he would also be at a loss to dis- credit the man who thinks telepathy proved, by anything except the resolution to suspend judg- ment for more evidence. As for myself, I have had very little personal evidence in favor of telepathy. In one case I obtained three successes with diagrams in three experiments, and the diagrams were too compli- cated to be guessed. They by no means proved any- thing telepathic to me, but they certainly induced me to respect the more elaborate experiments of the Society for Psychical Research. Considering, however, that telepathy has either been proved or justified as a possible hypothesis, there is one thing regarding it that is certain, and this is that the conception has been very much mis- understood, both by psychic researchers who have used it too freely and by the general public which has never appreciated the limitations under which it was at first supposed. Those who adopted the term as a synonym of thought transference carefully defined it and indicated, implicitly or explicitly, the limitations under which the process was supposed. It was defined explicitly as " tTie communication of im- pressions of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognized channels of sense." At the same time that it was defined in this manner the conception was implicitly limited to coincidences GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 85 between the present active mental states of the agent and the received impressions of the percipient at the same time. A few instances of deferred percipience occurred that might suggest the supposition that the telepathic access was a subliminal affair for both agent and percipient. But as this deferred percip- ience was not the rule and as they might be cases of delayed reproduction, like the difficulty of recalling a forgotten word, there is not sufficient evidence to suppose it a subliminal affair involving supernormal access to the memory of the agent. All but a very few instances of the evidence confine the process to coincidences between present active states of con- sciousness, and this sufiices to determine the limits of the process as a scientific hypothesis, if it is to be tolerated at all. But in spite of what is implied in the definition of it and of the facts that have been collected as evidence for it, the public generally and many psychical re- searchers employ the term to denote a process which may not involve the effect of the present state of an agent upon a percipient, but which may represent the percipient's own unstimulated access to anything that has been in the mind of the agent in the past. It is even extended by some persons to this omniscient access of any percipient to the mind and memory of any living person at any time desired. It suffices to say that there is not a particle of scientific or any other warrant for such a process. On the evidential side such an hypothesis is sheer nonsense, and I do not think that any one would be tempted by it except as a means of giving trouble to those who believe 86 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE in the existence of discarnate spirits. It should be remembered that the scientific world generally has not yet accepted telepathy of any sort, to say noth- ing of this omniscient thought reading which is ap- parently without analogy of any kind in physical and mental phenomena. It is certain that there is no scientific excuse for this extension of the term, even though we do not know the laws of the assumed tele- pathic action. We may ask the question, if telep- athy of any kind is possible, whether it might not possibly extend to the memory of agents, but asking this question, in the absence of known limits for the process, is not answering it, nor is the legitimacy of such a question a reason for supposing that any such telepathy is a fact supported by evidence, because all the evidence that can claim to prove telepathy of any kind limits it to the present active states of the mind, and the assumption of anything else is either gratuitous and unsupported or can be only assumed as a precaution against hasty conclusions in favor of some other theory that is not so respectable. It is not imperative that we should deny the possibility of such a telepathy, as we must reserve judgment for any facts that advocates of this extension of the process may bring forward. But there is absolutely nothing but the imagination at present in support of such a claim as this omniscient thought reading. When it is so hard to prove the occasional trans- mission of a present mental state we are certainly not justified in using the telepathic hypothesis to ex- plain every coincidence of ideas that occurs between a percipient and some other living person in the GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 37 world, whether the thought be a present or a past one, unless we produce evidence in some proportion with the claims made. There is also much misunderstanding in regard to the explanatory nature of telepathy. There is a strong tendency on the part of the layman to sup- pose that telepathy is an explanation of the phe- nomena which have been adduced to prove it as a fact, and psychic researchers have consciously or un- consciously lent their support to this conception of it. But we should not forget that the term was em- ployed in the first place, not to explain the phe- nomena really or apparently proving it, not as a name for the cause of the phenomena, but only as a name for an exceptional type of facts which require a cause. In other words, it was only a name for coincidences which were not due to chance, but which had some cause for them, and hence served only to determine their classification outside the well-known and understood phenomena of science. What its modus operandi, mode of action, is we do not know, even supposing that we have a right to accept the existence of it as a supernormal fact. A certain class of people assume that it is effected through the me- diation of vibrations of some kind, whether ethereal or otherwise. This may be a fact, but I do not know a shred of evidence to support such a conviction, ex- cept the habits of physicists in their explanation of everything by modes of motion, and that is, in fact, not evidence, but is attempted explanation, and one wonders how an appeal to modes of motion can ex- plain anything until we can see in the phenomenon 88 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE something of the characteristics which are involved in its relation to such a supposed cause. But, admit- ting the right of such a conjecture and of trying to make the phenomena of telepathy consistent with the universal explication of physical events, an ef- fort quite legitimate in the light of the hypothesis that nature is uniform and representative of some kind of unity, the first thing to do in supposing a motional nexus between agent and percipient in the process of telepathy is to find evidence that con- sciousness is a mode of motion. Whatever it may be, there is certainly no tangible evidence that mental action is a mode of motion, and until we can render this assumption of its vibratory nature probable we must use the term telepathy only to denote a coin- cidence that involves a causal nexus and without any implication that we know what this nexus is. In prov- ing it we are only establishing a fact, not explaining the process. It is true, however, that there is something about the conception of telepathy which excuses the tend- ency to appeal to it as a cause. It explains away the previously alleged cause of certain phenoTnena. There has been a long prevalent habit of appealing to spirits to explain every unusual fact that came un- der observation, often without any inquiry into the simple and natural character of the event, and more especially all instances in which knowledge was sup- posed to have been acquired in an exceptional way. What telepathy has done in such situations is to ex- clude the application of spirits and to imply that the process, even though it involves something inde- GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 39 pendent of the percipient's mind, does not require us to suppose that the intermediating agent is a spirit. Its ground for this is that the facts to which telep- athy may apply are not evidence of discarnate ac- tion, even though they actually be eflFected by them. Science will not tolerate the assumption of spirits unless the facts necessitate that explanation in pref- erence to any other, and the facts described by telep- athy are not such as prove the personal identity of deceased persons, whatever agency they might be supposed to have in producing them. In thus ex- plaining away the supposed significance of the phe- nomena it is an easy step to suppose that the phe- nomena are positively explained by the process, when in fact they are not so explained, but remain as a problem for further inquiry as to causes. But the man who supposes that the phenomena are explained when he finds that there is some causal nexus in te- lepathy commits the obverse error of the man who ap- peals to spirits as the cause. It is no proof that we have found a cause of phenomena when we have found what is not their cause, and all that telepathy does in phenomena to which it is applicable at all is to indicate that the process is a direct one between two living minds and that, from the want of a character expected from any other source, they must originate within and not without the living. But telepathy does not explain even the phenomena to which it ap- plies as a name describing their supernormal char- acter, to say nothing of the kind of phenomena to which it does not apply. As indicated above, the evidence for it as a supernormal fact is confined to 40 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE the present active consciousness of an agent supposed to aflFect a percipient, and there is not the slightest scientific reason for applying it to any other phenom- ena as a mode of reducing them to the intelligible. Hence telepathy only limits our problem, and does not solve it, though it excludes, where it is applicable at all, the right to invoke transcendental agencies of a personal kind. I have found these remarks necessary in order to explain the position which science must take in re- gard to telepathy, after it has admitted it, and it is to be remembered that the scientific world generally is not yet prepared to accept it in any form. More- over, I have wished to insist that there is no ade- quate excuse for the wholesale appUcation of the idea to explain every remarkable mental phenomenon we encounter. There must be as much sobriety and cau- tion in applying the idea of telepathy as there has been in accepting it as a fact, while as a fact there has been too little tendency to respect this canon of intelligence. If telepathy is a fact we must discover its laws and conditions as a justification of applying it to phenomena which do not prove it. At present it can apply to nothing but coincidences of the active type between minds, and it must not be confused with the cause of them or the mode of transmission that may be conceived as possible. My own personal attitude, therefore, is that there is at present satisfactory evidence in favor of spo- radic instances of an unusual phenomenon involving an exceptional causal nexus between the thoughts of GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 41 one person, the agent, and another, the percipient. How it is effected I do not know ; nor do I know any- thing about its laws and conditions. What it means is still to me a problem and it may long remain a problem. Many real or alleged facts which are claimed to be telepathic I do not believe are either evidence for it or to be explained by it. Many of the instances quoted in the Phantasms of the Living, it seems to me, are not adequately explained by telep- athy and are certainly not evidence of it. Telepathic phenomena may be involved in them as a part of the process affecting them, but it seems to me that we have still to determine their true causes, while telep- athy must be for me a tentative ttieory of them in lieu of anything better, and a little understood theory of more evidential coincidences that are the result of experiment and spontaneous occurrences. I, there- fore, hold to telepathy as a suitable explanation, if such we may call it, of phenomena that cannot lay claim to any transcendental origin of a spiritual kind and that represent a supernormal relation between living minds. That is as far as I can go, and I shall revise that opinion when it can be shown to be un- scientific. 2. Apparitions One of the Society's professed objects was to in- vestigate the alleged phenomena of Spiritualism, and it included in its scope of them all that the advocates of that doctrine had claimed. This plan, of course, brought it into contact with the frauds of that sub- 42 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE ject as well as cases that at least superficially presented better credentials. Much that was undoubtedly not of the fraudulent type represented abnormal psychology or bad science, and was accord- ingly relegated to secondary personality, unconscious muscular action, misunderstanding of the phenom- ena, illusion, and hallucinations which science could not question. But there was one class of facts which had an apparent significance for the spiritualistic theory, and, if they were what they claimed to be evi- dentially, offered the most promising prospect of sup- porting the existence of discarnate spirits, if that doctrine could obtain any support at all from phe- nomena that were not the result of experiment. These were the phenomena of apparitions of deceased per- sons. / Ghost stories have been from time immemorial the delight and the fear of the race ; the delight of those who would seek to prove by supposed genuine ones the survival of man after death and of those who love to ridicule superstition, and the fear of those who imag- ine that spiritual agencies mix in the affairs of life for some form of evil. Illusion and hallucination account for so much that the more intelligent, whether they were moved to ridicule such experiences or to accept them as facts though unreal, have been obliged to dis- credit the claims so often founded upon them. But their constancy in the experience of all races in all stages of human culture has been so prominent a fact that Mr. Herbert Spencer traces, not only the belief in a future life to them, but also the origin of religion. He is also so much impressed with their influence GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 43 upon ideas and institutions that he gives them an im- portant place among the forces that determine the data of Sociology. I shall not dwell upon that fact, except to insist that, whatever we may think of their real nature, they have a scientifically serious import for the study of man, and Mr. Spencer wiU not he accused of superstitious sympathies in recognising that importance. I can only refer readers to his So- ciology for some interesting information upon the subject, and the same wiU be found in any discus- sion of primitive culture. I remark this aspect of them and their influence on human belief and action because I wish to bespeak for such phenomena a value wholly apart from their supposed objective truth and reality. I do not con- sider that the value of scientific study is limited to the investigation of merely what can be proved to be real, and that conviction can be doubly reinforced by all the work of psychiatry, the study of folk-lore, and the study of literature and philosophy. Psychiatry and abnormal psychology have ostensibly occupied themselves with unrealities, except as they were sub- jective facts, and have prided themselves on their su- preme value to the knowledge and protection of man. If apparitions have been so persistent a phenomenon in human experience and if they have actually influenced human beliefs and customs, even to a small part of the extent asserted of them by men like Mr. Spencer, there is no reason for taking an attitude of contempt when some one proposes to ascertain, if possible, why they persist; except as a preservation of one's sense of humor and respectability in the estimation of per- 44 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE sons otherwise intelligent. If we should happen in the investigation to find that they have a wider and deeper meaning than the scoflFer has supposed with- out adequate investigation, the existing body of hu- man knowledge will not be disgraced. The fact is that the contempt for the study of ap- paritions has various motives that may represent a perfectly healthy state of mind. Some of us find after investigation that the prevalent opinion of in- telligent men has so much to support it that it will appear a vain effort to revive any other serious inter- est in them than in illusions and hallucinations. Some of us cannot accept their attestation of a future life without fearing a revival of all those intellectual crazes which have diverted human energies into the most maudlin of philosophies. Some of us have to affect ridicule of the phenomena to protect our re- spectability while we secretly or publicly recognise the serious and important side of their investigation. I do not know any man who has maintained this bal- ance between humor and seriousness better than Mr. Andrew Lang, and he has admitted that he thinks Mr. Myers actually proved the possibility that they evince sufficient evidence of a future life. Reviewing Mr. Myers' work on Human Personality and its Sur- vival of Bodily Death and referring to additional phenomena of the same kind in Phantasms of the Liv- ing, Mr. Lang says: " To myself, after reading the evidence, it appears that a fairly strong presumption is raised in favor of a ' phantasmogenetic agency ' set at work, in a vague unconscious way, by the deceased, and I say this after GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 45 considering the adverse arguments of Mr. Podmore, for example, in favor of telepathy from living minds, and all the hypotheses of hoaxing, exaggerative mem- ory, mal-observation, and so forth — not to mention the popular nonsense that 'What is the use of it? ' 'Was it permitted?' What is the use of argon? Why are cockroaches permitted? " To end with a confession of opinion : I entirely agree with Mr. Myers and Hegel, that we, or many of us, are in something, or that something is in us, which ' does not know the bonds of time, or feel the manacles of space.' " Personal interest in a future life is so intense and the consequences of being fooled both in our evidence of it and in our ideas of it on any such evidence as is obtainable, that we do well to be cautious about accepting it on the testimony of apparitions. The neglect of them, therefore, may have its justi- fication for many of us, but the scientific man cannot plead any dangers to his own temper of mind as an excuse for leaving them unin- vestigated, as any outcome must add to his power and usefulness, whether they add to the triumphs of psychiatry or prove the immortality of the soul. Now an apparition is the sensory appearance of a reality, animal or human, which turns out on exam- ination not to be the physical being that it seems to be. To find out what the frequency of apparitions might be and to ascertain how seriously science might be required to treat them as significant of objective causes, the Society for Psychical Research addressed 46 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE an inquiry to the public for an account of experiences having psychological interest and importance. Among the replies involving waking and dream coin- cidences were a large number of coincidental appari- tions. It was found that these last could be arranged for convenience in three classes. (1) Apparitions of persons known or proved to be living at the time. (2) Apparitions of persons in or about the crisis of death. (3) Apparitions of persons some time de- ceased. The obvious purpose of this division was to emphasise the very different conditions under which a common or similar phenomenon occurred. The im- portance of this consideration will be apparent when we come to theories of explanation. But while the classification served as a means of distinguishing dif- ferent conditions with the same general phenomenon, it also served to suggest explanations not consistent with the spiritistic interpretation of the phenomena, as they had been viewed for ages. I shall give some well authenticated instances of them without regard to the class into which they fall. They shall repre- sent suggestive coincidences at the same time and a type that apparently cannot be classified with the or- dinary phenomena of illusion and hallucination. Due allowance was made by the committee that collected them for that enormously numerous class of expe- riences that belong only to abnormal psychology and which have a purely subjective origin without any possible doubt of the fact. Its collection of cases was designed to represent the type that at least seemed to have an objective source. I shall men- tion no instance of an apparition that does not come GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 47 from an authority which will carry weight at least in regard to the occurrence of the experience and of details that suggest a scientific interest beyond the ordinary, or that was not authenticated by sufficient testimony to exempt it from the clear suspicion of ordinary illusion, whatever the final explanation. The first instance that I shall quote is that of Lord Brougham, who, as every one must recognise, was thoroughly a man of the world. He was travelling with friends in Sweden when the experience occurred: " We set out for Gothenberg determined to make Norway. About one in the morning, arriving at a decent inn, we decided to stop for the night. Tired with the cold of yesterday, I was glad to take advan- tage of a hot bath before I turned in, and here a most remarkable thing happened to me — so remark- able that I must tell the story from the beginning. " After I left the high school, I went with G., my first intimate friend, to attend the classes in the uni- versity. There was no divinity class, but we fre- quently in our walks discussed and speculated upon many grave subjects — among others on the immortal- ity of the soul, and on a future state. This question, and the possibility, I will not say of ghosts walking, but of the dead appearing to the living, were subjects of much speculation; and we actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our own blood, to the effect that whichever of us died the first should appear to the other, and thus solve the doubts we had entertained of the ' life after death.' " After we had finished our classes at the college, G. went to India, having got an appointment there 48 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE in the civil service. He seldom wrote to me, and after the lapse of a few years I had almost forgotten him ; moreover his family having little connection with Edinburgh, I seldom saw or heard anything of them, so that all his schoolboy intimacy had died out and I had nearly forgotten his existence. I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath, and while lying in it and en- joying the comfort of the heat after the late freezing I had undergone, I turned my head around, looking toward the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get out of the bath. On the chair sat G., looking calmly at me. How I got out of the bath I know not, but on recovering my senses I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was that had taken the likeness of G. had disappeared." Lord Brougham's account of it afterward showed that he had evidently made a journal record of the experience before he learned that his friend had died in India on the same day as this occurrence. The apparition occurred on December 19th, 1799, and soon after Lord Brougham arrived in Edinburgh on his return a letter arrived from India announcing the death of G. on the date mentioned. The ex- perience produced a profound impression upon Lord Brougham's mind, but wisely for his time and for the lack of similar instances at command to suggest any supernormal significance, he treated it as possibly a dream during a little period of unconscious sleep or a casual hallucination. But the case illustrates a fairly well authenticated Instance of a coincidental appa- rition, no matter how we explain it. GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 49 The second instance is one from Dr. George J. Romanes, F. R. S., the distinguished disciple of Dar- win and almost his peer in scientific reputation. He writes the account of his experience to Mr. Myers, the secretary of the Society for Psychical Re- search : " Toward the end of March, 1878, in the dead of the night, while believing myself to be awake, I thought the door at the head of my bed was opened, and a white figure passed along the side of the bed to the foot, where it faced about and showed me it was covered, head and all, with a shroud. Then with its hands it suddenly parted the shroud over the face, re- vealing between its two hands the face of my sister, who was ill in another room. I exclaimed her name, whereupon the figure vanished instantly. Next day (and certainly on account of the shock given me by the above experience) I called in Sir W. Jenner, who said my sister had not many days to live. She died in fact very soon afterwards. " I was in good health, without any grief or anx- iety. My sister was being attended by our family doctor, who did not expect anything serious; there- fore I had no anxiety at all on her account, nor had she herself. I have never, either before or after this, had such an experience." This is what may be called a premonitory incident for the sake of classification and its objective reality in any sense can be questioned on several grounds. But it is not mentioned here with any implication of its supernormal significance, and even if it were this would not represent the appearance of a discarnate 50 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE spirit in any explanation of it based upon personal identity. John Addington Symonds, one of the best known of the English literary scholars, was the subject of the following experience. He says, writing to the Society for Psychical Research: " I was a boy in the sixth form at Harrow, and, as head of Mr. Kendall's house, had a room to my- self. It was in the summer of 1858. I woke about dawn, and felt for my books upon a chair between the bed and the window, when I knew that I must turn my head the other way, and there between me and the door stood Dr. Macleane, dressed in a clergy- man's black clothes. He bent his sallow face a little toward me and said, ' I am going a long way — take care of my son.' While I was attending to him I suddenly saw the door in the place where Dr. Mac- leane had been. Dr. Macleane died that night (at what hour I cannot precisely say) at Clifton. My father, who was a great friend of his, was with him. I was not aware that he was more than usually ill. He was a chronic invalid." Mr. Andrew Lang, who will not be accused of su- perstition, narrates the following experience. It is found in his article on Apparitions in the Encyclo- pcedia Britcmnica: " The writer once met, as he believed, a well- known and learned member of an English univer- sity, who was really dying at a place more than one hundred miles distant from that in which he was seen. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that the writer did mistake some other individual for the GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 61 extremely noticeable person whom he seemed to see, the coincidence between the subjective impression and the death of the learned professor, is, to say the least, curious." Dr. Weir Mitchell reports an interesting case in the experience of his father, who was also a phy- sician. His father had a patient in an insane asylum who occasionally had lucid intervals. One morning Dr. Mitchell went to the asylum to inform the pa- tient of the death of his wife during the night. As he came in sight of the patient the man cried out: " You need not tell me. My wife is dead. I know it. She was here last night and told me herself." Supposing that there was no foundation for this story, Dr. Mitchell went to the manager of the in- stitution and told him what had been said, and that gentleman confirmed it by saying that he had heard the man talking in the night and went to him to see what was the matter, when the patient at once re- proached him for the disturbance and for driving away his wife, who, he said, was there and had told him that she had just died. This case is interest- ing as associating a veridical apparition with a patho- logical condition of mind when hallucinations are so probable and suggesting the complications which such phenomena having an apparently objective mean- ing may possess. Mr. Keulemans, who was a draughtsman in the work done for the Encyclopaedia Britarmica, a man of very considerable intelligence and free from super- stition of any kind, according to the testimony of Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, the secretary of the 52 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE Society, reports two interesting apparitions of his own similar in import to those that I have mentioned. Mr. Keulemans was living in Paris with his family, and on the breaking out of an epidemic of smallpox sent his three children to London to escape it. He tells his experience in the following language : " On the 24th of January, 1881, at half past seven in the morning, I was suddenly awakened by hearing Isidore's voice, as I fancied, very near me. I saw a bright, opaque mass before my eyes, and in the center of this light I saw the face of my little dar- ling, his eyes bright, his mouth smiling. The appa- rition, accompanied by the sound of his voice, was too short and too sudden to be called a dream; it was too clear, too decided, to be called an effect of the im- agination. So distinctly did I hear his voice that I looked around the room to see whether he was ac- tually there. The sound was of that extreme de- light such as only a happy child can utter. I thought it was the moment he woke up in London, happy and thinking of me. I said to myself, ' Thank God, little Isidore is happy as always.' " Mr. Keulemans describes the ensuing day as one of peculiar brightness and cheerfulness. He took a long walk with a friend, with whom he dined, and was afterwards playing a game of billiards, when he sail} the apparition of the child. This made him seriously uneasy, and in spite of having received within three days the assurance of the child's perfect health, he expressed to his wife a conviction that he was dead. Next day a letter arrived saying that the child was ill; but the father was convinced that GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 53 this was only an attempt to break the news; and, in fact, the child had died, after a few hours' illness, at the exact time of the first apparition. Mrs. Keulemans confirmed the statements of her husband and that he had mentioned to her before re- ceiving news of the child's illness his fears, and finally told her that he had had an apparition of the child. Mr. Keulemans records a large number of coincidental experiences, some of them not apparitional, and among them one intimating the death of his father in Rot- terdam while he himself was in London, and one in- timating in much the same way the death of his grandmother, one the sickness of his daughter, and another the vision of his little boy, living, falling out of bed at the sea-side Worthing, near Brighton, and himself in London. The incident was verified by the mother, who was with the child. James Cotter Morison, a name that will be recog- nised by every intelligent man in the English world, narrates an auditory apparition, as it will have to be called, that is corroborated in a peculiar way, and is too long to be quoted here. Prof. J. Estlin Carpenter is responsible for one which he narrates in detail, and Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the brother-in-law of Charles Darwin and a savant himself well known in England, tells a most remarkable instance in which his daughter-in-law had a vision in a waking or dream state of a man who about the same time had one of her, the details in each case corresponding to the phys- ical facts, neither party knowing the other at the time and simultaneously recognising each other when they afterwards accidentally met. The Marquis of 54 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE Bute, Mr. Andrew Lang and Dr. Terrier of London are responsible for one of the most remarkable ap- paritions that has been put on record involving something of an experiment involving the phantasm of a deceased person twice and not known to the percipient and described so that the person was quite recognisable, as we experience this every day in our ordinary conversation. The case is too long even to abbreviate in a work like this. I can only refer the reader to the original record {Proceedings S. P. R.-, Vol. XI pp. 54.7-659). Dr. Hack Tuke, the cele- brated physician and alienist, reports a case of the apparition of a living person that he says is reliably authenticated. Miss Goodrich-Freer (Miss X), ed- itor of Borderland and author of Essays in Psy- chical Research, and well known for her experiences in crystal visions and herself rather sceptical of spirit- istic theories, went to a house which had the reputa- tion of being haunted for the purpose of experi- menting in apparitions. Though she had not seen any description of the phantasms seen there before, she had an apparition while at the house whose de- scription tallied with that given by others. Dr. Minot J. Savage vouches for the following incident, which he personally investigated, though he has to reserve the names and residences of the parties concerned. It is interesting as exhibiting what may occur at the point of death and have at least an apparent evidential value: " In a neighboring city were two little girls, Jennie and Edith, one about eight years of age, and the other but a little older. They were schoolmates and GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 56 intimate friends. In June, 1889, both were taken ill of diphtheria. At noon on Wednesday, June 5th, Jennie died. Then the parents of Edith, and her physician as well, all took pains to keep from her the fact that her little playmate was gone. They feared the eflFect of the knowledge on her own condi- tion. To prove that they succeeded and that she did not know, it may be mentioned that on Saturday, June 8th, at noon, just before she became uncon- scious of all that was passing about her, she selected two of her photographs to be sent to Jennie, and also told her attendants to bid her good-bye. " She died at half past six o'clock on the evening of Saturday, June 8th. She had aroused and bid- den her friends good-bye, and was talking of dying, and seemed to have no fear. She appeared to see one and another of the friends she knew were dead. So far it was like the common cases. But now, sud- denly, and with every appearance of great surprise, she turned to her father, and exclaimed : ' Why, papa, I am going to take Jennie with me ! ' Then she added, ' Why, papa ! Why, papa ! You did not tell me that Jennie was here ! ' And immediately she reached out her arms as if in welcome, and said, ' O, Jennie ; I am so glad you are here.' " Now I have not narrated these experiences to prove the existence of the supernormal, nor to prove any interpretation of them whatever. I am quite aware that it would be folly to lay any claims to the proof of anything " supernatural " by them, and that is not my object in quoting them. I have endeavored 56 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE only to collate some instances of such experiences as come from authorities respectable enough to merely authenticate the fact that coincidental apparitions of the living and dying or dead actually occur. What they mean in particular it may take many years to determine. It is easy to discredit the testimony of men and women we do not know and about whom we have to take the authority of some one else. But it is different with men and women whose characters are public property like those I have mentioned, and I could have enumerated scores of others whose testi- mony is quite as respectable, and their incidents often far more interesting scientifically than those I have mentioned. But the few that I have quoted suffice to make it very probable that there are many more such experiences, and certainly show a type of phe- nomena which, if numerous enough, have significance for some conclusion that either has momentous conse- quences of value to the human race or tendencies to produce the most dangerous of intellectual illusions. It matters not for this work which consequence is in- volved, nor would it be of less value to prove for those who may be tempted to accept illusions that they are drifting toward delusion and insanity than it would be to sustain the fact of a future life. I am concerned in this narrative only with the necessity of scientific investigation and not of a priori neglect and ridicule. Psychology has a duty to mankind be- sides proving the truth in normal fields of experience. Its duty to expose error and delusion and to explain the phenomena that lead to them is quite as impera- tive as any other. GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 57 Such instances as I have indicated induced Mr. Ed- mund Gurney and other members of the Society to institute what they called a Census of Hallucinations which would be a large collection of these phenom- ena. The results were partly reported in the Phan- tasms of the Living and partly in a later volume of the Proceedings. They represented all types of ap- paritions. The inquiries brought 17,000 answers, and nearly 10^ of these affirmed that they had ex- perienced some form of apparition or sensory equiva- lent, visual, auditory or tactile. Of these 352 were apparitions of living persons, and 163 apparitions of dead persons, and 315 were incompletely devel- oped instances. There were 62 death coincidences of a striking evidential type. Taking these with the apparitions of living persons and eliminating certain cases for evidential reasons there remained for the committee 350 instances on which to calculate the law of chances. The question was whether these 350 apparitions involving apparently significant coin- cidences were due to chance alone. The technical method of calculating these I shall not detail, and no one seems to have questioned its correctness or fair- ness. But it involved as a conclusion that 142,500 cases would have had to be collected in order to have 30 coincidences of the kind due to chance, instead of 350. In its conclusion the committee announced its conviction in the following language, which it itali- cised : " Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connection exists which is not due to chance. This we hold as a proved fact." 58 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE Farther than this the committee would not go, and it certainly was not justified in proposing on such scanty evidence any positive explanation of such phe- nomena. There was much said in the Phantasms of the Living to suggest, but the authors would not de- fend, the application of telepathy to them. It was content in the Census to eliminate chance and to leave positive conjectures to those who care to ven- ture upon them. But the general public has come to refer them to telepathy, and as the committee's work ignored the apparitions of the dead when they occurred more than twelve hours after the decease, it was natural on this account and other reasons to apply telepathy to such as had been considered, es- pecially as some of them could not lay the slightest claim to being spiritistic. We must not forget, in es- timating the application of any explanatory agency, that the large majority of the apparitions of an vnterestvng coincidental character were of living per- sons. However we may choose to explain this type of phenomena, we could never adduce them as proof of the existence of discarnate spirits, and hence in lieu of this explanation it was natural, if any posi- tive theory at all were offered, to tolerate telepathy. But I must demur to any such interpretation of the phenomena. I do not think that they are either evi- dential of telepathy or explicable by it. I think that all three classes of apparitions are to be explained by the same general hypothesis. What this is I do not know. It will not do to choose telepathy because some of the phenomena are unquestionably not ex- plicable by discarnate spirits. In adopting an hy- GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 59 pothesis we must always have respect to the fitness of the cause to the effect, and there is neither the evi- dential situation for telepathy nor anything in the phenomenon to suggest such an explanation. As the phenomena are all of the same type in spite of the difference in the conditions under which they occur, a difference which affects only evidential and not ex- planatory considerations, we have to find the one general cause of them. If we make that telepathy, it must most naturally be on the ground that the per- son appearing in the phantasm is the agent, and this would require us to assume the spiritistic theory to account for the apparitions of the dead, since we would have to make such realities existent in order to have the proper agents for explaining the phe- nomena. Otherwise we should have to suppose that they were telepathically initiated by living persons, thus vitiating the first supposition that the agents in the phantasms of the living were necessarily the persons seen. The simplest theory, of course, is illu- sion and hallucination, if we exclude chance and can show the causes for this particular type of coinci- dence which apparently does not occur in the annals of pure psychiatry ; at least psychiatry does not show the evidence of it. The point that psychiatry recog- nises is the fact that the same general explana- tion must be applied to all three classes of appari- tions, and I think it is right in this position. But it may be fairly contended that psychiatry cannot explain the coincidences of the apparitions with ob- jective events too remote from the percipient to af- fect sensory cognition. The exclusion of chance from 60 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE the result and therefore the admission of a causal nexus in the coincidences discredits the hypothesis of subjective hallucination, and as telepathy cannot easily be applied without admitting the spiritistic theory which it is intended to nullify, the general cause is still to be sought. I do not think that telep- athy has any evidential application to them and I do not think that we have the data at present to justify confidence in any hypothesis. It must remain for fu- ture investigation to ascertain how all three types of apparitions are to be explained, with allowances for differences in the circumstances that are not essential, especially as the main characteristic of the phenomena is identical in aU three types. What form that ex- planation wiU take I have no means of predicting, and I would have to venture upon inadequately supported conjectures. In brief, I think that the evidence is en- tirely lacking for any satisfactory theory, beyond the denial of chance, and men may differ on this conclusion of the committee. 3. Mediumistic Phenomena Mediumistic phenomena generally purports to rep- resent communications from discarnate spirits. Their actual character very often may be nothing more than secondary personality, which is unconscious mental action impersonating the dead, or in some cases it may involve mind reading. If the evidence be sufBcient to show the existence of the supernormal. But in spite of this broad scope of the term It gen- GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 61 erally assumes the spiritistic type of phenomena as representative of its intended meaning. I shall here use the term in that sense. A " medium," therefore, is a person who claims to have communications with discarnate spirits or recognises that his or her phe- nomena are capable of that explanation. The man- ner of receiving alleged messages does not affect the conception of such persons. Sometimes their work is done in a trance or unconscious state, some times in a normal and conscious state. In either con- dition it may be by what is called automatic writing or by automatic speech. Or, again, in the normal state it may be by conscious speech interpreting impres- sions whose origin is not consciously known by the person acting as " medium." Sometimes the plan- chette may be used instead of the pencil for writing, and the Ouija board for spelling out communications instead of writing them. Or table tipping may be supposed to spell out words and sentences. But the manner of receiving " communications " does not de- termine the definition of the " medium." It only af- fects the evidential character of the results, whether they be supernormal or not. The phenomena of Mrs. Piper, near Boston, have been exploited by the Society in such a manner as to leave the impression that hers are the only me- diumistic phenomena we have. But this is far from being the case. There are reasons to be mentioned again why so much emphasis is placed upon this one case, and I do not mean to enter into them now. I wish to summarise very briefly the phenomena of a 62 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE few other persons of this class, which have not been professional and whose results certainly justify in- vestigation. It would take too much space to give a satisfac- tory resume of the cases to which I wish to refer, and hence I must content myself with little more than references and the expectation that the reader, if he is interested at all, will examine them. I mention only those whose respectability cannot be questioned and who seem never to have been of the professional type. In the first stages of scientific inquiry into these dubious phenomena this limitation is an impor- tant one. I shall take my instances from Mr. Fred- eric W. H. Myers' Human Personality and its Sur- vival of Bodily Death (Vol. II, pp. 1-277) for con- venience, though most of the same cases are reported in the Proceedings of the Society. I must abbreviate the reports, so that the reader who may be interested in the study of the details and evidential incidents affecting the genuineness of the phenomena must ex- amine the references. Dr. Liebeault, the French physician, reports an authentic case " where a girl writes a message an- nouncing her friend's death at the time when that friend is, in fact, dying in a distant city" (pp. 169- 170). Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, who I have said above was the brother-in-law of Charles Darwin, re- ports a most remarkable instance of his own expe- rience with two friends whose integrity he could not question. It was in June, 1889, and represented a purported message from a John Gurwood, intimat- ing that he had been in the Peninsular War in 1810, GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 63 and drawing a picture representing a mural coronet with an arm holding a scimitar extending from the wall. The message also stated that he had killed him- self on Christmas day. Inquiry showed that a Col- onel Gurwood had been wounded in this war in 1812 and never recovered from the effects of it, but killed himself on Christmas day in 1845. The message also mentioned the name of Gurwood's friend, Quen- tin, and intimated that there was a secret in regard to this man in connection with some scrape in the army. Inquiry showed that this was correct, and that Colonel Quentin had been court-martialed in 1814 (pp. 162-167). I do not care what the mean- ing of the incident is, but only the form which it takes. We may explain it by secondary personality, if we have the evidence for this, but the point for us at present is the unconscious manner in which the sug- gestive phenomenon occurs, and the fact that it represents incidents well calculated to prove personal identity and hence the existence of survival, if the al- leged source of the facts be true. Dr. Richard Hodgson, secretary of the American Society, reports a very good case which was the re- sult of a direct experiment. It represents a test mes- sage arranged before death to be revealed after it, if return were possible. The tests arranged were to re- veal where a certain piece of brick was placed before death and the contents of a short letter which had been written and sealed before death. For months after the man's death the survivor got nothing satis- factory, until experiments were tried at home by the lady and her mother themselves by table tipping. 64 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE The alphabet was said over and the table tipped, evi- dently through unconscious muscular action, at the letters appropriate until the sentence, " You will find that piece of brick in the cabinet under the toma- hawk. Benja." Its place of concealment was not known to the parties present, but the piece of brick was found as indicated, under the tomahawk and concealed in a shell at the bottom of the cabinet. Then the letter was spelled out in the same way, the message being : " Julia, do right and be happy. Benja." When the letter was opened this was found to be the sentence in it (pp. 182-185). Such a story, of course, is incredible to most of us, and I do not repeat it to be believed, but to indi- cate that the ordinary objection to its credibility cannot be raised. The lady and her mother were not likely to engage in a trick to fool themselves, and the experience was one that Dr. Hodgson came across incidentally in his investigations, and found it hav- ing a respectable origin. What the explanation is will have to be determined by innumerable cases of the kind adequately authenticated. Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers reports a case which is extraordinary on any theory whatever. It came to him on the authority of a physician with a Euro- pean reputation and his name has to be withhheld, as the incidents recorded would be out of place in his scientific surroundings. Mr. Myers, however, vouches for his name and reputation. He is given the pseu- donym of Dr. X. The incident purports to be a case of hypnotic control from the side of the " spirit world," and the " control " which directed the medi- GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 65 cal treatment of a patient of Dr. X's was an intimate friend of Dr. X's and a European physician of much repute. The story is too long to be quoted here and should be read (pp. 124i-130). The explanation is not important. It is the fact that is interesting. Dr. Ermacora of Padua reports some remarkable instances of real or apparent supernormal phenomena connected with automatic writing and apparently not amenable to telepathic explanation (pp. 4!46-4!4i7), and the Countess of Radnor reports a large number of apparently supernormal experiences of a Miss A., some of which purport to be spiritistic and are too complicated to even abridge here (pp. 4<4!7-4!56). Mr. B. r. Underwood, a man widely known in the United States as a freethinker, vouches for the ex- periences of his wife in automatic writing which he himself witnessed in most cases (pp. 461-4<66). M. Aksakoff reports two cases (pp. 466-473). One of the most remarkable and interesting of me- diumistic incidents is one that I take from the ex- periences of Stainton Moses, Many of his expe- riences rest upon his own statements and authority alone, and while his probity cannot be questioned the scientific importance of all facts of this kind depends upon the confirmation of their occurrence by inde- pendent testimony or such facts outside the subject's knowledge as makes their credibility possible. In this instance we have the attestation of facts which render the word of Mr. Moses credible independently of his known honesty, and the task of scepticism more difficult. It purports to be a message from a lady whom Mr. Moses had known in life, but of whose 66 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE death he did not know. I quote in full the account which Mr. Myers gives of the incident; " The spirit in question," says Mr. Myers, " is that of a lady known to me, whom Mr. Moses had met, I believe, once only, and whom I shall call Blanche Abercromby. The publication of the true name was forbidden by the spirit herself, for a reason which was at once obvious to me when I read the case, but which was not, so far as I can tell, fully known to Mr. Moses. The lady's son, whom I have since consulted, supports the prohibition, and I have consequently changed the name and omitted the dates. " The lady died on a Sunday afternoon, about twenty-five years ago, at a country house about 200 miles from London. Her death, which was regarded as an event of public interest, was at once telegraphed to London, and appeared in Monday's Times; but, of course, on Sunday evening no one in London, save the press and perhaps the immediate family, was cog- nisant of the fact. It will be seen that on that even- ing, near midnight, a communication, purporting to come from her, was made to Mr. Moses at his secluded lodgings in the north of London. The identity was some days later corroborated by a few lines purport- ing to come directly from her, and to be in her hand- writing. There is no reason to suppose that Mr. Moses had ever seen this handwriting. His one known meeting with this lady and her husband had been at a seance — not, of course, of his own — where he had been offended by the strongly expressed disbelief of the husband in the possibility of any such phenomena. GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 6T " On receiving these messages Mr. Moses seems to have mentioned them to no one, and simply gummed down the pages in his MS. book, marking the book outside ' Private Matter.' The book when placed in my hands was still thus gummed down, although Mrs. Speer was cognisant of the communication. I opened the pages (as instructed by the executors), and was surprised to find a brief letter which, though containing no definite facts, was entirely character- istic of the Blanche Abercromby whom I had known. But although I had received letters from her in life, I had no recollection of her handwriting. I hap- pened to know a son of hers sufficiently well to be able to ask his aid — aid which, I may add, he would have been most unlikely to aff^ord a stranger. He lent me a letter for comjJarison. The strong resemblance was at once obvious, but the A. of the surname was made in the letter in a way quite different from that adopted in the automatic script. The son then al- lowed me to study a long series of letters, reaching down till almost the date of her death. From these it appeared that during the last year of her life she had taken to writing the A (as her husband had al- ways done) in the way in which it was written in the automatic script" (loc. cit. pp. 230-231). These are by no means the only instances which might be quoted, but I have given enough to accom- plish the purpose which I have in this chapter. This is merely to mention some instances of real or alleged communications with discarnate spirits that can claim respectability of origin and evidential incidents 68 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE calculated to suggest their reliability as facts, how- ever we may account for them. I do not pretend for a moment that they prove what they allege. It will require much more and much better evidence to es- tablish the fact of survival of death, and it is not our first duty to effect this proof, but to see if our facts claiming that character are credible in any sense whatever, and owing to considerations which must rule in scientific method we have first to see whether our witnesses are trustworthy, and whether, whatever their character, their testimony can in any way be corroborated by outside evidence. I have, therefore, confined the instances quoted to such persons as have either been accustomed to scientific observation or such as can have their statements rendered probable by some form of confirmation. I think that the cases involved show the widespread existence of mediumistic phenomena, however we explain them, and that the main want at present is a systematic reproduction of them in numerous cases extending over a number of years, in order to reach a scientific understanding of their meaning and importance. Such illustrations as I have given challenge investigation, and this is all that I wish to show by them. If they contribute any portion of the evidence bearing upon such a con- clusion as a life after death they are important, as related to one of the most momentous problems that science or philosophy ever approached, and if they are only instances in which we are likely to be led astray in our ideas of the cosmos and its tendencies, so much the more dangerous are they to the multitude and all the more imperative is it that scientific men GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 69 should be the responsible leaders in the investigation of them and in the dispossession of delusion. The complete breakdown of the old religious ideas, which undoubtedly held mankind in some of its best moral tendencies, and the widespread development of tran- scendental philosophies as maudlin as Neo-Platonism, and the insanities of astrology, palmistry and similar vagaries — to say nothing of those crazes founded on a half truth, and which are helped by the refusal of science to direct human convictions in this turbid sea of abnormal and apparently supernormal psychol- ogy — are closely related to each other. One is the consequence of scepticism and criticism applied to traditional beliefs and the other is the consequence of that resolute faith in the transcendental which the older religion had fostered, but which is now as scepti- cal of dogma as science drifting farther away from practical and ethical life than the church. There is, therefore, a profound mission for science in this field whatever may be the conclusion of its labors, and I shall not forecast what they might be. I can only say that, in an age when scientific method has be- come the substitute for biblical authority, whether rightly or not it is not necessary to say, it is not un- fair to ask of it that it accept its responsibilities and direct human convictions on the problem of a future life in a manner to protect the humanities of history and to deserve the respect of mankind for its interest and guidance. 70 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 4. Miscellaneous Results There were many other subjects of psychological interest that came under the purview of the Society's work besides those to which I have given prominence in this summary. They were of a various charac- ter and most of them pertained to matters affecting scientific methods in dealing with obscure and dif- ficult phenomena and precautions against error in the study of them. I shall do nothing more in this book than to call attention to them and advise the student to examine them carefully if he wishes to ascertain something of the pitfalls which await the investi- gator who ignores the complications and difficulties, evidential and otherwise, that haunt the path of prog- ress in matters of this kind. The titles and refer- ences of the articles will stiffice for the reader, and they are taken from the Proceedings of the Society, accessible in most good libraries. Report on the Phenomena of Theosophy, or Madame Blavatsky, by Richard Hodgson and others. Vol. Ill, pp. 201-400. On some Physical Phenomena, commonly called Spiritualistic, by Prof. W. F. Bar- rett, Vol. IV, pp. 25-42. Results of a Personal In- vestigation of the " Physical Phenomena " of Spirit- ualism, by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, Vol. IV, pp. 25-74. The Possibilities of Mal-Ohservation in relation to Evidence for the Phenomena of Spiritualism, Vol. IV, pp. 75-99. The Possibilities of Mal-Observation and Lapse of Memory from a Practical Point of View, by Richard Hodgson and S. J. Davey, Vol. IV. pp. 381-487. The Canons of Evidence in Psychical Re- GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 71 search, by Prof. Henry Sidgwick, Vol. VI, pp. 1-6. Apparitwns of the Virgin in Dordogne, by Leon MariUier, Vol. VI, pp. 100-110. On Alleged Move- ments of Objects Without Contact, by F. W. H. My- ers, Vol. VII, pp. 146-198 and 383-394.. A Case of Double Consciousness, by Richard Hodgson, Vol. VII, pp. 221-257. On Spirit Photographs, by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, Vol. VII, pp. 268-289. Mr. Da- veyi's Imitations by Conjuring of Phenomena some- times attributed to Spirit Agency, by Richard Hodg- son, Vol. VIII, pp. 253-310. The Defence of the Theosophists, by Richard Hodgson, Vol. VIII, pp. 129-159. Mind-Cure, Faith-Cure, and the Miracles of Lourdes, by Dr. A. T. Myers and F. Yf. H. My- ers, Vol. VIII, pp. 160-209. Resolute Credulity, by F. W. H. Myers, Vol. XI, pp. 213-234; Coincin dences, by Alice Johnson, Vol. XIV, pp. 151-330. There are many important observations and facts in Mr. Myers' articles on the Subliminal Conscious- ness which show the dangers of the ordinary mind in the presence of unusual phenomena. They are scattered throughout the Proceedings of the Society and will have to be searched for by the interested reader. Dr. Morton Prince has an important case affecting subconscious mental action and dramatisa- tion of personalities which many in the past would have mistaken for spiritistic phenomena. The Census of Hallucinations, Vol. X of the Proceedings, con- tains chapters on Illusions, Hallucinations, and Ex- pectancy and Suggestion that are most important, and the Phantasms of the Living contain much material on the same subjects, affecting the common liability to 72 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE mistake the supernormal. One can hardly read this matter carefully without feeling discouragement in regard to the possibility and usefulness of investiga- tion in the subject, but he will console himself by the observation that it is not wise or helpful to accept any transcendental existence without the cautions and limi- tations which any such important belief must admit as a condition of being accepted at all. CHAPTER III THE PROBIiEM OF A FUTURE LIFE There have been two great tendencies in human thought and action, and they divide mankind, rough- ly speaking, into two classes. They may be called the scientific and the religious types of mind. One thinks and acts with reference to facts and the other with reference to hope. But as all action is in one sense based upon a hope of some kind, we may per- haps express the antithesis better by saying that the hopes of the one are based upon experience and the hopes of the other upon ideals that ignore experience. However this may be, one type will not accept any belief unless it can base it upon present facts, veri- fiable human experience; the other wants to believe in some idyllic future and persists in doing so if it has to evade the real or apparent significance of the present experience. One concentrates its attention upon " nature," the sensible physical world, which always seems clear and intelligible to him; the other concentrates its attention upon " supernature," a non- sensible reality which is a world of hopes and aspira- tions. One lives in the present; the other lives for the future. One makes money and the other makes religion. Of course, there are natures plentiful that combine both tendencies and they are perhaps the healthiest intellectual and moral types, so that I am not trying to represent the two tendencies as neces- 73 74. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE sarily in an irreconcilable conflict. They have as- sumed an antagonistic attitude toward each other because each is so exclusive about his interests. The division of labor in the world tends to narrow our affections and interests and it does not matter in what field of thought and activity this division takes place, it tends to produce differences of class ideas and prej- udices, and though this conflict is not wholly excus- able by this circumstance, it appears to represent the process by which progress in both directions has been secured. But the most curious part of the case is that the scientiflc man, in all his alleged reverence for fact and emphasis upon the material phenomena of sense for the formation of his conception of things and the regulation of his actions, is quite unconscious that the basis of all his work is a supersensible world of amaz- ing character, and this is especially true of the as- sumptions of modern science which has postulated realities as far beyond sense as any spirit could be supposed to be. This was quite manifest in both schools of Greek philosophy, the one headed by Plato and the other by Epicurus, and Greek philosophy has always been assumed to have been predominantly actuated by regard for things of sense. But I shall return to this general tendency of scientific thought toward the supersensible, after thus remarking that it represents the common characteristic of the op- posed schools, while I pause to note the real point of difference between the conceptions of the scientific mind and those of the religious mind. This is the distinction between the mind that emphasises law or THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 76 the uniformity of " nature " and the mind that hunts for Kberation from the hard restraints of such law. It is, perhaps, better to say, owing to the claim of " law " on both sides, that the difference represents the opposition between the believer in an impersonal and the believer in a personal order of the world, the one an absolutely fixed and invariable order and the other a capricious and variable one adjustable to the purposes of a personal agent. I do not contend that the two are necessarily antagonistic, but the con- troversies of the past have so generally been coi;iducted with that assumption that we are in the habit of conceiving the fixed order of events as excluding per- sonal agency in their determination. But, though a personal and an impersonal order may be mutually exclusive, a fixed and a personal order are not so. They are quite consistent with each other. But it is much more diflScult to find evidence of a personal in- terpretation of " nature " in an order of the mechan- ically fixed sort in which individuals are sacrificed to a Juggernautic process than in one which reflects a variability that protects individuals against de- struction. But the evidential defect of the personal view does not indicate a conflict between the scientific and religious conception of things as they may be understood in the light of all the facts, though it affects convictions regarding it. We must always re- member that the personal view of the world was taken for the purpose of supporting the probability of a future life, and that it only followed the example of the prevailing philosophy, which was wholly a priori, when it was lax in its demand and use of 76 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE evidence. But when we have come to realise that the religious conception is compatible with some form of fixed order and that the problem of knowledge of a safe and sane type must be determined by respect for present facts, we shall not first resort to a phil- osophic speculation about a personal order of " na- ture " to defend the probabilities of belief, but accept the canons of science and investigate the residual phenomena of human experience which have been hitherto cast into outer darkness, and we shall do this without any prognosis of its outcome and without any despair or waste, if the result is not what we may have hoped. Now the scientific mind which confines its interpre- tation of " nature " to the most easily verifiable facts of experience has usually supposed itself justified in denying the fact and the possibility of a future life. The religious mind on various grounds usually be- lieves and affirms it, and it is the differences of criteria and canons between them that determines the differ- ences of their convictions, the one being much more stringent in his demand for evidence than the other. One thing is certain, however, and that is that there could be no dispute between the two schools of thought, if life after death were sensibly provable as are every day experiences, and that, if it be a fact, it represents a supersensible condition of reality. The believer in it must assume some sort of super- sensible or transcendental world beyond the reach of direct sensory experience if he is to explain the ab- sence of the kind of evidence for a future life that physical science demands for its marvels. The THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 77 sceptic who relies on the uniformities of human ex- perience and upon his senses for the evidence of his beliefs wUl, of course, exact very severe credentials for so extraordinary a claim as the survival of per- sonal consciousness, after all the triumphs of physi- ology and the silence of all the ages. " Thousands of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of time, and there remains no wreck of them any more, and Pleiades, and Arcturus, and Orion, and Serius, are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them on the plains of Shinar." The problem of a future life, therefore, involves two questions of evidence : ( 1 ) Whether there is any supersensible reality at all, with its bearing upon the possibility of conceiving the survival of consciousness after death, and (2) whether there is any evidence that makes the survival of personal consciousness an imperative hypothesis. These questions define for us the method of approaching and solving the problem, and this requires us to examine briefly the conception of the problem as it has been worked out by the devel- opment of materialism and the investigations of psychic research. I shall approach the question, however, from the standpoint of physical science for the purpose of completely disarming the presumptions on which it usually relies for discrediting psychic re- search. I mean to throw physical science upon the defensive against a spiritualistic interpretation of the phenomena which are under investigation. The main point, therefore, to be first kept in mind is, that the conclusions of physical science make for the possi- 78 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE bility of personal survival after death, though they do not in any sense prove it. My first argument will be ad hommem; that is, based upon the physicist's own premises, and it will devolve upon him to discredit the case by abandoning the fundamental conditions and conclusions of his own science. The first question is whether there is any super- sensible reality in the world. I said above that all Greek thought was based upon the assumption of such a reality at the basis of the sensible world. It still called this supersensible world " physical," but without any consciousness of the qualifications under which this was either possible or implicative of greatly modified conceptions of the world. No one will doubt that Plato made the basis of things supersensible. His " ideas," which ought to be called " reals," as they denote the permanent realities of the world as over against the transient, were entirely supersensi- ble and in no way accessible to the senses. It was supposed that the doctrine of Epicurus opposed that of Plato, but in fact it did so in name only. What Plato called " ideas " Epicurus called " atoms." There was a great difference in one respect. Plato was not always clear in the use of his " ideas." They were generally a name for the essential qualities of individual objects, that is, attributes that were com- mon to individuals in a class and persisted through the species from parent to offspring. But he also gave the term a meaning to denote something having self-motion which the Epicureans gave to their atoms. With Plato the " idea " was neither a state of con- sciousness nor a mere function of something and so THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 79 phenomenal or transient, but it was a " reality " that persisted like the Epicurean atoms, and in its super- sensible character is perfectly comparable with them. But pass this by as irrelevant. The certain thing is that the " idea " or " form " (in our parlance, " real ") of Plato was a permanent acting thing, and the atom of Epicurus was a permanent passive thing in motion, and both supersensible. The only point of apparent difference was that the materialists called their supersensible reality physical. But it was su- persensible nevertheless. The only thing that linked their conception of it with the physical was the attributes ascribed to the atoms. They were supposed to be hard, similar in kind, having weight and shape, but entirely incapable of being discovered by the senses. The modern atomic theory has gone much farther than this, after accepting the ancient doctrine as in the main correct or satisfactory for its purpose, which was to explain the material complexity of or- ganic and inorganic compounds. The modern theory says nothing about the shape of the atom and noth- ing about its perpetually falling. It has weight and affinity and is perhaps in perpetual activity. How it can be in perpetual activity consistently with the doc- trine of inertia is not made clear. But the main point is that the doctrine places the supersensible at the basis of the sensible precisely as did Greek specula- tion, and though it still regards this basis as physical, it assumes a world transcending sense which opens the way to conceiving it possible that there might be realities of a supersensible type making possible the survival of consciousness. Once admit that the basis 80 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE of things is supersensible and there is no barrier to the assertion that much is possible which could not be admitted where sense perception is the canon of truth. But modern science has gone even further than a radical modification of the ancient atomism. It has come to the conclusion that even the atom which was before supposed to be a simple and indivisible reality is complex, and in the estimation of men like Sir William Ramsay and Sir Oliver Lodge, has justified the supposition that the atom or ultimate constituent of all matter is composed of electricity or in some way a modification of electrical energy, a view which sim- ply throws the reins free to all sorts of speculations that have been rife in the class which many of us have had to restrain because it was not deemed respectable ! But this aside, we have in this position of physical science the reducibility of the supersensible material atom to something still more supersensible and mys- terious than ever, and yet we are not allowed to talk about the possibility of spirits and survival after death! With physical science declaring as a proved fact the impossible of the preceding ages, it is strange to find it so obstinate against the possibility of the possible of all ages ! It is interesting, too, to remark that this new theory of matter abandons all the prop- erties that in the ancient and the modern conception of atomism had characterised the elements. Weight, in- ertia, shape, density, affinity, motion in space, etc., are not indicated in this new ultimate, and in fact its na- ture is about as well described as Herbert Spencer's " Unknowable." None of the characteristics by which we know and call a thing " matter " are per- THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 81 ceptible in its constitution, and yet it is sacrilege to speak or think of anything like " spirit," which might be some form of this reaHty, simply because genera- tions of men have come to dislike the word. In the same direction of thought is the doctrine that the elements are evolved from some one ultimate and sim- ple reality. It is supposed that MendeleyefF's classi- fication of the elements points to this conclusion, as it shows a relation of density between them assumed to suggest that even the elements are not the ultimate reality in the cosmos. Here is a conception which goes beyond " matter " for its primal substance, or if it calls it " matter " does not realise that the term has lost its distinction from " spirit," and yet it is superstition to think it possible that we might find reason or evidence to tolerate the existence of a soul ; and to cast a doubt on the doctrine that consciousness is a function of the brain ! Then again we have Roentgen rays, radio-active; forms of energy, and wireless telegraphy, all of which! represent supersensible modes of reality. They are based on sensible facts in the physical universe, but none of them reveal themselves directly to the senses. All that we have to evidence them is some effect in the physical world which cannot be explained by the ordinarily known modes of action. Their effects are sensible, but they as causes are wholly supersensible. What limit, then, is there to the forms of energy in the cosmos? Why suppose that they stop with these elusive agencies.? What ground have we to say to science, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther ".i" Why is It so insane to wonder whether the phenomena 82 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE of apparitions, which Mr. Spencer regards as the basis of religion in all ages, and whether mediumistic phe- nomena might not reveal something not dreamt of in our ordinary philosophy, and to endeavor to protect the race from illusion in such a field, when it is so noble to find argon. Roentgen rays, radio-active agen- cies, and wireless telegraphy, which, if they mean any- thing, point toward the very possibility for which I am suggesting the respectability? Again the ether hypothesis is the most definite abandonment of the old theory of matter as the only ultimate reality in the universe. There is not a single attribute in it, according to the suppositions usually entertained, that justifies its description as matter, in any sense affecting either the common or the scientific theory of ordinary matter. There is no assurance that it is atomic, that it is subject to gravity, that it has anything like density, that it has color, sonorous- ness, tangibility, or other sensible qualities, or any of the speculative qualities of the scientist's " matter," except elasticity and extension, its elasticity being said to be perfect, which means nothing because per- fection is a negative attribute. But there is every- thing in the scientist's account of ether to suggest the attributes of omnipresence, omnipotence, indivisi- bility, unchangeability, etc. ; these have been the terms in which men in theological ages described God. It is scientific and sane to say ether, but not to say spirit. There is, of course, some reason for this, but it is not one that excuses any bigoted opposition to the possibility of spirit. " Spirit," if usable at all in philosophic parlance, ought to imply the accompani- THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 83 ment of consciousness or the possibility of conscious- ness, whether it denote the material or immaterial reality as its ground, and that possibility of conscious- ness beyond the existence of the physical organism that we know is the problem. But the existence of ether takes the human mind so far beyond the limita- tions of the ancient materialism that, while nothing is proved in the spiritual field by it, it is folly to indulge in dogmatic denials or in ridicule of the pos- sibility of the spiritual. There is so much supersen- sible reality actually admitted that it ought not to be insane to wonder whether there may not be more of it at the bottom of apparitions and mediumistic phenomena. The physicist should remember the fate of his sneering at the alleged existence of meteors, and of travelling balls of electricity, asserted at first on the evidence of the common man. He at first ridiculed the stories about them, finally accepted them as facts, appropriated all the honors of their discovery, and learned no lessons of humility by the experience. Meteors even became in his opinion the best means of explaining the production and the conservation of the sun's heat! And this after having fought the belief in their existence with all his might ! The his- tory of hypnotism, euphemistic for Mesmerism, might be quoted as an illustration of the same tendency of respectability wherever it has the power and the votes, and the respectability usually consists only in this im- munity. Caution and deliberation are the duties of the scientific man and he is not to be castigated too severely for hesitation in the acceptance of every claim presented to his attention, but while he is justi- 84 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE fied in suspense of judgment at all times, he is not ex- cusable for taking the attitude of a man who wiU not entertain possibilities for what he does not always be- lieve. But the old materialism has been too severely shaken by later speculation and discoveries for the physicist to justify the kind of intolerance toward the effort to prove the existence of a soul that led in the middle ages to every form of persecution against science. Ridicule may be for a while as effective an instrument against progress as the torch and stake were against the liberty of science, but neither agency ever succeeds finally in suppressing the truth, if the phenomena are recurrent enough to constantly enforce attention to them, and this persistency seems to be a characteristic of a certain type of residual phenomena in psychology. I might take up several special fields of physical science and reinforce the argument from the tendency to enlarge the territory of the supersensible at the basis of the sensible world, but I think that the in- stances which I have mentioned suffice to show that the physicist must remain quiet if he does not wish | to be refuted out of his own mouth when he under- \ takes to discredit the possibility of spiritual agency ; beyond the known phenomena of sense. The persons j to question this are those who limit all knowledge to sensory experience, and question the existence of any- thing whatever supersensible, including atoms, ether, and electrical energy of a substantial type. But the believer in these transcendental physical realities ought not to stumble at the possibility of spirits, though he is justified in hesitation and extreme cautiousness in THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 85 regard to the alleged evidence. It is not the absurd- ity or impossibility of a future life that gives the rational man his difficulties in the challenge to his belief. It is the comparative paucity of the alleged evidence that will stand scientific scrutiny. So meager is it in comparison with the evidence on which the general affairs of life and the discoveries of phys- ical science are based that sane men may well pause before the demands made upon their credulity, espe- cially after the attempt to study the alleged evidence for the existence of discarnate spirits has revealed in- credible sources and quantities of illusion and hal- lucination, to say nothing of fraud and mal-observa- tion. These make the problem a larger one than those which physical science has to face. It will be necessary in the further consideration of what the problem of proving a future life is to ex- amine what the theory is that stands in the way of accepting the existence of a soul and its survival. I refer to the theory of materialism and the conception of it which has prevailed so long and which is so strong in the estimation of physical science. To ex- plain what materialism means and what the facts are that support it will be to outline the method by which it has to be disproved, if that be possible at all. But we shall neither understand the problem before us in this book nor the strength of the materialistic theory unless we do thus approach the matter as defined for us by traditional controversies. The ancient materialism was identified with the atomic theory of matter. This conceived all physical objects as known to the senses to be compounds of the 86 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE elements which were atomic in nature. This view of organic and inorganic compounds was carried down into modern times, and it led to the definition of all phenomena as functions of these compounds. Mater- ialism thus took a position opposed to the theological interpretation of nature and denied the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. In its broadest conception, where it was conceived as a cosmic doc- trine and so defined as convertible with the theory that all phenomena whatsoever were material phenomena and where such a thing as immaterial or spiritual ex- istence of any kind, except as phenomenal or func- tional modes of matter, was deemed impossible, it was a general philosophy. With this broader view of it this work has nothing to do. But reduced to its psychological conception, it is convertible with the statement that consciousness is a function of the brain. Now functions of the physical organism or body are admittedly perishable with it, and hence if consciousness be regarded as a function of the organ- ism as digestion, circulation, perspiration are, it must be conceived as having the same destiny. Let me take some facts in physical science which show how materialism can explain or tries to explain phenomena, which have no permanent existence. A gaslight, for instance, is the resultant of the com- bination of oxygen and carbon. Water is the result- ant of the combination of oxygen and hydrogen. In each of these instances, the resultant shows what is not found in the elements. Thus neither carbon nor oxygen exhibits the phenomenon of light alone. Their properties are very different. But in the act of com- THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 87 bining to form carbonic acid they produce the phe- nomenon of light, a property or functional activity that neither element exhibits alone. Again, neither oxygen nor hydrogen will alone quench thirst or a fire, but in combination they show this property which they do not show in their elementary condition. Now this same phenomenon of producing properties not apparent or real in elements characterises the whole process of organic and inorganic compounds, and this process seems to determine the nature of all cosmic phenomena. Now we have only to recognise the proved fact that all organic compounds, and especial- ly the human organism and brain, are exceedingly complex compounds. The fact enables the physi- ologist to appeal to this possibility to account for the phenomena of consciousness as functions of the brain, seeing that the brain is more intimately con- nected with mental action than any other part of the body. No one questions the belief that digestion, inhalation, circulation, perspiration and all the secre- tions are functions of the bodily organism; and only the philosophic superstition that, because consciousness cannot be a mode of motion, as all material functions are supposed to be this, it cannot be a function of the body or brain, prevents the psychologist from admitting that the materialistic position is the proved one. But we have no reason to suppose that all phe- nomena of matter are modes of motion by necessity, and if we had there is no way of proving that con- sciousness is not one of them. However such contro- versy may be settled, the extent to which phenomena can be explained by the principle of composition in 88 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE matter is a presumption in the absence of other evi- dence that consciousness can be classified in some sense with the other functions of the organism. Two strong arguments in facts can be given to sustain this view, one positive and the other negative. We find in physiological science, in the phenomena of insanity, brain and other diseases, accidents and injuries, and various bodily conditions that the integ- rity of consciousness is determined by the integrity of the organism, being healthy when the organism is healthy and abnormal when the organism is abnormal. While this may not absolutely prove that conscious- ness is a function of the brain, it creates that pre- sumption by virtue of the fact that the causal priority of the disturbed or normal occurrence of mental phe- nomena is the bodily condition. This dependence in- evitably suggests the relation most natural to scientific conceptions and that is illustrated in the relation of all the other functions of the body which vary in their action and integrity with the normal and abnormal condition of the physical organism. When organism explains so much of the phenomena we observe it is rational to suppose that it also explains consciousness. That I am correctly stating the materialist's posi- tion may be indicated by what others say of it. " Throughout the animal kingdom," says John Fiske,. " we never see sensation, perception, instinct, volition, reasoning, or any of the phenomena which we distin- guish as mental, manifested except in connection with nerve-matter arranged in systems of various degrees of complexity. We can trace sundry relations of general correspondence between the increasing mani- THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 89 festations of intelligence and the increasing compli- cations of the nervous system. Injuries to the nerv- ous structure entail failures of function, either in the mental operations themselves or in the control which they exercise over the actions of the body; there is either psychical aberration, or loss of consciousness, or muscular paralysis. At the moment of death, as soon as the current of arterial blood ceases to flow through the cerebral vessels, all signs of consciousness cease for the lookers-on; and after the nervous sys- tem has been resolved into its elements, what reason have we to suppose that consciousness survives, any more than that the wetness of water should survive its separation into oxygen and hydrogen?" Dr. William Osier, of Johns Hopkins University, and recently called to Oxford, England, in his Inger- soll Lecture at Harvard University, indicates the po- sition of materialism very clearly. " Modern physi- ological science," he says, " dispenses altogether with the soul. The old difficulty for which Socrates chided Cebes, who feared that — The soul Which now is mine must re-attain Immunity from my control. And wander round the world again, — this old dread, so hard to charm away, lest in the vast and wandering air the homeless Animula might lose its identity, that eternal form would no longer divide eternal soul from all beside, — this difficulty science ignores altogether. The association of life in all its phases with organisation, the association of a grada- 90 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE tion of intelligence with increasing complexity of or- ganisation, the failure of the development of intelli- gence with an arrest in cerebral growth in the child, the slow decay of mind with changes in the brain, the absolute dependence of the higher mental attributes upon definite structures, the instantaneous loss of con- sciousness when the blood supply is cut off from the higher centers — these facts give pause to the scien- tific student when he tries to think of intelligence apart from organisation." The evidential situation points in the same direc- tion. By this I mean that our habits of thought in forming convictions about anything whatsoever neces- sitate our recognition of the view that the facts of general observation are against the spiritualist's theory of the case. Let me explain this by illustra- tion. I observe that seed placed in the ground will grow when the temperature is suitable and that when the temperature is not suitable it will not grow. I be- come confirmed in the belief that the heat is the cause of this growth by the uniformity of the relation be- tween it and growth, and so consider growth to be a phenomenon dependent upon this causal agency and that it will neither occur nor perdure without such conditions. In the same way frequent observation leads to the conclusion that rain is the condensation of moisture in the air and that the clouds are the accom- paniment of it. Before we know anything about the uniformity of such a phenomenon we observe that rainfall is associated with a certain type of cloud and by frequent experience we discover that rain does THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 91 not fall unless this type of cloud is present, and we then feel certain that the cloud is the cause or a nec- essary condition of it in some form. Again we find that fire is the result of the composition of carbon and oxygen, as indicated above and that we cannot produce a fire without this relation between the two substances, so that we feel obliged to suppose that the effect or phenomenon cannot take place unless those conditions exist. It is the same throughout the whole plane of nature. Facts seem dependent upon the re- sults of composition, and this truth can be formulated in a general way by the illustration of A and B, in which B stands for a phenomenon and A for a cause. Thus, if we observe the fact B associated with A we may suspect that A is its cause, but we cannot assure ourselves until we have observed the fact a large number of times and in varying circumstances, and until we have learned that B does not occur when A is absent. In this manner we come to accept as our cri- terion of conviction in all matters whatsoever the prin- ciple that B must be present with A and absent if A is absent, if we are to suppose that there is any necessary connection between them, and if B disappears when A disappears we say that B is a transient and perish- able event. It has no persistence or existence beyond the sensible conditions in which we observe its uniform occurrence. Now let us apply this mode of thought to con- sciousness to see how scientific method and common sense oblige us to consider it, or at least apparently oblige us to think of it. We find in our experience that consciousness is associated with a bodily organ- 92 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE ism and, apart from the phenomena of psychical re- search, which are refused recognition by most scien- tific men, there is no evidence that this consciousness exists apart from the bodUy organism. The most natural conclusion under such circumstances, espe- cially in the light of the manner in which we form all our beliefs, is that consciousness is a function of the organism and perishable with it like digestion and circulation. In this mode of interpretation of the case science and common sense alike are correct, in so far as the apparent facts are concernedj and the argu- ment stands in favor of materialism and making it the only tenable hypothesis unless we can show that it mistakes the observed, or supposedly observed, rela- tion of consciousness to the organism and that there are facts showing that consciousness can exist apart from the physical organism. To this question we shall have to devote ourselves presently. The most important point to be remarked as a con- clusion of this evidential way of looking at the prob- lem is the fact that materialism as a theory does not depend for its real significance upon any determina- tion of the " nature " of matter, nor upon the denial that any immaterial energy exists. It can consist with any view whatever of the " nature " of reality, whether we call it matter or spirit. The whole argu- ment for the existence of the supersensible as a pre- sumption for the existence of spirit and the persist- ence of consciousness after death, falls to the ground, as the facts mentioned to show that phenomena are the resultant of composition do not require us to deter- mine the nature of the reality that enters into com- THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 93 position. It may be any supersensible reality what- ever. We do not require to insist that matter is the basis of things in order to sustain the real meaning of the ancient and modern materialism. The use of the word would only deceive us into the belief that " matter " can mean only what it was commonly sup- posed to be, namely, a sensible reality only. Besides as shown, " matter " has become so abstract a con- ception, so refined into the supersensible when it is even applied to the ether or other ultimate substance out of which the elements have presumably been evolved, that the question is not at all what name we shall apply to it, but what is its behavior. We may call atoms spirits, or we may call the ether spirit, if we like, and it would not alter the conception of the rela- tion of phenomena to composition. Suppose we call oxygen and. hydrogen spirit instead of matter, this would not alter the fact that the capacity of water to quench thirst or fire was dependent upon their compo- sition and dissolvable with the breaking up of the composition. And so throughout the whole range of known phenomena. There is no help in attacking the physicist for his belief that there is a supersensible reality. We may say and think what we please about this, as long as the facts are what we observe them, namely, the resultants of composition, all the meaning of materialism that made it a view opposed to immor- tality remains intact, and we have to resort to some- thing very different from determining the " nature " of reality in order to create a presumption in favor of survival after death. The old speculative method of talking about the " nature " of matter and the 94 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE " nature " of spirit becomes folly when we do it for settling questions of this kind. We have to ascer- tain what the facts are and not what the " nature " of things is. The problem becomes a scientific and not a philosophic one. Philosophy is helpless and worthless for proving a future life. It may be able to show us what a rational order would be, but it cannot prove that the existing order is rational until some form of a future life is proved. One of the conditions of conceiving the cosmos rational is that it shall give some form of sur- vival, because it is useless to ask men to value a personal life, with its highest ideals, above an im- personal one, if nature does not conserve it as well as matter and energy. If there were no ideals that may be valued so highly or considered imperative in his development the case might be different. But with these ideals whose moral value he estimates above mere material existence he must pronounce an unfavorable judgment on the order that does not preserve what it makes imperative. What then will serve as evidence that nature probably protects the survival of personal consciousness ? The answer to this question is briefly that we must have present experiential facts which cannot be ex- plained by any other hypothesis. With philosophic and scientific speculations on the " nature " of matter or spirit disqualified by the facts which show that con- sciousness appears to be a function of the organism, whatever the " nature " of matter or spirit, the only resource is to see whether there are phenomena that wiU render probable or prove that consciousness sur- THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 95 vives as a fact, not as a consequence of some specula- tive theory about the " nature " of things ; for the " nature " of things has to be determined scientifically by the facts which show what it actually does, not by what we can imagine to be possible. Can, therefore, any facts be shown that at least suggest the proba- bility that we survive death? This question is not easy to answer, and before I attempt to answer it I must state the difficulties in the way of accepting many facts that are popularly claimed to be such evidence of survival, and the obsta- cles to the acquisition of the facts that might be desirable. These difficulties and obstacles to the prob- lem's solution are determined by the nature of the problem itself, which I must state. With the inability of philosophic or other specula- tion to prove survival and with the scientific coinci- dences between consciousness and bodily organisms as its apparent ground and cause, we are forced, by the scientific conception of the case, to isolate an individ- ual consciousness from an organism in order to prove its capacity for independent existence. This is the process of discovering a new element, such as argon, aluminium, etc. In the scientific field we isolate a phenomenon and its cause when we want to be sure that the particular phenomenon is not due to some other accompaniment than the desired or conjectured one. Can this be done for the individual conscious- ness? If it he possible at all, and if discarnate con- sciousness exist at all after being once cormected with the human body, we must establish communication with it. We must establish an intelligent relation be- 96 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE tween an isolated and discamate soul and the living, if we are to have any scientific evidence of survival. We should remark also that as long as there is no such evidence as that which might be supplied by communi- cation there will be no conclusive evidence that there is any soul at all. The materialistic theory accounts quite naturally and furnishes very forcible evidence that consciousness is a function of the physical organ- ism, and that theory has to be accepted, if all the evi- dence is on its affirmative and none on the negative side that offsets it, no matter whether we regard this materialistic theory as proved or not. Science accepts its hypotheses on the balance of evidence and not merely because they are necessarily true. A theory may actually be false in nature, but if all the evidence at hand favors it the theory must be held until con- trary evidence is supplied. Hence the materialistic theory having all the normal and abnormal facts of psychology in its favor and none decidedly offsetting these, must be the only hypothesis for the rational scientific man until evidence is forthcoming that in- dividual consciousness has been isolated and communi- cation with it established. In that way the proof for the existence of a soul in the living must be the proof of its survival. As long as consciousness is possibly a function of the physical organism there is no need for supposing a soul as its subject cause, and if we prove its survival, we at the same time prove that consciousness with the living was in fact not a func- tion of the organism, although all the ordinary facts of experience were consistent with that supposition. It will be seen, therefore, what importance attaches THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 97 to the isolation of personal human consciousness and communication with it. Is this possible and what are the difficulties of securing evidence that it is a fact? Let me first look briefly at the conditions of com- munication between the living, in order to suggest how much more difficult it would be to communicate with the deceased, if they exist after death. The first con- dition of communication between the living is some system of accepted signs, or a language. This may consists of sounds or gestures. Usually they are sounds and these give rise to language for auditory communication, while written symbols may represent these sounds and convert their meaning into visual signs for communication. Now if at any time either of two hiunan beings do not understand any of these signs or symbols communication between them is al- most impossible, and when it is possible can be effected only by a small number of gestures or physical signs. Very little can be transferred or communicated be- tween such parties and that with great difficulty. How much greater must be the difficulty of communi- cating with the discarnate, if they exist, when the condition of all communication between one person and another, as we know it in our natural experience, is some physical fact or sign in our physical world. When an incarnate or embodied condition is necessary to produce an effect with any ease in the physical world we may well imagine the difficulties with which the discarnate, supposing them existent, must contend in the production of physical effects. A good in- stance of this difficulty is the phenomenon of paraly- sis, where consciousness may give no evidence of its 98 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE existence until the individual recovers the control of his muscles. Here the manifestation of consciousness may be suspended right in the living, and when the individual is presumably still in some sort of relation with his own organism, how much more difficult to produce the required phenomena through the organ- ism of another or without it, when we do not common- ly know or suspect any influence of one living organ- ism on another without contact. All that we know in ordinary experience of a soul's influence on matter, if soul there be, is that which it produces through the living organism. This even has to be slowly and painfully learned in a long education. What must be the difficulties in the way of a discamate soul when its accustomed relation or rapport with a living organism is not that which it possessed while incarnate or liv- ing.? Take also the case of visibility. We cannot while living see a soul, according to all normal experience. We can be conscious of ourselves, but not conscious even then of the soul as anything sensibly perceived or existent apart from the organism. We cannot even in any direct way be aware of the soul of others. We have no direct means for ascertaining that others are conscious. The conviction that consciousness ex- ists in others is based solely upon an inference from the physical movements of their bodies. We infer that consciousness is present in certain organisms be- cause we can best account in that way for certain movements which appear to be intelligently initiated, as we directly know of such a cause in ourselves. But we can see neither the consciousness nor the soul of THE PROBLEM OP A FUTURE LIFE 99 others even in life. How much more difficult it must be to see them or to infer their existence when they have no immediate physical accompaniments by which to manifest themselves and their existence. Most of us acquainted with science and its methods, and with the most natural conditions of manifestation, which in hfe even is not direct, would be pardoned for saying that such an appearance is impossible. But having seen the difficulties of manifesting the supersensible existence of spirit after death, we may examine the difficulties in connection with the evidential side of the problem. We have found that the difficulties are great, if not insuperable, in pro- ducing the phenomena that are necessary for proving survival, and now we have to examine the difficulties in accepting any alleged evidence that such phenom- ena have been produced. These seem to be as numer- ous and more perplexing than any connected with the production of the necessary phenomena. The first class of phenomena that claims to repre- sent evidence of departed spirits is that of apparitions of the dead. If we could assure ourselves that they were plentiful enough and verifiable in any such form as would attest their real existence beyond the imag- ination of the percipient of them, science might be more strongly impressed than it is with them. But they are first offset by the real or alleged fact of the apparition of the living whose explanation does not involve a proof of the discarnate. Then their value is impaired by the frequency of hallucinations and illusions. So many of the alleged appearances of the discarnate are explicable by one or the other of these 100 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE causes that few are left to stand the test of scientific scrutiny. In many of this residuum, if many we can call them, the question of their chance occurrence from unknown normal causes is so great as to oflFer great encouragement to scepticism. Then often those who have such experiences add or subtract from the ac- count of them, whether consciously or unconsciously. Some are defective observers of the phenomena. Some are affected by illusions of memory, or fail to make any record of their experiences, or fail to keep the evidence that would protect their statements from the erosive influence of doubt. Consequently when we come to reckon up the influences which make for scepticism in regard to the facts of apparitions we find intelligent men cautious and rightly cautious about the acceptance of so large a conclusion as a future life upon the credentials of apparitions. The next class of phenomena which claim a spiritis- tic source is the mediumistic type. This purports to be some form of communication with spirits, as ap- paritions claim to represent their visible appearance. Mediumistic communications may be by automatic writing, by automatic speech, or by either normal or abnormal speech involving some sort of unconscious access to alleged communications with the discarnate. I say nothing of " materialising " seances and slate writing phenomena, as I discard their consideration on the ground of their absolute worthlessness under any circumstances but such as are never accredited. Mediumistic phenomena of the credible and pertinent type are often so suggestive in their production of just the facts which scientific proof of survival after THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 101 death demands that they offer the best opportunity for study and investigation. But they have manifold diflSculties and objections to encounter which must be considered. First, there is the perpetration of fraud. This may take various forms. The medium may employ detectives for acquiring information about " sitters " and experimenters. This has been a very frequent method in the past. Then they may fish information from the " sitters " who are not always aware of how much they may tell in a casual way. Many may for- get how much they have told the medium at various times, and keeping no record of their experiments they have no account of them that, can be respected by science even for proving fraud, to say nothing of what is necessary to prove the supernormal. Then the mediums may add shrewd guessing to their other dubious accomplishments. The " sitter " may give all sorts of conscious and unconscious hints in various emergencies which the shrewd medium knows so well how to improve. Suggestions by the voice, by mus- cular movements, by direct assent to questions by the medium, by acceptance of guesses by the medium, and various indications which are easily interpreted by this experienced class of adventurers who know the weak as soon as they see them. Then there is the whole field of juggler's tricks which forms the majority's conception of the whole subject, until it is almost impossible to get intelligent people to even imagine that there is anything more serious. Now all these sources of distrust must first be re- 102 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE moved from any alleged mediumistic phenomena be- fore they can receive the serious attention of intelli- gent and scientific men. It may be easy or it may be difficult to remove them, but they must be removed before spiritistic theories can obtain any consideration but ridicule. In most cases, it requires the scientific man to prescribe the conditions upon which phenom- ena of the kind can become credible as evidence for the supernormal. The second difficulty in mediumistic phenomena is the influence of secondary personality, as it is called. This is a very much misunderstood phenomenon. Many think that secondary personality means another person inhabiting the human body, another person than the one who consciously controls it in a normal state. But this is not the meaning of the expression. It is a natural error to commit when one is not familiar with the phraseology of scientific psychology. But secondary personality is not another soul or person acting in conjunction with the normal personality on the organism. It is nothing more than unconscious mental action of the same person that can introspect his self-consciousness. Secondary personality is dis- tinguished from the primary personality, or normal consciousness and self-consciousness, only by the fact that its action is not perceived or remembered by the normal consciousness. But it is a function of the same soul or subject. The normal consciousness is a " personality " not a person. It is the evidence and activity of a person, this last term standing for the soul or subject of consciousness, in physico-legal par- lance, the body and all its functions with conscious- THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 103 ness included. Now the secondary personality is only an activity of this same person dissociated from the stream of consciousness which we can introspect and remember. We may call the secondary personality " subliminal consciousness " and there can be no ob- jection, as long as we distinguish it from the ordi- nary consciousness we know by the absence of a direct memory link between the two. It often behaves it- self like another " person," but this fact does not alter our conviction in regard to its real nature. The connection between it and the experiences of the nor- mal or primary personality is such as to preclude any explanation of the phenomena but the same general explanation that applies to the normal stream of consciousness. Its capacities and limitations are the same as those of the primary consciousness or person- ality. Its activity depends upon the attainments of the normal self through its ordinary sensory action and reactions. But I shall not go into any detailed account of sec- ondary personality, as there is no space for that in this brief discussion. All that I want to correct in the popular conception of the term is that idea which is so prevalent and which represents it as if it meant quite as distinct a " person " from the conscious self as a spirit would be. But it is not to be so conceived, whatever its appearance. What is noticeable in its action is the frequency with which this secondary personality in real or alleged mediumistic cases rep- resents that it is communicating with discamate spir- its. It can often indulge in the loftiest sentiments and inspirational teaching, but the fundamental point 104) SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE in which it always fails to meet the demands of a spiritistic hypothesis is its inability to give facts which prove the personal identity of the individual alleged to communicate. It may invent incidents to simulate this effect, but it fails in anything but guess- ing, chance coincidence, fishing, and response to sug- gestion, all of which resembles the same processes in the conscious frauds, but is not amenable to the same reproach. Now in real or alleged mediumistic phenomena we have to disregard all statements that are explicable by secondary personality, until we have first assured ourselves that supernormal phenomena have been produced, and even then evidential facts must conform to the criterion of the supernormal which is the supersensible acquisition of knowledge. Now there is such an enormous mass of phenomena that is undoubtedly the result of secondary person- ality, and so many more that are explicable by it, that the medium who gives any evidence of the super- normal is very rare. The layman is not aware of the tremendous difficulties involved in the quantity and quality of matter that is produced and producible by secondary personality, that can neither be attrib- uted to spirits nor demands explanation by fraud. Secondary personality can no more be inculpated with ordinary fraud than can the somnambulist or the dreamer. Whatever imitation of the normal it repre- sents, it is not responsible, and may exclude everything but itself from the results. But it is a very exten- sive operator in the simulation of non-evidential spir- itistic communications. I shall not discuss telepathy as a difficulty in the THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 105 proof of a discarnate existence, because it will come up later as an objection to the spiritistic theory in the facts that appear to sustain it, and because the scientific man generally has not yet fully convinced himself that telepathy is a fact. But if it be a fact, we must certainly show that it does not adequately explain the phenomena adduced to prove a future life. If the supernormal exists that cannot lay any claim to spiritistic origin, it certainly limits the evi- dence adducible to prove spirits, and it will no doubt have to be reckoned with wherever it claims to explain facts. Now having considered the difficulties in the evi- dential problem as shown by the necessity of eliminat- ing the possibility of fraud, of chance coincidence, of fishing and guessing, of suggestion and inference from hints and direct statements, and of secondary personality, it will be necessary to examine briefly what kind of evidence is necessary to prove a future life. What kind of facts will do this.-' What kind of phenomena are necessary to treat the subject of spiritism seriously after obtaining security against the above mentioned difficulties.? The answer to this question will contain two im- portant conditions. (1) The facts given through mediumistic or other sources must represent super- normal knowledge. (2) The facts must illustrate and prove the personal identity of the particular person represented as communicating. In regard to the first of these conditions, the ac- quisition of the knowledge represented in the phe- nomena claiming a spiritistic source must exclude 106 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE first fraud and secondary personality, and secondly all normal modes of acquiring information in an honest way. That is, the facts purporting to be evidence of discarnate spirits must be impossible on any normal hypothesis. Normal methods of obtain- ing knowledge are sense perception and inference, whether fraudulently or honestly employed. Any specific facts transcending explanation by fraud, sec- ondary personality, chance coincidence, guessing, sug- gestion, etc., such as detailed incidents, pass words, trivial experiences known only to the living and de- ceased person, or characteristic expressions, will be evidence of knowledge that has not been obtained by the ordinary processes of sense perception, and hence facts not explicable by any theory of knowledge based upon accepted ideas of the normal. All nor- mal knowledge is through the senses in some form with mental processes interpreting the meaning and connections of sensations. Knowledge of the same definite specific kind, though not sensory, must be obtained from supersensible sources and the conditions must make this proof against scepticism. All the spontaneous mental functions, as illusion and hal- lucination, secondary personality, imagination, dreams, etc., and all external physical impressions of the normal sensory type, must be excluded as possible sources of the real or apparent phenomena. As regards the second condition, the facts must be of the kind that will prove the personal identity of the discarnate. That is, they must prove that the source of the phenomena is what it claims to be, and this personal identity of the discar- THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 107 nate means that the deceased person shall tell facts of personal knowledge in his earthly life and tell them in such a quantity and with such a quality that we should not doubt his existence any more than we would if we received the same incidents over a telegraph wire or through a telephone. In this way and in this way alone, can we show that the intelligence involved is outside the medium through which the facts come. Besides being supernormally acquired the facts must represent intelligence and an outside intelligence. Given the conditions by means of which it can communicate the proof of survival after death the facts must be incidents in the earthly life, and usually, if not absolutely always, they must be very trivial and uncommon. Any one can conceive for himself what such facts would be, if he were called upon to prove his identity to a friend who doubted it, and hence I need not illustrate. The im- portant fact to be considered here is the exclusion of all normal sources of knowledge and the admission, as relevant, of only such information as is unequivocally supernormal and pertinent to the personal identity of a deceased person, all statements relative to tran- scendental or post-mortem modes of life being abso- lutely worthless as evidence, because they are neither verifiable nor relevant to the personal identity of de- ceased persons. I shall illustrate the situation in which we are placed for judging of the evidence for the existence of outside intelligence in any case, whether of living or deceased persons, and in any circumstances affecting the judgment of intelligence. Let me take first the 108 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE case of a machine. We associate intelligence with a machine, especially one that is complicated in its structure and action. But we do not place the in- telligence m the machine. We place the intelligence in its creator who is outside its creation. The rea- son for this is the assumption of inertia which main- tains that matter can not move itself, but must be moved by a force outside the body moved. If it were not for this we might interpret the motion of a ma- chine as a force or some action within itself, as we do in living beings. But the doctrine of inertia im- plies that the motion of a machine is initiated by a force without the machine. Hence when we suppose intelligence associated with a machine at all we place it outside the machine in some other agent, its maker or its director, and this conclusion is determined by the general principle of the limitations assumed to characterise all imert machines. The intelligence that mfluences and controls them is independent of them. The case is quite different with living beings. Whenever we ascribe intelligence to the action of liv- ing beings it is placed within the organism, and not independent of it. This may be false. I am not concerned with the truth or falsity of the judgment, but only with the fact of it and its prevalence. It is in any case within the same space limitations, as it is not in the case of physical and inert machinery. The living organism seems, at least, to be capable of self-motion, and the consciousness associated with many of its actions is placed within the organism and thus appears to be a function of it. When this is once assumed the explanatory powers of internal and THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 109 immanent mental functions will cover everything that does not originate from without. We must remem- ber also, as remarked above, that the existence of this intelligence in others than ourselves is purely a mat- ter of inference, or the interpretation of their ac- tions, and not a direct knowledge of observation. We explain certain adjusted actions by supposing that intelligence is their accompaniment or cause, and as long as those actions are the natural result of the sub- ject's own sensory and intellectual experience we do not think of attributing the intelligence initiating them to any agent outside the organism. Hence the force of fraud and secondary personality in explain- ing so many phenomena that reflect intelligence, but not the facts that we would ascribe to deceased per- sons. It win be necessary, therefore, to transcend the in- telligence and powers of any human organism in its normal functions, if we are to obtain facts that will serve as evidence for the proof of a future life. We must get facts that the normal functions of that or- ganism cannot explain and that reflect an intelli- gence outside it, precisely as in the case of a machine. It matters not whether the facts are acquired through automatic writing, or other unconscious means, or whether they are acquired through the medium of the normal consciousness, provided they transcend the capacities of normal sensation and inferences based on those sensations associated with physical impres- sions ordinarily explicable. We must have phenom- ena in, the physical world, but with the indications that they are either nearly or remotely initiated from 110 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE without the physical world and pertinent to their in- terpretation by intelligence beyond physical organ- isms. The facts will best present this evidence when the medium is automatic and unconscious, as that condition removes the ordinary explanation more eas- ily. But if the facts reflect an intelligence not ac- quired by normal sensory impressions they may still pass through the medium of the normal consciousness, though they will be much more open to criticism than if the organism resembles a machine in its ac- tion. But letting complications and delicate condi- tions alone, the clear fact is that phenomena claim- ing a spiritistic origin must be of the kind that we cannot explain by any normal process of sensation and intelligence in the organism which serves as a means for their production. That every one will admit. Now are there any facts that have such cre- dentials ? That they are possible, whether they are actual or not, might be suggested by more than one known in- cident in psychology and physiology, or even in phys- ics. First take the fact of hyperaesthesia. This is an increased power of sensibility in certain cases of abnormal physical conditions when the organism can appreciate impressions that the normal sensorium will not perceive. No one knows exactly what the limits of this hyperaesthesia are, and we can imagine a condi- tion of it when, if outside intelligences of the discar- nate type exist, they might give rise to phenomena in our world which indicate their action and lead to the proof of their identity. The existence of a group of supersensible forces like Roentgen rays, wireless tel- THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 111 egram vibrations, radio-active energies, and perhaps innumerable agencies of a similar supersensible kind, suggest what might be employed in abnormal and hyperaesthetic conditions for effecting communication with a discamate existence. I do not imply that any of these forces are usable for effecting such a result, but their existence limits the right of dogmatism to deny the possibility. If the possibility be once ad- mitted, in so far as physical science is concerned, it will only be a question of facts to decide whether such a communication has been effected. Again, if telepathy be an admitted fact, and I appeal to this here, only because many people admit it and appeal to it to discredit the theory of spirits in certain cases, it can be used in the service of the spiritistic theory instead of against it. Telepathy once accepted shows the existence of the supernormal and involves the conception that consciousness can transmit ideas independently of the normal action of the senses, so that after this admission it will only be a question of the kind of facts obtained to deter- mine whether they have not been telepathically trans- mitted by the discarnate. Though telepathy may be a difficulty evidentially considered, in certain phenom- ena at least, it may equally be the means by which the discarnate, if they exist, can communicate under favorable conditions and prove their identity. What then are the facts to suggest that the discarnate have actually communicated? The answer to this question will occupy the rest of this book. I shall confine the statement and in- terpretation of them to the case of Mrs. Piper. I 112 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE have above indicated that there are other similar instances of mediumistic phenomena, but not repre- senting the desirable quantity and complexity of facts necessary for scientific conclusions. CHAPTER IV HISTOEY OP THE PIPEE CASE I propose in this chapter to give a brief history of this singular case of experiment, including a few words on Mrs. Piper's personal history. The chief in- terest and importance of the case consists in the care with which fraud was excluded from a possible inter- pretation of its phenomena and the perfection and magnitude of the records made in the experiments. It is these two facts which justify the consideration of it by itself. 1. Exclusion of Fraud Mrs. Piper's connection with trance phenomena be- gan in 1884!. Her " husband's father and mother had been impressed by an experiment with a medium in that year and persuaded Mrs. Piper to try con- sultation with a medium who gave medical advice. She was suffering at this time with a tumor." The result was that she soon developed a trance state her- self and began sittings with her own friends. No important record of these sittings is accessible. Cas- ual experiments of this sort were kept up until 1885 when Prof. James, of Harvard University, made his acquaintance with the case. His account will be stated in his own language : " I made Mrs. Piper's acquaintance in the autumn 113 114 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE of 1885. My wife's mother, Mrs. Gibbens, had been told of her by a friend, during the previous summer, and never having seen a medium before, had paid her a visit out of curiosity. She returned with the state- ment that Mrs. Piper had given her a long string of names of members of the family, mostly Christian names, together with facts about the persons men- tioned and their relations to each other, the knowl- edge of which on her part was incomprehensible with- out supernormal powers. My sister-in-law went the next day, with still better results, as she related them. Amongst other things, the medium had accurately described the circumstances of a letter which she held against her forehead, after Miss G. had given it to her. The letter was in Italian, and its writer was known to but two persons in this country. " I remember playing the esprit fort on that occa- sion before my feminine relatives, and seeking to ex- plain by simple considerations the marvellous charac- ter of the facts which they brought back. This did not, however, prevent me from going myself a few days later, in company with my wife, to get a direct personal impression. The names of none of us up to this meeting had been announced to Mrs. Piper, and Mrs. J. and I were, of course, careful to make no reference to our relatives who had preceded. The medium, however, when entranced, repeated most of the names of ' spirits ' whom she had announced on the two former occasions and added others. The names came with difficulty, and were only gradually made perfect. My wife's father's name of Gibbens was announced first as Niblin, then as Giblin. A HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 116 child Herman (whom we had lost the previous year) had his name spelt out as Herrin. I think that in no case were both Christian and surnames given on this visit. But the facts predicated of the persons named made it in many instances impossible not to recognise the particular individuals talked about. We took particular pains on this occasion to give the Phinuit control no help over his difficulties and to ask no leading questions. In the light of subsequent experience I believe this not to be the best policy. For it often happens, if you give this trance-person- age a name or some small fact for the lack of which he is brought to a standstill, that he will then start off with a copious flow of additional talk, containing in itself an abundance of ' tests.' " My impression after this first visit was, that Mrs. Piper was either possessed of supernormal powei-s, or knew the members of my wife's family by sight and had by some lucky coincidence become acquainted with such a multitude of their domestic circumstances as to produce the startling impression which she did. My later knowledge of her sittings and personal ac- quaintance with her has led me absolutely to reject the latter explanation, and to believe that she has supernormal powers." Prof. James visited Mrs. Piper a number of times that winter and also sent strangers to her unan- nounced beforehand, in all of which about twenty-five reported. One half of these reported nothing worth mentioning. The remainder were surprised, accord- ing to the statement of Prof. James, at the communi- cations they received. This Prof. James reported in 116 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE the American Froceedmgs for 1886. He concluded it with the statement : " I am persuaded of the medium's honesty, and of the genuineness of her trance; and although at first disposed to think that the ' hits ' she made were either lucky coincidences, or the result of knowledge on her part of who the sitter was and of his or her family affairs, I now believe her to be in possession of a power as yet unexplained." Some attempts were made by Prof. James to hyp- notise Mrs. Piper, with partial success only until the fifth trial. But this experiment did not result in throwing any light upon the trance state, as the facts seemed to show that the hypnotic and trance states were different from each other. It was two years later before any further impor- tant experiments were undertaken, and these were by Dr. Richard Hodgson, who had been appointed Sec- retary of the American Society for Psychical Re- search. He came from Cambridge University in England, where he had been a lecturer in its courses before being sent to India to investigate the doings of Madame Blavatsky on whom he published an elaborate report convicting her of fraud. His story affecting Mrs. Piper may be told in his own language : " My own knowledge of Mrs. Piper," says Dr. Hodgson, " began in May, 1887, about a fortnight after my arrival in Boston, and my first appointment for a sitting was made by Professor William James. Professor James had visited her about a dozen times during the previous year and half, and had sent a large number of persons to her, making appoint- HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 117 ments himself ' for most of these people, whose names were in no instance announced to the medium.' As a result of his inquiries he became fully convinced that Mrs. Piper had supernormal powers. " I had several sittings myself with Mrs. Piper, at which much intimate knowledge, some of it personal, was shown of deceased friends or relatives of mine; and I made appointments for sittings for at least fifty persons whom I believed to be strangers to Mrs. Piper, taking the utmost precautions to prevent her obtaining any information beforehand as to who the sitters were to be. The general result was the same as in my own case. Most of these persons were told facts through the trance-utterance which they felt sure could not have become known to Mrs. Piper by ordinary means. For several weeks, moreover, at the suggestion of one of the members, detectives were employed for the purpose of ascertaining whether there were any indications that Mrs. Piper or her husband, or other persons connected with her, tried to ascertain facts about possible sitters by the help of confederates, or other ordinary methods of inquiry, but not the smallest indication whatever of any such procedure was discovered. My own conclusion was that — after allowing the widest possible margin for information obtainable under the circumstances by ordinary means, for chance coincidence and remark- able guessing, aided by clues given consciously and unconsciously by the sitters, and helped out by sup- posed hyperaesthesia on the part of Mrs. Piper, — there remained a large residuum of knowledge dis- played in her trance state, which could not be ac- 118 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE counted for except on the hypothesis that she had some supernormal power; and this conviction has been strengthened by later investigations." The common knowledge that fraud of some kind could simulate the acquisition of supernormal infor- mation was the justification as well as the instigation of this careful experimentation to exclude its possi- bility, and it seems that the judgment was fairly uniform that fraud of no kind could explain the best part of the results. The detective and confederate methods of many " spiritualistic " mediums can ac- count for many a striking fact, but in addition to the exclusion of their possibility in this case was the fact that no evidence could be found that any attempt to get information in this or similar ways had been made. But the effort to satisfy themselves that some resource for fraud was not practiced was not abated by these experiments. Mrs. Piper was taken to Eng- land for experiment by the group of investigators there, which comprised such men as Prof. Henry Sidg- wick, Cambridge University; Prof., now Sir Oliver Lodge ; Prof. Barrett ; Mr. F. W. H. Myers ; Dr. Wal- ter Leaf ; and a few others. The design was to intro- duce Mrs. Piper to surroundings about which she knew nothing personally prior to this visit. It served as an obstacle to all clandestine knowledge. Mrs. Piper was taken to England in November 1889. Mr. F. W. H. Myers says of the precautions taken against fraud : " Professor Lodge met her on the Liverpool land- ing-stage, November 19th, and conducted her to a hotel, where I joined her on November 20th, and HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 119 escorted her and her children to Cambridge. She stayed first in my house; and I am convinced that she brought with her a very slender knowledge of English affairs or English people. The servant who attended on her and on her two young children was chosen by myself, and was a young woman from a country viQage whom I had full reason to believe to be trustworthy and also quite ignorant of my own or my friends' affairs. For the most part I had my- self not determined upon the persons whom I would invite to sit with her. I chose these sitters in great measure by chance ; several of them were not resident in Cambridge; and (except in one or two cases were anonymity would have been hard to preserve) I brought them to her under false names, — sometimes introducing them only when the trance had already begun. Sir Oliver Lodge reports still further measures against the suspicion of fraud by Mrs. Piper. It seems that every resource was anticipated and provid- ed against. I give his statements of what was done to protect the results of experiment against ordinary suspicions. " Mrs. Piper's correspondence was small, something like three letters a week, even when the children were away from her. The outsides of her letters nearly always passed through my hands, and often the in- sides, too, by her permission. " The servants were all, as it happened, new, hav- ing been obtained by my wife through ordinary lo- cal inquiries and registry offices, just about the time of Mrs. Piper's visit. Consequently they were en- 120 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE tirely ignorant of family connections, and could have told nothing, however largely they had been paid. " The ingenious suggestion has been made that they were her spies. Knowing the facts, I will con- tent myself with asserting that they had absolutely no connection with her of any sort. " The photograph albums and family Bibles were hidden by me the morning of the day after she ar- rived at my house. I had intended to do it sooner. This is manifestly a weak point. Like many such things it sounds worse than it is. The more im- portant books were in my study, and into it she did not go till just before the first sitting. One or two photographs she did look at, and these are noted. The safest thing is to assume that she may have looked at everything about the house. " In order to give better evidence, I obtained per- mission and immediately thereafter personally over- hauled the whole of her luggage. Directories, biog- raphies. Men of our Time, and such-like books were entirely absent. In fact there were scarcely any books at all. " The eldest child at home was aged nine, and the amount of information at his disposal was fairly well known to us. My wife was sceptically inclined, and was guarded in her utterances ; and though a few slips could hardly be avoided — and one or two of these were rather unlucky ones — they were noted and recorded. " Strange sitters frequently arrived at 11 a. m., and I admitted them myself straight into the room where we were going to sit; they were shortly after- HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 121 wards introduced to Mrs. Piper under some assumed name. " The whole attitude of Mrs. Piper was natural, uninquisitive, ladylike, and straightforward. If any- thing was noticeable it was a trace of languor and self -absorption, very natural under the trying condi- tion of two long trances a day. " Her whole demeanor struck every one who be- came intimate with her as utterly beyond and above suspicion." These statements illustrate the kind of precautions generally taken during the history of the Piper ex- periments, and they are such that any future sus- picions of fraud of any kind must support themselves by specific evidence to account for specific facts and to explain the collective force of the results where the means would have to be so vast, when they are known to have been very meager, to ascertain a small por- tion of the information imparted by Mrs. Piper's trances. The whole burden of proof now rests upon the man who persists in irresponsible talk and sus- picion of fraud. I say boldly that no intelligent man, whether scientific or otherwise, would any longer advance such an hypothesis without giving specific evidence that it is a fact rather than an imag- inary possibility. There have been several sitters during the history of the case who thought they detected signs of con- scious fraud, but these were mere impressions formed from lack of acquaintance with trance phenomena and from first sittings, or from single sittings. But it is manifest that no man has the right to make up 122 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE his mind from any single or first experiments, nor to trust to suspicions and impressions induced by a vague knowledge of trance phenomena. Moreover those who have expressed this suspicion have, in some cases, admitted its weakness and in some other cases its error or insuiBciency as evidentially considered. Mr. Myers sums up the whole case as follows: " On the whole, I believe that all observers, both in America and in England, who have seen enough of Mrs. Piper in both states to be able to form a judg- ment, will agree in affirming (1) that many of the facts given could not have been learnt even by a skilled detective; (2) that to learn others of them, although possible, would have needed an expenditure of money as well as of time which it seems impossible to suppose that Mrs. Piper could have met; and (3) that her conduct has never given any ground what- ever for supposing her capable of fraud or trickery. Few persons have been so long and so carefully ob- served; and she has left on all observers the impres- sion of thorough uprightness, candour, and honesty." 2. Psychological Incidents of the Case The psychological interest in this and similar cases begins with what is called the " control " in the par- lance of the spiritualists. It will be necessary to ex- plain briefly for the average layman what this means. The scientific man understands its meaning well enough, and it will only be necessary in this work to indicate clearly the use of the term as it must be em- ployed to make the Piper and similar cases intelligible HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 123 in their superficial characteristics at least. The " control " claims to be a discarnate spirit, and is the agency, whether a real or alleged force outside the living organism of the medium, that exercises an in- fluence over this organism to produce the eifects re- corded. If it be the secondary personality or sub- conscious mental action of the medium it acts like a real person and controls the motor or muscular sys- tem precisely as does the normal consciousness. If it be a spirit it exercises this control of the medium's or- ganism in the same manner as the normal subject, whether this be the primary or secondary personality. The " control " always gives itself another name than that of the normal person, and in this way repre- sents the appearance of something independent of the known person and organism. It is a frequent phe- nomenon in secondary personality. Apparently the first " control " in the experience of Mrs. Piper, which manifested itself soon after her first visit to the mediumistic physician mentioned, called herself " Chlorine " and claimed to be an Indian girl. The " control " of the mediumistic physician, Mr. Cocke, whom she visited, professed to be a French physician whose name was pronounced " Finny." This of course became known to Mrs. Piper in the process of her " development," and in some of her early trances, as reported by some of the sitters, the name of the " control " was pronounced " Finny " or " Fin-ne," and afterward became " Phimuit" pro- nounced " Finwee." It is evident that the assump- tion of this name is complicated with suggestion either in the normal consciousness or in the abnormal 124 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE condition of the trance. The " evolution " of this personality is indicated in some detail by Dr. Hodg- son's first report in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. After this personality became more definitely de- veloped it was induced to give its personal history, claiming to be the spirit of a French physician. I quote Dr. Hodgson's statements with quotations from the record: " In reply to my inquiries on different occasions, Phinuit stated that his full name was Jean Phinuit Scliville. ' Phinuit is one of my names ; Scliville is my other name; Dr. Jean Phinuit Scliville; they al- ways called me Dr. Phinuit.' He was unable to tell the year of his birth or the year of his death, but by putting together several of his statements, it would appear that he was born about 1790 and died about 1860. He was born in Marseilles, went to school and studied medicine at a college called ' Merciana ' (?) College, where he took his degree when he was between twenty-five and twenty-eight years old. He also studied medicine at ' Metz, in Germany.' At the age of thirty-five he married Marie Latimer, who had a sister named Josephine. Marie was thirty years of age when he married her, and died when she was about fifty. He had no children." He mentioned the " Hospital of God," or " Hospi- tal de Dieu " (Hotel Dieu), and referred to Dupuy- tren and Bovier, the former of whom is known to have been a distinguished French physician and surgeon who was born in 1777 and died in 1835. But there were contradictions in Phinuit's story of himself and in HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 125 addition to this inquiries as to the existence of any such person in France did not confirm the story in a single detail. The consequence was that he has always been treated and must be treated in the discussion of these phenomena as a secondary personality of Mrs. Piper. But on any theory he is the central psychological phenomenon of the case for the apparent manage- ment of it in its early history. It was through the intermediation of this personality that the phenomena took on a spiritistic appearance and that many of the incidents clearly referring to the personal iden- tity of other deceased persons were produced. I shall speak of the period of his " control " as the Phinuit regime. The demand was made of Phinuit that he prove his identity as a condition of accepting his claim to be a spirit. But, as we have seen, he never succeeded in effecting this desired result. But he acted as in- termediary for the " communication " of facts which distinctly suggested the survival and presence of other deceased persons. Whether the incidents are more than telepathy may explain is not the ques- tion at present, but only the circumstance that they were what we would expect a discamate person to teU, in part at least, to prove its identity, and they apparently took the explanation of the phenomena beyond the scope of secondary personality. Many things were done that bore evidence of being super- normal without being facts suggesting a spiritistic source. They rather suggested clairvoyance or telepathy or both, as they were not related to the personal identity of deceased persons. Consequently 126 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE there was diflSculty with any one theory in attempts to explain the phenomena. The confusion and fragmentary character of the " messages " were so great that a cautious scientific man had to reserve opinions or venture upon the most tentative hypothe- ses, until the causes of the limitations in the " commu- nications " could be ascertained. The prevailing hy- pothesis, with many, though a tentative view to help mental suspense while additional facts were accumu- lating, was that of telepathy and secondary person- ality combined. Phinuit was the supposed secondary personality of Mrs. Piper possessed with tele- pathic powers. But there was no clear assurance that this hypothesis really explained the phenomena. The Phinuit regime continued uninterruptedly until 1892, when a very interesting modification of the phenomena appeared, though still continuing for some years the chief " control " of Phinuit. While Dr. Hodgson was carrying on his experiments, a young man who had been a personal friend suddenly died in New York. He is called in the Reports by the name of George Pelham. This is a pseudonym adopted out of respect to the feelings of his living relatives. But he was a graduate of. Harvard Uni- versity, and as indicated by Dr. Hodgson, " he was a lawyer by training, but had devoted himself chiefly to literature and philosophy, and had published two books which received the highest praise from com- petent authorities. He had resided for many years in Boston or its vicinity, but for three years preced- ing his death had been living in New York in bache- lor apartments. He was an Associate of our So- HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 127 ciety, his interest in which was explicable rather by an intellectual openness and fearlessness characteristic of him than by any tendency to believe in super- normal phenomena. He was in a sense well known to me personally, but chiefly on his intellectual side; the bond between us was not that of an old, intimate, and if I may so speak, emotional friendship. We had several long talks together on philosophic sub- jects, and one very long discussion, probably at least two years before his death, on the possibility of a ' future life.' In this he maintained that in ac- cordance with a fundamental philosophic theory which we both accepted, a ' future life ' was not only in- credible, but inconceivable. At the conclusion of the discussion he admitted that a future life was con- ceivable, but he did not accept its credibility, and vowed that if he should die before I did, and found himself ' still existing ' he would ' make things lively ' in the effort to reveal the fact of his continued ex- istence." This George Pelham died early in the year of 1892. Dr. Hodgson heard of his death a day or two after its occurrence and was present several days at sittings during the following weeks, but no reference was made through Mrs. Piper to George Pelham. Between four and five weeks after his death Dr. Hodg- son was present at a sitting by a friend of George Pelham's and during it George PeUiam's full name was given and many names and incidents that sug- gested the personal identity of the deceased person by that name. Sittings held by friends of the deceased man revealed more and more evidence of his identity 128 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE which Phinuit could never furnish for himself, and among them was a reference to his promise to Dr. Hodgson to " make things lively," if he lived after death. The experiments were continued for several years before Dr. Hodgson would commit himself to the spiritistic interpretation of the phenomena. It was in the process of these experiments that the au- tomatic writing of Mrs. Piper was developed, ap- parently under the agency of this George Pelham, Phinuit having always employed vocal speech for his " communications." The resort to automatic writ- ing was a great help in keeping the record which has been practically perfect ever since. George Pelham soon came to exercise the func- tions of a " control " and for a time there were " com- munications " by speech and writing at the same time, Phinuit " talking " and Pelham " writing." In the course of this work, however, a remarkable and interesting change took place which shall be de- scribed in the language of Dr. Hodgson : " In the summer of 1895, when a friend of mine was having a series of sittings with Mrs. Piper, and asking questions of George Pelham, certain state- ments were made by George Pelham denying the so- called ' obsession by evil spirits.' My friend referred to the alleged ' Spirit Teachings ' published by W. S. Moses, and the result of the conversation was that later on W. S. Moses purported to communicate at my friend's request through Mrs. Piper's trance. He was confused and incoherent — and George Pelham offered a warning to that effect. He gave entirely wrong names in reply to questions concerning the HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 129 real identity of the Imperator, Doctor, and Rector mentioned in his ' Spirit Teachings,' and failed later in attempting to answer test questions propounded by some of his friends. Later still, however, he did fur- nish some private information unknown to the sitters, and afterwards verified in England, and well adapted so far as it went as an indication of identity. " I shall not enter into detail concerning the pro- fessed appearances of W. S. Moses at later sittings. Mrs. Piper gave few sittings in the winter of 1895-6, and early in 1896 underwent a second operation, re- suming her sittings in October of that year. I pointed out to George Pelham the importance of making W. S. Moses ' clear,' and getting the answers to my test questions. The final result was that W. S. Moses professed to get the assistance of his former ' controls,' who, after communicating on various oc- casions directly in November and December, 1896, and January, 189T, demanded that the control of Mrs. Piper's ' light ' should be placed in their hands. In other words, ' Imperator ' claimed that the indis- criminate experimenting with Mrs. Piper's organ- ism should stop, that it was a ' battered and worn ' machine and needed much repairing ; that ' he ' with his ' assistants,' ' Doctor,' etc., would repair it as far as possible, and that in the meantime other persons must be kept away. I then for the first time ex- plained to the normal Mrs. Piper about W. S. Moses and his alleged relation to ' Imperator,' and she was willing to follow my advice and try this new experi- ment — to which I may say I was repeatedly and emphatically urged by the communicating George 130 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE Pelham. I explained at the following sitting to ' Imperator ' that the medium and myself agreed to the change. Much of what followed later was per- sonal and non-evidential. It was stated that there were many difficulties in the way of clear communi- cation, due chiefly to the fact that so many inferior and perturbed communicators had been using the ma- chine. Phinuit's last appearance was on January 26th, 1897. Later on, other alleged ' communica- tors ' were specified as persons who would not injure the 'light,' in addition to what I might call W. S. Moses's group, and various persons who have had sit- tings in previous years with Mrs. Piper had opportu- nities of being present, and some new sitters also. Those who had sittings in previous years and who have been present since the change which I have de- scribed, were all struck by the improvement in the clearness and coherence of the communications from their ' deceased ' friends. Most remarkable has been the change in Mrs. Piper herself, in her general feel- ing of well-being, and in her manner of passing into trance. Instead of the somewhat violent contortions which she was apt to show in earlier years when Phinuit ' controlled,' she passes into trance calmly, easily, gently, and whereas there used to be fre- quently indications of dislike and shrinking when she was losing consciousness, the reverse is now the case; she seems rather to rejoice at her ' departure,' and to be in the first instance depressed and disappointed when, after the trance is over, she ' comes to her- self ' once more in this ' dark world ' of ours and realizes her physical surroundings. Various at- HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 131 tempts by these new ' controls ' to describe contem- poraneous incidents occurring elsewhere in this world have been notable failures. On the other hand there have been a few cases (said in 1898) under this regime where opportunity has been given for tests purporting to come from recently " deceased ' per- sons. And in these cases, so far as I can judge, and so far as the incidents go, the results as a whole have been much clearer and more coherent than they were in similar cases formerly." The reader must remember that all this material which I have been quoting was produced through the automatic writing of Mrs. Piper, and it is here described as if it were actual conversation between the living. Mrs, Piper goes into a " trance " whose nature we do not know, except that it involves the suspension of her normal consciousness and in this condition the alleged messages from discarnate spirits are written visibly by her own hand. Her head lies upon a piUow placed upon a table and is turned away from the writing. The tests for anaesthesia or her unconscious state were exceptionally severe and such as are never employed by physicians to ascertain a similar condition. The writing does not present any special mystery to the scientific mind, as it is familiar with automatic work of this kind where there is no pretense or evidence of discarnate intervention. It is the contents of the " messages " that suggest some extraordinary origin, at least simulative of spiritistic communications. This representation of it, whatever its real character, whether merely subconscious and 182 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE dramatic play by Mrs. Piper's secondary state, or the result of an independent spiritistic intelligence, is the only way to indicate intelligently its psychological interest, and we have only to dismiss from our imagi- nations all conceptions of visible and tangible ap- pearances in order to understand the nature of the phenomena as facts for psychology, and to appre- ciate what they represent in the development of the Piper case. What we now call the " Imperator group," repre- senting alleged spirits, assuming Latin names for reasons that have not been explained and for which we need not care until later discussion, may best be described, for the sake of clearness in understanding, as a group of personalities purporting to take charge of the " communications " from the " other side " precisely in the same manner in which Mrs. Piper has been scientifically managed on this side. From what has been said the reader can percieve that, on any theory whatever of the facts, they appear to be intermediaries for the " communication " of super- normal facts and that their work takes the form of supervision of the whole process. What will be the outcome is not yet known. But they still control the experiments and represent, with the frequent as- sistance of George Pelham, a most interesting and complicated psychological problem for science. What the Imperator group does cannot be treated as evidence of spirits until they prove their identity, but what is mediated through their action in proof of the identity of others must receive serious consideration of some kind and may indicate the supernormal ac- HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 133 quisition of knowledge, while its analysis and expla- nation may suggest a theory beyond any form of sec- ondary personality that we know. This brief history of the experiments with Mrs. Piper will afford the general reader some conception of the machinery and difficulties attending the work and of the conditions through which the facts still to be summarised were obtained. I shall proceed next to give some account of these, with this prelim- inary statement that the reader must ever keep in his mind that they have been obtained under the pre- cautions against possible fraud as indicated in this history and with the supervision and mediation of the trance personalities which have been described. CHAPTER V INCIDENTS FE.OM THE ENGLISH KEPOET In this chapter I propose to give a summary of the facts which the experiments with Mrs. Piper pro- duced while she was in England. I shall not select them with any reference to proving any theory or explanation of them, but only with reference to their supernormal character as facts. I mean in this and two or three of the following chapters to maintain an entire indifference to all explanations of the facts to be observed and hence not to assume that I am illustrating either telepathy or spirits in the narra- tive of the records. All that I shall admit into my purposes is the fact that the phenomena quoted are evidence of the supernormal acquisition of knowl- edge, and this means that the knowledge has not been normally acquired. Explanations will follow a statement of the facts. I have to give two types of facts, one of them wholly unevidential of spiritistic agencies and the other relevant to that supposition. There will prob- ably be a mixed class whose character the reader may determine for himself wherever it appears in the nar- rative. Sometimes instances of this mixed type may appear in one or the other of the main classes, and will be placed there according to the quantity of matter pertaining to one or the other of the kinds of incidents. In the last analysis some general theory 134 THE ENGLISH REPORT 135 must account for this diversity of facts, but at the present stage of inquiry their types must be kept dis- tinct. 1. Incidents in Experiments of Sir Oliver Lodge (a) Facts unevidential of spirit agency. At the first sitting with Sir Oliver Lodge Mrs. Piper re- ferred to a brother of his and described his character with some accuracy, saying that he was " a sort of happy-go-lucky fellow — taking the world as it is — wanting to see a good deal of it. Rather positive; likes to keep his own ideas. Not so deep in mind as you are, but deep in feeling." But the statement that this brother was in Australia was wrong. He was in America. There immediately followed a very definite diagnosis of a difficulty with Dr. Lodge's lit- tle boy which was found to be true a few days later, by the family physician. For a later sitting Mr. Gonner had written to his sister in London, Mrs. Piper being in Liverpool, to ask her mother to do something unusual between the hours of 11 and 12 on Saturday morning, and to ob- serve what the mother did. Mr. Gonner's mother was not to know and did not know that it was to be done at his request. The sitting began a little be- fore 11 in Liverpool. Very soon Phinuit broke out with a reference to Mr. Gonner's mother in response to Prof. Lodge's request to tell what his mother was doing at the time. " Ha, Ha ! Fll tell you why it's important, be- cause he don't know it himself. I read your thoughts 136 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE then. I can't generally. Your mother is just this minute fixing her hair, putting a thing through her hair (indicating) and putting it through her hair in a room with a cot in it, up high. Did you know she had some trouble with her head.? (No.) Long distance between you and your mother. She's in an- other place She's fixing something to her throat and putting on a wrap here, round here, and now she has lifted up the lid of a box on a stand. I'll go back to your mother.* " There's been some news, some correspondence reached the large building where your mother is. She has had a cold. A young lady is with her, and I should think it's a daughter ; a very nice girl. She draws somewhat, and needlework and reads a great deal. There's a pretty girl with light hair and blu- ish eyes. She's speaking to your mother at this minute. "(Is her hair long or short?) How do you mean? It's fuzzy light hair. She's a little pale, sort of smil- ing; nice teeth. Your mother is going out Your mother didn't want to go, but they wanted her to go, and she made up her mind she would. So she went." At the next sitting on the same day and in the * The reader should remark the following explanation of symbols used in the records quoted. Matter in parentheses represents statements or actions of the sitter on the occasion of an experiment with the medium. Matter in hraekets rep- resents notes or comments made after the sittings in explana- tion of their contents or mode of production. Periods or dots in succession represent that something has been omitted by the " communicators." Asterisks mean that something in the auto- matic writing is undecipherable. THE ENGLISH REPORT 137 evening Phinuit added the following at the very be- ginning of his " communications." " His mother just as I left was brushing some- thing, and had a little thing looking at it. She had a frame, a little picture, looking at it. She took it up and looked steadily at it and then brushing some- thing. That's how I left her. When I first saw her she was fixing her hair, and had something on the top of it, and was fixing something around her throat, and she took up a pencil and wrote something. But just as I left she was looking at a picture and brushing something." The report states what actually occurred in Lon- don while the experiment was going on simulta- neously in Liverpool, the arrangements having been carried out according to the directions of Mr. Gonner through his sister. Miss Gonner. The mother had no trouble with her head, so far as known. The lady who went out with Mrs. Gonner in London was cor- rectly named as Armie and rightly described, accord- ing to Mr. Gonner's statements. With this lady Mrs. Gonner decided to take a drive round the park. "The drive round the park on a wet Saturday morn- ing, though sufficiently incongruous to astonish even the cabman, was unfortunately a passive kind of performance to select ; but considering the absence of every kind of information or clue to the reason for doing anything, the wonder is that anything what- ever was done. Miss Ledlie (the lady with Mrs. Gonner) reports that after Miss Gonner left the house she and Mrs. Gonner decided what to do, and a vehicle was sent for. Just about 11 she ran up 138 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE stairs to see if Mrs. Gonner was ready, and saw her come out of her room to a landing cupboard, take a box out of it, put it on a ledge, open it and take out a mufF, very much as described by Phinuit half an hour later. She had her cloak and things on then, and the cloak is troublesome to hook, so that there would be a good deal of apparently fixing things round the neck. The taking up and looking at the photograph would almost certainly be done before going out, though it was not actually seen." " On her dressing table there stands a small photograph of my (Mr. Gonner's) father, which she very fre- quently takes up and looks at intently. There is a wooden half-tester in her room, which might con- ceivably be called a ' cot.' " Mrs. Gonner was not seen to take up a pencil and write, nor to brush anything. Prof. Lodge tried a " clairvoyant " experiment which consisted of a little box with some letters in it, picked at random and without Prof. Lodge's knowl- edge of what they were. The experiment was a fail- ure, as the two correctly named letters were expli- cable by chance. Another experiment to tell the con- tents of a bottle was also a faUure. It was said to contain salicylate of soda, but in reality contained sulphate of iron, wrapped up so that it could not be seen and was unknown to the sitter. There were some curious allusions to Prof. Lodge's Uncle Robert, alleging that he was lying on a couch at the time and describing two or three articles in the house. But while it was the uncle's habit to lie THE ENGLISH REPORT 139 on a couch a great deal he was not doing it at the time and the articles named were not as described. At another time Phinuit said that the wife o£ a sit- ter was at that moment brushing her dress, a fact which turned out to be true, and that his son was ill, also true. There are many instances of correct diagnosis and hits at physical troubles in various persons not sit- ters, but they were incidental and made in the midst of other matter which it would be too perplexing to sift. Some idea of these hits can be obtained from those I have narrated, and taken collectively they seem to have some indication of knowledge acquired in some way not normal. (b) Facts relevant to spirit agency. I do not mean by " relevancy " that the facts prove such an agency as is mentioned, but only that the facts might conceivably be told by discarnate spirits, if they communicated, as they often represented what might naturally be mentioned in proof of identity. Many incidents purporting to have this origin seem unnatural for it, but being associated with such as are appropriate must be narrated in that connection. Whatever the explanation, I shall give them as they are. In Prof. Lodge's first sitting a curious mistake was made in referring to an " Uncle William," taken to refer to Prof. Lodge's uncle, which was false, but it was later corrected to Mrs. Lodge's father. He was correctly described at this first sitting, and was dead. More striking and correct was the name and 140 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE relationship of an Aunt Ann with a description of her character. Phinuit said that this aunt was on the mother's side, and that she had cared for Prof. Lodge when a child after his mother's death, and asked if he did not have " a little old-fashioned pic- ture of her, on a small card," referring to the aunt. Prof. Lodge replied that he had, and apparently the aunt " communicated " immediately and referred to her care of her nephew and the little means that she had. She mentioned as caring now for a deceased child of Prof. Lodge, he having lost two very young children, and said it was a boy, after first saying that it was a girl. She then claimed to have had trouble in her chest and stomach and that she died from that illness, mentioning inflammation. Prof. Lodge remarks that all this is true of the aunt except the immediate cause of her death was an operation for cancer of the breast. At the next sitting, after two names had been given correctly, Mrs. Lodge asked Phinuit to tell her about her father. Some rambling statements of and unevidentlal character were made and Phinuit broke out: " He says you have got something of his. He says if you had this it would help him. He has difficulty in coming back. It's a little ornament with his hair in." (Mrs. Lodge here ran up stairs to get the locket referred to.) " He passed out long ago; she was but a little thing." Presently his name, Alexander, was given and the statement that the father had given the locket to Mrs. Lodge's mother and that she gave it to Mrs. Lodge. All this was correct, except that it is not known whose hair THE ENGLISH REPORT 141 is in the locket. Mrs. Lodge was only a fortnight old when her father died. There immediately fol- lowed a very striking " message " regarding his death. Phinuit said : " He had an illness and passed out with it. He tried to speak to Mary, his wife, and stretched out his hand to her, but couldn't reach and fell and passed away. That's the last thing he remembers in this mortal body." He added a statement about taking some medicine, the last he took, and then that something had happened to his right leg and it was caused by a fall, affecting the leg below the knee. It was also stated that it gave him pain at times. The facts were that Mrs. Lodge's father had his health broken by tropical travel and yellow fever, and his heart was weak. A severe illness of his wife was a great strain on him. As she was recuperating he entered her room one day, quite faint, half- dressed and holding a handkerchief to his mouth, which was full of blood. " He stretched out his hand to her, removed the handkerchief and tried to speak, but only gasped and fell on the floor. Very soon he died." He had broken his leg below the knee once by falling down the hold, and in certain states of the weather it afterward pained him. Phinuit made the further statement that he had had trouble with his teeth ; that he wore a sort of uni- form with " big bright buttons " ; that he traveled a good deal, and that he got the locket on one of his journeys. A little later it was intimated that he was a Captain. The facts were that during his married life he had been troubled much with toothache, his 14.2 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE position was that of Captain in the merchant service ; he traveled a great deal as a consequence, though his travel was mentioned before the statement was made that he was a Captain, The locket was obtained on one of his voyages. A question in regard to the "Uncle William," the step-father, brought out from Phinuit : " Never saw a spirit so happy and contented. He was depressed in life — had the blues like old Harry, but he's quite contented now. He had trouble here (prodding himself in lower part of stomach and me over blad- der). Trouble there, in bowels or something. Had pain in head, right eye funny. Pain down here, abdomen, stoppage urine. Had an operation and after it was worse, and with it passed out." At a later sitting his full name, William Tomkinson, was given, and it was stated that he was an old man with white hair and beard, but without mustache, and that he had passed out with trouble with the bladder. Prof. Lodge says of the incidents : " The step- father used to have severe fits of depression, more than ordinary blues. His right eye had a droop in it. He had stone in bladder, great trouble with urine, and was operated on towards the end by Sir Henry Thompson." On the second day after at a sitting in the evening the incidents of Mrs. Lodge's father were told, some of them a little more definitely, especially the ref- erence to the hurting of his leg by a fall " through a hole in the boat," and his name in full, as Alexan- der Marshall, which was correct, was given. Then mention was made of " two Florences," with the state- THE ENGLISH REPORT 143 ment that one paints and that the other does not; that one is married and the other is not, and that the reference was to the " one doesn't paint who is married." It happened that Prof. Lodge had two cousins by the name of Florence, one married and abroad, as indicated in the " communications " and who does not paint, and one who paints and is not mar- ried. In connection with the former, Phinuit had said that she had a friend, Whiteman. This was all unintelligible to Prof. Lodge, except the names of his cousins and their relation to painting and mar- riage, and he inquired of one of them to find that she had a lady friend by the name of Mrs. Whytehead, recently married, and he conjectures that the allu- sion to something as the matter with her head was a confusion in Phinuit's mind by the termination of the name. Otherwise the allusions were all correct. This incident was followed by some pertinent " messages " from a Mr. E., well known to Prof. Lodge, and a man well known in Europe. The facts stated were private and said to be intended to prove the " communicator's " identity. They were absolutely unknown to Prof. Lodge and had to be verified through a common friend. The chief inter- est in them is the recognition of the purpose of " communicating " the facts, since the man was one who appreciated the problem before his death and was a co-worker in psychic research. The next incident should be told in Prof. Lodge's own language and occurred soon after the sittings began. " It happened," says Prof. Lodge, " that an uncle 144. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE of mine in London, now quite an old man, and one of a surviving three out of a very large family, had a twin brother who died some twenty or more years ago. I interested him generally in the subject, and wrote to ask if he would lend me some relic of this brother. By morning post on a certain day I received a curious old gold watch, which this brother had worn and been fond of; and that same morning, no one in the house having seen it or knowing anything about it, I handed it to Mrs. Piper when in a state of trance. " I was told almost immediately that it had be- longed to one of my uncles — one that had been men- tioned before as having died from the effects of a fall — one that had been very fond of Uncle Robert, the name of the survivor — that the watch was now in possession of this same Uncle Robert, with whom he was anxious to communicate. After some diffi- culty, and many wrong attempts. Dr. Phinuit caught the name, Jerry, short for Jeremiah, and said em- phatically, as if a third person was speaking, ' This is my watch, and Robert is my brother, and I am here. Uncle Jerry, my watch.' All this at the first sitting on the very morning the watch had arrived by post, no one but myself and a short-hand clerk who happened to have been introduced for the first time at this sitting by me, and whose antecedents are well known to me, being present. "Having thus got ostensibly into communication through some means or other with what purported to be a deceased relative, whom I had, indeed, known slightly in his later years of blindness, but of whose early life I knew nothing, I pointed out to him that THE ENGLISH REPORT 145 to make Uncle Robert aware of his presence it would be well to recall trivial details of their boyhood, all of which I would faithfully report. " He quite caught the idea, and proceeded during several successive sittings ostensibly to instruct Dr. Phinuit to mention a number of little things such as would enable his brother to recognise him. " References to his blindness, illness, and main facts of his life were comparatively useless from my point of view; but these details of boyhood, two- thirds of a century ago, were utterly and entirely out of my ken. My father was one of the younger members of the family, and only knew these brothers as men. " ' Uncle Jerry ' recalled episodes such as swim- ming the creek when they were boys together, and running some risk of getting drowned; killing a cat in Smith's field; the possession of a small rifle, and of a long peculiar skin, like a snake-skin, which he thought was now in the possession of Uncle Robert. " All these facts have been more or less completely verified. But the interesting thing is that this twin brother, from whom I got the watch, and with whom I was thus in a sort of communication, could not remem- ber them all. He recollected something about swim- ming the creek, though he himself had merely looked on. He had a distinct recollection of having had the snake-skin, and of the box in which it was kept, though he does not know where it is now. But he al- together denied killing the cat, and could not recall Smith's field. " His memory, however, is decidedly failing him, 146 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE and he was good enough to write to another brother, Frank, now living in Cornwall, an old sea captain, and ask if he had any better remembrance of certain facts — of course not giving any inexplicable rea- sons for asking. The result of this inquiry was triumphantly to vindicate the existence of Smith's field as a place near their home; where they used to play, in Barking, Essex ; and the killing of the cat by another brother was also recollected; while of the swimming of the creek, near a mill-race, full details were given, Frank and Jerry being the heroes of that foolhardy episode. " Some of the other facts given I have not been able to get verified. Perhaps there are as many un- verified as verified. And some things appear, so far as I can make out, to be false. One little thing I could verify myself, and it is good, inasmuch as no one is likely to have had any recollection, even if they had any knowledge, of it. Phinuit told me to take the watch out of its case (it was the old-fash- ioned turnip variety) and examine it in a good light afterwards, and I should see some nicks near the handle which Jerry said he had cut into it with his knife. " Some faint nicks are there. I had never had the watch out of its case before ; being, indeed, care- ful neither to finger it myself nor to let anyone else finger it. " I never let Mrs. Piper in her waking state see the watch till quite towards the end of the time, when I purposely left it lying on my desk while she came out of the trance. Before long she noticed it, with THE ENGLISH REPORT 147 natural curiosity, evidently becoming conscious of its existence then for the first time." Prof. Lodge received a number of specific incidents well calculated in their nature to prove supernormal knowledge and purporting to come from the father of a personal friend by the name of Wilson. Some of the facts Prof. Lodge knew and some he did not. To test the telepathic hypothesis, which, he thought, ought to be correct in what he knew and might be false in what he did not know, he wrote to Africa to make inquiries. The reply showed that the facts which he did not know were not true of Mr. Wilson's father, whose name was given by Phinuit as James, when it should have been George. In a footnote, however, Prof. Lodge says that " James " was the name of Mr. Wilson's grandfather, and that the facts " would have had a truer ring if they had purported to come from the grandfather." At a sitting held under the supervision of Prof. Lodge a gentleman friend by the name of Mr. G. H. RendaH was introduced as Roberts, and during the course of the experiment Mr. Rendall placed in Mrs. Piper's hand a locket containing " a miniature head, faced by ring of hair, of a first (step) cousin, named Agnes, who had died of consumption in 1869. The locket remained closed from first to last." Im- mediately Mrs. Piper (Phinuit) said that it was con- nected with an old friend and gave the name Alice, pronouncing it " Aleese," in Phinuit's French. When told that the name was not quite right Phin- uit said, " it is the cough she remembers — she passed out with a cough," and gave the name " An- 148 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE nese." Mr. Rendall at once said, as if trying a sug- gestion, "Agnes. Can't you say Agnes.?" Phinuit replied: "That is it. Anyese — Anyese," and throughout the remainder of the talk kept at the French pronunciation, and said that he could " not say it quite right." Phinuit continued with much unevidential talk and said in the midst of it that " she's got greyish eyes, and brown hair," that " she passed out with a cough," that " when she passed out she lost her flesh — but she looks better now — looks more like the picture you have in here — rather fleshier," that " there was a book when she was in the body connected with you and her — a little book and some verses in it," that " she's got a mother in the body," that " she has a sister in the body," and that " that's her hair in there." Every one of these incidents were correct in regard to the person named. The only thing that was false was the state- ment that she had owned the locket. Mr. Rendall had "her Houndell Palmer's Book of Praise, as a keepsake." The conversation continued for some time with frequent correct incidents mentioned by the " communicator," and among them was the statement that her sister had been ill of late, and that the sis- ter had married since her own death. Mr. Rendall tried a test for telepathy, asking if the " communi- cator " could tell what little memento he had of her. There was another reference to the book in reply and then Mr. Rendall definitely indicated what was in his mind by asking if she remembered any little thing at table d' hote. She could not remember and he then said what it was, a little blue vase, but it was THE ENGLISH REPORT 149 not remembered, and the " communicator " went on through Phinuit to say that she sent her "love to Lu," the name of a friend of Mr. Rendall's cousin and whom he had not seen and hardly heard of since his cousin's death, in 1869. Amid much confusion and error some other true incidents occurred, but not complicated enough to quote. In a sitting the same evening a number of names and incidents were correctly given, but without the complexity that makes them especially interesting or useful as evidence, except as unlikely due to chance. 2. Incidents in Experiments of Walter Leaf I mean to group under this head the sittings and experiments that were supervised by Mr. Walter Leaf, Litt. D., just as I have treated the previous account as under the care of Sir Oliver Lodge. Mr. Leaf's introduction to his report calls attention to a number of precautions which have to be taken against the misinterpretation of real or apparent coincidences in the sittings, and I have no space to dwell upon them. The reader must go to the original data for evidence of the cautiousness with which he approached the case and adopted conclusions favorable to some supernormal process of acquiring information. (a) Facts tmevidential of spirit agency. The first two sittings in this series were for a Mr. Clarke, one of them held in America and the other in Eng- land. He very carefully analysed the " communica- tions " and the amount of error makes the successes pale so that the whole result is dubious. Even the 160 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE facts in many cases that were treated as possibly sig- nificant may be extremely doubtful. At the next experiment three sitters were present whose names were reserved from publication. The first incident in the " communications " has its sig- nificance in the mistake, along with successes, that represents what was false in fact, but what the sitter thought was true. Phinuit almost at once said: "You have three sisters and two brothers in the body ; an elderly gentleman in the spirit, your father. (Right.) " One of your brothers has a funny arm, the right arm paralysed; very funny (points to place a little above the elbow on inside of arm). That is sore, it is lame. He can't use his arm, it aches. The lump keeps growing." The sitter stated that this was a correct descrip- tion of her eldest brother, who suffers from writer's cramp, which seriously hinders him in his profes- sion. There is a lump on the arm which gives him pain ; but it is significant that it is in fact below the elbow, not above it, and the sitter believed it to be above the elbow at the time. A second brother was described with equal cor- rectness and his name, James, given. He was said to be funny and hard to get at, stubborn and self- willed, but manageable by quiet influence. At a sitting by Mrs. Verrall Phinuit referred to a living sister and advised care regarding her, as she had been ill, and made a half successful attempt at the name of her physician, and then said : " I don't like his treatment; he gives her quinine. Her sys- THE ENGLISH REPORT 151 tem is full of it." Both Mrs. Verrall and her sister denied that she, the sister, had taken quinine, but it was subsequently ascertained that she had taken quin- ine without knowing it. After some further refer- ence to friends and relatives with names given and statements making the incidents mixed ones, Phinuit made a clear set of statements in reference to a child of Mrs. Verrall's. " There is a child in the body ; a little stiffness — a boy — no, a girl. That leg too. This leg is the worst (indicating the left knee). The muscles are strained, not lubricated properly. A drawing of the muscles ; they are too tight." " It is a fact that Mrs. Verrall's baby, a girl, suf- fered from want of power in the lower limbs, and that the left knee was the worst. But it is not cor- rect to say that there was straining or want of lu- brication of the muscles of the knee, though the ten- dons of the heels were somewhat contracted." This was followed up by another singular coinci- dence, in which Phinuit said that Mrs. Verrall had another child quite bright, and that he would be very musical. Mrs. Verrall asked if it was a boy or girl, and Phinuit said: "A boy. You have had that child's hair fixed peculiarly, but after all it's a girl; a girl sure enough, but she looks like a fury." The child was a girl, and its hair was badly cut at the time, and she looked like a boy. (b) Facts relevant to spirit agency. None of the incidents in this series of sittings are so impress- ive as those of Prof. Lodge. There are traces of ordinary mediumistic talk all through, but now and 152 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE then a complex incident occurs that cannot easily be referred to chance, coincidence or guessing. The first sitting of the series was, as indicated above, for a Mr. Clarke. Until he and Mr. Leaf went out of the room and left the " communications " with Mrs. Clarke, nothing of a suggestive character occurred. But as soon as they had gone out Phinuit mentioned an uncle and said he was " in spirit," which was cor- rect, and remarked that some one was with him, giv- ing the name and relationship to Mrs. Clarke as her cousin. He then went on to say: " There was something the matter with his heart, and with his head. He says it was an accident. He wants me to tell you it was an accident. He wants you to tell his sisters. There's M. and E. ; they are sisters of E. And there is their mother. She suffers here (pointing to abdomen). E. told me. His mother has been very unhappy about his death. He begs you, for God's sake, to tell them that it was an accident — that it was his head; that he was hurt there (makes motion of stabbing heart) ; that he had inherited it from his father. His father was off his mind — you know what I mean — crazy. But the others are all right and will be He and his father are just trying to take comfort in each other. They are a little apart; they are not with the others in the spirit." He then sent his love to "Walter, his friend, not this Walter," alluding evidently to Mr. Walter Leaf in the distinction. But no such friend of the " communicator " was known. But Mrs. Clarke says in a note : " A striking account of my uncle's family in Ger- THE ENGLISH REPORT 153 many. The names and facts are all correct. The father was disturbed in his mind for the last three years in his life, in consequence of a fall from his horse. The son committed suicide in a fit of melan- cholia by stabbing his heart, as described. The sis- ter referred to as lame was bedridden for 10 years. One of the sisters (mentioned by Phinuit previous to what has been quoted as "one who paints") is a painter by profession. Some few of the facts she gave me were unknown to any one out of Germany, even to my husband. The more important events — my uncle's and aunt's death and my cousin's sui- cide, which happened respectively 28, 15 and 12 years ago — were known to only two persons in Eng- land besides my husband." Further important " communications " of a coinci- dental sort, immediately followed what I have quoted. Phinuit said: " Did you know your mother had dread- ful headaches? That's the reason she is so nervous. E. told me that about his aunt." Mrs. Clarke adds in a note that her " mother formerly suffered from severe headaches." Then followed a most interesting set of episodes, in which Phinuit seemed at his best. " Here's M. — not the M. who hurt her ankle, but another. She is your aunt. (Is she in the body?) No, she is in the spirit. (Did you see her?) Yes, she is here, and wants to speak to you. (AVhat does she say about her husband?) She says he has changed his life since. She does not like it that he married again. (Does she like the one whom he mar- ried?) Oh, she loves her dearly. But she does not like 154. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE him to have married again so soon. He married her sister. Two brothers married sisters. Her husband has children now. There are two boys. And there are Max and Richard, or Dick, as they call him ; they are with your uncle's children. "Now what do you think of this.'' Don't you think I can tell you many things? You just ask about anybody you like and I'll tell you. (Tell me about my childhood.) Shall I tell you how you ran away (chuckling) with that man — that boy, I mean. You were a little devil to do that. It wor- ried your mother almost to death." Mrs. Clarke says in her notes : " This is an accu- rate description of the family of another uncle. His wife died childless, and he soon afterward married her sister, by whom he has children. His brother had previously married a third sister. " When five years old I rambled off with two boys, staying hours away from home, an event which in my family is jestingly referred to as my running away. I had no thought of it when I asked her about my childhood." When Mr. Clarke and Mr. Leaf returned into the room Phinuit repeated the incidents just quoted with remarkable accuracy and brevity in a running talk that is most interesting and suggestive on any theory. The next sitting was for Mrs. A., full name re- served from publication. Mr. Frederic W. H. My- ers was present taking notes. Immediately follow- ing the incident quoted of the brother with a " funny arm" (p. 160) came a reference to a "spirit Jo- seph " which was not recognised, and then : " Tim- THE ENGLISH REPORT 155 othy is the nearest spirit you have got to you; some call him Tim ; he is your father. Timothy was your grandfather also. Your father tells me about S. W. — stay, I can't get that, I must wait. Your mother had trouble in the stomach ; she is in the spirit world. Your father had trouble in heart and head. Myers' father passed away from disease of the heart." The notes say : " Except the allusion to ' S. W.,' which is not recognisable, the above is all true, if the ' trouble in heart and head ' be taken to refer to Mr. Myers' father, as seems to be intended." Then with the reference to a living brother, James, not mentioned before, Mr. Myers asked what the father, Timothy, was interested in and what he did in his " earth life." The reply was : " He is interested in the Bible — a clergyman. He used to preach. He has a Bible with him, he goes on reading and advancing. He is living with your mother just the same as on earth. He has been in the spirit-world longer than she has. Your mother is a little nervous. I can't get her to come near. Your father has a graceful, solemn manner, as he had on earth. He had trouble with his throat — ir- ritation (points to bronchial tubes). The boys used to call him Tim at college." The note states that these statements are all cor- rect, so far as they can be verified. With a refer- ence to an unrecognised name and in connection with matter on which no notes are given the question was asked by Phinuit : " Do you like that picture of your father in the hall?" There was some confusion as to whether it was oil or crayon, but it was said 156 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE apparently not to be a photograph. His dress was described to fit more or less the ecclesiastical garb which he wore in the oil picture of him which hung in Mrs. A's sister's house. Some further coincidental matter was given, but was buried up in much that it would not pay to quote. Mrs. Verrall's sittings were full of pertinent mat- ter, but of a type in many cases that requires the study of the detailed records. But a few incidents are especially interesting and suggest the super- normal very clearly. Near the first of the second experiment came : " Carrie was sick in the chest when she passed away — consumption. She says she is happy, so is her mother. Well, Carrie and her mother were not congenial in the body, but they un- derstand one another now. Carrie had a little sister who passed out as an infant." Mrs. Verrall remarks of the incidents: " The only friend of the name Carrie who is dead, the wife of a cousin, died of inflammation of the lungs. Her mother died at her birth and her step- mother was by her believed to be her own mother, and as a child she used to reproach herself for not loving her as a child ought to love Its mother. There was an infant sister, the child of the step-mother, which died at two months old. This I have never known, at least this is my impression. The husband of Car- rie did not know it, but found the event recorded in the family Bible. I knew Carrie very well, and it is, of course, possible that she may have mentioned the baby sister to me, but I had so little knowledge of the fact that I thought the medium's statement a mis- THE ENGLISH REPORT 157 take, and neither my mother, who was very intimate with Carrie, nor my sister knew of the ' infant sis- ter.' » Another set of very interesting statements was made by Phinuit a little later in the experiment, and after some isolated hits of significance. What I wish to quote is very complicated and gets its importance from that fact: " Who was the teacher? There was a grandfather lame, very lame, rheumatism; the father's father, lame, crutches. You know Henry, he sends his love. There are two Henrys, one the father's side, one on the mother's. The two Henrys came to another gen- tleman by mistake. One belongs to the lame grand- father, his son; the other to the mother; not her son nor brother — father, perhaps, or grandfather. Your grandfather had a sister Susan. The other Henry — there is an old-fashioned picture with a coUar turned down, hair old-fashioned way — a painting done by one of the family, not you. Ken- yon, what's her name? Your grandmother's sister, no, grandmother was a Wilson, no, Williams. Ke- lon, Keley; that's it. What relation is she?" Mrs. Verrall, replied : " My uncle married a Mrs. Keeley." Phinuit continued : " Oh, what a mixture — double marriages! Your aunt married your uncle; I mean, she was your aunt after she married him. Mrs. Kee- ley was the second wife and had a first husband. George, that's the brother of the uncle's first wife. I like the teacher. (Who?) Music teacher; your aunt, father's sister. She is a lady; she is living." Mrs. VerraU confirms the incidents in the follow- 158 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE ing manner : " Grandfather lame ; this is true of my father's father. But he never had rheumatism; his lameness was due to an accident. ' Henry ;' I had an Uncle Henry whom I never knew, a son of the lame grandfather. There is a portrait of him by his mother, which she valued very much. It shows him as a young man, a grown-up looking boy. The other Henry was an uncle of my mother's. I have written to ask if my grandfather had a sister Su- san." Subsequently Mrs. Verrall writes : " I hear that my grandfather had a sister Susan. She was born in 1791, and after her marriage went out to Canada and lived near Hamilton, Ontario. But a son remained in England. Members of my grand- father's family have kept up communication with some of my relations, though not with our branch, notably with the uncle who married a Mrs. Keeley. The uncle, Henry, whose portrait was described to me went out to Canada to join the Susan branch. It is certainly very astonishing that Dr. Phinuit should know a fact of which I certainly never knew. My grandfather had entirely broken with all his family except a sister, Mary, and never mentioned them to me. This information is derived from papers in my grandmother's handwriting. My father knew noth- ing of this Susan. " George was the name of the brother of my un- cle's first wife. I find that he is still alive, but is now called Jasper, his other name. I have lately heard a great deal about Jasper, but had no idea he was the George of whom I used to hear from my cousin, John Merrifield, when we were both children. THE ENGLISH REPORT 169 My father's sister taught music, certainly; possibly painting, too." The extraordinary character of the incidents in this case, I think, will strike every reader, and it may perhaps be too strong a verdict to say, as intimated above, that there were none in this series of experi- ments equal to some of Prof. Lodge's. This set of incidents certainly runs in very close rivalry to the significance of his. In a long sitting at which Mrs. Herbert Leaf was present, introduced as "Miss Thompson," a large number of incidents were correct, but they did not have so much psychological complexity of detail as those I have just quoted, though of that pertinent character which makes them strongly evidential of the supernormal and relevant to spirit agency. It would take too much space to indicate their impor- tance by quoting them. A similar experiment by a Mr. Pye exhibits the same type of result. The rec- ord then shows two sittings which were failures and left a bad impression upon the sitters. The general summary of both series of sittings from which the quotations have been taken contains abbreviated accounts of experiments whose full de- tails were not published, and there are many impor- tant incidents for both types of phenomena, the un- evidential of spirit agency and the relevant. One by Mr. Oscar Browning contains incidents of a strik- ing character and explicable by either hypothesis. One also by Miss X. (Goodrich-Freer), author of Essays m Psychical Research, is especially rich in evidence of the supernormal, some of it relevant and 160 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE some of it unevidential of spirit agency. It is so interesting that I shall quote the whole record : " Miss X. was introduced, veiled, to the medium in the trance state, immediately after her arrival at Mr. Myers' house. She was at once recognized and named. ' You are a medium ; you write when you don't want to. You have got Mr. E.'s influence about you. This is Miss X. that I told you about.' She was subsequently addressed by her Christian name, one of similar sound being first used, but cor- rected immediately." " A large part of the statements made at this and the following sittings were correct, but in nearly all cases of so private and personal a nature that it is impossible to publish them. Only fragments, there- fore, can be given, with proper names omitted. But these sittings were perhaps the most successful and convincing of the whole series. " You know that military-looking gentleman with the big coat on and the funny buttons on the pads here, on the collar. It is some one very near you in the spirit." This is a correct description, so far as it goes, of a near relation. " Howells speaks ; he tells me he knows the Mar- tins, your friends; they know one of my books." These names were not recognized. "You see flowers sometimes? (What is my fa- vorite flower? There is a spirit who would know.) Pansies. No, delicate pink roses. You have them about you, spiritually as well as physically." Miss X. has on a certain day every month a present of THE ENGLISH REPORT 161 delicate pink roses. She frequently has hallucina- tory visions of flowers. " There is an old lady in the spirit wearing a cap who is fond of you — your grandmother. She is the mother of the clergyman's wife's mother. (Not correct.) She wears a lace collar and a big brooch, bluish-grey eyes, dark hair turned greyish, with a black ribbon running through it; rather prominent nose and peaked chin ; named Anne." This is a cor- rect description of a friend of Miss X., whom she was in the habit of calling Granny. "Dr. Phinuit described an entertainment at which Miss X. had been present, her position in the room, the appearance of her companion, including a marked personal peculiarity, and its cause, giving the Christian name of the same friend, and the sub- ject of their conversation, and the circumstance of Miss X.'s return home — all with absolute correct- ness, except as to time, which was said to have been ' last evening,' whereas it was the evening before." At the next sitting " Prof. Charles Richet and Mr. Walter Leaf were also present; the latter only a few minutes at the beginning." "Miss X. was told that her mother's sister was named Sarah. It was said that she was in the body, but this was corrected to ' in the spirit ' after a ques- tion. Her brothers' names were given as G — , A — , W — , A — , B — , correctly, all but B — , being very common ; but in the case of A — , and B — only at the second attempt, John and Walter having been first given instead. W — was the name of a brother 162 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE who died in infancy, and whom Miss X. had never known. Miss X. at first denied that the name was correct, having usually heard of him as H — , but afterward remembered that W — was correct. She was further told rightly that A — was an artist, and B — the handsomest of the family. A medallion which she showed was stated to be given by a friend whose very rare Christian and surname were rightly obtained, the one after hesitation, but with no false shots, the other at the second attempt." No record of the third sitting is given. A curious fact is connected with the reference to "Mr. E." and the statement that Miss X. had been mentioned before. This Mr. E., well known in life to both Prof. James and Dr. Hodgson, had pur- ported to communicate in sittings in America and had said there that he had communicated through Miss X., giving the name correctly with the excep- tion of one letter. On November 29th, in a sitting with Mr. Myers, the same statement that had been made in America was made to Mr. Myers and the same mistake in the name committed. It was on December 7th following that Miss X. had her sit- ting. The incident, which might be interpreted as a " communication " through Miss X. from Mr. E., is unpublished. 3. Failures, Errors, and Irrelevant Incidents I shall not summarise details of failures and er- rors, because errors are not opposed to any theory when the correct facts are not explicable by chance or guessing. All that I need do in this section will THE ENGLISH REPORT 163 be to recognise that the true incidents were often given in such a mass of error as to make it neces- sary to discount their value. Some sittings were entire failures and have all the appearance of the or- dinary medium's talk and associational reproduc- tions. Names were often given in a manner to sug- gest guessing and " jSshing," and even though they were strikingly right their significance had to be sceptically received or wholly rejected. The inci- dents that were wholly false in many instances, as re- lated to the sitter, were often as detailed and as probable inherently as any that were true, and if the contrast between them and those that were quite true had been less, the problem of their import would have been more suggestive. As it is, this is inter- esting enough. But they do not, in fact, aflfect the inexpKcability of the complex true facts by any ordi- nary hypotheses. As illustration of dubious matter on a large scale, the sittings with Mr. Wilson seem to have been full of error, very little comparatively being true, though what was true seems to have been significant. Mr. Clarke's sittings also were associated with much that was false or irrelevant, especially in relation to himself. Mrs. Clarke's incidents, as we have seen above (p. 152), were better. Professor Macalis- ter's sitting was one of the worst and he spoke of the failure in strong and uncomplimentary language. He thought it a case of hystero-epilepsy and that Mrs. Piper was wide enough awake to profit by sug- gestions. He mentions several instances of Phinuit's statements that support such an interpretation. He 164. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE thought Mrs. Piper was not ansesthetic in the trance, a conclusion that is contradicted by the general opin- ion of others and by the severe tests to which Mrs. Piper has been subjected for determining this very matter. The anassthesia is not necessary for ex- cluding suggestions and guessing, but these may be favored by its presence. The sitting also of Mr. Barkworth was practically a failure. He thought the case not more than one " of the ordinary thought reading kind," putting aside the experiments of oth- ers and treating seriously such coincidences as he found in his one sitting. Miss Alice Johnson's sit- ting, though associated with much success, was thought to be " open to the suspicion of systematic guessing." Those of Prof, and Mrs. Sidgwick were not so strikingly successful as some others, though there were decided coincidences in them suggesting a telepathic explanation, and only a telepathic ex- planation. CHAPTER VI DE. Hodgson's first keport Dr. Hodgson's first report takes up several ques- tions which were not discussed fully in the English report. He gives a lengthy account of some pecu- liarities of the trance and of some tests to determine the existence of the trance and of anaesthesia. The history of the Phinuit " control " and the hypothesis of fraud are discussed and the latter dismissed from further consideration in the case. The spiritistic hypothesis is regarded as insufficiently supported by the evidence to assure its acceptance. There remains, then, for this chapter a summary of the facts which sustain the existence of supernormal powers in Mrs. Piper. In giving this summary, however, I shall not distinguish the incidents by the class differences by which they have been marked in the preceding chapter. I shall leave this task to the reader, as it will not have any further importance for this book. Many of the accounts in this report do not repre- sent verbatim or stenographic statements of what oc- curred at the sittings, but depend upon the memories of the sitters. They would have been much better for the scientific treatment of the facts, if they had been more perfectly recorded. But many accounts were so reported and the summary of this report must place its stress upon the best accounts, though some of those not fully reported have that kind of confirm- 165 166 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LITE ation that eliminates a too rigid scepticism based upon the supposition of mal-observation and defective memories. I shall select cases also with reference to the difficulty of supposing fraud to account for them, though I consider it as excluded in fact. I quote first the records of a Miss W., known to Dr. Hodgson, who was obliged to conceal her identity in his report. She had many sittings with Mrs. Piper and made careful and very critical accounts of them. The most complicated incident was the fol- lowing, which came in response to a request made that the " communicator " write Miss W. a letter through Phinuit's dictation to another sitter and have it mailed to her by this person. Miss W.'s account is as follows: " On November 16th, 1886, Dr. Phinuit told me that T. (Miss W.'s deceased friend) was dictating a letter to me. 'How wiH you address it?' I asked. ' T. knows your address and will give it to the medi- um.' November 29th, a friend, who had been sitting with Mrs. Piper, brought me word that the promised letter had been mailed to — Miss Nellie Wilson, Care David WUson, Reading, Mass. " By applying at the post-office at Reading I was able to obtain the letter. I alter the names, but these points may be noted : " 1. My surname is given correctly. " 2. I have a cousin, David Wilson, of whose relationship and friendship T. was well aware. His DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 167 home, however, has always been in New York. " 3. Reading was my home during my childhood and youth, but I removed from it thirteen years ago. I knew T. only subsequent to that removal. " 4. While living there I wrote my name with the diminutive, Nellie, but since then have preferred to write my baptismal name EUa, or merely the initial E. T. was wont to use the initials merely. "At my next sitting, November 30th, I inquired about this mongrel address. ' T. was not strong enough,' said Phinuit, 'to direct where the letter should be sent, but he thought your cousin David would attend to your getting it. Your other friends here helped us on the rest of the address.' ('But they would not tell you to send it to Reading.') 'Yes, they did. It was Mary told us that.' ' Non- sense,' said I, thinking of a sister of that name. ' Not Mary in the body; Mary in the spirit.' ('But I have no such friend.') ' Yes, you have. It was Mary L. — Mary E. — Mary E. Parker told us that.' I then recalled a little playmate of that name, a next door neighbor, who moved away from Reading when I was ten years old, and of whose death I learned a few years later. I had scarcely thought of her for twenty years. The E. in the name I have not verified." The remarkably complicated character of these in- cidents is apparently inexplicable on any theory but the most obvious, and illustrates the supernormal very clearly. Miss W. adds another incident of interest. " T. was a western man, and the localism of using like as a conjunction clung to him, despite my frequent 168 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE correction, all his life. At my sitting on December 16th, 1886, he remarked, ' If you could see it like I do.' Forgetful for the instant of the changed con- ditions, I promptly repeated, ' As I do.' 'Ah,' came the response, ' that sounds natural. That sounds like old times.' " " March 1st, 1888, he requested : ' Throw off this rug,' referring to a loose fur-lined cloak which I wore. I noted the word as a singular designation for such a garment, and weeks after recalled that he had once, while living, spoken of it in the same way as I threw it over him on the lounge," " March 2nd, 1887, I was asked by my mother to inquire the whereabouts of two silver cups, heirlooms, which she had misplaced. Said Dr. Phinuit, ' They are in your house, in a room higher up than your sleeping room, in what looks to me the back part of the house, but very likely I am turned round. You'U find there a large chest filled with clothing, and at the very bottom of the chest are the cups. Annie (my mother's name) placed them there and will re- member it.' Returning home I went to a room on the third floor at the front of the house, but remotest from the stairway, found the chest (of which I knew), and the contents (of which I was ignorant) both as described, but no silver. Reporting the message to my mother, I learned that she had at one time kept the cups in that chest, but more recently had removed them." " February 11th, 1887, my sister L. wished me to ask Phinuit where she should find her missing card- plate. To be thoroughly explicit, I took her calling- DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 169 card with me and placed it in Mrs. Piper's hand, in- quiring, ' Where is the plate from which this is en- graved.-" Phinuit replied, ' You will find it in a box with a brush and a bottle. The box is in the house where you live, in a drawer under something that looks like a cupboard or closet or something of that sort. There are soft things cluttered up in the drawer.' L. and I searched together all possible places, and finally concluded that ' the cupboard or closet ' might be the stationary washstand in her bedroom which is set into a recess with shelves above and drawers below. The second of these drawers, of whose contents I knew nothing, we found filled with loose pieces of woolen and muslin, and under these pieces a small box. The box contained the specified box and bottle, but in- stead of L.'s card-plate her stencil-plate. We subse- quently wondered that the mention of brush and bot- tle had not forewarned us of this mistake, but it had not." In both these instances where the sitter and other living persons did not know the facts they were not correctly given, and what was known seems to have been correctly given. They strongly suggest a large telepathy, when that process is once admitted to. ex- plain any facts, conscious or subconscious. Clairvoy- ance did not answer the question, and if clairvoyance be admitted into the case at all it would have been natural to have supposed that it would have found the articles. It failed just at the point in which living minds were as ignorant of the facts as Phinuit seems to have been. " March 15th," continues Miss W., " T. observed, 170 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE ' This medium is good and true. I am glad to say that because I used to think she was a fraud. Do you remember.?' ' No, I didn't know you ever said so,' thinking only of communications received through her. ' Why, yes, last summer, when you sent her a lock of hair. Don't you remember.?' I then re- called that during T.'s fatal illness in June, 1886, I had won his reluctant consent to send Mrs. Piper a lock of his hair. I first heard of her at that time, and faintly hoped that a clairvoyant might diagnose a malady which physicians had failed to reach. The diagnosis proved worthless, and T. had freely charac- terised the whole thing as trickery and fraud. I have never mentioned that correspondence to Mrs. Piper, and since I wrote her from a distant city she is not likely to have associated it with me." Even if the correspondence had been so associated this fact would not account for the mention of his previous belief regarding Mrs. Piper. Her narrative continues : " The scepticism of one B., with whom he had much in common, had seemed a matter of concern to T. He spoke of it November 26th, 1886. ' I re- member how we used to talk about this (spirit control) and how set against it B. was — like a wall. He thinks so yet.' December 16th, 1886, he again in- troduced the matter, saying, ' I notice your father has a letter from B. How strongly he holds his old notions. He's determined not to admit anything, isn't he?' The letter, whose contents were correctly sum- marised, was received by my father that very morn- ing. I did not know of its arrival until my return DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 171 home after this sitting. In July, 1887, B. visited my father and the two had a sitting with Mrs. Piper, At my next visit, August 5th, T. thus spoke of it: ' I have seen B. He seems changed and so inquisitive. I do not remember him so. But he seemed to think me different.' I learned afterward from my father that B.'s conversation had been a bombardment of questions. " On one occasion my mother went with my father to Mrs. Piper's. On my next visit, August 15th, 1887, T. spoke of it with pleasure, but added: ' This seemed strange. A little while after she was here I heard her say to your father, ' It did not really seem like T.' It was on the piazza that she said it. I verified this on reaching home. Nothing of the sort had been said to me. " January 5th, 1888, I was told, ' Here is some- body who says he is your grandfather. He is tall, wears glasses, and is smooth-shaven.' (' Which grandfather?') 'He gives his name F.' ('Yes, it must be my grandfather F., if smooth-shaven'). 'Well, it is. But do you mean that your grandfather E. wears a beard?' (' Yes.') ' I think you must be mistaken.' (' No, I am sure that he did.') ' I never see him so, and I see him often.' My grandfather E. died before my birth, but I felt sure that he had been described to me as full-bearded, like his son. But my father, when appealed to, disappointed me. ' No you are wrong,' he said. ' I am like him in figure and features, but not in cut of beard. He was always smooth-shaven.' " There were three prophecies recorded. One was 172 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE from a deceased friend giving her name and saying that another friend of Miss W.'s, giving his name, would marry soon. The " communicator " was the deceased wife of the person named, her surviving hus- band. Miss W. exclaimed that it was preposterous, and would not believe that it was her friend that was communicating. But the prediction was insisted on and Miss W. had finally to admit that the communica- tions were characteristic of her friend, but attached no importance to the prediction. But the prophesied marriage occurred in a few months. The last prediction is very interesting and should be quoted in full. Miss W. says : " In the spring of 1888, an acquaintance, S., was suffering torturing disease. There was no hope of relief, and only dis- tant prospect of release. A consultation of physicians predicted continued physical suffering and probably mental decay, continuing perhaps through a series of years. S.'s daughter, worn with anxiety and care, was in danger of breaking in health. ' How can I get her away for a little rest .'' ' I asked Dr. Phinuit, May 24th, 1888. ' She will not leave her father,' was the reply, ' but his suffering is not for long. The doctors are wrong about that. There will be a change soon, and he will pass out of the body before the summer is over.' His death occurred in June, 1888." There have been many such prophecies at various sittings, some of them much more complicated than these, and whatever theory be adopted to explain them it will not be telepathy. I shall next recur to some incidents in the sittings of Dr. Hodgson. It should be remembered that he DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 173 was a native of Australia, graduated at the Univer- sity of Melbourne, and afterwards came to England, where he had been Lecturer at Cambridge University before he was sent to India to investigate Madame Blavatsky. He had come to this country for the first time about a fortnight before his first sitting with Mrs. Piper. He was introduced, as said above, by Prof. James. At this first sitting, after two or three correct hits about members of the family, " Phinuit mentioned the name ' Fred.' I said it might be my cousin. ' He says you went to school together. He goes on jump- ing frogs, and laughs. He says he used to get the better of you. He had convulsive movements before his death struggles. He went off in a sort of spasm. You were not there.' " Dr. Hodgson states in a note : " My cousin Fred far excelled any other person that I have seen in the games of leap-frog, fly the garter, etc. He took very long flying jumps, and whenever he played the game was lined by crowds of school-mates to watch him. He injured his spine in a gymnasium in Mel- bourne, Australia, in 1871, and was carried to the hospital, where he lingered for a fortnight, with oc- casional spasmodic convulsions, in one of which he died." Phinuit also described a lady whom he said had died, saying that she had " dark hair, dark eyes, slim figure," referred to two rings, and gave her name not quite correctly. Dr. Hodgson knew nothing of the rings, but the lady died in Australia in 1879. Among a number of names mentioned that of 174. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE " Charlie " and " Marie " were given and Dr. Hodg- son afterward recalled a friend by this name who had died in India in 1886 probably, and a lady by the name of " Marie " who had been engaged to this friend. Phinuit also said that Dr. Hodgson's younger sister was married and had three children and that another, a boy, would be born soon. This was May 4th, and before the end of the month a boy was born to this sister. The number of children mentioned was also correct. At the second sitting some months later, Phinuit mentioned the lady indicated in the first sitting and " referred to a black lace collar, with a pin with a head, also a ring with a stone," and said she wanted the pin and the ring to be given to him. He recalls the collar distinctly, and the pin vaguely, but not the " ring with a stone." Later in the sitting a reference to the beautiful teeth of this lady was made, which was false, and the statement that " she wanted me to keep the book of poems always with me, the book which I had sent her, and had received back. I should recollect the writing in front of it, which I had written myself." Dr. Hodgson's note states : " I had lent ' Q.' The Primcess (Tennyson), which had been returned. It is the only book in my possession, and I think the only book of any kind, which I ever lent her. This book is now (1887) with most of my other books in England. It was my custom at that time to write favorite lines on the fly-leaves of special books. I do not recall with certainty what lines, if any, I had written in this book." DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 175 The third sitting was practically a failure and was an attempt at clairvoyance. At the fourth sitting some very interesting matter was obtained. It refers especially to three complex sets of facts, with some minor incidents of considerable evidential importance. The first set refer to the lady called " Q." in his re- port. I quote it in full : " Information purporting to have been received from ' Q.' The chief new matter was : " (a) That I had given her a book, ' Dr. Phinuit ' thinks of poems, and I had written her name in it. [Correct.] "(b) [Correct. This includes a reference to circumstances under which I had a very special conversation with ' Q.' I think it im- possible that ' Q.' could have spoken of this to any other person. It occurred in Aus- tralia in 1875.] "(c) That she left the body in England, and that I was across the country. [This is incor- rect. ' Q.' died in Australia. I was in Eng- land.] This was followed by references again to his cousin Fred. The chief new matter with reference to him was: " (a) That I was not there when he swung on the trapeze and fell and injured his spine, finally dying in a convulsion. [At my first sitting the accident was not described, only the death, at which I was rightly said not to have been present. At this sitting 176 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE the accident was described, at which also I was rightly said not to have been pres- ent.] " (b) That he wanted to remind me of Harris at school, who was a very able man, etc. [I believe it was also stated that Fred and myself talked about Harris, and that Har- ris had a high opinion of Fred's ability. This was all true; Harris was a school- master who taught Fred and myself (Mel- bourne, Australia) about 1868 or 1869. I saw Harris, I think, a short time after my cousin's death (in 1871), and he ex- pressed regrets, etc. I do not recall hav- ing seen or heard anything of Harris since.] "(c) That his father was my mother's brother. [True.]" At the same sitting Phinult said that Dr. Hodg- son had lost his keys near some mountains and that they were lying near a walk by some leaves, and that " they were on a ring, something different from the holder of the keys in her (Mrs. Piper's) hand. What held the keys was round." A new set of keys had been put into Mrs. Piper's hand. Dr. Hodgson adds the note : " I had lost my keys in the Adirondack mountains, and hunted vainly for them. They were found after my departure from camp on a spot an- swering to ' Phinuit's ' description. Before their re- covery, however, I had been compelled to obtain dupli- cates of most of my keys, and had fastened them on DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 177 a heart-shaped holder. The old keys were fastened on a common hej-rmg." At the fifth sitting further striking coincidences occurred. The record was : " Fred says you came from Australia. [True.] Lady ' Q.' says so, too; says she was there and knew you there, and used to be a great friend of your sister. [True.] You heard about her death by letter from your sister. [True.] " You went into Germany. Fred went with you in spirit. You went to Germany after father went into spirit. (No.) Got awfully provoked with a lady in Germany. You said she was deceitful, called her a storyteller. [True. While in Germany, in 1882, I charged a lady with falsehood under somewhat pecu- liar circumstances. My father died in 1885. J " At the fourth sitting Dr. Hodgson had asked Phi- nuit to give him a detailed description of " Q.'s " face. The description at the fifth sitting was wrong except in general characteristics. At the sixth sitting the following took place, and is minutely described in the report : " Phinuit referred to ' Q.,' said she spoke of a Loo — something. [Louie was the name of a cousin of ' Q.,' very intimate with ' Q.' and myself in child- hood.] Said her full name was ' Q.' A . Is that right? (No.) Well, she says ' Q.' A . [A is the surname of other cousins of ' Q.,' who frequently stayed at her house, and were well known to me.] " Phinuit then proceeded to give a general descrip- tion of ' Q.,' right so far as it went, and described the 178 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE eyes as ' dark.' She then began to rub the right eye on the under side, saying, ' There's a spot here. This eye (left) is brown, the other eye has a spot in it of a light color, in the iris. This spot is straggly, of a bluish cast. It is a birthmark. It looks as if it had been thrown on." Phinuit was asked to describe its shape. His an- swer was : " It is like this, running in towards the pupil." He then traced on the little finger nail an acute angled triangle with apex upward, and when he was asked to draw it a representation of the eyes was drawn with the spot in the right relation to the pupil and with the right shape, as indicated by Dr. Hodgson's statement and reproduction of the spot as he remembered it. He says in his note : " ' Q.' had a splash of what I should call grey (rather than blue) in the right eye, occupying the position and having very nearly the shape assigned by Phinuit. It was very peculiar; a little jagged in the edges, and sharp- ly and distinctly marked off from the rest of the brown iris. I asked Phinuit how he obtained the informa- tion about the eyes. He said that ' Q.' was standing close to him and showing him her right eye so that he could see it clearly, and saying that that was what I wanted. This peculiarity in the eye was what I had in my mind when I asked Phinuit for a detailed de- scription of ' Q.'s ' face." This is an extraordinary set of incidents and cer- tainly exclude chance with an emphasis, and they are not all the incidents having significance. If we con- sider fraud out of the question we have the super- normal of some kind incontestably evident, and it will DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 179 be as little questioned that the facts are relevant to the claim of spirit agency. An incident narrated by Prof. James is worth men- tioning. Mrs. James and his brother went to a sitting and were told that " Aunt Kate, referred to also as Mrs. Walsh, had died about 2 or 2:30 in the morn- ing." They stopped at the office of the Society on the way home and recorded the fact before any veri- fication of it came, though they were expecting her death. " On reaching home," says Prof. James, " an hour later, I found a telegram as follows : ' Aunt Kate passed away a few minutes after midnight — E. R. Walsh.' The telegram was sent from New York, where the aunt had died. Mrs. James states that during the sitting the " control " said when mention- ing that Aunt Kate had died, " that I would find a ' letter or telegram ' when I got home, saying that she had gone." Later, this Kate Walsh purported to " control and communicate." Another very remarkable set of incidents is the following by a gentleman whose name is reserved, but who gave the initials " M. N." His wife corrobo- rates the incidents as told by him. " About the end of March last year (1888) I made her (Mrs. Piper) a visit (having been in the habit of doing so, since early in February, about once a fort- night). She told me that a death of a near relative of mine would occur in about six weeks, from which I should realise some pecuniary advantages. I natur- ally thought of my father, who was advanced in years, and whose description Mrs. Piper had given me very accurately some week or two previously. She had 180 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE not spoken of him as my father, but merely as a per- son nearly connected with me. I asked her at that sitting whether this person was the one who would die, but she declined to state anything more clearly to me. My wife, to whom I was then engaged, went to see Mrs. Piper a few days afterwards, and she told her (my wife) that my father would die in a few weeks. " About the middle of May my father died very suddenly in London from heart failure, when he was recovering from a very slight attack of bronchitis, and the very day that his doctor had pronounced him out of danger. Previous to this Mrs. Piper (as Dr. Phi- nuit) had told me that she would endeavor to influence my father about certain matters connected with his will before he died. Two days after I received the cable announcing his death my wife and I went to see Mrs. Piper, and she (Phinuit) spoke of his pres- ence, and his sudden arrival in the spirit-world, and said that he (Dr. Phinuit) had endeavored to persuade him in those matters while my father was sick. Dr. Phinuit told me the state of the will, and described the principal executor, and said that he (the execu- tor) would make a certain disposition in my favor, subject to the consent of the two other executors, when I got to London, England. Three weeks afterwards I arrived in London; found the principal executor to be the man Dr. Phinuit had described. The wIU went materially as he stated. The disposition was made In my favor, and my sister, who was chiefly at my father's bedside the last three days of his life, told me that he had repeatedly complained of the presence DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 181 of an old man at the foot of his bed, who annoyed him by discussing his private affairs." A Mr. and Mrs. T. (full names not given) from Detroit, Michigan, and never seen or known by Mrs. Piper, report a very interesting sitting with inci- dents of the kind that are relevant to spirit agency. Mr. J. Rogers Rich also reports similar incidents with others of a supernormal type not suggestive of spirit identity. There are many other cases of the same type in this report which it would take too much space to quote. I shall close, however, with one re- ported by Dr. Minot J. Savage and his brother. Rev. W. H. Savage. I shall greatly abbreviate it. Mr. W. H. Savage had a sitting with Mrs. Piper and after " several remarkable " incidents she (Phi- nuit) said : " Ah ! Here is somebody from the out- side — he says his name is Robert West. He wants to send a message to your brother." Apparently this Robert West took control; for there immediately fol- lowed : " I wrote an article against his work in The Advance. I thought he was wrong, but he was right." When asked to describe him he was described in language which Mr. W. H. Savage says " was photographic in its truth." Phinuit said : " He died of hemorrhage of the kidneys." A little more than two weeks later Dr. Minot J. Savage, the brother, had a sitting, and this Robert West purported to com- municate with him. He said that he had been buried in Alton, Illinois, and gave the epitaph or text on his tombstone, saying that it was " Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." On inquiry of an editor of a newspaper in Alton it was found that the Rev. Robert 182 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE West was buried there and that the text on his tomb- stone was exactly as said. Mr. W. H. Savage had personally known this Robert West in Jacksonville, Illinois, and he had been editor of The Advance in Chicago, and had written a severe criticism of Dr. Minot J. Savage's doctrines and work, Dr. Savage being a Unitarian and Mr. West a Congregationalist. Mr. W. H. Savage had not seen the criticism and Dr. Minot J. Savage did not know that Mr. West was dead. Both Mr. W. H. Savage and Dr. Minot J. Savage did not know the cause of Mr. West's death, and on inquiry of The Advance his death was ascer- tained, and in the Congregational Year Book it is stated that he died of Bright's disease on October 25th, 1886, a little more than two years before the sitting. At the same sitting of Dr. Minot J. Savage the death of a Rev. C. L. Goodell was correctly announced, but was not known by Dr. Savage until verified after- wards. The apparent character of these facts is evident to any one and I need not comment upon them. But there are many in the report which do not clearly support the suggestions indicated by such as I have quoted, and perhaps lead to serious scepticism of the spiritistic interpretation of any of them. I shall quote the most important cases at sufficient length to make them intelligible. I quote Dr. Hodgson's sum- mary: Dr. Hodgson secured a lock of hair from a lady by the name of Mrs. Holmes and took it to Mrs. Piper for experiment after the usual manner with mediums. The object was to find out what Mrs. Holmes was DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 183 doing at that time. " According to her annotations, the following statements made by Phinuit were ap- proximately correct as regards her doings close to and during the hour of the experiment, but Phinuit's de- scription did not coincide exactly in time with her actions, but was given about half an hour after. Phinuit stated that she trimmed some flowers and put them in a vase ; that she sat down at a desk to write, and that Charles was on the paper in front of her; that she went to the window to speak to a man, that she pulled something down at the window and returned to the desk ; that she ' pawed over a box of things.' Phinuit also stated, incorrectly, that she had a parcel hke a book in her hand that she had been reading, had thrown a wrap over her head, had on a dark dress with little light spots in it, was doing some- thing to a picture, and, later, was doing something with a brush." Dr. Hodgson repeated the experiment with Mrs. Holmes, after asking her to take note of her doings at certain specified hours, and the result was that Phinuit was wrong in his account of what she was doing at the times specified, but apparently correct in many incidents of past experience, some of them occurring " as recently as half an hour previously." Dr. Hodgson states a similar conclusion in regard to " the attempts of Phinuit to describe his doings " on a certain occasion when he was far from Boston and Miss Edmunds holding the sitting, though " Phinuit seems to have given more correct information concern- ing his actual doings than can be accounted for by mere chance," apparently indicating a " supernormal 184 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE faculty for getting knowledge beyond that of thought transference from the sitter." Some other experiments of a similar kind, an article or trinket being placed in Mrs. Piper's hand, resulted in similar supernormal information, the facts some- times not being known, at least in part, by the sitter. " The ' piece of embroidery ' tried by Mr. Rich pro- duced the name of the sailor who made it. More im- portant still, Mr. Rich took a box, of the contents of which he knew nothing, and Phinuit described cor- rectly the person, X., who gave Mr. Rich the box, the person Y., who had provided X. with the article for the experiment, and the person Q., who had given the article to Y. The article in the box was described by Phinuit as a ' charm ' and ' glittering,' and as hav- ing been brought from ' far off over the sea ' ; it was a carved ' but not glittering ' button brought from Japan, and ' latterly worn as a charm with a gold attachment.' Miss Edmunds was correctly told that her locket brought her grandmother's ' influence,' and that she had had it since she was a little girl," the fact being known, of course, to Miss Edmunds. " Miss A. took with her to the sitting three articles, of the history of which she knew nothing — a locket, a ring, and a watch. The locket she obtained the evening before through a lady friend whom she met by accident in the street. This friend, at Miss A.'s request for a ' personal article of an individual un- known to her,' called at the ofiice of a gentleman whom Miss A. had never seen (she ' knew only his surname in a casual way ') and procured from him the locket. It was wrapped in a paper envelope, and Miss A. did DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 185 not look at it till the sitting was over. Inter alia, the owner of the locket was correctly described as being physically well, handsome, of light hair and com- plexion, as having a big head, and as being immensely extravagant, as writing and dictating (letters, etc.) a great deal. Phinuit stumbled round and about the names Joseph and George in his attempts to get the owner's Christian name, mentioning both (and also we must add Judson) without affirming either to be the name. Joseph George were the owner's first names. After the locket was opened, which contained a picture of the owner's mother on one side and some hair of his father and mother on the other, Phinuit correctly got the father's and mother's ' influence ' from the hair, and apparently connected the name Elizabeth with the hair and the picture, Elizabeth being the name of the owner's mother. There seemed, indeed, to be some confusion between the ' influences ' of the owner and those of the mother ; and in connection with the latter, apparently, various names were given, of which the owner knows nothing. He knows, however, very little of the mother's family, and apparently is not inter- ested enough to make the inquiries necessary for cor- roboration. " Miss A. knew, but not intimately, the owner of the ring and the watch. Phinuit said that the ring brought a bad influence — that there was an insane lady connected with it who began to lose her mind at an early age, and that another person connected with it died with cancer. Concerning the watch Phinuit said that it came across the water many years ago, had been in Italy ; that it had the ' influence ' of a 186 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE gentleman who had died; that the owner had a sister named Annie. The name Elizabeth, Eliza, Lizzie was given in connection with the watch. Phinuit said that he saw the watch in a box with other trinkets kept in cotton. The names John, Joseph, and Jennie, were finally given. All these details proved to be cor- rect, except the name Jennie, the owner's mother being named Jesse (Jessie.''). " The name of a relative, Henry, was given as having been connected with some ' printing ' estab- lishment, and also the name Davis. It was further stated that a Henry gave the watch to Elizabeth. I presume that these details were incorrect, though the report is not quite clear upon this point. The present owner was wrongly called a man. " The ring and watch, it appears, were kept in the same box. John, a ' bad character,' had given the ring to the present owner, who suspected him of hav- ing stolen it. John's father had repudiated a debt to the owner's mother ; he died of cancer in the stom- ach. The owner's sister, named Elizabeth, and called Eliza and Lizzie, suffered a great fright at the age of three years, from being left alone in a burning house, and ' gradually became entirely idiotic' She was for many years under the sole charge of the owner of the ring, and as the watch amused her, it was frequently given to her by the present owner's mother, to whom it came at the death of the Uncle Joseph. The watch, Geneva make, had been bought abroad by Joseph, who lived for some time in Italy. Several additional correct statements which were made DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 187 in connection with the articles, but not mentioned in the report, were regarded as too private for publi- cation. " Miss A.'s own view appears to be a form of that suggested by several previous reports, and particu- larly in connection with Mrs. Blodgett's experiments, that the information given by Phinuit was obtained in some way from the objects themselves, to the ex- clusion, that is, of individual minds either of the living or the dead. Miss A. stated, in reply to my inquiry, that Phinuit did not profess to obtain his information (concerning the objects) from ' spirits.' ' He gave no intimation that he was getting his facts from any one, ' in ' or ' out of the body ' ; the im- pression conveyed was rather that he was ferreting about for himself in some obscure way for the in- formation asked.' It is probable, however, that if Phinuit had been questioned on this point he would have claimed that his information was derived from the deceased. "Thus (March 21st, 1888), Phinuit: 'Who's Margaret in your family."" (R. H. ' Can't you tell me that?') Phinuit: 'It's your mother.' Correct. (R. H.: 'Who told you that.?') Phinuit: 'Your father.' " Again, I placed in Phinuit's hands a pencil case with the initials J. B. upon it, saying that I had received it from a friend who wanted to be told who gave it to him. The name of John B was given correctly, but he has a middle name which was not given at all. (That he had a middle name was known 188 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE to me at the time, though I cannot recall that I had ever heard what it was, beyond the initial letter.) Then: " ' George gave it to him. I get the influence of Ellinor and Palline, and a young man. No, it wasn't George ; cross that out. It was Harry or Henry, and Harry's sister's influence was connected with it before he gave it to him. That is all I can tell you. (How did you get to know this.?) J B 's wife in spirit told me. She's gone away now.' " Pauline is the name of Mr. B.'s eldest daughter, and Eleanor is the name of one of her most intimate friends. But Miss B. and two other members of Mr. B.'s family (not himself) had previously had a sitting each with Mrs. Piper, and the names Eleanor and Pauline had been given at Miss B.'s sitting, at which her mother, deceased, was also referred to. All that was correct was in my mind, consciously or subcon- sciously, but what I desire specially to emphasise here is that while Phinuit's language — about ' getting in- fluence,' etc. — did not suggest the ' spirit ' hypothe- sis, but rather the contrary, he claimed, on being questioned, that he received his information from a ' spirit.' Further, he has recently expressly dis- claimed any power of obtaining information from ob- jects themselves independently of specific personali- ties." I have myself in several instances found that cases, superficially, presented no claims to spiritistic origin, but when careful inquiries were made, whether about the " medium " or directly of the alleged " communi- cator " the invariable answer has been some person- DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 189 allty not living. I cannot say that the cases are evidential, but they exhibit the form of the phenom- enon with which we often have to deal when it has no external claims to a spiritistic source. But the most interesting of all the cases in Dr. Hodgson's report which I am summarising is probably that which I shall call the Hannah Wild incident or incidents. I shall abbreviate it for its essential points. Miss Hannah Wild and her sister, Mrs. Blodgett, had frequently talked over the possibility of spirit re- turn, and the former promised to write a letter, whose contents she would reveal after death, if any such thing as communication from the dead were possible. It was sometime, however, before she was persuaded to write the letter. " One day, about a week before she died, she said: 'Bring me pen and paper. If spirit return is true, the world should know. I will write the letter.' " She wrote the letter and inclosed it in a tin box, and when she handed it to her sister, she said : " If I can come back, it will be like ringing the City Hall bell." "She spoke about the letter often." Miss Hannah Wild died July 28th, 1886. Toward the latter part of the same year Mrs. Blodgett saw in a paper a notice of the Society for Psychical Research in which the name of Prof. James was men- tioned, and it led to correspondence and her telling him what she had for a test. Prof. James proposed trying Mrs. Piper, and the letter was sent to him properly sealed. Some articles that had been worn by Miss Wild were sent to Prof. James and by him to Mr. J. M. Piper, where Mrs. Piper was living at the time, and the nature of the test explained without 190 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE giving any names. The letter remained in the pos- session of Prof. James. At this first experiment, Mrs. Blodgett not being present and her name not being known, " Phinuit ob- tained the name of Hannah Wild, and perhaps some perception of her connection with the Woman's Jour- nal, in which she was interested and to whose pages she had contributed, also the name of her sister, Bessie (Mrs. Blodgett), to whom she was to give the test, and some impression concerning the then recent mar- riage of this sister. Beyond these facts practically nothing correct was obtained. Mr. Piper had numer- ous sittings for the purpose of receiving the details of what Phinuit gave as the death-bed letter, and was confident that he had been conversing with the spirit of Hannah Wild ; yet the description of her personal appearance was almost entirely wrong. Phinuit's let- ter contained no hint of the substance of the real letter, which Mrs. Blodgett forwarded to Prof. James for comparison with Phinuit's statements, and the numerous circumstances referred to in Phinuit's letter had scarcely any relation to the life of Hannah Wild. They were chiefly a tissue of incorrect statements. The result so far suggested that however Phinuit suc- ceeded in obtaining the names and other impressions which proved to be more or less correct, he at least did not get them from the ' spirit ' of Hannah Wild." The next experiment was made with Mrs. Blodgett and Dr. Hodgson present, Dr. Hodgson taking notes. The sitting had been arranged before and no names were mentioned, so that Mrs. Piper apparently had no normal knowledge of the relation of the sitter to the DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 191 letter, whose contents it was desirable to obtain. At the first shot came the following : " You have a sister here, and did you ever find out about that letter.? Anna. Hannah. Hannah Wild. She calls you Bessie Blodgett. You was in an audi- ence and a message was thrown to you. She'll tell you all about that. How's the Society — the women you know. Moses. He's in the body. I want to tell you about that letter." The pertinence of some of the incidents here will be apparent without comment. The name Moses seems not to have been recognisable by Mrs. Blodgett. She had been at Lake Pleasant, where a " medium," John Slater, had said, pointing to Mrs. Blodgett in a large audience : " Lady here who wants to have you know she is here. Henry, the lame man, is with her. She wants to know about the big silk handkerchief. Says she will tell you what is in that paper soon." The name Henry was also alluded to at this sitting with Mrs. Piper, and Mrs. Blodgett says : " This Henry was my mother's only male cousin, and she had lived with him all her life until she was married. He was lame." A little later in this sitting with Mrs. Piper came the question, purporting to be from Hannah Wild: " Do you remember I told you it would be like ring- ing church bells ?" With the substitution of " church bell " for " City Hall bell," the reader will recall that this was the statement made by Hannah Wild, living, when she handed the letter in the box to her sister, but when asked just after this allusion to tell the contents of the letter the reply was irrelevant. Five 192 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE attempts to obtain the contents of the letter were entire failures, though in the process of the experi- ments a large number of true incidents were given through Mrs. Piper, such as those here indicated. But most of them at least were known to Mrs. Blod- gett and little was given that she did not know, while other living persons knew what was unknown to her. The reader will note that at the crucial point where the spiritistic hypothesis might most naturally be ex- pected to be confirmed was not met, and telepathy from living minds might appear to be adequate to explain the successes, especially when we observe the remarkably interesting fact that the statement made when the box containing the letter was given to Mrs. Blodgett was substantially reproduced, being known, of course, to Mrs. Blodgett, but without any of the contents of the letter. If any explanation of this failure be possible it is a matter to be taken up later. At present I am only concerned with the narration of the facts and the recognition of the claims that the anti-spiritist may make for his hypothesis of telepa- thy. There were a number of other experiments with ar- ticles, and the summary of the facts would only du- plicate such as I have quoted. The reader who is in- terested must go to the detailed report for them. Some of them are very complicated and suggestive and represent clear knowledge of names and Incidents not known to the sitters. But in his conclusions Dr. Hodgson was not prepared to claim that the spiritistic hypothesis was proved. His judgment remained In suspense. There were difficulties that made it im- DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 193 perative to preserve an attitude of scientific scepti- cism and reserve in regard to a spiritistic view of the phenomena. CHAPTER VII SK. Dr. Hodgson's first report of which the previous chapter gives an account was published in 1892. His second report was not published until early in the year of 1898. He had been carefully experimenting during this long period under a change in the condi- tions affecting the real or apparent nature of the phenomena. It was about the time of publishing his first report that this change was effected. As nar- rated in the history of the Piper case (p. 127) a friend of Dr. Hodgson's died early in the year 1892, who is called in this second report by the pseudonym of George Pelham. A few weeks after his death, at a sitting held by a personal friend of the deceased, George Pelham purported to communicate. This friend's name had not been mentioned to Mrs. Piper. The man's name, as given in the report was John Hart (pseudonym). Near the beginning of the sitting a locket was placed in Mrs. Piper's hand, Phinuit's hand, if we wish to speak of Mrs. Piper's trance personality in this way, and in a moment the name George was given and the statement made that the locket contained the hair of his father and mother. This was true, and then a watch was put into the hand and at once Phinuit said, " Yes, George Hart." Then followed the name " Lai . . . Albert," and the question, 194 DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 195 "Is that the way you pronounce it?" Mr. Hart states in a note that " the name of his Uncle George is in the back of the watch, and when he died, my uncle Albert wore it. Lai was a pet name that my (John Hart's) father called my Uncle Albert." Mr. Hart did not remember that " the name was engraved on the inner case of the watch." There was appar- ently also an attempt at the name of the Howards a little earlier, and a little later came the name Kath- erine, and the statement : " Tell her, she'll know. I will solve the problems, Katherine." Just before this there was also a reference to the name Jim. Mr. Hart notes : " This had no special signifi- cance for me at the time, though I was aware that Katherine, the daughter of Jim Howard, was known to George (Pelham), who used to live with the How- ards. On the day following the sitting I gave Mr. Howard a detailed account of the sitting. The words, ' I will solve the problems, Katherine,' im- pressed him more than anything else, and at the close of my account he related that George, when he had last stayed with them, had talked frequently with Katherine (a girl of fifteen years of age) upon such subjects as Time, Space, God, Eternity, and pointed out how unsatisfactory the commonly accepted solu- tions were. He added that sometime he would solve the problems, and let her know, using almost the very words of the communication made at the sitting." Dr. Hodgson states : " Mr. Hart added that he was entirely unaware of these circumstances. I was my- self unaware of them, and was not at that time ac- quainted with the Howards, and in fact nearly every 196 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE statement made at the sitting, during which I was the note taker, concerned matters of which I was absolute- ly ignorant." Reference was made to the name Meredith and that George Pelham had lent him a book ; a statement ap- proximately true. He also referred to " Uncle Will " and said : " I met Uncle William. Ask Mother. She'U know." George Pelham, says a note, had no Uncle William deceased. He had a deceased Great- uncle William, on his mother's side, who was thus the uncle of his mother deceased and his stepmother living, who are sisters." Some further confused ref- erences to a Club were made, having been seen by Mr. Hart the last time at the Players Club in New York, and then the statement, in connection with an unrecognised reference to a handkerchief, " Rogers has got a book of mine." Both Mr. Hart and George Pelham knew Rogers, according to a note, who at that time had a certain manuscript book of George Pelham's in his possession. There was a very pretty reference to three Alices, which is too complex to un- ravel in a summary, and George Pelham's full name was written out. All this occurred thus at the first sitting, and it was some time before another opportunity came for George Pelham to " communicate." But when it came a Mr. Vance, known to George Pelham in life, was the sitter. The " communicator " asked for Mr. Vance's son, and on being asked where he knew the sitter's son, replied at college. Mr. Vance's son and Gfiorge Pelham were classmates at college. When asked where he, the " communicator " had stayed with DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 197 the Vances, the reply was correct and a descrip- tion of the house was given. Later George Pelham mentioned a tin box which he had had and wrongly said there were some letters in it, and asked that his father come to a sitting, saying that he saw his mother brush his clothes and put them away, and that he saw her take his sleeve buttons from a small box and give them to his father, and that he sent them to John Hart. The facts were that his clothes had been brushed and put away after his death, but not by his mother, and the " studs," men- tioned at the first sitting of John Hart, were given to his friend by the father of George Pelham. Dr. Hodgson at a sitting made an " arrangement with George Pelham that he should watch his father and see him do something that the Howards could not know about and tell them at their next sitting. At this sitting George Pelham wrote : " I saw father and he took my photograph and took it to an artist's to have it copied for me." The father recognised the truth of the statement, and the mother wrote : " His father did, without my knowledge, take a photograph of him to a photographer to copy, not enlarge." At another sitting the same experiment was tried again. George Pelham was asked to go away and watch the Howards and report. Before the sitting ended George Pelham returned and through Phinuit said : " She's writing, and taken some violets and put them in a book. And it looks as if she's writing that to my mother. Who's Tyson . . . Davis. I saw her sitting before a little desk or table. Took little book, opened it, wrote letter he thinks to his 198 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE mother. Saw her take a little bag and put some things in it belonging to him, placed the photograph beside her on the desk. That's hers. Sent a letter to Tyson. She hunted a little while for her picture, sketching. He's certain that the letter is to his moth- er. She took one of George's books and turned it over and said: ' George, are you here? Do you see that? ' These were the very words. Then she turned and went up a short flight of stairs. Took some things from a drawer, came back, sat down to the desk, and then finished the letter." Davis was the name of Mrs. Tyson's father. Of this set of " communications " Dr. Hodgson says : " The statements made as to what Mrs. How- ard was doing at the time were not one of them correct as regards the particular time, though they seemed to indicate a knowledge of Mrs. Howard's actions during the previous day and a half, as ap- pears from the following statements," made in a let- ter to Dr. Hodgson by Mrs. Howard. " I did none of those things today but all of them yesterday afternoon and the evening before. " Yesterday afternoon I wrote a note to Mrs. Ty- son declining an invitation to lunch; this I did at a little table. Later I wrote to his mother at a desk, and seeing George's violets by me in their envelope, gave them to my daughter to put in my drawer, not ' into a book.' This is the only inaccuracy of detail. The day before I also wrote to his mother, putting his photograph before me on the table while I was writing. Did ' hunt for my picture,' my painting of him. What he says about the book is also true. DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 199 though I can't tell at precisely what time I did it as I was alone at the time. In all other matters my memory is corroborated by my daughter who took the note to Mrs. T.'s, and saw me put photo before me on the desk. " While writing to his mother I did ' go and take things from a drawer, came back again, sat down to the desk, and then finished the letter.' This was the letter finished at the desk, not the one written at a table." The extraordinarily interesting feature of this ex- periment is the disparity in time between the facts expected and the facts obtained, the past and not the present seeming to have been cognised. The ex- periment, however, was tried again at a later sitting. Mrs. Pelham was present as the sitter and Dr. Hodg- son taking notes. At this sitting, " great anxiety was shown by George Pelham to make some arrangements for giving tests by describing at a later sitting what his father and mother were doing at some specified time, and it was decided that he should follow them that after- noon, during which they should do something special having relation to him, which he should recount at the next sitting. The day was Saturday, and the next sitting was held on the following Monday, Mrs. How- ard and myself only being present. At this sitting Dr. Hodgson asked what his father did on Saturday afternoon, and the reply was : - " I saw him take some notepaper and write an explanatory letter to Frank about what I said to him when I saw him in or on that day. The flowers 200 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE which I saw mother put before my photo, she and father will understand. In connection with this I saw them open my book and place therein a picture of X. Y." There was then a long communication the facts of which Mrs. Howard says are all true. Of the incident purporting to represent what the father and mother were doing in reference to the son, Dr. Hodgson says: " It appeared that two of the acts attributed to Mr. and Mrs. Pelham had been done as described, nor were there any other test incidents, but the third, viz., the writing of a certain explanatory letter to Frank (brother of George Pelham) had not actually been carried out. Mr. Pelham had intended writing such a letter on the Saturday afternoon, and had consulted his wife about the proposed contents, but had not found time to write. This experiment again suggests that the supernormal knowledge shown of our physical world by the communicators through Mrs. Piper is obtained indirectly and telepathically through the mind of living persons, rather than by a direct visual perception such as we enjoy." Many of the facts which are most important evi- dence of supernormal knowledge and which strongly support the suggestion of spirit agency cannot be quoted because it would take too much space to ex- plain their setting. It is the same with many facts which a critic might wish to use as evidence of some other theory. Hence all who wish to be critical must go to the original report for data. But I may allude to the type of incidents, with an illustration or two, which represent important evidence. The reader will DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT gOl recall that in an earlier chapter mention was made of the fact that George Pelham not believing in a future life had, when living, promised that he would try to communicate with Dr. Hodgson if he died first and if he survived in a conscious life. In the conversation on the subject while living the discussion at one point turned upon the philosophy of Plato. At the sittings here after his death he alluded to his promise to make himself known and at one sitting said : " Plato was a philosopher and a good one. You know, Hodgson, that was our argument, our discussion." There were perhaps hundreds of such little references that sug- gested the personality of George Pelham, as he seemed to be a clearer communicator than usual, and it would take too much time to quote and discuss them in this summary. A most interesting incident occurred in connection with another " communicator." A lady whom Dr. Hodgson calls Madame Eliza, a deceased acquaintance of Dr. Hodgson, stated through Mrs. Piper that she had been present at the deathbed of a certain gentle- man as he was dying, had spoken to him, and indicat- ed that he had recognised her. She repeated what she had said to him from the " other side " as he was dying, and it was an unusual form of expression. That this had actually occurred at the deathbed of the person mentioned was confirmed by two near and surviving relatives who were present at the deathbed. The gentleman as he was dying had recognised the apparition of the deceased person and uttered the words as coming from her which were afterwards com- municated through Mrs. Piper in the same form. 202 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE In connection with this same " communicator " the incidents may be summarised as follows, in the lan- guage of Dr. Hodgson : " She was known to George Pelham, and her first appearance was to her sister, Madame Frederica, on May 17th, 1892, (about four months after the death of George Pelham). She (Madame Elisa Manners) had died the previous sum- mer. The cause of her death was designated by Phin- uit, who also described correctly, purporting to repeat what she was telling him, some incidents which had oc- curred at her deathbed. The sitter inquired about a watch which had belonged to Madame Elisa, but the statements made at this sitting, and to myself at sub- sequent sittings, did not lead to its recovery. Some Italian was written by request, the lady being as fa- miliar with Italian as with English, but only two or three common words were decipherable. The first names of sitter and communicator were given, and the last name was both written and afterward given by George Pelham to Phinuit. Some of the writing was of a personal character, and some about the watch, and George Pelham stated correctly, inter alia, that the sitter's mother was present (in 'spirit') with the communicator, and that he himself did not know her. The real names are very uncommon. The Italian for ' It is well. Patience,' was whispered at the end of the sitting as though by direct control of the voice by Madame Elisa." It must be remembered that Mrs. Piper does not know Italian, and Dr. Hodgson has shown in his report why the communication in a language foreign to Mrs. Piper is difficult and in some cases impossible. DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 203 But in connection with this incident it may be well to remark some facts accompanying a sitting by a Mr. Briggs. The communication purported to come from a Honolulu boy named Kalua who had Uved with Mr. Briggs both in Honolulu and in Boston. " Ka- lua tried to write Hawaiian, but the only * ordinary ' words deciphered were ' lei ' (meaning wreaths, which he made daily for Mr. Briggs) which was written clearly and frequently, and an attempt at ' aloha ' ■ — greeting. Phinuit tried to get the answer to the question where Kalua's father was, but could only succeed in getting ' Hiram.' But the writing gave ' Hawaiian Islands.' In reply to the question which one, the answer in writing was Kawai, but Phinuit said Tawai. The word is spelt Kawai, but is pronounced Tawai by the natives of the island itself and in the island where Kalua was born. The natives of the other island called it Kawai." Mrs. Piper does not know the languages of the Sandwich Islands. In connection with this, too, may be briefly men- tioned the experiment of Prof. Newbold, of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, at a sitting with Mrs. Piper, published in a later report than Dr. Hodgson's. George Pelham was the " communicator." He had known Greek while living, and Mrs. Piper does not. Prof. Newbold spelled out to him through Mrs. Pi- per's organism a part of the Lord's prayer, and under much difficulty it was translated with approximate correctness. In the sittings of another person are a number of interesting complex Incidents deserving quotation, as throwing light upon the complications of any theory 204) SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE but the most apparent one. The lady is called in the report Mrs. M. She had made the appointment for her first sitting from a town in Georgia by a letter through Dr. Hodgson, so that Mrs. Piper, as in all other cases here quoted, did not know the sitter. At the first sitting the name Richard was given and the statement made that he was a brother of the sitter, and when the sitter asked if it was B — , using a pet name of the supposed person, there was much excitement in Mrs. Piper's hand, and the " communicator " asked the question, " Where is James ? " In a moment Mrs. Piper's hand began feeling Mrs. M.'s jacket and seemed to be trying to reach something inside. Mrs. M. gave it, a small locket and chain which she wore around her neck under her dress. In some confused message of an unevidential sort came the names Tom and Pauline. Mrs. M. adds in her note explanatory of the perti- nence in the names : " Richard is the name of a younger brother of mine who died early in 1891, and James is the name of my elder brother, and he was with me when I was taking care of Richard during his last illness. The locket contained some hair and a small picture of my husband, who died in 1892. Tom is the name of a person who was well known to my husband and who, for reasons known only to myself, was very much in my thoughts at that time. Pauline is the name of my eldest sister." At the second sitting which was held the next morn- ing, as soon as the trance came on Phinuit remarked: " After I went out I found your brother and another DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 205 gentleman with him. The gentleman is everything to you. He will come ... I get the name Brown. I get it from your gentleman. Richard says Susy." When the writing began the " message " was: " Do you know who I am.'' " Then the names Brown and Parker were written, followed by the words : " Oh, don't you know me? Don't you know me? I am Roland and I love you always." Mrs. M. remarks in her note : " In my first sitting the name Susy had occurred a number of times, but it had no special meaning for me in connection, and I was constantly thinking of Ruth, the name of a young girl to whom my brother had been engaged to be married, but on my way home it flashed over me that Susy was the name of a sister two years older than my brother Richard. She died before he was bom, so when Phinuit said ' Richard says Susy ' I asked : ' Did he mean Susy, when I suggested Ruth to him yester- day ? ' ' Yes, it is Susy. He told you forty times the last time, but you wouldn't understand: he said, ' If that's my sister she must know who Susy is." ' She's here with him ; she was his sister, she passed out many years ago; it was sad for her mother, the most sad of any trouble she ever had. She was very bright. She would have been very musical.' " Mrs. M. adds the note : " The baby Susy died at seven months old, was ' very bright ' — and my moth- er often told me how fond of music she was, and that the sound of the piano would quiet her when she was in pain. Her death was a great sorrow to my mother. The names Brown and Parker were those of the doctor and nurse who cared for my husband during his last 206 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE illness, and Roland was the name by which he, my hus- band, was usually called." Mrs. M. one day was alone at her husband's grave and planted some violets there, and said : " Roland, if you can see me I wish you would go and tell Dr. Hodgson so." A few days afterward, without any one knowing what she had done when alone by the grave, the message came apparently from this hus- band : " She told me to tell you, sir, that she put some flowers on the tomb, and asked me if I saw her do it." Dr. A. Blair Thaw and Mrs. Thaw had a large number of sittings which were exceedingly rich in evi- dential matter. I cannot quote them at length as they would occupy more space than can be spared. A few incidents of a very important character will suffice to illustrate their value. "At their first sitting a very in- timate friend of theirs, who had been dead about a year and a half, and whom they have called Dr. H. in the records, gave (through Phinuit) a nickname by which he had been called. This name was not known to the sitters. On inquiry his widow said it was the name used by his mother and sisters, all dead, but not used by any one living. At a later sitting a test question which was sent for the purpose by the widow of Dr. H., and the answer to which was unknown to the sit- ters, was correctly answered at the same sitting. " At the sitting which Mr. G. Perkins had on March 18th, 1892, he presented a chain which he knew had been worn by his mother, deceased. Phinuit said that both his mother and sister recognized the chain, and that both had worn it. This was true. DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 807 although Mr. Perkins did not know that his sister had also worn it. She died when he was a small child. Again the nurse of Mrs. Thaw's children presented a parcel which she supposed contained her mother's hair. Phinuit speaking of the sitter's mother said, thrusting his finger down the neck of the sitter, ' Put it in there and wear it, just as she told you.' The sitter insisted that Phinuit was wrong, but he tore open the paper and showed that it contained an Agnus Dei, which as a matter of fact the sitter's mother had told her to wear." The reader may recall that it was a man, here called John Hart, who was at the first sitting when George Pelham appeared to communicate. Three years later he died suddenly in Paris. Dr. Hodgson heard the fact the next day from a cablegram to a friend and arranged through his assistant for a sitting with Mrs. Piper the following day. Soon after the sitting be- gan and after some confusion and difiiculty the name John Hart was given, and in a moment the statement came: " I brought Ge (George) here first," evi- dently referring to the first communication of George Pelham to him three years before. " There were con- fused references to the Howards. He referred to two other friends in Europe,',' and expressed the hope that they would bring his body to America, saying: "They are now talking about it." It was learned later that the desirability of so doing was discussed. Mrs. Katherine Paine Sutton, who " had many re- markable psychical experiences, especially in seeing ' figures ' of deceased persons, in 1887 published a little book giving an account of these. It was called 208 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE Light on the Hidden Way, with an introduction by James Freeman Clarke. At one of her sittings James Freeman Clarke purported to send a message to his own daughter and at a later sitting he appeared to ask if the message was delivered, when Mrs. Sutton saw an apparition of him while the mes- sage was being written. Mrs. Sutton also saw an apparition of her little daughter at a sitting in the act of reaching for a spool of tangled red knitting silk, while Phinuit was indicating in the " communi- cation " that this was what she wanted. Her few sit- tings were remarkably rich in evidential matter. M. Paul Bourget, the French writer, had two good sittings, though he apparently refused to give Prof. James any account of one of them. A sitting by Prof. J. Estlin Carpenter, of Oxford, was very good, and one by Prof. Herbert Nichols had a very fine test in it. It was the naming of the first word of a proverb engraved in a ring which his mother had given him years before and which he had lost, though he was thinking of the word engraved in her ring left him at her death. Many more pages of this kind of matter could be quoted, but it will hardly he necessary, as it would only multiply types of incidents already mentioned to a tedious length. But I have been obliged to quote largely in order to give the general reader some con- ception of the mass of material pointing to the exist- ence of something supernormal and which would justi- fy the consideration of some theory adequate to the scope of the facts themselves, when the discussion DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 209 of a large theory on the illustration of a few facts would not impress the scientific mind as legitimate. The facts in Dr. Hodgson's second report are much better than in his first, at least in many instances, especially in connection with the George Pelham per- sonality, as they afford the opportunity to discuss certain questions which earlier trances had not an- swered completely. I can hardly more than indicate some of these points. One of them is the increased tendency, especially in the case of George Pelham, to recognise living friends and not to recognise those who were not personal friends while living, or better to recognise that certain persons were not acquaintances. It seems that George Pelham never failed to recognise his living friends at sittings, and knew well enough when sitters were not acquaintances. Then again there is the dramatic play of personality in which there is the definite appearance of conversation be- tween the discamate spirits themselves, slipping through to the sitter as automatisms or unconsciously delivered messages that it was intended to send. The reader will have to go to the detailed reports for a clear conception of this and the extent of its occur- rence. He will also have to do the same for an ade- quate appreciation of very many incidents which would exhaust the patience of all but the critical scien- tist to consider here. Some of the sitters, like a few in the English series of experiments, were either not favorably impressed with their results or suspended judgment on the ground that their personal sittings were too few to justify conclusions. Prof. Pierce had no striking 210 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE success in his sitting, and discredited the supposition that there was anything supernormal in it. Dr. Weir Mitchell, writing to Prof. James, after a sitting at which the latter took notes, said : " If I had never seen you and heard your state- ments in regard to Mrs. Piper, my afternoon sitting with her would have led me to the conclusion that the whole thing was a fraud and a very stupid one. Of course I do not think this, because I am bound to consider all the statements made, not merely the time spent with me. As to this point I want to make my- self clear, because I shotild like on another occasion to repeat my sitting." Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, of Harvard Univer- sity, had two sittings. He could not report anything indubitably supernormal. But he said that " there was no question as to Mrs. Piper's good faith," while he thought her trance condition resembled the dream- ing of an ill person. Prof. J. T. Trowbridge, of Harvard University, with one sitting to judge from, thought that the trance was not simulated, and that Mrs. Piper was " in some abnormal condition," but his experience was without result in the supernormal of any kind. Prof. James Mark Baldwin, of Princeton University, with a single sitting, did not feel sure that the trance was genuine though he " came fully expecting to be convinced on that point." There were a few incidents sufficiently striking in his sitting to suggest the need of explanation. The sittings of some others were practical failures in many respects, and led to occasional suspicion of the whole thing. But the majority of the sitters DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 211 had sufficient success to be impressed with the indubi- table evidence for something supernormal, and many of them felt convinced that they were in reality com- municating with their departed friends. It was Dr. Hodgson's opinion that this interpretation of the phe- nomena was correct, although in adopting it he had to surrender the sceptical attitude which his first report maintained. For the grounds on which he based this change of position the reader will have to read his report. CHAPTER VIII PERSONAL EXPEEIMENTS AND EESULTS Dr. Hodgson's reports were based upon results ob- tained during the Phinuit regime including the work of the personality of George Pelham. He quoted nothing from his record of the Imperator regime. He probably intended to quote this in the second part of his report which was promised to follow, but which has not yet been published. The effect of his report, however, on my mind was such as to make it imperative for me to have some personal sittings, in order to understand the phenomena much better than I did. I had not the slightest doubt about the proof for the supernormal, and felt the strength of Dr. Hodgson's plea for the spiritistic hypothesis as not only actually explaining the facts in a large measure, especially the crucially evidential facts, but also as being the best hypothesis at the time. But there were certain difficulties connected with the mistakes and confusions and with the dramatic play of personal- ity, as I afterward called it, that made me still sus- pend my judgment. But to satisfy myself it was necessary to have some sittings, and I so expressed myself to Dr. Hodgson in a letter. They were ar- ranged for in the following manner, and come under the Imperator regime, Phinuit having disappeared a year previously. When the Imperator assumed complete control of the sittings and arrangements. Dr. 213 PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 213 Hodgson consulted these trance personalities in all arrangements made for sitters. All the results were obtained by automatic writing. The use of the voice was discontinued, after the departure of Phinuit, ex- cept for work of a less scientific kind. Hence my rec- ord represents a written account including all that the sitters, myself and Dr, Hodgson, said or did on the occasion. 1. Incidents Previously/ Published Dr. Hodgson arranged for my sittings with the trance personalities and mentioned no name, saying only the " four times friend," and Mrs. Piper not knowing, when she recovers normal consciousness, what has been said or done during its loss. When I went to the sitting, while I was in a closed coach some hundred feet from the house I put on a mask covering the whole face. When I entered the house with Dr. Hodgson he introduced me as " Mr. Smith." I bowed in silence, did not shake hands, nor utter a word, and during the seventeen sittings published in my report Mrs. Piper did not hear my voice in her normal state, " except twice when I changed it into an unnatural tone to utter a sentence, in one case only four words." My object was to conceal my identity, because I had been present at a sitting in 1892 for fifteen minutes, and met Mrs. Piper after the sitting. The present occasion was in 1898, and I had grown a full beard in the meantime. As soon as Mrs. Piper went into the trance, I took my place behind and to the right of her, where I could 214 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE see the automatic writing, and never touched her even during the seventeen sittings, except a few times to place the hand on the writing pad after the pencil ran off the edge. Muscle reading was thus shut out, and even if Mrs. Piper had been conscious her head was so placed on the pillow on the table that she could not have seen me had she been normally con- scious. Dr. Hodgson read and copied the automatic writing and in its place whatever he and I said or asked on the occasion, so that the record is a perfect account of all that was said or done, in so far as it was decipherable. The trance " control " was usu- ally Rector, one of the Imperator group of trance personalities. But occasionally George Pelham act- ed as amanuensis, if I may so call the " control," especially at my first sitting, coming in other cases for special purposes. Under these conditions the first part of my first sitting was full of confusion and without incidents that were conclusive at the time for anything super- normal. Several names and relationships were cor- rectly given, and then a whole group of names in con- nection with a lady claiming to be my mother were given which were wholly false to me and had no relation to me. After the publication of my report I found that they were aU correct and pertinent to an acquaintance of mine. But toward the close of the sitting the following incidents were written out. The name Charles was mentioned and the claim made that he was my brother ; that he had died of a fever, say- ing that " they said it was typhoid " ; that he had " had a very bad throat, and it took me over here, be- PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 216 cause the membrane formed in my throat"; that he had seen mother and that she had come after him; that he had passed out in the winter and remem- bered seeing it snow, and two days later, giving his name and relationship, corrected spontaneously the allusion to typhoid fever, and asked if " scarlet fever was a bad thing to have in the body." My brother Charles died at four and a half years in 1864) of scarlet fever and measles, so diagnosed, with a very putrid sore throat of a diphtheritic char- acter. It was in March and a heavy snow fell on the day before and on the morning of his death, a fact which I remember because I was sent on an errand that morning. My mother died five years after my broth- er Charles. A little while before this series of inci- dents I had asked the " communicator " if he had seen my brother George, thinking to trick the medium into a false statement. The answer was that he had been spoken of before, which was not correct, but near the end of the sitting I was asked what I meant by asking about George, the " communicator saying that he was not there" and that he could not understand why I asked him if he was there, and stated that he was not coming for a while yet. This brother is still liv- ing. The names of Elizabeth and Mary were given, the latter apparently said to be an aunt, and in con- nection with it the name Allen or Ellen, which was possibly an attempt at the name McClellan, which was made clear at a later sitting. This aunt Mary was the mother of the McClellan, deceased, and pos- sibly referred to, and Eliza, not Elizabeth, was the name of my aunt by my mother's side and this McClel- ai6 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE lan's aunt by marriage of his stepmother. The name " Robertson " had no meaning, but its connection with " Ell el " and at a later sitting with the name Eliza clearly given where her husband was apparently communicating, evidently referring to me as " Robert's son," indicates a possible reference to the correct name of my father and my relationship to him. At the second sitting I was at once addressed with " James, James, speak to me," and presently the " communicator " claimed to be my father, though my brother Charles was mentioned again and he re- ferred to the previous " communicator " as father. At the end of the sitting, as Mrs. Piper was coming out of the trance, she gave the surname " Hyslop " and said, " Tell him I am his father." My father had died a little more than two years previous. Dur- ing the sitting the name Eliza was given, that of my aunt who had suddenly lost her husband about three weeks before in the west, and some incidents mentioned in her life with her husband that were characteristic, and an allusion, apparently made by my father, to a dream of this aunt, saying that she had seen him in it. Inquiry proved this to be a fact. The uncle was mentioned, but the mistake in the name spoiled its evidential force. At the third sitting be- gan a series of incidents of considerable value. The first allusion to it was in the statement that, " It was not an hallucination but a reality, but I felt that it would be possible to reach you." A little later in the same sitting he said that he had promised to come ""PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 217 back if possible and let me know that he was not annihilated, adding : " I remember well our talks about this life and its conditions, and there was a great question of doubt as to the possibility of com- munication. That, if I remember rightly, was the one question which we talked over." At the next sit- ting, recurring to the same subject, he asked me: " What do you remember, James, of our talks about Swedenborg? Do you remember of our talking one evening in the library about his description of the Bible? " In a sitting held by Dr, Hodgson in my behalf, while I remained in New York, and recurring to this subject of our conversation again, he said: " Shut out the thought theory and do not let it trouble you," and mentioned Swedenborg again. Later still on the same subject he said: " Do you remember our conversations on this subject? (Yes, I do. Can you tell me when it was?) Yes, do you remember of my last visit . . . your last visit with me? (Yes, I remember it well.) It was more particularly on this occasion than before. (Yes, that is right. Do you know what I was doing just before I made the visit?) Yes, I believe you had been ex- perimenting on the subject, and I remember of your telling me something about hypnotism. (Yes, I re- member that well.) And what did you tell me about some kind of manifestation which you were in doubt about? (It was about apparitions near the point of death.) [Excitement in hand.] Oh, yes, indeed, I recall it very well, and you told me [about] a young woman who had had some experiments and dreams." The next day recurring to the topic again I was 218 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE asked if I remembered what he said when I told him about dreams. The facts were these. About a year before my father's death I was lecturing in Indianapolis on this subject and surprised my father, and paid him my last visit. During the three or four days of that visit we had many hours' talk on the phenomena of psychic research including thought transference, hallucina- tions, apparitions, dreams, hypnotism and an experi- ment that I had performed in connection with a coin- cidental dream by a lady with whom I had also performed some experiments in crystal vision. I ex- plained apparitions on that occasion as possibly only hallucinations, and was exceedingly sceptical about them, though admitting that they might be more. This was the only occasion on which we had any ex- tended conversations on the subject. I tried to hyp- notise my brother at the time, but failed. We talked of Swedenborg in our conversations, but I had com- pletely forgotten it, and had to ascertain its truth from my stepmother, who remembered it well, as she had to ask my father who Swedenborg was after I left. My father was not a spiritualist, in fact, did not know enough to despise it as most people do, and I supposed that he knew nothing of Swedenborg. I had explained the Piper case as presented in the first two reports by thought transference, and hence the pertinence of the exhortation to " shut out the thought theory." His mind recurred to the last scenes of his deathbed and mentioned some of them confusedly, and said that my voice was the last he heard. I was the last to PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 219 speak in that final moment. I asked what medicine I had gotten him in New York, and with some difficul- ty I got the word " Himi." In connection with this he also mentioned strychnine. I had gotten Hyomei for him, the only medicine I ever bought for him. I did not get any strychnine for him. But I ascer- tained from other members of the family that he was taking strychnine with the Hyomei. He mentioned a black skull cap which he finally said had been made for him by " Hettie's mother," Hettie being the name of my half-sister. This was correct. The names of the members of the family were given as they were used in life, and many incidents indicated in connec- tion with them. Thus my sister Lida was mentioned in connection with the organ and the statement made that he, my father, wanted her to sing. My father had bought an organ and wanted my sister by that name to learn to play and sing. In the five sittings held by Dr. Hodgson on my be- half there were a number of articles mentioned which, taken together, have some evidential value, but it was mainly in the last of the five that the most striking incident occurred. I had asked, through Dr. Hodg- son, whether the " communicator " remembered how we used to go to church, and the reply was a reference to the rough roads and country, naming the state of Ohio, in which my home had been. The roads were very rough in winter and there was much difficulty in getting to church, and when I sent this question to Dr. Hodgson by letter I had In mind the very fact of this roughness, but the manner of going to church was not mentioned. A moment after the " communi- 220 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE cator " spontaneously stated that he had had a talk with the principal of the school about George, my brother, and mentioned some anxieties which, he said, he, my aunt Nannie, and myself had shared about him. The incidents were remarkably correct. An al- lusion was made to a hymn, " Nearer, my God, to Thee," with his name attached which I thought was opposed to the supposition of its coming from my father, but inquiry showed that it was a very pertinent allusion. The same is true of a reference to a cane, though it was associated with so much confusion that I could not treat it as evidential, though I am now in- clined to give it more weight than I did when I pub- lished my report. The allusion was to a " stick with the turn in the end, on which I carved my initials." I had given him a curved handled cane a short time before his death, but inquiry showed that he had not carved his initials on any cane. But we children had given him a straight cane in 1876 with his initials cut in the top on a gold plate. The cane was lost soon afterward by his brother-in-law, who gave him a substitute for it in the form of a stout curved handled hickory stick. This he had broken in the course of time and a short time before his death I gave him, at the instigation of my aunt, a curved handled cane with the represen- tation of a " gold bug " on it. This was during the gold campaign in 1896, near the end of which he died. Seeing that the message about the cane was confused I resolved to test the matter indirectly. Hence when I had some personal sittings later I took the oppor- tunity to ask the " communicator " if he remembered PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 221 shaking a walking stick at Robert McClellan in the presidential campaign, and the hand of Mrs. Piper showed considerable excitement, and wrote : " Well I do. I never was more excited in my life. I think I was right too." My cousin Robert McCleUan had visited him on his deathbed and on asking my father how he stood on poHtics, my father simply reached for the " gold bug " cane that I had given him and shook it in the air, not being able to speak above a whisper owing to laryngeal trouble. This much I knew, but I did not know that the occasion was an exciting one to him. I learned from the wife of my cousin, he having died a year later than my father, that my father became so excited on the occasion that they left for fear he would have a spasm of the larynx and die with it. Immediately after the answer to my question I asked who had given him this walking stick and Mrs. Piper's hand stopped writing and tapped me on the temple for some moments and pointing to Dr. Hodgson, who was taking notes, came back and wrote : " You did, and I told him about it." I had given him the cane mentioned, and the reference to the " stick with the turn in the end," had been made six months before, though it evidently did not mean the one I had given him with the " gold bug " on it. I then asked what was on it, and the reply was first apparently to the gold-headed cane, then to the hick- ory cane which had been broken and mended with a tin ring, he said : " I think it had the little ring." This was dissented to and at once the lines were drawn that fairly represented the " gold bug " on the cane that I had given him a short time before his death. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE The incidents were confused, but apparently indicated a reference to all three canes. In one question the " communicator," purporting to be my father, asked " Where is George? ' and said: " I often think of him but I do not worry any more about him," and in a moment came, as if struck by a sudden recollection, " Do you remember Tom, and what has he done with him? I mean the horse." My father had worried about this brother, George, in connection with business matters, and we had an ex- citable horse by the name of Tom that father would not sell because of this temperament and hence pen- sioned him, so to speak, on the farm, and when the horse died my brother George buried him. This last fact I did not know. At one sitting I asked about Robert Cooper, a liv- ing cousin of mine, the object being to test some false statements made about another Cooper referred to by myself at an earlier experiment. The answer came that he intended to mention him, and the demand, " TeU me about the mortgage." This cousin at the time of my father's death had a heavy mortgage on his farm and my father knew nothing about it. But my cousin, Robert McClellan, helped Mr. Cooper out of his difficulty, and a year later died, and was one of the " communicators " at this series of sittings. I also asked about a Harper Crawford, who was an old neighbor of father's, and the reply was a state- ment that he had frequently tried to mention him, and the question whether " they were doing any- thing about the church." I asked what church was referred to, and the reply was that " they have PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 223 put an organ in it." I asked if he meant a certain church, knowing that this Harper Crawford was a member of it, and the reply in italics was: "Yes, I do." I made inquiries in the west and found that an or- gan had been put in this church and that Harper Crawford, being opposed to instrumental music in religious worship, had left the church on account of this act. I did not know this latter fact, and do not recall any knowledge that the organ had been put in the church. A most curious and interesting set of incidents oc- curred in connection with the name of my step- mother, which was Margaret, but always called Mag- gie when living. The first time that any reference was made to her apparently it was given " Mannie," and afterward the name of Nannie came when the message was pertinent to my stepmother. I noticed that when the reference was to my Aunt Nannie, the appendage " aunt " was always there and when the fact was relevant to my stepmother the " aunt " was omitted. I resolved to have the mistake corrected, if the interpretation I had placed upon the case was correct. At a later sitting, therefore, I stated what error had been committed and asked for the correct name. After much confusion and dramatic play during a whole sitting George Pelham took " control " and the matter was explained to him and he said he would get it. Near the close of the sitting he gave Margaret as the name. In the meantime an attempt by my father to explain his confusion resulted in the reference to his mother, whose name was Margaret, 224 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE and his sister, Nannie, with whose name my stepmoth- er's was confused, and to my own mother, whose name was incorrectly given as Mary when it was Martha, as if trying to indicate what he had called my step- mother to distinguish her from the others, having called her Maggie, as I have said, in life. There was a reference to his taxes, which were un- paid at the time of his death, and which I paid after- ward, and I said so when the reference was made. Immediately my father asked if I remembered help- ing him once in the matter of his taxes, and as I did not remember it I had to inquire for the possible meaning of the allusion, and found that I had prob- ably been instrumental in helping him at another time to have his taxes paid, as I found that I had a letter of father's mentioning the taxes and my brother paid them; my recollection that I had written my brother about them not being certain. There were several " communications " from my uncle, who had died a few weeks before my sittings, but his name was not given rightly for three years. I identified the person meant by the name of his wife, which was given several times, and by the relation- ships stated of him and others. The " communica- tion" was so interesting that I shall quote it. The name Lida was mentioned by this uncle, and I asked what relation she was to me. The answer came: " Annie and she are cousins. Lida, aunt. (Yes, which Annie is cousin of her?) There is a sister Annie and a cousin Annie and Aunt Lida. She was an aunt to James Hyslop, if I remember rightly, and there is a sister in the body by that name," and there PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 225 followed by my father, seeing the confusion of my uncle, a relative clause, " which is the one I failed to mention, and I had to come to straighten out Un- cle Clarke's mind, James." The statement " Annie and she are cousins " was a mistake, though it would have been correct if it had been " Nannie and she are cousins." I had a sister Annie, deceased, an Aunt Eliza and a sister Eliza, always called Lida to distinguish her from this Aunt Eliza, and a cousin, Nannie, who was very in- timate with this Aunt Eliza, the wife of the Uncle "communicating." This sister Lida was the only one up to this time that my father had failed to men- tion. A remarkable set of incidents came with reference to another uncle. At one sitting I was asked, in con- nection with the statement "there were two James," if I remembered an uncle. I asked " which uncle James .'* " knowing that both uncles in mind had that name, and the answer was " James Mc." I recog- nised it and a reference to a " Cousin John " was made that confused me, as I recalled no cousin John at the time, and a reference was made to the " commu- nicator's " sister, saying " my sister Ann is here." The uncle in mind and indicated by the name " James Mc." had a sister Ann, of whose death I did not know. But at the sitting a few days later came the follow- ing: "I am here once more. I am James McClel- lan, if you wish to know, and you are my namesake. (Yes, I remember you and that I am your name- sake.) Yes, all right. We cannot quarrel about that, can we, James; but I despised the name Jim." 226 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE Then a reference to the names Frank and John was made, and I asked who this " Cousin John " was, and the reply came : " That was a mistake. He is a brother, and he will be here soon." Then followed the statement that the " communicator's " father was also named John, the name James added to it in the confusion, and the further statement " and he had a brother David, who had a sunstroke." Then was added, " I wanted to speak of Nancy." I had an uncle James McClellan, who died in 1876. I was his namesake, as well also of my grandfather and the author of the Meditations, and I did not know that he despised the name of Jim. One of his living daugh- ters did not remember that he did, but the other, the oldest in the family, remembered it distinctly, and told incidents in which my uncle and aunt tried to get the neighbors to stop calling him " Jim." I had always known him as Uncle Mack, and never knew why, supposing that it was to distinguish him from another uncle whom we called " Uncle Jim." I my- self was called " Jimmle " as a boy, and afterward " Jim " in the family until a year after this uncle's death, when I left college and my father began call- ing me James. I knew this brother, John McClellan, as treasurer of the college where I graduated. He died about nine months after this sitting. My Uncle James McClellan's father was named John, and he had a brother-in-law, not a brother, by the name of David, who, I learned after some months of inquiry and from one of his surviving sons, had had a light sunstroke in 1867. The " communicator's " mother's name was Nancy. PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 227 I learned of the death of this brother John two months after its occurrence, and without telling Dr. Hodgson the fact, asked him at a sitting that he was to have a week or so later to ask my father " if any- thing had happened recently that he wished to tell me," and in a few minutes came the reply that John McClellan had come, and he was said to be the brother of James McClellan. The fact was correct, as the reader will see. There was a large number of minor and less com- plex incidents which cannot be detailed. But I may mention a few of them for their importance. My uncle, James McClellan, in his "communications," just after giving the name of his father as " John James McClellan," it being only John McClellan, said: "I want to tell you about his going to the war, and about one of his fingers being gone before he came here." Inquiry showed that John McClellan, the father of James McClellan, my uncle, had not been in any war and had not lost a finger before he died. But I found that a John McClellan, no relative of mine, but probably a distant relative of my uncle, from another branch of the McClellans, and who lived in the same county, was mentioned in the history of that county as having been commissioned as an ensign in the war of 1812. Earlier in the sittings in connec- tion with the name John and associated with name of my cousin, Robert McClellan, who was a communi- cator, was the name Hathaway and three of the Wil- liams family. I had great difficulty in running down the incidents. But I found finally that this John 228 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE McClellan, who had been the ensign in the war of 1812 had lost a finger there; that he had died some years before I was born, and that Hathaway was the name of his son-in-law's cousin, and this son-in-law's son remembers that the Williamses had been men- tioned in connection with John McClellan, who had lost the finger. He was known prior to his death as " Uncle John McClellan." In the earlier refer- ences to the name " John " there was one by my father in which he was once called " Uncle John," and then a mention of the university where my father had sent me and where I had known the John McClellan who was my uncle's brother, but who was neither mine nor my father's uncle. The old " Uncle John McClellan" had lived near my mother's birth place, and might have been known to her in her early days. My mother's name was given as " Mary Ann Hys- lop," when it should have been " Martha Ann Hys- lop," my cousin Robert McClellan's relationship was correctly given, and he gave several correct rela- tionships to himself and myself, and the name of his wife was given in full, and later the wife's name as- sociated with the Christian name of her sister in the same sentence. The Christian name of his Aunt Ruth was mentioned, though I have no assurance that it was she that was meant, and a reference to a book of poems which apparently referred to a book each chapter of which ended with a poem and that was read to him during his last illness by his sister. The name of a dog owned by his son when a very small child was given and stated to refer to George, which PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. was the name of his oldest son. The dog's name, as given, was Peter. An incident of my brother's should be mentioned. He, Charles, purporting to communicate, and in con- nection with the mention of the name John, which in connection with Charles' name, had no meaning to me, said : " Ask him what happened to the chimney after I left. Wasn't it taken down? I heard father talk- ing to mother about it some time ago. I mean the chimney, James." There was an especially tall and ungainly chim- ney on our kitchen at the old home in Ohio, and it had to be built to prevent the wind from coming over the house to drive the smoke into the kitchen. The chimney was built in 1861, three years before my brother's death. It was blown down by a cyclone in 1884, twenty years after his death, so that his " hear- ing father talking about it" is the most natural ex- pression imaginable as the source of his informa- tion. The same " communicator " remarked that he did not remember Hettle and spoke of her as half- sister, after first speaking of her as stepsister and then correcting it. He had previously referred to her as his " new sister Hettie." She was born ten years after his death. There are many such interesting incidents, but these as published in my report are sufficient to show the complexity of the phenomena and their signifi- cance for the existence of the supernormal. I must take up incidents that have not been published, and which, in some respect, are better than any I have mentioned. 230 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LEFE 2. Incidents Not Previously/ Published At my first sitting after that of June 8th, 1899, and held February 5th, 1900, I alluded to some things which had been said in previous sittings and which I could not verify. The name Baker had wrongly been connected with my aunt in connection with an incident which was substantially true on her own admission, and I resolved to test my father on this occasion by mentioning the name of the young man concerned. I did so, and asked my father if he remembered Steele Perry, and he recognised the name and said the family had moved west, a fact which I did not know and had to ascertain from an aunt. It occurred probably earlier than 1860. I had put a question at an earlier sitting to know of what my uncle had died, and did not get any correct reply. Here at this sitting there was the question asked me by the " communicator " : " What was the trouble with the foot, and was it the foot or ankle ? " I asked if my uncle's foot was meant, and the reply was an assent. The uncle in question had died from the effects of an operation made nec- essary by being run over at the ankle by a car, and this intimation of the " trouble with the foot or an- kle " here was associated with my statement to the " communicator " that he might take the organ inci- dent (p. 222) off his mind. Now this uncle had left the same church for the same reason that Harper Crawford had left it, namely, because he was opposed to instrumental music in religious worship. There PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 231 was, during these three sittings, a great effort to get this uncle's name correctly, but it failed. There was apparently an allusion to a picture of my brother, Charles, which I have and very clearly a mention of the sword which my father had as Quar- termaster somewhere about 184<5 and which he said was kept at a certain place in the house, specifying this almost correctly. The sword disappeared be- fore I was old enough to remember it. He mentioned my stepmother and said she had rheumatism at the time, and inquiry showed she was suffering from neu- ralgia. I did not know the fact. I also got the full name of the man who was called David in connection with the sunstroke incident (p. 226). It was David Elder. At another time he referred to disturbances in my stepmother's home with some specificness and inquiry showed that the statements were correct. Later again he said my stepmother had had a fall, and on inquiry I found this to have been true and did not know the fact until thus told of it through Mrs. Piper. Again he said she had trouble with her back and was quite lame a few days. This turned out to be true and unknown to me. An allusion to hearing me talk with my brother George about his moving was true and known only to me and my brother. A most interesting incident occurred at a sitting when I was not present. Dr. Hodgson received a message purporting to come from my father in which he said: " What do they say about Maggie? " and Dr. Hodgson replied : " I do not know." My father then went on to say : " She has been upsetting SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE things a good deal at home, getting ready, I think, for Hettie's return." A letter written by my mother on the same date of the sitting and in Indiana said that they were busy getting ready to leave Portland for the summer, my stepmother going to Iowa and my sister Hettie to Ohio, It was the intention to return in the fall in time for the school which my sister was teaching. One of the most important and most interesting set of incidents is connected with the " communications " of my father and my uncle, his brother-in-law. In my published record this uncle never got his name through correctly and my father was no more success- ful in giving it. My uncle was so confused in his "communications " that apparently he gave up fur- ther attempts, and as the sequel shows, apparently delegated my father to mention an important inci- dent for him, which he knew would prove his identity to me and his living wife. At my sitting of June 6th, 1899, (published report) I had asked my father to tell me some incidents which had happened before I was born and that my two aunts would know. He went away to think them over and on his return men- tioned several which were all unverifiable, except the allusion to Jerry, the orphan boy who had been in the family, and in connection with one of the inci- dents connected with my Aunt Eliza, said : " I have something better. Ask her if she recalls the evening when we broke the wheel to our wagon, and who tried to cover it up, so it would not leak out, so to speak. I remember it as if it happened yesterday." I in- quired of this aunt and she emphatically denied that PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. any such incident had ever occurred in her life in con- nection with my father or any one else. On February 5th, 1900, after a spontaneous ref- erence to my Aunt Eliza and some pertinent conver- sation about her, my father said again sponta- neously : " What I would now ask is that Eliza should recall the drive home and ^let me see a moment 1 am sure, but it was one of the shafts, but the wagon broke, some part of it, and we tied it with a cord. I remember this very well." Inquiry showed the incident false in relation to my aunt men- tioned in the message. She said that no such inci- dent had ever occurred in their lives. My uncle did not try to communicate personally after this date until June 2nd, 1902. I then asked him if he remembered what we did just after father passed out, and the reply came : " You are thinking of that ride. I guess I do not forget it." But he became too confused to continue, and the next day when he appeared I put the question about the ride just after father passed out. After saying: " Your father told you before but had it on his mind Eliza," he referred immediately to a ride that we had taken to father's grave to see a grave-stone that I had ordered placed there. This was correct, but was not the incident that I had in mind. From my attitude on one of the incidents mentioned in this connection he apparently came to the conclusion that we were not thinking of the same things, and said: " I think we are thinking of different things. Let me think. You don't mean the Sunday after- noon, do you? " I replied that I did. Immediately 234 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE he mentioned that we had a breakdown ; that we broke the shaft ; that we mended it with a piece of harness ; that the horse was a red one; that we got home late in the evening, and that it was a dog that frightened the horse. There were a number of slight errors in the messages. The thing that frightened the horse was a negro boy with a goat and wagon. The facts were these: My father died on Satur- day at my uncle's home. The next morning, Sun- day, a telegram arrived which we had to deliver at once and we hastened to deliver it in the country with a buggy and horse. On the road side we met a negro boy with a goat and wagon which frightened the horse and it shied, overturning the buggy, dragging it over us and injuring both of us rather badly, broke the shaft, which we had to mend with a string or piece of the harness, and we arrived home late in the evening, having promised each other that we should say nothing about it so that it would " not leak out, so to speak." But we were so badly hurt that we could not conceal it longer than the next morning. But the most interesting incident of the whole series of " communications " is the spontaneous cor- rection of what my father had said, and the supposi- tion on his part that I was asking for an incident of which I was, in fact, not thinking at all and which I would not have recalled but for his reference to it, namely, the drive to father's grave-stone. The reader will see that my father had confused the inci- dent with my aunt Eliza, to whom it was indeed rele- vant, but not as an experience of hers with my father. But the most important incidents of an evidential PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 235 character are several connected with Mrs. Piper's trances and two other mediums with whom I have ex- perimented. This relation of the facts makes it nec- essary to mention them in connection with a summary of the Piper experiments. They involve obtaining the same messages through two other mediums and Mrs. Piper. At the sitting of February 7th, 1900, after an al- lusion by my father to some attempts which I had made, not mentioned at any of my sittings, to have " conununications " through other mediums, and es- pecially one that was fraudulent, my father gave me a pass sentence in a language which Mrs. Piper does not know and by which I was to recognize my father in future experiments with other mediums. This pass sentence is known only to Dr. Hodgson and my- self and would have been unknown to him if he had not been the note-taker on the occasion. Early in 1901 I discovered a lady, the wife of an orthodox clergyman, who seemed to have some mediumistic power, and I resolved to test the case. I had her come to New York for sittings to be held simulta- neously with some of Mrs. Piper's, with a view of com- municating between New York and Boston, if that were possible. They began on March 12th, 1901. The attempts to communicate with Boston were fail- ures, but on March 15th my father's name was given and the first word of his pass sentence was given, probably the second word, but certainly not the rest of it. His name, of course, was known to the lady, but the pass sentence was not. Through the husband of this lady I had learned 236 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE of another lady who appeared to have mediumistic powers. She was not a professional medium, never had been, took no pay for what she did, sat only for a few friends occasionally, earned her own living, and had no theories of her powers. I wrote to the clergy- man to arrange with this lady, whom I shall call Miss X., a sitting at which I was to be known under an assumed name. He arranged it for May 31st, 1902, under the pseudonym of Robert Brown, of Nebraska. I have to assmne, of course, that she might have seen my picture in the papers and could have recognized me on my admission to the house. The fact was that she did not know me until my name and title were given in the automatic writing, and she would not have known it then had it not been for the fact that she did not go into a trance, but did the auto- matic writing in her normally conscious state. I had evidence of her irreproachable character before I sought the sitting, and from the nature of the results I would not have cared what her character was. Some of the, facts were beyond the possibility of fraud, as the reader will see from my remarks on them. Their articulation with what occurred thirty- six hours later at a sitting with Mrs. Piper will con- jSrm the case's exemption from suspicion. But I am less interested in proving this exemption than I am the fact that I have been alert to the kind of objection which has to be considered in first experiments of this kind. The reader will simply have to take for granted that I was careful on this point. On my introduction under the name of Robert Brown we sat down to experiment, I supplying the PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 237 pad and pencil. Miss X., as said above, did not go into a trance. The first words written were: " Why, James." Astonished at the promptness with which this correct hit at my name occurred, I asked, " Who says that? " and received the two Christian names and initial of the surname of my wife who had died eight months before, the middle Christian name being very unusual. This was given with a little diffi- culty and confusion, as in the Piper case, and imme- diately afterward I was spontaneously greeted with the statement : " Well, now, my dear, there is a Rob- ert himself, but not your new self, your father." I at once asked that his full name be given, and received the reply : " I doubt if he can write. The last name begins with H., as my and yours do." This discovery of my pseudonym and the indica- tion of the correct Christian name and initial of the surname of my father was certainly interesting, and the fact that the lady was not in a trance, as Mrs. Piper is, suggests why he did not write in this case. Almost immediately after this and apparently with the feeling that nothing more evidential was required came the statements : " I wish to talk. You have the proof now and I want to speak of your health. I am somewhat re- lieved regarding an anxiety which held me during the past four months. You are improved. That constant irritation of the throat is becoming less and less." Nearly a year previous I had broken down with nervous prostration and tuberculosis, with stomach complications, and during the previous nine months SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE I had recovered from the trouble, with a gain of fifty pounds, to the extent that I was pronounced cured. But three months, not four, previously I had been seized with an irritation in the throat which I feared was a threat of laryngeal attack, but by the date of this sitting the irritation had disappeared. Only one other person in the world, my wife's cousin, who spent a month with me in the mountains, had been told of the fact at the time, and even this cousin had not been told of the improvement three months later, so that the fact was known only to myself. The state- ments are not evidence of spirit agency, but they are evidence, so far as they go, of the supernormal and 1 are distinctly against fraud. ; Then followed this pas- sage: " Your name is not Robert. It is James. Isn't it James H.? Well, wait a little. We don't want too much flutter here. " (You know why I want full details.) Ah, but you have had these, now let me talk. Don't ask for more proof. (I have not had them from you.) I doubt if I can give you the one thing you most desire this moment. (What do I desire this moment?) [I was not conscious of any particular desire at the time. I was certainly not thinking of what was re- ferred to in the reply.] The sign, well not exactly pass word, but the test. If you will keep motionless I can be able to give even that." [Here Miss X. remarked that she felt as if she were going to sleep and that she was afraid she might go into some state which she did not like. She went PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 239 to the window to throw off the tendency, and resumed the writing on her return.] " Well, we are doing well. Let us go on. I shall not be able to give that and much else without the co- operation of the messenger. Let us not ask too much, James. You have had other cases when you least expected it. (Is this father talking?) No, Mary." Mary was the first Christian name of my wife. The denial that my name was " Robert " and the afiSrmation that it was " James H." were correct, as the reader will see. My wife knew that I had re- ceived detailed evidence at sittings with Mrs. Piper before her death. In fact my report was written at the time of her death. The reference to the " sign, well not exactly pass word, but the test " is surpris- ingly accurate. It is not a pass word, but a pass sentence, and hence a " sign " or " test." The ap- parent tendency of Miss X. here to go into a trance in this connection is a most suggestive incident, as that is the condition in which I would most naturally expect the pass sentence to be given. Still more sug- gestive is the reference to the " co-operation of the messenger," as the " controls " in the Piper case call themselves the " messengers " and claim that they have to " co-operate " with communicators in that case in order to effect the delivery of messages. Miss X. did not know this fact, and, of course, knew noth- ing of my expectation of a pass sentence. In one message I was referred to as " Prof." and in response to the question where we had met, the an- MO SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE swer was " not where we lived," which was correct, though perhaps not significant, and in reply to the question where we had Uved I got the answer : " The river of the beautiful scenery, H. river," and then came the last letter of the name, " n " and then " d and s," said to be the middle letters. It was apparent that the " Hudson River " was meant, and this was correct, my wife being very fond of its scenery. I asked the " communicator " " What did you like most in life? " and received the reply: " I was fond of music for one thing, but you have in mind some other recreation or amusement." My wife was very fond of music, studied it for five years, and taught it in a western college. I was thinking of music when I asked the question, but not of what was apparently meant in the next statement. My wife was as fond of neat housekeeping as she was of music, and I used to tease her in life by saying that when she would get to heaven her occupation would be to play the piano and scrub the floor. Apparently prompted by the " subliminal " con- sciousness of Miss X., through which I had to get the " communications," I asked the " communicator " what had been the color of her eyes. With a little confusion I got the answer " They were grey on blue." This was correct, as my wife had greyish blue eyes and I asked what she used to say was the color of mine. The reply was " I can't tell. I know though," and a correct statement about her hair and disposition immediately followed. A number of other quite pertinent " communica- PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 241 tions " came, which I shall not mention, but the one which was the most important for later incidents was this about the color of my wife's eyes. I have placed it last for the sake of this emphasis. As I have said above, this was on Saturday night, May 31st, and I was to have sittings the next Monday and the two following days, June 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, with Mrs. Piper. I locked up my report of Miss X.'s sitting, said nothing about it to any one, and went to Mrs. Piper the next Monday without any one knowing what I had been doing. Near the close of this first sitting and without any previous allusion to her presence her name was given as " Mamie Hyslop " ; as soon as given I recog- nised it, and the following colloquy through Mrs. Piper's hand took place : "(Have you tried to communicate with me before?) Again and again. (Did you get anything through to me?) I tried to say I am still with you. (Well, when was it that you tried?) Only a day ago. (That is right. Do you remember any question that I asked you?) Not at the moment, only that you asked me to meet you here. (All right.) I heard you ask this but not as you speak now. (Do you re- member saying anything about your eyes?) Oh, Yes. (Well?) I said they were open and I could see clearly now. (Well, I meant the color of ) Yes, I Do not say anything more. I will re- call. I tried to say it Do not say anything more. I found the light open. Oh, I hear. I said B Grey. (Right, One word more.) Blue 242 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE I started to say blue first, then I happened to think that the first word was grey and the second blue. You said something about hair," I have two other records besides that of Miss X. in which there is fair reason to suppose that my wife had tried to " communicate." The rest of the story is apparent to the reader of the sitting with Miss X., as here described, except the statement that I had asked her to meet me at the Piper case and that I did not " speak " it as I did here. This last is true, however, but does not stand in my written record. I wrote down only what I had spoken orally. But I had over and over again said mentally, or made the mental suggestion, " meet me at the Piper case." Here the fact is indicated, and the distinction drawn between my modes of " communicating " with her in the two cases. In the Piper case we always speak aloud to the hand. I had spoken aloud in the case of the sitting with Miss X. except in this mental sug- gestion. All the other statements in the passage quoted from the record of Mrs. Piper explain them- selves as true, and it was interesting to remark the correction of the order in which " grey " and " blue " had been given. I followed up the " communication " just quoted with the same question that I had asked on Saturday night previous after receiving the message " grey on blue," as follows: (" What did you use to say about the color of my eyes?) your eyes. (Yes.) like do you remember the joke about them.'' (Yes.)" What she used to say about the color of my eyes was her joke about them, but with this reference to the PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 243 matter the sitting came to an end and the " communi- cator " could not complete the answer to my question until the next day when she returned to it at once on Mrs. Piper's going into the trance, and succeeded after much difficulty and confusion in getting " green- ish grey green." My wife used to say that the color of my eyes was " grizzly gray green," resorting to this alliteration to indulge teasing. My wife mentioned a picture of herself with a wide collar and "clasp," a name she had always given to a certain type of breastpin, saying that the picture was in a little frame ; I found this picture in Philadel- phia in a closet drawer, the only one with a "clasp" among many taken each year since her childhood. The statement that it was in a frame was false, as it was in an album. I was asked by her if I remembered " Scott," which was the name of a lady friend she and I met in Germany and with whom we had many walks, but who went to India and we after- ward had no communications with her. But one of the most interesting incidents was her statement that we had paid my father a visit in the west; that we had taken a drive in the country on that occasion ; that it rained, and that I had pulled my coat collar up over my neck, and that I had taken her " to the school house." Every incident of this is true. A year after our marriage we visited my father in the west and he took us out for a drive in the Wabash valley, and a thunderstorm came up and as I was in the front of the carriage and driving I had to pull up my coat collar to save my shirt and collar, which I failed to do and was laughed at for it. 2M SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE There were a number of other incidents of equal evidential value, but I have given an adequate account of the record and shall turn from it to the discussion of theories. The less complex incidents, although evidential to a high degree, would take more time to explain than it is prudent to take here. The sum- maries which I have given at such length suffice to indicate the problem before the scientific man in pre- senting an explanation. CHAPTER IX THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS I have carefully refrained from the explanation of the facts which have been summarised in the previous three chapters, as I was not there interested in any- thing more than the supernormal character of the phenomena, which will be admitted by every intelli- gent person who admits that fraud of any and all kinds has been excluded from the case. What the specific explanation is or may be is now to be the subject of consideration. The theories which the psy- chologist has to keep in mind when trying to explain all such phenomena purporting to be supernormal, and some of them claiming a source in the agency of discarnate spirits, are chance coincidence, guessing, suggestion by experimenters, fraud, telepathy, and discarnate spirits. Every intelligent reader of the records, of which I have given samples, will perceive without my intimation that chance coincidence, guess- ing, and suggestion by experimenters will not account for such facts, collectively considered, as I have quoted. Some occasional incidents In the records can probably be so accounted for, and these have not been given any important place In the problem or in this discussion. But since these assumed explanations can- not apply to the whole system of facts we are forced to some other theory to account for them, and hence we are reduced to the last three hypotheses for our 245 246 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE alternatives. The reason that there can be no more alternatives is the fact that the current conception and use of the term " telepathy " is so comprehensive in its scope of supposed action that it can mean any supernormal act whatever that is not spirits and not ordinary conscious fraud. Otherwise we might say that some way of escaping the choice between the three theories mentioned might be discovered. But the fact that some critics of the spiritistic theory, who have given up fraud, assume that " telepathy " is convertible with supernormal information represent- ing the knowledge of any living person whatever, shutting out all evidence of spirits except what living persons do not know (!) is indication that we are limited to the three alternatives in the explanation of the phenomena. These I may state for clearness to be (1) Fraud; (2) Telepathy; and (3) Spirits. I ex- clude secondary personality from consideration be- cause it does not, in any recognized form of it, include any supernormal phenomena. I shall not underestimate the importance of elimi- nating fraud from the consideration of such phenom- ena as I am discussing. Indeed, taking the subject of psychic research generally and especially medium- istic phenomena in general, as they are popularly known, I think that the hypothesis of fraud is a stronger competitor of spiritism than telepathy. The reasons for this judgment will be seen a little later. For the present I must only say that I think fraud is a much more relevant supposition than telepathy when we consider the type of facts purporting to represent spirits. Throwing aside " materialisation " and slate THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 247 writing performances, as wholly worthless in any such conditions as they are usually described, and taking the detective type of fraud, it always has this merit and intelligibility, that it represents a fairly clear conception of personal identity. That is, the person to whom the facts are relevant is recognisable from the nature of those facts, and without regard to the process by which they are obtained they sug- gest the person concerned. Names, scars on the per- son, familiar expressions, and the thousand little in- cidents which we should rely upon in normal and honest conditions for testing the truthfulness of the incidents and their pertinence are what frauds em- ploy, and there is usually no mistaking the persons to whom they refer, and hence they prove personal identity. But it requires much more to prove the supernormal acquisition of the information. There is nothing in telepathy, so far as we at present know it scientifically, to show that its acquisition of knowl- edge simulates the personal identity of any one, living or dead. But fraud can do this to great perfection, and hence fraud is the most natural competitor of the spiritistic hypothesis. In the phenomena, however, which I have sum- marised in this book and in the cases concerned, I do not propose to discuss the hypothesis of fraud. I consider that it has been excluded from consideration as long ago as 1889, and I think that every intelli- gent person who examines the facts carefully and in their details will not be willing to accept the respon- sibility which his theory of fraud will impose upon him for its assertion. Enough has been said upon 248 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE this to make it unnecessary to discuss it here, and hence I shall refuse to say anything more about it. I therefore limit the consideration of the problem to the hypotheses of telepathy and spiritism. To state the issue clearly as I understand it, I do not yet admit that telepathy applies to the Piper and similar cases. Whatever theory is true, I do not yet accept the telepathic explanation of the phenomena. The objections to telepathy in general are the fol- lowing : First, telepathy is not yet so assured an explanation of any facts in the scientific world as is desirable for making it a solvent for such facts as I have quoted in previous chapters. The scientific world generally has not accepted it with any assurance as yet, and even where it is accepted there is no knowledge what- ever of its laws and conditions. The scientific man will insist that these laws and conditions must be definitely ascertained before applying the hypothesis upon any large scale. It seems to me that there is possibly evidence for sporadic telepathy, and hence I am in a position to admit the possibility of objec- tions to the spiritistic interpretation of the phenom- ena. But the man who does not admit telepathy at least has no way of evading the spiritistic hypothesis. If he accepts it, he must have some clear idea of its laws and conditions before he is even then permitted to apply it to phenomena like those of Mrs. Piper. He may do it for the sake of suspending his judg- ment until he can understand and remove objections to alternative hypotheses, but as anything more than a politic device for exercising caution it cannot be THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 249 justified in so wide an application as is generally made, until its laws and conditions have been deter- mined, and there is not even an approximation to this at present. But suppose that telepathy has been proved to be a fact, it must be remembered that the conditions under which it has any claim at all to scientific rec- .ognition represent the agent as thinking of the fact transmitted at the time that the percipient obtains it. That is, telepathy as a necessary supposition, if neces- sary at all, is limited to the present active mental states of the communicator. To put it plainly, telep- athy, so far as it is scientifically supported, represents what the person communicating is thinking about at the time that the thought is received by another, and any other form of telepathy has not yet received suf- ficient scientific credentials to be assured of its ex- tension beyond what I have said. It may be capable of doing all that is claimed for it, but this claim has not yet been adequately proved. There are facts that suggest this larger telepathy, but the scientific man will be as cautious in accepting this extension of it as he is in accepting it in any form. Until he obtains evidence of its extension beyond the present active mental states of the agent or communicator, he will not readily admit its application to such phenomena as a whole, as I have mentioned in previous chapters. Another limitation of it is important. It has been referred to before. I mean its meaning as a con- ception. This is that the term means, in the light of the experiments that are supposed to justify it at least as a working hypothesis, nothing more than the 260 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE existence of some cause for coincidences in the thoughts of two persons that cannot be due to chance. It is not an explanation of anything. It is not a name for a cause of the coincidence, but a name for a nexus that demands a cause. We often speak and think of it as meaning or implying a direct trans- mission of thought from one living person to another in some supernormal manner, and we are led to this conception of it by the perpetual assumption that it excludes a spiritistic influence. But the fact is that we know nothing whatever about the process of super- normal communication from mind to mind. It may be a direct transmission of thought by some process not yet known and not involving the intermediation of spirits. It may be by some process of vibration set up in the ether between mind and mind, that is living minds. It may be by spiritistic mediation in which a spirit gets the thought in some unknown way from one living person and carries it to another. It may be by ethereal vibrations set a-going by a thinker and perceived and interpreted by a spirit and then com- municated by a similar process through the ether to another living mind. I do not know which of these it may be, or whether it is any other. I know of no reasons to justify the supposition that our thoughts affect the ether in any way, or produce vibrations anywhere in the material universe. But all these may be possible, so far as I know. But there are none of them sufficiently known to assure ourselves that telepathy excludes the operation of spirits in all cases. If we assume that it is some direct process between living minds without the intermediation of outside THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 251 agencies it of course limits the nature of the evidence that may be accepted as proof of spiritistic influence, but it does not exclude the possibility of that agency. And if telepathy be limited, as the scientific evidence at its best does limit it, to the present active states of the agent's mind living, we still have no adequate reasons for supposing that it can explain facts not so thought of at the time. If we knew the process involved, we might employ the hypothesis more con- fidently to qualify or deny spiritistic reality. But not knowing this process we can only maintain our suspense of judgment, not disqualify the spiritistic theory when we are dealing with personal identity and the memories of sitters at such experiments as have been quoted. But a stUl more important limitation of the telep- athic hypothesis is to be found in its entire consistency with that of spirits. No matter what the process involved in the transmission of thought from one liv- ing mind to another, the fact does not exclude the possibility that telepathy may be the very process by which the discarnate, if it exists, communicates with the living. If thought produces vibration in the ether or other media between mind and mind, whether living or deceased, it will only be a question of the kind of facts supernormally obtained to settle wheth- er the telepathy is between living minds only or be- tween the living and the dead. But suppose that we do not know whether there is any undulatory ac- tion in media involved in the process, or that we know that no such process exists, still the fact that telepa- thy, when accepted as a fact, means that mind can 252 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE communicate to other minds in supernormal ways, it is again only a question of the kind of evidence to determine whether a discarnate consciousness may not also, if it exists, communicate by this telepa- thy to living minds, and prove its identity. If a living mind can transfer its thoughts to another living mind without the use of physical means or of sensory impressions a discarnate mind might do the same, and it is only a question of the evidence and the kind of facts obtained to decide whether this source is not the real one. Thus it appears that telepathy, so far from being an objection to the spirit- istic hypothesis, might represent the means by which spirit communication should be effected. Of course the existence of telepathy as a mode of communica- tion between living minds would increase the need of caution in accepting the real or alleged fact of dis- carnate spirits as communicating with the living, sup- posing them to exist, and so would serve as an evi- dential difficulty in the credibility of the existence of spirits, and would thus make it harder to prove the existence of the discarnate, but it would not imply either the impossibility or incredibility of such com- munication. On the contrary, it would rather strengthen the possibility of it. It might be the very means of proving the condition of securing the evi- dence. I do not say that it is such a condition, as we know too little about it to justify any assurance on that point. But if supersensible communications can take place between the living, the fact shows that the acquisition of knowledge is not always an ordinary physical affair, and it would be only a question of THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 253 evidence to determine whether the supersensible phe- nomena were from supersensible beings that once ex- isted in bodily form. If the evidence is of that kind which unmistakably points to the person represented, and if telepathy does not in any of its ordinary mani- festations show that it represents the personal identity of living persons, we cannot well escape belief in spirits, unless we suppose that subconscious actions are rather fiendish in their simulation of spirits after acquiring the information that so evidently points to the persons represented. The psychological compli- cations involved in a telepathic hypothesis that com- pletely simulates spirits must make any man pause when trying to estimate the nature of unconscious mental action. It would have to be regarded as su- premely devilish in its character, as we shall see a little later when the range of such telepathy is examined. It win be important to see just what we have to conceive in the kind of telepathy that it is necessary to assume when we are discrediting the explanation by spirits of such phenomena as I have summarised. Telepathy as we know it, if we know it scientifically at all, is generally and perhaps always limited, in its access to other men's minds, to the present mental states. This is all that we have even ostensibly as- sured evidence for. But such telepathy does not even approximate an explanation of the Piper and similar cases. Prof. Stout, of St. Andrew's University, Scot- land, speaking of Mr. F. W. H. Myers' work on Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, says : " I agree with Mr. Myers that there Is no suffi- cient reason for being peculiarly sceptical concerning 254. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE communications from departed spirits. I also agree with him that the alleged cases of such communication cannot be with any approach to a probability ex- plained away as mere instances of telepathy." There is no sort of coincidental relation in most of the inci- dents between what the sitter is consciously thinking of in the Piper and similar cases, and what is said or written by the medium. The most of the incidents told are not in the sitter's conscious thought and many have never been there at all, and I have purposely narrated a number of incidents that prove this. Hence telepathy as represented by such phenomena as are supposed to prove it is not at all adequate to explain such incidents as are not in the conscious men- tal action of the sitter. The conception of telepathy will have to be made to include the capacity of the medium to acquire facts from the memory of the sitter, or what some call the subliminal con- dition of the mind. Some would say the " sub- jective mind," but this is a misnomer, as it im- plies things not implied by the terms memory and subliminal. But no explanation o^ the Piper and similar cases is possible which does not at least suppose the acquisition of knowledge from the memory of sitters, if the spiritistic theory is to be rejected. Per- haps the majority of the facts represent incidents known to the sitter at some time, but not in his con- scious state at the time of the sitting. But there is as yet no adequate scientific evidence of any such telepathy. It is true that, in the Piper case, and perhaps others, there are incidents that suggest such a possibility, but they are far from proving it. They THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS g55 are such incidents as occurred at Dr. Hodgson's sit- tings in which the memories instead of the present mental states of the Howards were obtained (p. 197), and the same with Mrs. Holmes (p. 182). They are types of occasional phenomena. But it should be re- membered that in the former case George Pelham had already done much to prove his personal identity before he attempted to ascertain the thoughts and actions of persons living, so that this supposed ex- tension of telepathy involves a relation to a possible spirit agency as its means. The only thing that suggests an explanation other than spirits is the fact that the incidents are not relevant to the personal identity of deceased persons, while they might be relevant to the proof of their powers if their existence is once proved or assumed. But no telepathy that does not go as far as the acquisition of knowledge from the memories of sitters will explain the phenomena, and there is no such scientific evidence for this kind of telepathy as there is for the transmission of present mental states. But let us grant that telepathy can reach the mem- ories of sitters, that it can have access to the sub- liminal states of the mind as well as the present active states of consciousness of sitters. Yet even this telepathy will not approximate an explanation of the phenomena. No telepathy which does not extend in some way to all living minds and memories can even approach an explanation of such cases. So far as I know such a telepathy may be possible, but there is no adequate scientific evidence for it. I do not know even one iota of evidence for It that can be 256 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE scientifically accepted. Moreover it represents a process far more incredible than spirits, and no intel- ligent man will resort to the belief of it in any haste. Only a superstitious prejudice against the possibility of spirits will induce a man to betray such credulity as the acceptance of such a universal telepathy. A man that can believe it in the present state of human knowledge can believe anything, and ought to be tolerant of those who have a lurking suspicion that there might be such a thing as a discarnate spirit. I do not yet believe there is any such telepathy, and I am certain that there is no adequate scientific evidence for it. But I shall treat any evidence for it respect- fully, and when it is proved I will frankly admit the difficulties which it would propose for a spiritistic theory. I shall exact, however, of its claimants as much specific evidence as now exists for the possibility of discarnate spirits. I have seen the hypothesis proposed that Mrs. Piper's subliminal condition is the recipient of all the mental states of living people and their memories, these being acquired by telepathy going on all the time, but not revealed in her normal life, and that she has only to go into a trance that her subliminal action may select the proper facts and palm them off for communication with spirits. This hypothesis is at least as large as the spiritistic, and it is so wholly lacking in evidence and conceivability that I shall not treat it seriously in the light of the mistakes occurring in mediumistic phenomena until it presents some cre- dentials that will save it from ridicule. I shall not make any assertions about impossibilities, but I may THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 257 preserve my sanity if I am not more credulous in re- gard to this than I might be about discarnate spirits, who would be as respectable realities as this kind of telepathy and fiendish representation. I come now to more specific objections to the telep- athic hypothesis as an explanation of the phenomena under discussion. The general difficulties of it show that it has at least to be as large as the spiritistic, or even larger, in order to be a competitor, and also in every form as incapable of denying the applicability of spirits to the phenomena as equally relevant to the facts, if they are not proved by them. But there are certain specific objections drawn from the records of such phenomena that are very important to keep in mind. The first of these is the selectweness of the process involved in the phenomena presented. If telepathy between the living is the explanation of them it has to possess the same selectiveness, and in fact a far larger selectiveness in securing the facts than any selectiveness supposed of discarnate spirits. What is noticeable in the facts presented is their definite relev- ancy to the proof of the personal identity of the de- ceased. Whether the deceased continue to exist or not, there can be no doubt as to who is meant by the facts, and if telepathy acquires them it certainly has an amazing power to select the right ones from the memories of sitters and other living persons at a distance. Experimental and spontaneous telepathy show no trace of any such power. Their sole analogy is in the phenomena of mechanics, which represents an 258 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE action as producing its immediate effect in definite coincidence or sequence. Mechanical agents do not select facts with reference to chooseable or rejectable ends. They act with reference to prearranged condi- tions. Wireless telegraphy does not represent the coherer as selecting messages from the multitude of vibrations about it, but as attuned to a specific type of them at any point of space in which it may be placed. The messages sent out from the originating station ramify through all space and wherever the coherer is placed it gets them when it is properly adjusted to that form of vibration, and does not select from the multitude. It is not a self-adjusting instrument, but a passive instrument subject to great limitations. But a still more important limitation to the anal- ogy exists. The coherer does not respond to messages sent out last week, the last year, or the last half cen- tury. It is sensitive only to messages that are prac- tically simultaneous with its own recipiency, allowing only for the velocity of the transmission. Nor will the analogy of light from distant stars be reasonably accessible here to illustrate the assumed selectiveness of telepathy, as the reader may determine for himself by a careful study of the facts as a whole. Hence in two respects the analogy of wireless telegraphy wholly fails to make the phenomena intelligible by telepathy. They are first the elasticity of attunement assumed in mediumistic phenomena and the absence of selectiveness in wireless telegraphy. The only point in which the two processes resemble each other is in the absence of ordinary physical media for their trans- mission. THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 259 The incidents quoted in the reports show, super- ficially at least, just that selectiveness which we should expect of memory and association trying to prove personal identity, even though they are forced to act in an abnormal mental condition on the part of both the medium and the discarnate communicator. The phenomena look like mental phenomena and represent them in a selective form quite at variance with any- thing that we know in telepathy as proved or sup- posed. A second objection to telepathy in the case is the inconsistency between the mistakes and errors of fact in the " communications " and the enormous powers which have to be attributed to it in order to explain the correct facts. Any process which is supposed to have ready access to all living memories and distin- guishes with apparent infallibility between the rele- vant and the irrelevant facts for illustrating the per- sonal identity of the dead ; any process which ignores the personalities of the living and confines its acquisi- tions to the facts which represent only the personali- ties of the dead, is a process which is not lightly to be treated as telepathy, and it ought not naturally to be supposed guilty of the absurd mistakes and confusions which the record shows. Apparently omniscient dis- crimination between the facts pertinent to living per- sonalities and those pertinent to deceased personali- ties, with evidence of the most amazing limitations and ignorance within the territory of facts pertaining to the dead and circumscribed for selection from them, is not easily explicable by telepathy. The assump- tion simultaneously of limited and unlimited powers 260 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE is not to be made hastily. We would expect such limitations of discarnate spirits, but hardly of a telep- athy which is apparently omniscient and unlimited in its powers. A third objection to the telepathic explanation is its limitation to trivial matters. This is usually the great objection to the spiritistic theory, and I shall not defend its consistency with that hypothesis. But I must insist that the triviality of the facts is abso- lutely incompatible with the assumption of the enor- mous powers of access to living memories which the advocate of telepathy makes and must make. If the medium can reach out into the whole world of living consciousness and memory and select from this infinite mass of experiences just the right ones to represent the personality of the deceased it ought to get with ease all the important and elevated features of those personalities, and not limit its access to the trivial. Personal characteristics ought to be produced in their perfection, and the moral, religious, or irreligious, political, literary, philosophical characteristics of any one ought to be producible at will, instead of this dis- torted and confused mass of trivial incidents which we find. The objection from triviality may be fatal to spiritistic theories, if you like, but it is far more fatal to the telepathic hypothesis, because it has to be assumed to be so large to explain the facts we get and to discriminate between the relevant and the irrel- evant, that there is no excuse of a rational sort for its limitations to trivial matters, while we might well imagine the discarnate as so limited when we have to start with their finitude at the outset and especially if THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 261 they have to communicate under all sorts of difficul- ties, mental and cosmic. But this enlarged universal telepathy has no excuse for its limitation to trivial matters, when it can discriminate so infallibly appar- ently between the facts pertaining to living person- alities and facts pertaining to deceased personalities. A fourth objection to the telepathic theory is the change of " communicators." Readers of the record will find that the " communicators " do not appear always to remain long, but give place to other " com- municators " who are better able to endure the condi- tions affecting clear " communications." The record often shows that a " communicator " can apparently remain to send messages only for a short time, and his or her place wiU be taken by another. The conse- quence is that the telepathic hypothesis has to appear to be able to represent itself as implying the capacity of telepathy to obtain information from the sitter or other parties at a distance all the time, but cannot obtain such information about the same person all the time. It must thus simulate difficulties of " communi- cation " as would be most natural for spirits when in fact there are none for telepathy! We might natu- rally suppose that spirits would encounter difficulty and feel it necessary to interrupt " communications " to enable them to recover power to meet the extraor- dinary emergency ; but if telepathy encountered diffi- culties it would be interrupted in its process of acquir- ing the facts, and the change of " communicators " does not always show such a characteristic, and may even on the contrary involve an improvement in its access to information. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE A fifth objection is the differences in the personal equation of the " communicators." Some " communi- cators " are " clear " and others are not so. That is some " communicators " seem able to send good mes- sages and others can either not send evidential inci- dents at all, or send them in a very confused form. This simulation of what we should most naturally expect of spirits ought not to characterise telepathy. There is apparently nothing in the memory of the sitters or other living persons to make the incidents remembered of one person easily accessible and those of another impossible. Thus, for instance, in my record I received practically nothing about my mother except her name, and even that was given by another than herself! My uncle, James McClellan, was a very clear " communicator " in most incidents, and his son was almost a failure, though I remembered far more about the son than I did about his father. An- other uncle was very confused for two years but much clearer after that, while my father became more confused with time. Now, I see no reason for con- sidering that time should affect the " communica- tions " of telepathy in reference to one person more than another. The differences in the phenomena cor- respond to what we should expect in the personal equation of real " communicators," and not to any- thing in the minds of living persons and the assumed process of telepathy acquiring its information. A sixth objection is the fact that the one cue to the assumed access of telepathy to information is appar- ently the association in the living person's memory of a given name with the incidents related to his per- THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 263 sonality, while the " communications " often represent the intermediation of one " spirit " to send messages proving the identity of another, a process most natural on the spiritistic hypothesis and without excuse on the telepathic, except it is conceived as equal in all cases to the simulation of what we should expect on the opposing theory. Thus my brother Charles men- tioned incidents which he did not know in life, and so not associated in my memory with him, and some of them occurring after his death, but quite adapted to prove the identity of others. My father confused a most important incident of my uncle's experience with me, just after his — my father's — death, with his sister, the uncle's wife, and had to be spontaneously corrected afterward and the incident told correctly by my uncle. My wife acted as intermediary for my father in some instances. All this conflicts with the only possible cue that telepathy might be expected to use for the discrimination of personalities in the ac- quisition and reference of its information. The seventh objection is the dramatic play of per- sonality in the " communications." This takes the form of alleged conversation and intercourse on " the other side " between discarnate spirits, which would be quite natural on the spiritistic hypothesis, but un- natural and unnecessary in telepathy, unless we as- sume again that it does only what we would expect spirits to do, and nothing else. Thus the " control " says something to the " communicator " and his an- swer IS made to the " control," the conversation slip- ping through as an automatism or unintended mes- sage. There is no reason for this on the telepathic SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE hypothesis as we know it. This feature of the process can be appreciated only by a study of the detailed record, and has not been illustrated in the summary of the facts to give the reader any conception either of its nature or amount in the " communications." But it is a very frequent phenomenon in the record and represents what we should expect to be an accom- paniment of spiritistic agency and influence, but not of telepathy as known. The eighth objection is the fact that telepathy is only a part of the process necessary to explain the records. Telepathy does not explain dramatic play of personality, the mistakes and confusions, or the vast mass of unevidential matter involved in the rec- ords. Secondary personality of a most remarkable character has to be added to the process to give it even the appearance of rationality, while the spiritistic hypothesis, with such adjunctive suppositions as ab- normal psychology supplies us, gives unity and ration- ality to the whole result. The ninth objection is the fact that persons who did not know Dr. Hodgson when they were living often indicate that fact when he is present at the sittings in spite of the fact that Dr. Hodgson has been known for years by the normal Mrs. Piper and presumably known by her at least telepathically in the trance con- dition. For persons having known him in their lives recognise him after their death. This peculiarity of the case is not natural to telepathy, unless we as- sume, as is done without evidence, that there is no resource in the simulation of the spiritistic which it is not capable of using. THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 265 The tenth objection is the difference between Rec- tor's and George Pelham's ability to get proper names, or certain difficult and unfamiliar messages, while they are otherwise about equal in their abilities. There is no reason of an ordinary kind that can be adduced for their equality in all but proper names and the like. George Pelham is better than Rector in this respect, though the telepathic hypothesis has to assume them, merely secondary personalities of Mrs. Piper. We can conceive them different in their gen- eral ability or wholly different throughout, but it is not natural to expect them on any telepathic theory to differ in one type of incident alone. Whatever the explanation of the phenomena I can- not see that, in our present state of knowledge, telep- athy can escape the fatality of these objections. One difficulty might be overcome, but there is an accumu- lation of them, and applicable to every form in which telepathy can be conceived, whether concerned with the active consciousness or the memory of the sitter, or with the consciousness and memory of distant living persons. If telepathy were anything about which we knew the laws and conditions, we might discover its real capacities and limitations. But in any knowl- edge of the facts proving it, as a theory opposed to the hypothesis of spirits in such facts as are here on record, we should not expect such a complex sim- ulation of spirits as has to be supposed in order to supplant their agency. In its powers and limitations, one of them extending to infinity and the other in- dicating amazing finitude, it has to be conceived as far larger on the one hand than the spiritistic SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE and taxing our credulity to a much greater extent, and on the other as absurdly more limited than we should either suppose it to be from its otherwise attested capacity or expect spirits to be. It may be the true theory. I cannot be dogmatic about that. I simply do not wish to embarrass my mental attitude by accepting miracles where a natural explanation is possible, and it seems to me that spirits are the more natural and the less miraculous agency in the case, though telepathy certainly has the claim of social respectability. CHAPTER X THE SPIEITISTIC HYPOTHESIS The first thing which I wish to say in taking up the spiritistic hypothesis and in stating my preference for it, at present at least, is that I wish to empha- sise the conditions upon which I accept it. I take it to be the best working hypothesis in the field to ex- plain the phenomena concerned. Others may think it absolutely proved, but I shall not claim so much nor place myself where further inquiry and knowl- edge might embarrass a retreat, though I think that most intelligent men will agree that no other hypoth- esis presents half the credentials of rationality that can be claimed for spiritistic agency. We may hesi- tate to adopt it in the face of perplexities which are certainly striking and apparently incompatible with what we find many people expecting from spirits. We may wish to know more before committing our- selves finally to so important a belief, but this cau- tiousness and hesitation is not in conflict with the admission that the most rational explanation at pres- ent is the spiritistic. Our primary duty is to accept the hypothesis that best explains the fact and then to abandon it when facts are discovered that disprove or discredit it. I shall certainly not cling to the spiritistic theory any longer than the facts justify, but I shall not eschew it because it is not respectable when it is the most rational conception in the field. 267 268 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE The difficulties and objections to telepathy as an explanation of such phenomena as are here discussed are negative arguments for the spiritistic theory. In- asmuch as I have practically limited the choice of explanation to telepathy and spirits, any facts dis- crediting telepathy must be so much in favor of the alternative hypothesis. If they disprove the ration- ality of telepathy they make spiritism necessary for any man who chooses to have an explanation at all, even though they may not be construed as positive evidence for it. Some of the objections which I have mentioned as telling against telepathy represent psychological facts that are consistent only with the supposition of spirits, so far as we now know telepathy and its assumed nature, and they have been mentioned in the previous chapter in order to indicate clearly the cumulative character of the difficulties in the way of that explanation. The reader has only to think of them in relation to the psychological activity of minds as we know them to see that they would char- acterise properly the identical mental action which we would expect to find in the discarnate. But I shall add three positive arguments for the spiritistic hypothesis which I may discuss briefly. They are (1) the selective unity of consciousness exhibited; (2) the dramatic play of personality, and (3) the character of the mistakes and confusions. 1. The Unity of Consciousness Many phenomena that are popularly regarded as spiritistic have no value for a spiritistic theory. THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 269 even if supposed to be genuine. The mere move- ments of physical objects without contact, if they are even possible or credible, would have no evidential value in favor of spirits, as they do not indicate the personal identity which is essential to that proof. What we must have is psychological phenomena, and psychological phenomena of that kind which repre- sents the systematic mental action natural to the person whose existence is in question. Isolated super- normal phenomena will not do, such as can be ex- plained by telepathy. We must have a group of facts whose unity and consistency suggest a real per- son more easily than anything else. This class of facts is represented in those which show what I have called the unity of consciousness. By this unity of consciousness I mean the selection of facts with refer- ence to the proof of personal identity. If a man be called upon to prove his Identity across a telegraph line he would choose those Incidents In his life recog- nisable by the receiver as the sender's own experiences, and they would be chosen with reference to their per- tinence for both sender and receiver. The unity Is then that characteristic which we find In any memory recalling past experiences. The facts so recalled are associated together. In the Piper and similar cases this unity Is perfectly evident, and If It Is not found In minds outside the mediums we have to attribute to Mrs. Piper's mind the power to select from living memories the facts which will appear to represent a given person, the selection and unity being deter- mined by some other mind than the one that purports to be communicating. 270 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE I may illustrate briefly what I mean. If the reader will recur to the incidents which I have narrated as purporting to come from my father, deceased, he will observe that group of them (p. 217) relating to our conversations on the subject of psychic research before his death. Here were a number of incidents belonging to that conversation, the reference to hal- lucination, my doubts, thought transference, Sweden- borg, hypnotism, apparitions, and dreams with some experiments of my own. They are incidents which a personal consciousness might naturally be expected to recall and tell, but which we should not expect any telepathic process to do. Take also the simple fact that all the names of the members of the family were correctly given In the form In which the " communica- tor" was accustomed in life to name them, and in addition to this, incidents were correctly associated with those names. For instance, as indicated above (p. 219), I was reminded of the organ and my sister Lida and the desire of the " communicator " that this sister should learn to sing. All this was true and represented the association of incidents in my father's memory as well as mine. It Is quite as easy to sup- pose that the association is spiritistic as that it is telepathic, especially when we observe that we have not the slightest evidence that telepathy is associative in Its acquisitions. We have found telepathy, if it be admitted at all, to represent association within the experiences of the percipient, but not to select and organise associations In the mind of the agent. Such a process is without any scientific support whatever. The reader of the records will also remark another THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 271 fact of interest. It is the connection of incidents from sitting to sitting. The " communicator " will fail at one time to get his incident rightly and come back to it at a later time and correct it. Or he may get it right at the first attempt and return to it later for giving additional matter or ascertaining whether his message has been received or not. Throughout the experiments there is this natural psychological connection between the incidents, and perhaps as in- teresting a psychological fact as any is that which indicates this connection consistently carried out through all the distinctions of personality in different " communicators." There is no confusion of these, except apparently when some one acts as an inter- mediary for another, and this is very often accom- panied by the statement that the incidents belong to another than the intermediary, so that the distinction of personalities is kept up. I have called attention to the changes of " communicators " and it is in con- nection with this phenomenon that the characteristic occurs which I am intimating. The cleavage of per- sonalities in the " communications " is effected in entire consistency with the difi'erence between real personalities, and no confusion occurs except that which is involved in the attempt now and then to act as intermediary for some one else, and this confusion incident to such attempts indicates evidence of mental confusion on " the other side." But this confusion is not frequent in this form. There is often trace enough of the real form and intention of the " com- munication " to discover that another personality than the " communicator " is meant by it. As illustration gTS SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE of this I may take the incident of the chimney nar- rated above (p. 229). Here it was clearly indicated that the event referred to had occurred after the death of the " communicator " and that it had been learned from hearing my father and mother talking about it, they being the two deceased persons and perhaps the only two deceased persons whom I would expect to mention the chimney naturally in evidence of identity. Both the cleavage of personalities and the unity of consciousness are illustrated by such incidents. As a general instance of this unity let me take the incidents associated with the sitting with Miss X. and thirty-six hours later with Mrs. Piper. The allusion to the pass sentence or " test," the reference to " mes- senger " and to a trance along with the giving my father's Christian name and relationship we definitely associate with the phenomena that had been given me through Mrs. Piper two or three years before, and involved the use of ideas that were more natural to the operations in another world than to this one. Then the reference to the color of my wife's eyes, repeated thirty-six hours afterward through Mrs. Piper and the completion of the story in the latter as it was not completed in the former. All this repre- sents a natural unity for a surviving consciousness and would not be anything expected of telepathy. The detailed record alone will supply a clear idea of what this unity of consciousness means, as the frag^ mentary summary which has here been given does not illustrate the complications and the confusions in the midst of which the supernormal facts lie buried. THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 273 and hence I must refer those who are interested in a complete conception of this argument to the re- ports. But one can appreciate what is meant by it in general in any of the incidents that represent a complex set of details belonging together and asso- ciated with some other incident of similar complexity. In this characteristic they show an intelligent asso- ciation of acts that first recovers chance from the explanation and equally eliminates telepathy unless we ascribe it nothing but the power to imitate discamate spirits ; a curious conception for those who wish to use it as an opposing explanation, when the requirement should be that it should explain phenomena to which spirits are not applicable at all and, in explaining them, show capacities making it rational and prob- able that they extend to what can be explained by spirits without doubt. In other words, telepathy must be the broader theory while it actually applies to the facts involving Its extension, and this Involution of such phenomena as I have summarised is not sup- ported by anything known of telepathy between the living, a telepathy which, when it exists at all, ex- hibits not the slightest trace of this selective access to one's mind and synthetlsing of the facts acquired In a devilish simulation of personalities which do not exist on the supposition of telepathy. 2. The Dramatic Play of Personality In order to understand what I have called the dramatic play of personality it will be necessary to explain somewhat briefly the purported machinery 274 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE by which the results are obtained. We must remem- ber that in most mediums there is what is called a " control," and this " control " purports to be a dis- carnate spirit. Whether it is this or not is imma- terial to the issue now concerned. The superficial character of the phenomena is the same on any theory. In the Piper case the " controls " are a group of alleged discarnate spirits, most of whom have never even attempted to prove their personal identity. One of them, Dr. Phinuit Scliville, tried it and failed. George Pelham, who had died only a short time be- fore, succeeded in proving his identity. The rest of the group calling themselves Imperator, Rector, Doc- tor, Mentor, and Prudens, and who had been the " guides " or " controls " in the case of Stainton Moses, a medium in England and who died in 1892, have never attempted to prove their identity through Mrs. Piper, though they gave their real names through Stainton Moses before his death. They claim to supervise the work with Mrs. Piper on the " other side." George Pelham acts as an assistant in their work. Now it must be conceivable that, if this is true, we should expect that any difficulties associated with the " communications " would be ac- companied by various intrusions of conversation and remarks on the " other side " not intended to be " cornmunicated," but which would slip through nev- ertheless, just as irrelevancies often occur in the tele- phone when lines are crossed or conditions favor a confusion and interruption of messages. The same thing is familiar in a medical consultation about a patient. Much is said that is not the work of the THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 375 patient. Similarly in the confusion of " communi- cations " incidents of what goes on among the group of intermediaries slip through and sometimes state- ments meant to indicate explanation of difficulties, etc. There are two types of phenomena connected with the dramatic play of personality. They are what may be called the evidential and the non-evidential matters of such interferences. The evidential in- stances consist of matter, such as names and incidents which may be given by other personalities than the usual " control." The non-evidential instances con- sist of statements representing conversation of the " control " either with the alleged discarnate spirit and not intended as a part of the regular " com- munications," or with the sitter in explanation of conditions and difficulties on the " other side." I shall give a few illustrations of both so that the reader may understand the phenomenon which I represent by this dramatic play. The unevidential incidents are not necessarily supernormal and might be explicable by secondary personality. The evidential incidents and illustrations of it are not explicable by secondary per- sonality alone and must be explained by the same process that explains all other supernormal matter. Just at the beginning of a sitting Rector, acting as " control " at the time, apparently said to the " com- municator " who purported to be my father, " Speak clearly, sir. Come over here." The reply was " Yes," as if intending to obey Rector's injunction, and then Dr. Hodgson was accosted with the question : " Are you with James? " On Dr. Hodgson's affirma- 276 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE tive reply my father responds with an evident under- standing that he was to " communicate " with Dr. Hodgson in my absence, and the sitting went on. An- other instance was the response to a question of mine addressed to the " communicator " with the purpose of calling up his old religious associations and it led to an interesting recognition of my identity expressed to Rector but not to me, and yet it came as an ap- parent message. A passage which I had written out was read to Mrs. Piper's hand with explanation by Rec- tor that it would be gotten only in fragments, this being the mode of communicating with the intelligence claiming to be a spirit, and the immediate reply was : " Perfectly. Yes, that is surely James." The " perfectly " was the " communicator's " indication to Rector that he had gotten the message from me clearly, and the rest was an acknowledgment of my identity in finding the sentiment like me. On an- other occasion my uncle asked through Mrs. Piper if Dr. Hodgson was " Robert's son " and then asked if he was " George," the name of my brother, Robert be- ing that of my father. When Dr. Hodgson dis- avowed the relationship and I said I was not George the reply came : " No, James, I know you very well, but this other one, did you know the boys? Do you know me? " The interesting part of this play of personality is the fact that telepathy should not have had any diffi- culty in recognising Dr. Hodgson in the case ; neither should secondary personality have had any such ap- parent difficulty. Dr. Hodgson had known Mrs. Pi- per for twelve years and he was familiar with both THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS g7T her normal and her trance state, so that it is singular that a telepathic agent of such alleged powers should faU to recognise him at once and his relation to me and my father and uncle. It has to be inexpressibly fiendish to counterfeit the reality in this manner. There were a number of these interferences by George Pelham. He is generally better at getting proper names than Rector and on occasions when these give diflBculty George Pelham is likely to be called in to assist. Let me take some illustrations of this. There had been some difficulty and confusion from the start in getting the name of my cousin, Robert McClellan, calUng it " Allen," " McCollum," " Mc- Allen," etc. On one occasion when this cousin was trying to " communicate " he gave the name of George Pelham in full and said that he, George Pel- ham, was assisting him to " communicate." A mo- ment later, right in the midst of a " communication " which was greatly confused, George Pelham suddenly interjects the exclamation : " Look out, Hodgson, I am here, George Pelham. Imperator sent me some moments ago." Then in a few minutes, while Rector was struggling to get the name McClellan clear, and could only get " McAllen," George Pelham breaks in and says : " Sounds like McLellen, George Pelham," and my cousin acknowledges its correctness by saying : " Yes, I am he." On another occasion there had been great difficulty in getting my half-sister's name, and suddenly there was the interference : " Hettie, George Pelham." I give another complex instance of it. There was great difficulty in getting my uncle 278 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE James Carruthers' name. I had asked that it be spelled out. This was repeated to my father by Rector and his act was rewritten as if a message to me, this being an automatic act of Mrs. Piper's hand which Rector apparently could not prevent. The attempt to get my uncle's name clearly then began, and failing in the first effort Rector said to the " communicator," " What is it? Go on," and paused a moment, as it were, and apparently said to me, the sitter, " That certainly sounds like Clark." He then said to the " communicator," " Do not worry about it, but keep to it, my friend." The struggle contin- ued a little longer with much confusion in my father's direct effort to give it, and when I indicated that it was hardly right. Rector said that he had not spelled it rightly. The next day the attempt to give it was repeated with the same result, and suddenly George Pelham broke in : " How are you, Hodgson," and on recognition he went on to say, " He (Imperator) sent me in for a moment to say I told it to the spirit of the light as she went out." Pelham then explained that he would return and give it later. It was given later as Mrs. Piper came out of the trance. My step- mother's name was also given in as dramatic a manner as this uncle's name and by this same George Pel- ham. This cleavage of personalities and interference and interruption of the messages in the manner described represents a dramatic action quite natural in the situation, and there is no need of it on the telepathic hypothesis. In fact telepathy is no explanation of it whatever. The material is not drawn from the sitter's THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 879 mind, as it is not engaged in any such dramatic play. In fact the data lie perfectly simple in the sitter's mind and there ought not to be any more difficulty for telepathy in getting these data in one case than another. The dramatic play is, therefore, an en- tirely supererogatory affair considered from the point of view of telepathy, but a most natural thing from the point of view of spirits and their confessed diffi- culty in communicating. We may consider it as sec- ondary personality and seek the analogy in some of our dreams, which certainly exhibit the dramatic play of personality in a remarkable manner. But this resource for explanation is wanting in the dramatic play which is accompanied by evidential incidents such as the giving of proper names. Here we have the supernormal that cannot be accounted for by sec- ondary personality and a dramatic play not neces- sary to telepathy. The only rationality and consist- ency in the interpretation of the phenomenon is in the spiritistic theory. The argument, however, from the dramatic play of personality is not of a primary character. It con- firms, and does not primarily prove the spiristic the- ory. We should expect it on the spiritistic theory, where difficulty and confusion occur and we should not expect it on any application of telepathy, even though it were accompanied by difficulties. The pri- mary argument must always be the supemormally acquired facts and their illustration of the unity of consciousness involved. The dramatic play of person- ality comes in to confirm that argument and to make a greater degree of complexity in the phenomena 880 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE consistent with a single hypothesis. If the dramatic play of personality were a feature of all subliminal work and of all supernormal phenomena the case might be different, but it is not an essential charac- teristic of either of these, and so comes most -naturally as an accompaniment of spiritistic phenomena. S. Character of the Mistakes and Confusions In the experiments for testing the existence of te- lepathy we found certain types of half successes and failures, which were evidence of the influence of the percipient's mind upon the message received. In some cases this result amounted to almost an entire failure, so great was the influence of the percipient's mind. Here there was confusion. But in the " communica- tions " of the Piper case no such confusion is recog- nisable. The mistakes are of a wholly different type. They are due to a possible variety of causes still to be considered, and in this later consideration of mis- takes will be found a confirmation of what is to be said here. But there are certain mistakes which are inconsistent with telepathy and which can be appre- ciated without any large assumptions in regard to their causes. A most natural phenomenon on the spiritistic the- ory would be a defect of memory on the part of the discarnate spirit. If the physiological theory of memory be correct no memory whatever could survive the shock of death, and personal identity would be impossible even though the substance of the soul perished. But on any theory of consciousness that THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 281 admitted a soul other than the brain, memory might be affected by death, as we find it affected in life by physical accidents, even though not lost. But on the telepathic hypothesis there is no reason for expecting any characteristics in the " communications " that suggest defects of memory, especially when the actual mistakes are committed in the face of a clear memory and often of a clear consciousness of the facts at the time of the sitting. Let me give some illustrations. I had asked about an old neighbor by the name of Samuel Cooper with the hope that a certain incident in the life of my father in connection with that man would be recalled. But instead I received for answer a number of statements wholly false regarding this Samuel Cooper, but which I later discovered to be true of a Dr. Joseph Cooper, and not in my mind or memory at all. At one of the sittings a reference was made by my father to " the Cooper School and his interest there." He was said to be present and my father continued : " And perhaps you will recall a journey we took together." Now the interest in this message is this : A memo- rial school had been built to this Dr. Joseph Cooper after his death in 1886, and was mentioned in a paper which my father took in 1887. But my father and my stepmother took a journey in 1884 to the west and were in the town in Kansas where this memorial college was built. The evident reading of the " com- munication " is that this Dr. Cooper and my father took the journey, which was not true, as my father seems never to have seen the man after 1860. I had no knowledge of the facts and no living person had 282 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE it of the facts as told, so that there is no excuse for the mistake on the telepathic hypothesis. On one occasion I had asked what my uncle had died with and it was two years before I received the correct answer. But the immediate answer involved the statement first that Robert had gotten his foot injured on the railroad, and then it was afterward ascribed to Frank, both Robert and Frank being names of my brothers. With reference to them, how- ever, the statements were false. My brother Frank had had an injured leg, but it was not caused in any connection with a railway. My brother Robert never had any such injury. But my uncle about whom I had asked the question had had his leg cut off or nearly off at the ankle by a railway car and died from the effects of the operation a few hours later. No living memory had the facts as they were told, while their correct form was not given. This is not a nat- ural phenomenon of telepathy, but something that would be the natural result of either a disturbed mem- ory or disturbances in the " communications." I might also mention the mistake made in reference to my stepmother's name. The first attempt to give it was " Mannie," she having always been called Mag- gie by my father. But it became " Nannie " after one or two attempts, and I discovered the possible mistake by the fact that when my aunt by the name of Nannie was mentioned in the " communications " the prefix " aunt " was always found, and when facts were mentioned that referred to my stepmother and not to my aunt Nannie, this prefix " aunt " was omit- ted. I resolved to have the name given correctly THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 283 and said at a later sitting that my stepmother's name had been confused with that of my aunt Nannie. The resulting attempt to give it correctly, along with some remarkable dramatic play of personality, was the name Margaret, which was of course correct, but not the form customary to my father in life, though quite natural here after my explanation of his error. In all this process the matter was of course perfectly clear in my mind and the mistake without excuse from telepathy. Again, if Mrs. Piper has such wonderful powers of clairvoyance and telepathic access to information why did she not teU what was in the spectacle case which I had left with Dr. Hodgson to be placed on the table.'' Why also could she not tell what was in the little piece of paper in this spectacle case when it was opened? She failed in this last though the pa- per was in her fingers ! There are many such mistakes which are easily at- tributable to the limitations under which spirits must communicate, but which are not compatible with the telepathic powers that have to be assumed to explain the successes. The reader will have to go to the de- tailed records for the study of cases more complicated than any that I have quoted, and that also contain much evidence at the same time of supernormal phe- nomena in the midst of which the mistake and con- fusion occur. 284. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 4. Facts Making it a Possibility A fourth consideration in favor of the spiritistic hypothesis should be mentioned. It was omitted from the hst given at the beginning of this chapter be- cause it represents facts which cannot in any way be treated as evidence of spirits as facts, but only as possible " communicators." I aUuded to the gen- eral possibility of " communication " when stating the problem, and I merely repeat the points here with ad- ditions. The starting point is the fact of hyperses- thesia. This means acute sensibility in various condi- tions of the physical organism, and acute sensibility sometimes enables the subject to perceive what cannot be normally perceived at all. This is then a condition in which the power of the mind to receive impressions from without is heightened and information may be obtained that the normal person cannot appreciate. But this hyperaesthesia may take a still more interest- ing form. It has been noticed in recent years, and exploited to some extent by Dr. Boris Sidis, that there are cases where ordinary anassthesia has been produced and in which a kind of sensibility continues which may be called subliminal hyperesthesia in contradistinction to ordinary anaesthesia, which is known as insensi- bility to impressions. Some cases of abnormal condi- tions show that they are wholly insensible to external impressions, say of touch, sound, or vision, but yet in their secondary states can give as full an account of sensory stimuli as if they had felt them. This means that subliminal sensibility is perfectly compat- ible with supraliminal insensibility, and it is often THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 285 remarked that this subliminal sensibility is very acute making its proper description as hyperaesthesia. We find, too, that in suggestion the subject is extraor- dinarily acute and alert, and that its mental activities often surpass its ordinary capabilities. Now, if the mind can obtain information without the ordinary use of its physical sensibilities we have only to raise the question of its limitations in this re- spect in order to appreciate the claim that impressions come from a transcendental world. It is a condition that makes telepathy quite possible and conceivable within the limits of proved knowledge, and telepathy once admitted certainly involves either a hyperaesthe- sia far beyond any that is known in abnormal psychol- ogy or some sensibility of a wholly different type. It does not matter whether it is an extended hyperaesthe- sia or sensibility of a different kind. In either case the limits of knowledge received from without are greatly extended. Hence once accept telepathy in- volving this heightened sensibility to external influ- ences and the possible means of spirit communication are at hand, so far as any objection to its possibility can be urged, and it will only be a question of the kind of facts obtained whether we have been en rapport with the discamate. The process involved in the " communications " through Mrs. Piper is not yet known. It is popular- ly conceived as if it were direct speech, but the care- ful student of the detailed records will discover that the language employed does not consistently imply any such methods. It is often described as " this way of speaking," and still more frequently as " think- SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE ing," precisely the description of the telepathic meth- od. There are probably associated agencies involved. But I cannot here enter into any adequate account of how the communications are effected. I can only suggest that a study of the facts will show some right to approach the problem with the conceptions of hy- peraesthesia and telepathic sensibility in view. CHAPTER XI DIFFICTJI/TIES AND OBJECTIONS. I have already considered the primary objection to the spiritistic hypothesis and this is the telepathic the- ory. I do not require to mention or discuss it in this return to some minor difficulties which offer perplex- ity to the believer, without necessarily setting aside the cogency of the facts for some remarkable theory. I have also said all that I need say of chance coinci- dence and suggestion. These cannot pretend to ac- count for all the facts, and at most can only discredit occasional incidents which might be hastily assumed to have weight by those unfamiliar with phenomena of this kind. If they offered the slightest possibility of explaining all the facts we should feel bound to examine their claims at length. But after admitting their utmost claims they lamentably fail to make out any general explanation of the phenomena and we are obliged to resort to other objections if any hold good at all in the case. Such as I wish to notice here are not objections to the whole mass of phenomena as evidence of the supernormal, but only such as offer perplexities which must be explained in order to re- move doubt. They are difficulties im the theory of spiritism rather than objections to it. They repre- sent what the layman especially has to produce against conviction in so important a matter, and it must be admitted that they are also perplexities for the scien- 287 288 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE tific inquirer until he becomes familiar with the pecul- iarities of the problem. 1. Failures of Various Sitters The reader of the detailed records will be struck with the fact that some experimenters were wholly without results in favor of anything supernormal, and in a few cases were so impressed with the ques- tionableness of the phenomena as to suspect fraud. Others who were convinced that there was no fraud were disappointed in their results. Now why this failure of some people to get " communications " from their deceased friends? Why not something, even if the messages are not overwhelming? I think that there is no diiBculty in answering this objection. It is presumption for us to suppose that, if spirits exist, they ought to communicate easily and uniformly. But it is important to remark that most of the failures on record are connected with persons who had only one experiment. But it is absurd to judge a case like this by any single experiment, and some of those who had failures recognised this fact, and too much is made out of the failure by those who do not stop to think of the conditions involved or of the fact that the best successes represent whole series of sittings. If I had passed final judgment on the phenomena as a result of my first sitting, I should have had a less favorable verdict to pronounce, as the first experiment, though by no means a failure in regard to the supernormal, did not supply enough for any scientific man bent on proving a vast theory. In DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS. 289 this subject we must not expect the supernormal to be on tap always and everywhere and for every one. If it were so we should have more of the phenomena in history than we now have. The phenomena are comparatively sporadic, and we must expect failures in many experiments. The personal equation must figure in this work as in other investigations. All that failures indicate is that there are difficulties as- sociated with the supernormal acquisition of knowl- edge, and we should recognise that, perhaps, these difficulties are as great and numerous on the " other side " as on this. There is no reason to suppose from the nature of things that spirits, if they exist, could all communicate with equal ease. On the contrary we should more naturally wonder how any communica- tion was possible, and probably it is the tacit and unconscious recognition of this doubt that inclines so many to non-spiritistic theories to account for the facts. But there is certainly no fatality in the re- corded failures where there have been any manifest successes. The case must rest on the fact of the supernormal, and negative cases do not affect the question. They diminish the quantity of evidence, but they do not vitiate the positive evidence actually obtained. 2. Failures m the " Communications " It is often noticed that " communicators " fail to give just what is most expected of them, and often what they do give so coincides with the knowledge of the sitter and fails to produce what the sitter 290 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE does not know, that the query is raised whether telepathy may not most easily account for the phe- nomena. But the reader of the records will find so many things given that were not known by the ex- perimenter but were known by other living persons that the temptation arises to extend the process of telepathy sufficiently to account for the phenomena and to exclude the necessity of supposing spirits to be the cause. The records also show cases where state- ments of fact were made which were once true and known to the sitter or other living person, but not true at the time of the statement. This suggests telepa- thy again. But such facts, important as they are as matters to be explained, do not suffice to dis-: credit spiritism. There is no reason to suppose that spirits are omniscient, and there is no sufficient reason to necessitate the supposition that they must ac- quire information of events and things, of which we would like to know, after their death. Thus some one is asked to tell where a certain trinket is to be found and the place is told by the medium. It turns out that the object had been there, the fact being known by some one living, but is not there now (p. 169). This is certainly a curious limitation of knowledge. But it is not an objection to the spiritistic interpre- tation of the correct facts. There is no reason to suppose a spirit knows everything, especially if much or all of its information obtained after death has to be telepathically obtained from the living, which is certainly a plausible possibility. But failures of the kind mentioned are too few to make them so impor- DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS. 291 tant. Their curious coincidence in some cases with the limitations of telepathy is the only fact that ex- cites an interest in them, while they are often ex- plicable on grounds quite compatible with the assump- tion of spirits. But the one type of failure which exercises, and rightly, a powerful influence in favor of scepticism and so of telepathy is the Hannah Wild incident (p. 189). The reader will recall that in this case a posthumous letter was not given while the words that were uttered when the letter was handed to the surviving sister were given almost correctly. Five attempts to give the contents of the letter failed. Here we have a case where the limitations of existing human knowledge were the limitations of telepathy when presumably a spirit ought to have succeeded. There is no denying the interest of this phenomenon, and if it is fatal to the spiritistic theory the fact has to be frankly admitted. But whatever the force of the objection In this incident, we must not forget that it is the only pub- lished incident of the kind, except one (p. 63) which succeeded. There might be many reasons for fail- ure In this case which might not apply In others. If the failures of this kind were numerous and uniform the objection would have great weight. But a sin- gle Incident like this, important as it may be. Is not by any means a conclusive objection to the spiritistic theory to account for the supernormal facts. There may be many Important reasons for such a failure, and when we come to examine In the next chapter 293 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE the conditions affecting the " communications " we shall discover abundant reasons for understanding even frequent failures in matters of this kind. But telepathy cannot boast of any special triumph in the Hannah Wild incident. The contents of that letter have been known to Professor James for fifteen or sixteen years, and Mrs. Piper knows the fact, but the letter has never yet been given, when, if telepathy can command all living memories and can carry on such a selective and fiendish process of deception it should long since have obtained the desired informa- tion. Telepathy has failed quite as much as spirits to give the contents. Another important fact may explain the failure of the supposed spirit to tell the contents of the letter. It is conceivable that death may give rise to defective memory, or that if death does not in reality cause amnesia generally that the conditions for " communi- cating " may rise to disturbances in reproduction. Nothing is more probable on the physiological theory of memory. But, granting that even these are not true, we are perfectly familiar with defective mem- ories among the living in just such emergencies. Much depends upon the time and circumstances in which such things first occurred, and as much depends upon the kind of interest and emphasis which the facts of record had when written down. We do not remember all we say or think, and we do not remember all that we try to remember. Hence there are many possible causes for failure in this case. I shall give an instance of my own. I wrote out several posthumous letters containing very frequently DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS recalled incidents of my childhood with the intention of having them as tests after my death. I inclosed them in several envelopes so that the giving of one would not involve any knowledge by the living of other records before attempts were made to deliver the rest. Put this aside as unimportant. A year and a half after putting them on record I had for- gotten absolutely every one of the incidents that I had recorded. They were incidents purposely chosen be- cause I so often recalled them in thinking of my childhood, as I well knew the dangers of amnesia or failure of memory. Consequently I had to put on record the fact that I had forgotten them. Some six months afterward, while writing an account of my childhood, I recalled nearly all the incidents and now I have to put that circumstance on record. Since then, however, I have again forgotten some of them. The incidents are no doubt perfectly recallable, and the only difficulty is that their association with my in- tention to communicate them after death, if possible, is not strong enough to make their reproduction easy. But in the fact we have precisely what may have hap- pened with Miss Wild. She probably took no ac- count of the laws of memory when she wrote her posthumous letter, and wrote just what came into her mind at the time, something that seemed important and memorable then, but easily forgotten and hard to recall when the associative clues were dim. It was perhaps quite natural to have recalled the words uttered when handing the letter to her sister, as that was the critical moment and the evident emo- tional interest which her words showed indicate how 294 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE the impression could have been made on the memory. Significant Is the fact that the words were not exactly as stated on that occasion. The general thought was the same and suggests that the process involved more than a passive production of living memory. There was nothing in a spontaneous remark on such an occasion to necessarily connect it with the contents of the letter, which might have been a very common- place affair and the outcome of a capricious thought at the time it was written. Such things are easily forgotten. Add to these considerations the fact that the condi- tions for communicating are supposed to aflfect the power of memory at the time and in some cases to throw it into entire confusion, and we have a situation where much besides posthumous letters will be forgot- ten. I shall devote the next chapter to the discussion of this question alone, and allude to it only as a possi- bility or as a part of the spiritistic theory to be care- fully considered, not to be repudiated without a hear- ing. But careful readers and students of the detailed records will probably find more abundant evi- dence, psychologically considered, for this part of the theory than for the supernormal, and once accepted as a factor In the problem we would not attach very much negative value to the Hannah Wild Incident standing alone. 3. Telepathy and Secondary Personality Combined There are two kinds of matter in the records, the evidential and the non-evidential, the one proving the DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 295 existence of supernormal knowledge and the other not proving anything. The objection which I have just formulated means that the evidential part shall be explained by telepathy from other minds than the medium's and that the non-evidential matter shall be explained by unconscious mental action of the me- dium, as in dreaming or other similar mental action. This supposes that the medium's mind is in an active state of secondary personality and that outside mes- sages from other minds are spasmodically and capri- ciously intromitted into hers at favorable moments for their reception. But the trouble with this theory is the fact that it encounters all the difficulties of the unity of consciousness in favor of spirits and the pro- duction of matter representing the personal identity of deceased persons. It is the selectiveness of the process that makes telepathy absurd in the case, no matter how much secondary personality may be involved in the non-evidential material. Telepathy is thus dis- qualified without impeaching the assumption of sec- ondary personality. But the admission of secondary personality in the case is not so easy or to be made without evidence any more than spirits or telepathy. What we mean by secondary personality is mental action not intro- spected by the normal consciousness and hence either the product of memory or the result of a dream-like action creating systematic ideas as in reflection. Now there is not the slightest trace of this sort of thing in the Piper records. The dramatic play of per- sonality, though possibly accountable by secondary personality, is so intricately interwoven with the evi- 296 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE dential matter as to be in reality a part of it, and in fact the unity of the evidential and non-evidential matter is the desirable conception of science in any theory which it adopts in explanation of the phenom- ena. But the important point to be made is the fact that there are no traces in the non-evidential matter of the influence of Mrs. Piper's mind or memory on the material recorded, except in what is called " Sublim- inal I " as she is coming out of the trance. In " Sub- liminal II," which is a deeper state and next to the trance itself there is no trace of her own mental action on the data. In this state she does not distinguish her own personality from the incidents " communi- cated," but reports automatically what she " hears " or " sees " and does not appear to be a spectator or auditor of it. In " Subliminal I " she apparently recognises that what she " hears " or " sees " is ob- jective to her, and at times an occasional memory or secondary personality element will be intromitted into messages coming from the " other side." When she awakens from the trance, or emerges from " Sublimi- nal I," she has no recollection of what has occurred either in the trance or in either of the " Sublimlnals." But at no point is there a trace of an influence from either the normal or the secondary consciousness on the data of the record until we reach the state of " Subliminal I." All this indicates that the assump- tion of secondary personality to account for the non- evidential matter is gratuitous. It may be true; it may be rational, if not true, to suppose it. But when it is so interwoven with evidential matter and is a DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 297 natural part of the result on the spiritistic hypothesis, the assumption cannot be made with impunity, but must be required to sustain itself evidentially. It is not enough to say that secondary personality explains the non-evidential matter; for this may be granted. But we must know what definite evidence there is that it is a fact, if the phenomena are not to have the unity that they ought to have on the spiritistic theory. It is all very correct to discard non-evi- dential matter as secondary personality when we are studying the evidential side of the question, but when this is once satisfied in favor of the supernormal the next problem is to see if there is evidence for the secondary personality assumed to disqualify a part of the matter in the spiritistic problem, and every attempt to prove that the non-evidential matter in the Piper records is subconscious memories and fabri- cations wholly fails. We must remember also that, if the spiritistic theory be true at all, there would be non-evidential matter associated with the evidential as a necessary part of the whole. This would be the case in es- tablishing personal identity across a telegraph line, and would also foUow in any communications of the kind we are considering. While we are justified in disregarding this material in the evidential problem we should not forget that this fact does not in the least eliminate it from consideration as a spiritistic phenomenon. The unity of the phenomena which must finally be the conception of them in any simple and true theory makes the non-evidential matter com- 298 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE patible with the spiritistic theory, so that it can in no way be used as an objection to it. 4. Triviality of the Incidents The one objection to the spiritistic hypothesis that possesses the sceptic most tenaciously and that per- plexes the layman is the triviality of the communi- cations. Most people feel this characteristic very keenly, especially because they assume that it indi- cates the grade of mental development on the part of the so-called discarnate. What seems unintelli- gible is the almost entire limitation of the " commu- nications " to the most trivial affairs of life, such as jackknives, skull caps, penholders, and references to small incidents of their lives. This appearance of a degenerated mental condition is interpreted as repre- senting an undesirable mode of existence, if the spirit- istic theory is to be adopted, and as in conflict with the personality of the persons as remembered by the living. We perhaps naturally expect some clear and elevating " communications " representative of the characters so well known to us when living, but in- stead of this we have Inane and drivelling confusion and triviality, that we might expect of persons of a low intellectual order, or of persons out of their minds. Such a conception leaves nothing desirable in a post-mortem existence, and the majority of intelli- gent men and women wonder why we attach so much importance to the facts and why we treat the problem with such solemn seriousness and enthusiasm. This difficulty so universally felt and urged I mean DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 299 to face without equivocation. I do not consider it an objection to the spiritistic hypothesis, but a per- plexity in the conception of it which we would per- haps most naturally form. It is not an objection because we have the facts to explain by some theory, and it is manifestly most absurd to suppose that telep- athy with its enormous powers should so uniformly limit itself to trivial matters, especially as it has to be conceived as satisfying the conceptions of the general public in simulating spirits in respect of their iden- tity. It ought to give not only what is wanted, if it is a Zeitgeist (Time spirit), but also the important and elevated facts, as easily gotten by the process pre- sumably, as the trivial incidents. There is no excuse whatever for the limitation to trivial incidents on the telepathic hypothesis. But there is another reason why triviality cannot be treated as an objection to spiritistic theories. If the facts make the spiritistic theory the only rational supposition possible to explain them it has to be ac- cepted whether desirable or not. Our business as scientists is not with the desirability of the next life, but with the fact of it. We have to accept the life to come, if it be a fact, without any ability to escape it, and its degenerated nature would not affect the evidence for the fact of it. Its being a madhouse or an asylum for idiots would not weaken the evidence for its existence. We should have to bear with it sto- ically, and perhaps if our moral lives were what they ought to be, that degenerate condition, if it be the natural consequence of action when living, might not follow. In any case, however, the desirability or un- 300 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LITE desirability of a future existence has nothing to do with the scientific question whether it is a fact. This view of the matter cannot be evaded and it is irrefut- able. But there is another reply to the alleged objection. Nothing but trivial incidents will prove personal iden- tity. If any one will stop long enough to think and to ask what incidents he would choose to prove his own identity over a telephone or telegraph wire he will readily discover that his spontaneous choice would be the most trivial incidents possible. With this in view, and knowing that human nature would select such in- cidents, I arranged a series of experiments over a telegraph line between two of the buildings at Co- lumbia University. I had my operators there and brought two acquaintances, one to one end of the wire and the other to the opposite end. A., of course, was to know that B. was present at the other end, but B. did not know that A. was present. A. was to send messages to B. without giving his name until B. dis- covered his presence and identity, or gave it up. I said nothing to any one about the primary object of my experiments, which was to ascertain experi- mental evidence on the question whether men would choose trivial incidents to prove their identity. The sequel was that these persons, students and professors in the university, uniformly chose even more trivial incidents than we generally get through Mrs. Piper for the same apparent purpose. In fact, if we judged from the intellectual character of the commu- nications over the wire, we could not distinguish Columbia University professors and students from DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 301 bootblacks or street gamins. The record of my ex- periments was published with my report on the Piper case, and shows a very similar appearance. We must not forget that the ostensible character of the experiments is the proof of personal identity. The Imperator group of trance personalities, claim- ing to be spirits, manage their side of the work with definite reference to this proof of personal identity, and exhibit the same understanding of the problem that we insist upon. We cannot interest ourselves in any side issues of intelligence and spirit life until we have proved the personal identity of deceased per- sons, and as nothing but trivial incidents in sufficient quantity will prove this we must recognize that the data professing to be spiritistic in their origin repre- sent the most rational and scientific conception of the problem. But the fact is that these are not the real and fun- damental reasons for the persistent triviality of the " communications." The reason lies far deeper in the nature of the conditions affecting them, which will be especially the subject of the next chapter. I cannot enter into any elaboration of this reason at present, but must postpone the reader's interest in it until the whole subject can be more exhaustively discussed. All that I want recognized for the pres- ent is the fact that I consider the reason for triviality to lie much deeper than the arguments which I have presented above. We must also remember that there has been a great deal of matter in the " communications " that is not trivial in any sense of the term, but owing to the 302 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE nature of the problem, which demands evidential phe- nomena, we have been obliged to publish those records which contain the largest amount of detailed and trivial incidents, as necessary to the proof of the su- pernormal and then of the identity of discarnate spirits. No stress has been placed on matter and sentiments that are not trivial, as they are often non- evidential. Besides a fact associated with an impor- tant event in one's life loses much of its triviality by that connection and becomes an indication of high in- telligence, possibly, if chosen to prove identity. Let me, then, summarise the reply to the " objec- tion " of triviality, (a) The facts are not all trivial. Many of them are quite worthy of the best intelli- gence, and the predominance of the trivial is due to the persistence of the attempt to prove personal iden- tity under the abnormal conditions in which the " communications " are affected, (b) Many of the trivial incidents are in response to the sitter's ques- tions and involve the satisfaction of his demands. The irrationality must be shared with the living, (c) Many of the incidents follow upon the explana- tion to the " communicator " of what he is expected to do, he being reminded that he is to tell of little incidents in his earthly life, (d) The probable ab- normal condition of the " communicator's " mind in the act of " communicating." The last consideration is the most important one in the list and will be examined at length in the next chapter. It is in fact the true explanation of the general limitation of the messages to trivial facts, and I have mentioned other considerations because DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 303 they would hold true if this one did not. But the most general cause of triviality and confusion and error is the probable abnormal mental condition of the " communicator " at the time of his " communi- cating." I shall here summarise the evidence on which the supposition is based and reserve the elab- orate proof and discussion of it until the next chap- ter. The facts suggesting mental difficulty in " com- municating " are as follows: (a) The alteration of "communicators," which ought not to occur on the telepathic hypothesis (b) The character of the " communications " oftentimes at the point of change from one " communicator " to another, (c) The frequently confused and fragmentary nature of many messages, (d) The absolute failure of some " com- municators " to communicate, although it would be as natural to expect them as any one. (e) The state- ments of the " communicators " themselves, both in regard to their confused state of mind when " com- municating " and their clearer consciousness when not "communicating." (f) The analogies of hypnosis and secondary personality, and of abnormal mental states which are indicated by the character of the sub- ject's statements. 5. The Absence of Information about the Transcendental Life I often meet this objection, but I refuse to rec- ognise its seriousness. In the first place it is not al- together true. Many statements are made in regard to the transcendental world, but being unverifiable SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE are wholly worthless. Many statements also taken to represent the life beyond are not such at all, but delirious reflections caused by the disturbing condi- tions affecting the " communications." But even if these facts were not so, there is the main reason that the supposed abnormal condition necessary for " com- municating " would prevent any rational account of such a world. That is clear to every one, and all that we should have to do to enforce its recognition would be to give the evidence of that condition. But suppose the " communicator " to be perfectly clear in his mind when " communicating," there is no reason to suppose that he could give us any ra- tional account of such a life. All intelligent inter- course between living minds is based upon a com- mon sensory experience. Things are intelligible to us in terms of our sense experience and intelligible only in this in so far as it is communicable from one per- son to another. But the transcendental world is su- persensible and without distinct analogies with our physical world could not be described to- us from the " other side." A supersensible experience cannot be expressed in sensible terms. A man born blind but retaining his hearing could not make his auditory ex- periences intelligible to a man born deaf, but retain- ing his sight, and vke versa. Visual experience can- not be expressed in terms of the auditory, or either of them in terms of the tactual. This, it is to be noticed, holds true right in our present physical life, and the same or greater difficulties must attend at- tempts to convey notions of a supersensible existence through sensory channels. Of course, if they were DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 305 conveyed they could not be verified and would have no value either scientifically or ethically. Their un- verifiability makes them useless for scientific purposes and their unintelligibility makes them useless for eth- ical purposes. The whole problem for science is the explanation of the facts at any cost, and it will not halt at their triviality when seeking an explanation, though it may recognise that there is an interesting perplexity to resolve in addition to the proof of personal identity. CHAPTER XII CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE " COMMUNICATIONS " I explained in the close of the previous chapter that it was the mental condition of the " communica- tor " while communicating that explained the triv- iality of the messages, and I might have added that the same fact explains the fragmentary and confused character of many of the messages, whether they be trivial or not. I wish here to take up and discuss at some length t he conditions that give rise to thi^ e phenomena which have appeared to be su ^h fnmfn'd- able objections to the claim that thi;^ messages cflme from spirits . I regard the contention to be main- tained in this discussion to be the crux of the whole problem after satisfying the question of personal identity. As the perplexity occasioned by triviality and confusion is so great the issue depends in the same proportion upon the validity of the claim that is here to be advanced. But I shall not assume that all the perplexities are solved by one cause. I shall have many reasons to assign for the variety of diffi- culties and objections that are based upon triviality and confusion, as they are not all of them due to the same cause. But I wish here to group together a series of influences which make the spiritistic hypothe- sis perfectly intelligible and remove the objections of those who forget the complex and abnormal con- ditions under which experiments of this kind must be 306 CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 307 conducted. They will be designed, some of them, to explain the confusion and fragmentary character of the messages, and some of them their triviality, but altogether they give rise to the features of the record that excite hesitation in accepting the spiritistic in- terpretation of the phenomena. They are (1) the iptTame diumistic c onditions through which thfi -ines- s ages have to com e, or the physical and mental c on- ditions of the med ium ; (2) th e inter cos mic cond itions exis ting between the " communicator " and th ose of the__jnediiun, and (3) the ^ mental condition .Q £_the " communicators." The se cond of these divid es in to t hree classes, t h ose affecting the transmission of a m essage from the ordinary "communicator " to the " c ontrol," those a ffectin g the " control's " interp re- t ation of the messa ges received, and those affecting th e " control's " ability to send them thrmig li. the m edium's organis m. 1. Conditions Within the Medium Affecting " Communications " That there would be difficulties of some kind in " communicating " with discarnate spirits, accepting their existence as possible or a fact, would be a most natural admission to make. It would hardly require any proof to an intelligent man who understood the nature of the organism physical and mental through which messages had to be sent. The silence of all the ages would be proof of it, if they were known to exist, and the paucity of the evidence in cases where they claim to " communicate " is also conclusive proof 308 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE of it. But the fact would not require proof to any one. Only the kind of difficulty would be the sub- ject of dispute in any case. But if any one will re- flect for a moment on the difficulties of communicat- ing between two living persons he can imagine how much greater they must be between the living and the dead. First, they, the living, must be able to produce sensory impressions upon each other to carry on any intercourse whatever, except we suppose telep- athy be a vehicle for this, and we know how occa- sional this resource is. The normal method, how- ever, involves sense impressions of some kind, either of vision in a sign language written or gestural, or of hearing by sound. In some way the senses have to be affected. But even then little could be com- municated from mind to mind were it not for some previous agreement that certain vocal or visual signs should have a given meaning. Take two persons who have not the same language and the amount of communicable knowledge between them will be very small and that only by gestures of some kind. Now, if the difficulties of communicating normally between living people be so great as these when they have a definite and mutual knowledge of each other's existence, what must be the difficulties of communicat- ing between a supersensible and a sensible world where it would naturally be supposed that physical effects could not be produced from the material upon the immaterial world, granting the latter to exist, of course. Indeed, one might be pardoned for saying a priori that the phenomenon is impossible. Of course we cannot actually deny the possibility of CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 309 some way of intercommunication between a supersen- sible and a sensible world, but the absence of it as a generally and clearly established fact makes it neces- sary to admit that the difficulty is evidently great. But the acceptance of telepathy between living minds establishes a possibility where all other analogies might fail, and hence the telepathist is precisely the man to admit the possibility of spirit communication with the living. If it be true that our minds are so insulated in nor- mal life from each other that they can carry on inter- course and communication with each other only by artificial and conventional means, except in sporadic instances of telepathy, it would be natural to sup- pose that discarnate minds are insulated from each other in some similar way as a means of preventing the occurrence of omniscient telepathic communica- tion between themselves. If telepathy were conceived as the common mode of communication either between the living or between the discarnate, it would repre- sent a complete reciprocity of interchange of thoughts which would have no limitations except the will of the parties concerned, if that could do it. But there is certainly no such reciprocity of intercourse between the living and the dead, if any communication even be possible. Hence on any assumption of modes of in- tercourse there are evidently difficulties in the way of its easy accomplishment. But suppose that in normal conditions of exist- ence the communication be easy, there is no guarantee that in abnormal conditions it would be the same, and from what we know of abnormal conditions in actual 310 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE life the communication might still be difficult, especial- ly if the messages, when they come to us, must repre- sent something of the abnormal in them. But all this sparring aside, it is clear that communication with a discarnate world in our normal life is not a common thing and that in nearly all cases claiming to repre- sent it we have abnormal mental and physical con- ditions to contend with in obtaining any alleged in- tercourse. These abnormal conditions represent often some measure of inactivity of the normal con- sciousness or the suspense of its action on the mus- cular system, as in automatic writing, so that the messages when they have to penetrate to the physical world without direct mediation of the normal con- sciousness must rely upon either the subconscious function of the mind or upon the mechanical and automatic functions of the nervous system, respond- ing to outside mental influence much as it does to that of the incarnate mind, which in its suspension of control simply makes way for transcendental agency. Now, in Mrs. Piper's case, the medium, Mrs. Piper herself, is in a trance, a normally insensible and un- conscious state. Her mind is entirely passive and ap- parently exercises no influence whatever upon the physical organism, so that the messages apparently do not come through her mind. They certainly do not seem to be modified by any of its recognisable activity except in the last stages of her emergence from the trance. Consequently we have a condi- tion of things which is certainly infrequent for the communication of intelligent messages, and we should expect all sorts of difficulties in getting them through. CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 311 They must be affected by the limitations of the me- dium through which they have to be sent. There is fairly good evidence that unfamiliar words and ex- pressions give great difficulty in the transmission. Though the process is apparently an automatic one a foreign language is almost impossible to it, and at one period in the development of the case the use of the left hand for writing messages had to be abandoned because Mrs. Piper had never used it for the purpose of writing, and apparently its organic habits did not suit it to the ready delivery of mes- sages in a supernormal way. Possibly the education of the medium operates as a condition and determi- nation of the limits of communication, at least to some extent. But in any view it is certain that the general limitations of the medium must represent those of the messages, and her condition being ab- normal these limitations are greatly increased. The eflFect might be to confuse messages, if it did not make them trivial. 2. Intermediate Obstacles I include in intermediate obstacles to " communica- tion " the difficulties intervening between the " con- trol" and the medium's physical organisation, the modifying influence of the " control's " nature upon the messages received, and the intercosmic difficul- ties in sending the message from the "communi- cator" to the "control." These difficulties can be stated thus even though the "control" be consid- ered the secondary personality of the medium, as 312 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE secondary personality often shows incomplete con- trol of the organism, and often modifies what the normal consciousness knows. But I shall discuss the case as if the trance personalities were as real spirits as those personalities may be assumed to be who prove their identity. That the first of these difficulties would exist might be inferred from what we know of the original diffi- culty in the child of controlling its muscles. It only gradually learns to co-ordinate them, as they have a tendency to act in capricious and impulsive modes. But gradually it learns to subject them to its com- mand. Others than the person possessing the or- ganism have no influence or control whatever, ex- cept by physical compulsion. Imagine, then, the obstacles in the way of a discarnate spirit attempting to use the muscles of a living organism for speech or writing. The owner had a long course of educa- tion and habit in the use of it when in closer rela- tion to It than any discarnate person can be supposed to obtain. Hence it is probable that a similar course of experience is necessary on the other side to ex- ercise any influence either on the organism directly or indirectly through the mind of the medium in a passive state to effect communication. In this we should expect all sorts of confusions and fragmentary messages, especially if the conditions for successful communication fluctuated in any manner. An influence that may affect the messages is also the mind of the " control." When the " commu- nicator " does not himself " control " the medium's organism all messages have to pass through the CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 313 mind of the regular " control," and we know enough of the effect of a second mind on a story to recog- nise that modifications of messages are bound to take place in this way, and with no blameworthy fault of the mind through which they pass. If the " control " has to encounter any serious difficulties, as he prob- ably does, in receiving the messages for delivery to the sitter, he must use his interpreting judgment on their meaning and would inevitably implicate them in modifications, even to the extent of error. This statement is made on the assumption of analogies with our mode of communication with each other among the Hving. But we cannot assume this. On the contrary, we must suppose the mode of commu- nication there to be different, and if it is anything like telepathy, if the process of getting the mes- sage to the " control " is or resembles one of telep- athy, or invokes the " control's " interpretation of signs and fragmentary thoughts, we should have large measures of intromitted matter or at least forms of statement characteristic of the " control." There are interesting evidences of this modifying influence of the " control " on the messages trans- mitted to it. In general they represent forms of expression provably not characteristic of the discar- nate spirit from whom the messages purport to come, and present in the " communications " of the " con- trols " both when others are purporting to communi- cate and when they themselves are the sole " com- municators." That is, certain uniform modes of ex- pression are noticeable which are not characteristic of any particular " communicator " and so indicate the 314 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE modifying influence of the " control's " mind upon the message. One instance is the word " Messengers." This is the term which the Imperator group in the Pi- per case applies to themselves, as agents sent to prove the immortality of the soul. Now this word was sev- eral times put into the mouth of my father in his " communications," when it was wholly uncharacteris- tic of him. He knew nothing about this subject in general except what he got in a few conversations I had with him on it, and nothing whatever about this group of trance personalities in particular, nor did I at the time of our conversations. Here his allusion to them is clothed in their own language about them- selves. Again the word " Sunday " was twice put into the mouth of my father, when I suppose he never once used the word in his life. He always insisted on say- ing " Sabbath " instead and rebuked us children if he heard us use the word " Sunday," which I can assure you we rarely did under the discipline and habits of early life. It Is important, too, to re- mark that the trance personalities themselves, those of the Imperator group proper, always employ the term " Sabbath " in their spontaneous " communi- cations," and use " Sunday " only when they are faithfully transmitting the messages of others. But on the occasions when the word " Sunday " was put into my father's mouth George Pelham was an inter- mediary between my father and Rector, the " con- trol " at the time, and George Pelham had prob- ably never used the word " Sabbath " in his life, as CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 315 he was a resident of an eastern city where all re- ligious refinements about these terms were lost. A very striking instance of this modifying in- fluence is the adoption by the " controls " of the ab- breviation " U. D." for the word " understand," and the uniform practice of putting it into the mouths of various communicators, who cannot be supposed to use it at all. The trance personalities of the Imperator group often use the phrase " as I would have it," in their spontaneous " communications " and as often put it into the mouths of " communicators " who would not naturally use the expression, and who would be less imperious in their manners. It is the same with the term " light " by which they describe Mrs. Piper as a means of " communication." For instance, on one occasion in which my father wished to say that I could not communicate with him in certain experi- ments, he was made to say, speaking of the young men with whom I had been experimenting, " They are not light and I cannot reach you there." These are only a few instances of the phenomena which might be quoted, but they are decidedly evi- dential of the modifying influence which has been supposed or asserted, and they sufiice to show Its ex- istence. I have not the space to mention further proof, and it is not necessary here, as when once proved to exist to any extent at all, we can readily admit that it may have a larger influence than in the mere instances which prove its presence. The fact is that the reader of the detailed records will find 316 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE an immense amount of evidence for its influence, and to these he must go if he is not satisfied with the evi- dence given. The important point to be observed as a conse- quence of proving this modifying influence of the "control" is the fact that it explains the general absence of the personal characteristics of the " com- municator " which sitters are so on the alert to dis- cover, and without which they hesitate to accept the spiritistic origin. This modifying influence does not explain the triviality of the messages, but it does explain the disappearance of the personal character- istics which are so often sought, and it indicates that the mode of communication on the " other side " involves its difficulties and may be compared to those of the telephone, though much more complicated and disturbing than any in the telephone. There are probably certain intercosmic obstacles intervening between the " communicator " and the " control " which cause confusion in the messages. We have no way, of course, to prove their existence, and it does not affect the case whether we can or not. The probability of them is based upon cer- tain features of the dramatic play of personality which represents the trance personalities as laboring under difficulties in getting the messages clearly, which they can deliver clearly usually when they get them. The interposition of George Pelham to get proper names illustrates the supposition, and occa- sional allusions to the process of " communicating," not apparent in my published report, indicate the same fact. But these obstacles need not be urged. CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 317 as the utmost that can be implied by them is an in- crease of the difficulties in " communicating " and not merely the existence of them. But they explain cer- tain kinds of interruptions in the " communica- tions " and the occurrence of various confusions in them. S. Mental Condition of the " Communicator " I come now to the most important of all the ques- tions in favor of the spiritistic hypothesis after we have disqualified telepathy and satisfied ourselves with the evidence for personal identity. The existence of the supernormal and the satisfaction of the cri- terion for personal identity are the primary problems to be solved, and we should have to accept the spirit- istic hypothesis with any and all consequences what- ever, if the facts required it and if telepathy with its adjuncts were inadequate to effect a counter ex- planation. But we have the trivialities to explain also at any cost, and it is these that the supposi- tion of an abnormal mental condition of the " com- municator " is meant to explain. The crucial issue in the whole problem thus rests upon this question, in so far as it appeals to the personal interest of man- kind when called to recognise a future life as a fac- tor in the regulation of conduct or the cultivation of desire. We must give an intelligible answer to the scepticism based upon the persistent triviality of the messages as well as their fragmentary and con- fused character. The spiritistic hypothesis cannot shirk this responsibility in the least. 818 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE It will be readily admitted that an abnormal mental condition of the " communicator," if it exists, would affect the messages very seriously, but the question of both the layman and the scientific man would be: " What evidence have you that this abnormal mental condition is a fact ? " The answer to this question must be made clear and emphatic, and I think it can be made so clear that the supposition can be made to appear quite the most rational part of the general hypothesis. I am not prepared to define accurately the condi- tion of the " communicator " while sending messages, but it may be compared sometimes to certain types of secondary personality, sometimes to the hypnotic trance, and sometimes to delirium or dreaming. Whatever it is, the condition aflFects the current of thought and association, and the control of memory, so that amnesic tendencies are noticeable along with confusion and error in the " communications " and the limitation of the messages to trivialities, as we observe such conditions In normal life affecting them. We have only to be familiar with the abnormal mental phenomena of living persons to appreciate what would follow the existence of such mental states on the " other side." The only question for us, then, is the evidence that some abnormal condition prevails during the " communications," at least in most of the " communicators." The sceptic will ask, " How is any evidence possi- ble on such a matter? " " How can we determine con- ditions on the ' other side ' until we get there, If we CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 319 ever do?" The answer to these questions is cumu- lative and I shall give the answers in that form. In the first place I may say that we can tell the abnormal mental condition of the discarnate " com- municator " in the same way that we can tell it in living persons with whom we communicate. The dif- ficulty with the sceptic is that he does not seem to be able to realize that the question of triviality in the messages does not arise until the spiritistic hy- pothesis is forced upon us to explain the supernor- mal facts in the records; and that we have then the same right to postulate the origin of the fragmen- tary and confused messages, as well as the persistence of triviality, in the discarnate spirits, and then ex- plain why they naturally take that form. Hence we simply suppose the mental condition of the " com- municator " from the very character of the messages. We tell when a man is insane, when he is delirious, when he is drunk, when his mind is not acting right- ly» by what we hear him say. We can tell when a writer is a crank or insane simply by what he says. The distortion of one's sentences, the disconnected re- lation of one's sentences, the fragmentary nature of one's conversations, the halting character of speech often in hypnosis, and various signs of the kind are unmistakable indications of abnormal mental condi- tions in the living, and the same characteristics ought to evidence the same facts in discarnate spirits. We might thus appeal to the persistent triviality of the incidents themselves for proof, were it not that it is this that excites sceptical curiosity. Confusion 320 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE and error of a certain kind, simulative of dream-like and delirious consciousness in the living, will be un- mistakable evidence of it, when the force of triviality might be questioned. But there is a consideration that will certainly justify the supposition on the superficial character of the messages themselves. It is the fact that the spiritistic hypothesis rests primarily upon the supernormal incidents requiring an explanation, and that when the hypothesis is once assumed it must be made to include the non-evidential matter within its general application. It is not the intellectual char- acter or rationality of the messages that determines the necessity of supposing their origin in discarnate spirits, but it is the assumed impossibility of account- ing for them by chance, guessing, or by telepathy. They may be as irrational and insane in their form of presentation as you please, if only they show the activity of an intelligence independent of the me- dium's organism. In the study of the phenomena we simply select that part of the material purporting to come from spirits, which is evidential, and set aside the non-evidential matter as possibly due to second- ary personality or anything else. But once find that we are forced to explain the evidential matter by spirits and we are obliged either to explain the non- evidential matter by the same hypothesis or to show good reasons why the non-evidential matter is due to some other agency, and how the discrimination can be made. If the cleavage between the evidential and non-evidential matter is such that a diflference of source is perfectly apparent, then there will be no CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 321 reason for unifying our explanation. But readers of the Piper records will see very distinctly that there is no clear line of mental discrimination be- tween evidential and non-evidential matter, and hence we are required to extend the same hypothesis over the whole mass of phenomena, with only such ad- junctive hypotheses as are necessary to explain anom- alies perfectly consistent with the general theory but not naturally expected of normal conditions of con- sciousness. With this conception of the case in mind, with the necessity of first accepting the spiritistic theory at any cost of consequences, we can see very readily why the superficial character of the messages, as tes- timony to the condition of mind in which they origi- nate, may also be accepted, and this once done the reader has only to study the records to see the evi- dential cogency of that superficial character. But this cogency is of very different degrees in different cases. As I have remarked, the line of discrimina- tion between evidential and non-evidential matter bearing upon the supernormal cannot be drawn with absolute accuracy. Some messages are clear and true all the way through. Some are whoUy false and worthless. Some are half true and half false. Some, while they are wholly false as they stand, are so near the truth in a few or many details as to leave the sitter without any doubt whatever as to what was meant, and these reflect with much force the mental conditions in which the messages originate. I shall select instances of this which will show a mixed evi- dential and non-evidential character, as they cannot 322 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE be explained either by chance of any kind or by any accepted view of telepathy. They are, in fact, the strongest evidence of a spiritistic hypothesis as well as evidence of an abnormal mental condition in the " communicator " while sending messages. The first incident which I shall mention is the one in which my father and my uncle were involved about the drive and accident to the buggy (p. 233). I shall simply outline the facts briefly and without quoting the exact statements of the " communica- tors,", as these are accessible to readers who wish to examine the facts in detail. My father mentions an accident which he indicates was associated with his sister. This sister denies that any such accident ever occurred in her experience. The accident is mentioned again by my father with new details, and these turn out to be false on inquiry. I ask a question of my uncle when he comes to " com- municate " and he thinks that I am referring to some other incident than the one that had occurred with him and myself the day after my father's death, and tells me of another drive; then he discovers we are " thinking of different things." When he inquires if I " mean on that Sunday " and on an affirmative reply from me he proceeds to tell accurately the main incidents of the breakdown after saying that my father had mentioned it before, but confused it in connecting it with my aunt, my father's sister and the uncle's wife. Now I had asked for incidents previous to my birth and which the two living aunts would know. But the response brought an incident which had oc- CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 323 cur red after my father's death and which ought to have been related to me and my uncle, deceased at the time of the message, and not to my father's sister. It was well calculated to prove my uncle's identity to this aunt, because he and I had tried to conceal the accident from her when we returned, and this was mentioned in the first reference by my father to the accident. But the incident had neither a bearing upon the personal identity of my father nor any rel- evancy to the request which I had made for incidents occurring before my birth. Then just before clear- ing up the matter my uncle indicates the confusion of my father, which the mistaken time relations in his statements and the misapplication of the reference for the facts clearly showed. When we see in the sequel what was meant the mental confusion is per- fectly apparent. Another incident shows this confusion very clearly. My father had referred to an illness which my sister had had three months before the sitting, he having died six years previously. But he could not continue what he wished to say, and later he returned with the help of my wife, who had died two years before ; calling her his wife — a statement corrected by her spontaneously the next day — he showed some con- fusion again about my sister, and Rector, the " con- trol " said (wrote) to me: " He seems a little dazed in thought. It is most certainly connected with Lida in the body." Then my father went on to mention a disease and physical difficulties that he claimed had been his own, the main one of which I knew to be false with regard to him. But inquiry showed that exami- SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE nation had been made for this one in my sister's case and that the other two incidents were especially relevant to my sister, and were relevant to my father's condition just before death. The interesting circum- stance, however, is that Rector was aware of the ir- relevance of the facts as he was going to state them, and forewarned me as to their reference, while my father went on with a confused sense of personal iden- tity, claiming as his own what was in fact intended as true for my sister. My father made some statements about a fire which had given him a fright, and in alluding to it again and a third time showed that he had confused three difFerent fire incidents in his life, any one of which would have been good evidence of identity. A story was told about a cherry tree which was quite relevant to a willow tree and not true about the cherry tree. The confusion about the canes is per- haps another illustration. I was asked by my father if I remembered a curved handled cane with his initials carved in the end. The " communicator " had no such cane. But he had had a straight gold- headed cane with his initials carved in the end, and it was soon afterward lost and a curved handled cane was given him in its stead, and certain incidents in his life associated them very closely together. There is a very fine evidential instance of the mental confusion in Dr. Hodgson's report on the Piper case. After the death of George Pelham a friend of the deceased by the name of Mr. Hart had some sittings with Mrs. Piper and was very much annoyed by the way in which the messages were CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 326 speUed out in confusion, this process extending often to very ordinary words. Some time later Mr. Hart himself suddenly died and soon afterwards became a " communicator," but at first a very confused one. Dr. Hodgson had known him in life and was present at his sittings. One day this Mr. Hart turned up at one of Dr. Hodgson's sittings and engaged in the following " communications," whose significance is ap- parent at a glance. " What in the world is the reason you never call for me? I am not sleeping. I wish to help you in identifying myself. ... I am a good deal better now. (You were confused at first.) Very, but I did not really understand how confused I was. It is more so, I am more so when I try to speak to you. I understand now why George spelled his words to me." The strikingly evidential incident and allusion to his difficulty when living in understanding why there was confusion and the confession that he was now confused is an important indication of the phenom- enon which explains so much in the record. There is, of course, more than the mental confusion of the " communicator " involved in the explanation of the record, but this one circumstance suggests clearly the source of triviality. Quite as important a piece of evidence In this di- rection comes from this George Pelham. In explain- ing the conditions for " communicating " he once said, after having satisfied Dr. Hodgson of his iden- tity: " Remember, we share and always shall have our 326 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE friends in the dream-life, i. e., your life, so to speak, which will attract us forever and ever, and so long as we have any friends sleeping in the material world; you to us are more like as we understand sleep, you look shut up as one in prison, and in order for us to get into communication with you, we have to enter into your sphere, as one like yourself asleep. This is just why we make mistakes as you call them, or get confused and muddled, so to put it, Hodgson. (Dr. Hodgson repeats in his own language.) Your thoughts do grasp mine. Well, now you have just what I have been wanting to come and make clear to you, Hodgson, old fellow. (It is quite clear.) Yes, you see I am more awake than asleep, yet I cannot come just as I am in reality, independently of the medium's light." The reader will not only find this account of the matter entirely rational, whatever he may think of its truth, but he will also remark the reason for its ra- tionality, and this is the confessed clearer condition of this " communicator " who is clearer than we usually find others, as the records show. I shall take up some minor evidences of this same mental confusion and many of them will be found in my own records. On one occasion my father dis- covered his condition and the way that it might be viewed by me and broke out into the following mes- sage : " Ah, James, do not, my son, think I am de- generating because I am disturbed in thinking over my earthly life, but if you will wait for me I will remember all." Here is that borderland condition of consciousness in which we can sometimes detect CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING S27 ourselves when we are aware of delirium and cannot prevent it, but can introspect it enough to tell its na- ture. In another " communication " the same person said : " I am working to keep my thoughts clear," and soon afterward asked for an article with the statement: " It will help to keep my thoughts from rambling." In reference to something he could not recall he said : " Strange I cannot think of the word I want." Again he said : " I felt very much confused when I first came here." In another an interesting confession of amnesia dissociating the nor- mal life beyond from the condition for " communi- cating " occurs : " I seem to lose a part of my recol- lections between my absence and return." Again: " I intended to refer to Uncle John, but I was some- what dazed." Illustrations of this sort could be multiplied into the hundreds, and they all point to the same con- clusion and represent a consensus of opinion in va- rious " communicators." But there is one charac- teristic more of the " communications " which is an unconscious testimony to this delirious dream-like state of the " communicator." Their own definite statements are conscious and subject to discredit for various reasons, although if numerous enough and representative of a general law may be relieved of suspicion by that fact. But the characteristic which I wish to mark is not exposed to such an objection. It is the vmiformly rapid movement of thought from incident to incident in the " communications." This is one of the most noticeable features of them and the rapidity and abruptness of change from idea 328 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE to idea not naturally associated in life is a distinctive mark of what we know in delirium and dreams. I could give ma,ny and long illustrations of the phe- nomenon in the records. But I shall satisfy the reader with the mention of the fact, especially as it is unconscious attestation of the statements made in confession of the dream-like state when " communi- cating." Illustrations in proof of it would take up too much space and explanation. I have endeavored by these lengthy quotations to answer the question how we knew that there was any disturbed mental conditions associated with the mes- sages. In the nature of the case I could not make the supposition arbitrarily. I had to support it by evidence. The habit of paying no attention to the confusion, nonsense, and non-evidential matter pre- vents us from discovering the cause of it, and we nat- urally ask why the supposition is made when it is used to explain certain characteristics of the " com- munications. For these reasons I have given as much evidence as I can well quote in this book to show that the hypothesis is not arbitrary, but is one quite sub- stantiated by the facts. We are thus prepared to ex- amine what it explains. But I must remind the reader that the hypothesis of abnormal mental conditions as affecting the mes- sages is not a theory of my own concocting. It was first proposed by Dr. Hodgson, perhaps after being prompted to it by the statements to that effect by George Pelham and the unquestionable evidence of the " communications " themselves. I am only defending what another has suggested. It is not a novelty of CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 329 my own at all. It was almost anticipated by Mr. Myers ; for he was aware that some of the " communi- cations " looked so inane as to be intelligible only on the supposition of some abnormal condition, whether terrestrial or transcendental. But there has not been the opportunity on the part of Dr. Hodgson to ex- press fully his conception of the case or to present adequate proof of it. It is, however, so crucial to the spiritistic hypothesis that it must receive as much attestation as it is possible to give it in a brief work like this. Assuming, then, that the hypothesis has sufficient evidence to justify its application we may next ask what it explains. What does this dream-like condi- tion, or delirious half consciousness explain? The first answer to the question and the one intended from the very conception of the perplexity felt by most people is that it adequately explains the triviality of the messages. We are familiar enough with the inci- dents of dreams to appreciate this assertion, and de- lirium exhibits still more analogies in the type of in- cidents that constitute the stream of its reproductions. Both conditions show the mind in a more or less auto- matic state and incapable of controlling the drift of association and memory, as it is done by attention in normal consciousness ; and this feature of the phe- nomena Is noticeable In the " communications," and with the stress and strain of attention withdrawn the events of memory will naturally flow on and up in miscellaneous confusion and also represent the most trivial recollections of life. When we consider that the " communicator " In his normal state on the other 330 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE side is aware of his problem and would, in his rational condition, select trivial facts to prove his identity ; and that the condition for " communicating " interrupts this rational state with more or less amnesia and yet enough of automatic memory retained often to take up the incidents, we can understand both the triviality of the facts and the confusion attending the attempt to tell them in the abnormal state. Then the ab- normal state once assumed tends to keep the mind on the less interesting episodes of one's life and bring on something like delirium. Secondary personality in its undeveloped forms often imitates this same phenom- enon in respect to confusion and triviality, but does not involve anything supernormal. Some hypnotic states exhibit the same phenomenon. The triviality of its incidents is the striking fact, and is apparently the rule in most abnormal personalities or mental states, especially where this state is non-systematic. But more than triviality is explained by the mental confusion of the " communicator." Certain other features of the messages are probably due to it. But as obstacles within the organism of the medium and intercosmic difficulties may intervene to pervert mes- sages on the way to the " controls " it is possible that we cannot determine very accurately what confusions are due to the mental condition of the " communi- cator " and what to other obstacles. There is evi- dence in some instances, notably in false messages, that the mental action of the " communicator " is clear enough, but is without the power to compare its contents with the facts to assure itself of correctness. The confusion here is one of error and represents what CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 331 we find in systematic dreaming. But it is not neces- sary to distinguish the confusion due to the various causes, as so much of it is the result of the dream- like state of the " communicator " under the impelling force of association and rapid delirious thinking; we may rest satisfied with the one general removal of the primary difficulty of the spiritistic theory, as it has appeared to most persons interested in the phe- nomena. Readers of the records will observe that not all " communicators " are equally affected by the condi- tions influencing messages. Some are clearer than others, and some are clearer at one time than at an- other. The condition, like many abnormal mental conditions in the living, is a fluctuating one and the results vary with it. Some of the " communications " by my father were clearly related to the deepest inter- est of his life and showed a clearly changed point of view. His religious beliefs were what every one in the present day would call very narrow. He would not have denied this, though he would have insisted that they were true, whatever other characteristic they had. But in some very far reaching intimations he indicated a change of view that touched upon the vital questions of both his family and his religious life. But most that he " communicated " was the consequence of an explanation that little incidents were desirable for the proof of his identity, and he rationally clung to that policy with its inevitable accompaniment of triviality. Almost as soon as he came to " communicate " he began most naturally to refer to our conversations on this subject before his death, an incident not at all SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE trivial when it is considered in relation to the modi- fication of his view of things necessitated by a wider outlook into cosmic law and evolution. But the mo- ment that it was intimated that little incidents were necessary to prove his identity and to establish the conclusion involved in this investigation, the mind of the " communicator " thenceforth concentrated most naturally on the trivial incidents that would effect the object and has ever since stood by this conception with a firm persistence. He has not always been able to maintain a clear state of mind for his purpose, but it shows the effect of a rational understanding and will in the work, a position that probably refiects the normal consciousness on the " other side " imperfectly carried over into the abnormal condition necessary to " communicate." For there is apparently a good deal of evidence that more or less amnesia of both the nor- mal life beyond and of past earthly life arises from the condition necessary to " communicate," though it is only the amnesia of our natural dream life. Let me indulge a speculative analogy for a moment. In the experiments to prove telepathy it was no- ticeable that the agent had to think as intently as possible, and apparently in many cases the mental abstraction necessary to effect the transmission had to amount almost to the extent of visualisation. The percipient in many cases received the impression in the form of an hallucination. This was specially ob- servable in the only successes that I ever obtained in telepathic transmission. Now add to this the fact that In our dreams we perceive things as If they were real. We seem to see actual things, to hear actual CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 333 sounds, to touch actual objects. The process is really one of hallucination, and not imagination as we know it in our normal state. Those who awaken in a dream realise this very distinctly, and hypnogogic illusions represent the same phenomenon. The mind acts from central processes as if it was responding to peripheral stimuli and the dream world has all the reality of the real world but its persistence and probability. Now suppose the mode of " communication " with the discarnate is telepathic or involves telepathic proc- esses; that intensity of mental action which is neces- sary to impress a delicate mechanism with the mes- sage to be sent may involve something like the mental action that creates the sensory imagery of dreams, the suppression of external stimuli and the releasing of central agencies. If this be true we can under- stand why a state like our sleep should be necessary to eflFect certain kind of " communication." I do not pretend that this conjecture Is either prov- able or a complete explanation of the phenomena if it were provable. All that I contend for is that It is possible and that the indulgence of It In the light of known facts of normal experience helps us to under- stand the characteristic of the alleged communications through Mrs. Piper, and to modify their apparently anomalous character. The clear " communications " on the nature of the life beyond by George Pelham, In so far as analogies can be " clear," illustrate again that some " communi- cators " may possess a better balanced consciousness and when they do the messages betray less triviality of incident. I cannot detail any of his " revelations," 334. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE as they are outside the evidential problem which must be the first one to solve, and I allude to them only to refute the accusation that all the material is trivial, while admitting that most of it is such and ought to be such in a scientific question of this kind. I shall simply remark a fact that is incompatible with the telepathic hypothesis and that is probably connected with the abnormal mental conditions neces- sary for " communication." It is the fact that " com- municators " gradually lose the power of " communi- cating " incidents of terrestrial experience as time elapses, and can only engage in non-evidential " com- munications " though retaining certain personal characteristics of identity. This is quite a natural phenomenon for anyone who has observed human de- velopment in this life. The past vanishes in propor- tion to its inutility in our growth. The adult wholly forgets his childhood, and the child at a certain stage forgets the events of infancy, as its personality changes. A crisis in our lives may involve such an alteration of interests as to reduce to more or less complete amnesia the incidents important to a previous system of habits and interests. Now, after death, as- suming that we continue to exist, we have no need of our past sensory experience except as an accident of the retention of our personal identity, and as soon as this has been established by new experiences in a transcendental environment, whether we call this ethe- real or spiritual, we may allow sensory memories to atrophy and to be irrevocable, at least with that in- tensity and in that form that may be necessary to make them communicable with a physical world. I do CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 335 not say or imply that the past is not clearly recallable in the normal state beyond, but that as time elapses it seems that it cannot be recalled for " communica- tion." We can well understand, therefore, why its recall involves a dream-like and delirious stream of trivial incidents which usually characterise the auto- matic action of our own minds when the stress of at- tention is removed and the current of thought has its own spontaneous course. Let me carry this analogy a little farther and apply it all along the line of our evolution, beginning with infancy and illustrating the possible course of develr opment that may make survival after death a reason- able contingency and communication with the discar- nate an equal contingency. The prenatal existence of the infant is dependent upon the possession of two bodies, its mother's and its own. Its nutrition comes to it from an external source already digested and prepared for assimilation, and its circulation, the agency transmitting this nutrition, also comes from without. Its organic actions are not its own spon- taneous functions, but the contribution of its environ- ment, its mother's organism. But it possesses a latent system of senses and organs which have no relation to this environment and whose activities would proba- bly not represent this environment rightly if they occurred. Vision and hearing in this prenatal state, if possible, would not represent much of that world and touch may be as inactive as the other senses most naturally are. But they are functions unadapted to the prenatal environment, and waiting for use in an- other world after birth. This birth is only a depart- SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE ure from its mother's organism and its awakening in a different physical world in which its new activities are elicited. For its normal life through childhood to maturity these activities constitute its natural and adapted functions until death. But there are latent functions which we have to call subconscious, and which in secondary personality of certain forms rep- resent no useful character in the struggle for exist- ence. They are not necessary for survival in the present physical world and show as much inadaptation as the normal senses before birth. They are possible latent functions awaiting the stimulus of another en- vironment, functions capable of reacting to a spiritual or mental stimulus and of occasionally acting on the physical organism, indirectly at least through its automatic machinery, when the control or influence of the normal consciousness is relaxed or withdrawn. Now if death is merely a departure of the soul from its own body, as birth is a departure from the mother's body, it may simply release for functional activity agencies that were latent in its physical existence and the functions related to the physical world may gradu- ally atrophy from disuse and inadaptation to a new environment. The subliminal functions of the phys- ical world may become the supraliminal of the ethereal and spiritual world. The resuscitation of earthly memories and their transmission to the physical world may require that co-operation of subliminal functions which betrayed themselves in dreams and hallucinations in normal life, and consequently the recurrence of ab- normal mental conditions beyond to effect the result. The natural inadaptation of these perfectly to either CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 337 world may necessarily involve the production of dream-like trivialities and confusion. I have no evidence that any such possibilities are a fact and hence I do not pretend that they represent even a plausible theory. They only accord with the analogies of known experience in normal life, and may be proposed for what they are worth, not as a serious hypothesis of fact. They simply indicate the possible reason why the confusion and trivialities of communications may partake of the abnormal condi- tions that perhaps necessarily accompany the process by which nature tries to bridge the chasm between two different worlds while it carries personal identity over from one to the other. Nature has to observe the law of continuity in some form, and if it cannot do it any other way it will adopt temporary functions in an organism for the purpose. Subliminal mental functions may serve this purpose and connect the physical and spiritual worlds in this way without making them too close to each other in reality. The current and Kanto-Hegelian idealism cannot object to any such view of the case as can be shown by the place which is assigned to internal activities or functions of the mind. Idealism represents the mean- ing of things from the point of view of consciousness as distinguished from the physical world or external stimuli. It emphasises inner activity and in some cases goes so far as to describe the process as one of " creating our own world." Whatever place external stimulus may have, it is certain that the functions of consciousness are not always representative of the reality which gives rise to them. " Sound " seems to 338 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE have no resemblance to the vibrations which occasion it. The sensations of color seem to have no resem- blance to the undulations of light supposed to cause them. Hence the reactions of the mind upon things from without seem wholly unlike the phenomena of the transmission of motion in the mechanical world and so to characterise a world of creation. Determinative action from within begins in conscious organisms, and if there is anything in the survival of this conscious- ness it may represent a process of evolution toward the perpetuity of this creative action. The infant is purely passive in its prenatal existence. It requires no conscious struggle, and obtains nutrition and pro- tection from without. But when it becomes conscious on birth it assumes a life in which it starts toward a career of creation and construction. It is still related to a physical world in which its consciousness re- quires a stimulus to initiate its constructive activity. The growth of all the higher intellectual activities represents a growth in this creative or constructive agency. Scientific, philosophic, and poetic creations are the play of these higher functions on the appar- ently disordered material of sensory experience and are a discipline in the exercise of this sort of function which may be of continued service as function in an- other mode of existence. But they give no apparent reality apart from the presence of an external stimu- lus. In our subliminal activities, however, as in dreams and hallucinations, this apparent reality is present. We actually create our apparent physical universe in them and the stimulation of normal sense activity is complete. What if these subliminal func- CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 339 tions are only foresights of spontaneous activities in a new environment, creating their world there, while other functions are receptive of impression from it, and carrying along with them the best or the worst of our sensory life in the physical world. Why could not a rationalised dream life, such as poetry actually is, represent a true spiritual life, or at least the means of bridging the chasm between a material and a spirit- ual world and opening the way to a larger life of creative activity than the physical world will permit, a creative activity that may be wholly spiritual? I am not advancing any such possibility as true in fact, but only as a natural expectation on the basis of idealism on the one hand and the proof of a future life on the other. All that I am contending for is that idealism is deprived of objections to such a con- ception of things, as it apparently conforms to evo- lution as we observe it from the earliest stages of organic existence to its close ; in which apparently we have a progress from the purely passive toward the purely active life in which consciousness and its development toward creative activity for making the source of its enjoyments is apparently the law of the cosmos. But such a speculation is not necessary to the proof of a future life. Its indulgence can only serve to throw light upon those intermediate mental conditions which do not seem to represent a perfect adaptation to either mode of existence, and so to be abnormal to both while all the higher functions are reserved for their proper action in their appropriate place. The creative functions as we know them serve for progress in the present life ; and their continuance 340 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE in the next will only be their exaltation in an environ- ment better adapted to them while the latent func- tions of the present, receiving their stimulus from the active functions of sense and intellect, may carry over into the new ethereal world the capacity to make ideals real in the same sense in which dreams and hallucinations create reality, and will not require adaptation to that reality for survival as in the pres- ent. In the intermediate stages we may have the abnormal and unadapted of both worlds. Confusion and triviality would thus be a natural and perhaps a necessary accompaniment of communication between them. That this view is possible is supported even by Dr. Osier. Immediately following the passage in his In- gersoU Lecture on immortality, which I have quoted above, he adds : " There is much to suggest, and it is a pleasing fancy, that outside our consciousness lie fields of psychical activity analogous to the invisible yet powerful rays of the spectrum. The thousand activities of the bodily machine, some of them noisy enough at times, do not in health obtrude themselves upon our consciousness, and just as there is this enor- mous subconscious field of vegetative life, so there may be a vast supraconscious sphere of astral life, the manifestations of which are only now and then in evidence," CHAPTER XIII ETHICAL MEANING AND EESUI/TS In the scientific discussion of a future life a man can make no promises. He must adjudge the whole question by the evidence and must abide by the ver- dict. He must accept the disproof of it, if that be presented, as calmly as he pretends to accept its proof. He must have no personal preferences one way or the other, if he claims to decide the question by scientific criteria. Science is disinterested and accepts the truth whether it hurts or heals. Philosophy and poetry may indulge their empyrean flights, the one of reason and the other of imagination, and religion may utter its passionate cry for a happy meeting in the Elysian fields, but science with its stern unbending will, even if it has to leave Hecuba mourning for her children, must weigh the truth in the scales of justice without a tear and without any wincing at the bitterness of fate. The intelligent public's state of mind on this ques- tion in the present age is one of comparative indif- ference. There are several reasons for this connected with the whole development of the relation between science and religion and the development of economic industries. They are worth a brief notice as they partly excuse this indifference and partly condemn it. The Greeks before the rise of philosophic scepticism and of intellectual culture accepted the immortality 341 34.2 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE of the soul, though there is evidence that it not only exercised little influence on moral and social life, but also that their conception of it seems to have been drawn from phenomena resembling mediumistic com- munications. These represented it as a meager and undesirable mode of existence. When scepticism and culture arose they drove away the gods and the behef in immortality. Thenceforth the Greeks lived for science and art. They were by nature passionate worshippers of the beauties of nature, and having come to the conviction that another life after death involved an existence inferior to the present they gave themselves up to the delirium of terrestrial pleasures, the " carnal life of sense," and not having the brother- hood of man to steady their social and political life ended in the debaucheries of Epicureanism. There were redeeming features in their civilisation which I shall not discuss here, as I am emphasising only the influences that center about the idea of a future life, and the denial of it. Some of the best minds of Greece believed it, though not in a personal immortal- ity as usually understood. But it had a very slight hold on either individual or social morality and was never associated with any clear ideas on the brother- hood of man. Aristocratic and imperialistic concep- tions of society were too prevalent for anything like equality to secure respect. Philosophy, when not grossly materialistic, was an impersonal pantheism, and all social and political ideals were conceived in harmony with it. When Christianity came it was a revolt against both the philosophy and the politics of Greece. Its phi- ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 843 losophy was theistic and its politics were democratic. It asserted the created nature of the material world and placed an infinite spirit behind the phenomenal world, and in man it placed a finite spirit which sur- vived death, and associated this belief with a morality that involved the brotherhood of man. But in this re- volt, like all reactions, Christianity laid such stress upon a future life and upon an ascetic morality for the present existence that its whole history has been infected with an unnatural disease. It even forgot the brotherhood of man with which it started and concentrated all its interest in the life beyond the grave, and subordinated all its social, moral, ecclesias- tical, and political machinery to the end of personal salvation in another world. The importance of this was intensified by its doctrine of rewards and punish- ments and the denial of probation after death, the last being modified by the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. But its theory of rewards and punishments gave a perfunctory character to secular and social virtues, while the supremacy of the interest in the discarnate life led to the neglect of the most important duties in the present. The selfish instincts of ancient individ- ual life became an absorbing and passionate personal interest in individual salvation; and the social life of the community, whose regeneration it started to effect by the moral reformation of the individual, was abandoned for personal happiness beyond the grave. To purchase this the earthly life had to be made ascetic and external social duties were the price of this trans-mortal salvatibn. The out- come of this movement was the social, political, and 344. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE moral orgies of the middle ages when every principle of Christianity was sacrificed to persecution, bad gov- ernment, hypocrisy, superstition, barbarism, and such debaucheries as a low economic development would permit. Among the lower strata of society the orig- inal conceptions prevailed sufficiently to preserve the social system; but for this the anarchy of Greco- Roman civilisation at its end would have repeated his- tory. But it maintained itself in poverty, ignorance, and superstition, while the intellectuals played the game of tyranny and hypocrisy. The Renaissance put an end to this. It released from bondage the three most potent forces in modem civilisation, political liberty, industrial development, and scientific method. They only slowly followed the reformation, but their efficiency was sure and irre- sistible. They revived culture after ancient models while they preserved some of the humanitarian enthu- siasm which had been the teaching but not the prac- tice of so many centuries. The consequence has been the application of morals to the improvement of the present life. The movement was accompanied by the growth of scepticism and materialism, which have permeated all the strata of cultivated and intellectual society. The whole theistic system and its belief in a future life was slowly sapped by It, and as all the ideals of the mediaeval period, including its view of immortality and personal salvation, were the property of the less cultivated, the natural distinctions which arise from the differences of culture and their aristo- cratic associations have implicated an indifference to the question of a personal survival after death with ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 845 the marks of intelligence and unselfishness. After a passionate longing for a future life the human race, brought by materialism to think that it is not possible, consoles itself with the fable of the fox and the grapes and prides itself in a stoical philosophy, forgetting that such an attitude is a confession of the ideality of that which it has to scorn and to abandon. The per- sonal interest in immortality had become so neglectful of the social duties of the present and the necessity of mating peace with the inevitable so imperative, that the intelligent man had to make a virtue of this necessity, and however much he may have liked to retain his hopes he accepts his fate and will not bewail his loss, though he affects a stoical virtue in his pro- fession of indifference. " Thus," says John Fiske, " there has grown up a kind of Puritanism in the scientific temper which, while announcing its unalter- able purpose to follow Truth though she lead us to Hades, takes a kind of grim satisfaction in emphasiz- ing the place of destination." This temper, of course, has its healthy implications, as it is the Nemesis of that faith which neglected its present social duties for an imaginary and unattested world where, if it were rational, virtue would count for nothing unless it had been properly performed in this. Secularism is the rationalist's protest against an ab- surd " other worldliness ; " and it seems forced by the very law of human progress to gain its own end by a neglect of the spiritual, similar to that which charac- terised the religious mind's attitude toward the earth- ly. But there is no reason, save the lack of intelli- gence and high moral development, why both tenden- 346 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE cies should not act together. There is no reason why a belief in a future life should be a necessary evil and there is no reason why a reference to present duties alone should be the world's only virtue. Both ought to be articulated in the highest character, if there is any reason to accept a future life at all. Of course, a reference to a future life in our daily conduct will get its rationality from the conviction that it is a fact, while ignorance of such a destiny is certainly an ex- cuse for the neglect of it. No duties can have any force or motive power if they are based upon a mere possibility of another life when they are confronted with an equal possibility that it is not a fact. Moral- ity to be effective must have some certainties in the causal series of events or it will be largely inopera- tive. Hence if we are to use a future life as a motive power in conduct at all we must assure ourselves that it is a fact and that it represents some degree of progress as the result of effort in the present life. In spite of all the evils that have been associated with the abuses of Christian thought the belief in immortality has had an important influence and it is worth remarking. In a discussion elsewhere of an- cient political institutions and their sacrifice of the individual, I said : " Christianity created a revolution in this respect. It was a direct assault upon ancient morality and an indirect assault upon its politics. This was effected by changing the content and the direction, but not the point of view of the individual- ism that regulated ancient private life. I have said that ancient morality was confined to civic ends. But private conduct was under the dominion of personal ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 347 interest, and this was materialistic, being sensuous satisfaction and wealth based upon slavery. Christian civilisation was spiritualistic and its individualism was not only concentrated upon immaterial ideas, but also required the sacrifice of the present to the future and the subordination of self to the welfare of others. This change in content and direction of conduct was accomplished by its doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Usually this belief is assumed to represent a purely religious conception with no political impor- tance whatever. But it was in fact the profoundest political force in history, and with its associated social and moral conceptions was both a revolutionising and a regenerating influence for higher civilisation. The more we examine into the nature of this doctrine, the motives to which it appealed, the moral equality which it proclaimed even between master and slave, the promises and hopes which it held out to the poor, its contempt for riches and abandonment of ancient po- litical ideals and ends, the more we must recognise the natural antagonism which it aroused in pagan Rome with the prevailing devotion to the secular and military ideal. Patriotism and the virtues of soldiers and citi- zens directed only toward material happiness and na- tional glory were not likely to characterise men whose aspirations were occupied with a spiritual world be- yond the grave. Hence antiquity showed a perfectly natural and logical instinct when it endeavored by all the means in its power to crush the new society ; for its conception of the brotherhood of man, of human rights, its indifference to politics, and the firmness and austerity of its conscience were moral forces that M8 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE sounded the death-knell of a civiUsation which was based upon mere power. " The revolutionary influence which was exerted by the doctrine of immortality was caused by the value which it put upon the individual. In Greek thought aU moral values were placed in abstract institutions. The only approach to spiritual ideals that Greco-Ro- man civilisation produced was found in the welfare of the state and the sacrifice of individual life and con- duct to it. But Christianity put this value in the concrete individual for whom institutions existed, and not he for institutions. The new movement withdrew from politics at the outset, seeking the ' kingdom of God,' partly in the voluntary association of its votaries and partly in the purification and hopes of the soul. The mental and moral attitude of ancient thought, which had subordinated the individual to the whole was here completely reversed, and man was conceived as a being to whose interests and perfection both na- ture and government were to be contributory. In this conception of the world and man all rights and values belonged to the individual, and not to political and physical powers above him. Thus a new center of interest, social and moral, arose, making the subject and not the sovereign the ultimate reference of con- duct. Hence it is no wonder that Christianity was so violently attacked by Paganism. This inversion of the ancient political ideal, the substitution of the spiritual kingdom of God for the material splendor of civic grandeur, and the installation of the rights of the individual against the absolute rights of the sovereign were revolutionary forces of incomparable ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 349 magnitude, and made modern democracy inevitable. Imperialism and its military ideals were impossible where citizens sought peace on earth, good will toward men, and supernal bliss in a transcendental world after death." That this view of its importance is not without good authority is apparent in what historians admit. Every one knows what Gibbon says of its function in the conquest of the world by Christianity. He re- garded it as one of the five causes that accounted for its complete triumph over paganism. But Mr. Gold- win Smith recently proclaimed himself quite em- phatically on the social and ethical value of the belief in immortality. After defending the agnos- tic's position of doubt or disbelief, and showing that religion and philosophy have totally failed to sub- stantiate the belief with convincing evidence, he goes on with clear moral insight and something of despair to admit frankly the importance of the belief for civil- isation : " The Founder of Christendom taught the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. On what does the universal brotherhood of man rest, if not on the universal fatherhood of God? Is there among all the different tribes of man any bond of unity, or even of common origin, so' assured as to constitute a fraternal relation? Certain it is that a failure of practical belief in the fatherhood of God has been accompanied by a burst of disregard, even of contempt, for the brotherhood of man. Jingoism, which seems everywhere to be spreading, is in open defiance of humanity. It tramples under foot, in 350 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE its thirst of expansion, the restraints of the Christian code. It is accompanied and partly fed by a thirst of gain, turning the commercial world into a battle- field, which had hitherto been in some measure bal- anced and repressed by spiritual interests and aspira- tions. " Take away the religious conscience, and what re- mains? Enough remains, no doubt, to hold society together. There will still be the rules which the com- munity makes for self-preservation and embodies in municipal law. There will still be the policeman and the judge. There will stiU be social influences and restrictions of all kinds, which may hereafter take the more definite and impressive form of Social Science. Besides these, there wiU be affection, conjugal, paren- tal, and general. There wiU be friendship; there will be the need and desire of the good opinion of fellowmen. In the character and minds of men of the higher class there will be general benevolence and love of their kind. But what will there be to restrain evil natures, such as will probably continue to exist, from gratifying their propensities, if they can evade or overcome human law during their lives and there is nothing to fear beyond — if at the end of life there is to be no difference between the condition of the best man and that of the worst ? That is a question which not only may present itself, but perhaps is presenting itself, though in forms less antisocial than that here supposed, to men who have cast off belief in future retribution. Social science may be able to fill the void left by religion. If it is, let It do this with all speed. ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 351 " A general contraction of views to the man's own life must apparently be the consequence of the con- viction that this life is all. A man of sense will probably be inclined to let reforms alone, and to con- sider how he may best go through the brief journey of life with comfort, if possible with enjoyment to himself, and in pleasant intercourse with his fellow- men. High social or political aspirations of any kind, will hardly survive the disillusion. " We have an interest in our own children. But otherwise what interest have we in the generations that are to come after us on which a religion of Humanity can be founded? It is not a very lively in- terest that we feel even in the remoter members of the human race, to say nothing of those in the next street. Yet these exist ; and of their existence we are conscious, and are reminded by the electric cable. Of the existence of future generations, supposing there is no future life, we shall not be conscious, and there- fore for us they will not exist. We cannot even say with absolute certainty that they will exist at all. The end of man's dwelling-place and therefore of all human progress, science tells us, will be a physical catastrophe; and there are even those who seem to think that this catastrophe may be forestalled by a recurrence of the glacial era. Natural law, which science bids us venerate, departs, it must be remem- bered, with the Lawgiver. Nothing remains but phys- ical forces without a guiding mind, the play of which it is impossible to forecast. As to posthumous fame, it would be an arrant delusion, even if one man in a million could hope to obtain it. 352 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE " Whatever conduces to the enjoyment and pro- longation of this life will probably be sought more energetically than before. Material progress, there- fore, may quicken its pace. Nor is it likely that men will be quite so ready as they are now to throw away their lives in war. At present the soldier in facing death is probably sustained by a notion, however dim and vague, of a reward for the performance of his duty, " It can hardly be doubted that hope of compensa- tion in a future state, for a short measure of happi- ness here, though it may have been somewhat dim, has materially helped to reconcile the less favored members of the community to the inequalities of the existing order of things. The vanishing of that hope can scarcely fail to be followed in the future by an increased impatience of inequality, and a growing determination not to be put off the indemnity to another world. In fact, this is already visible in the spirit and language of labor agitation. Serious problems of this kind seem to await the coming gener- ation." I do not think " Social Science " can supply the lack of religion. No science can produce the motives that regulate human action. It can only reinforce or justify them by establishing the truths on which those motives feed. The great forces of civilisation are certain ineradicable instincts, and the desire for survival is one of them in the properly social and moral man. It is not noticeable in the man who has no real social impulses of the high moral order. It is the " religion of sorrow," the passionate pity for ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS pain where it seems undeserved, the altruistic sym- pathy for the weak and helpless, that feels most the need of a continued existence after death to balance the inequalities of the present, though such natures do not themselves feel the personal need of it. But no science will create this demand for it as the one con- dition for considering the world morally rational. Science can only prove or disprove the legitimacy of hope and desire, while those primary instincts will do their work with or without science, unless we have first resolved that no instincts shall have any play in life until they have obtained the permission of science." It is probable that the motives that actuate the soldier may be underestimated in the passage quoted, as there are races whose soldierly qualities do not de- pend upon any belief in a future life. But where this does not operate as a stimulus to bravery its place is taken by the influence of public opinion against the coward. This can be made quite as ef- fective as a deterrent as a future life can be made a stimulant. But the community in making this de- mand on the individual can be no less selfish in it than the man who acts from a personal interest in immor- tality. But the belief in a future life may effect all that is accomplished by a social and public opin- ion and at the same time do much more by satisfying the law of desert in human conduct, namely, that the individual who performs the duty shall have the consequences of it. But it is the relation of the belief to the social question that is its greatest importance, and here Mr. Goldwin Smith has touched the key to the future of 354. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE politics. The ideals of democracy will live or die with the belief in immortality. Christianity boasted of its freight of hope to the poor and of its placing men on an equality before the world. It taught us that man shall not live by bread alone, and that riches were not the pathway into the kingdom of God. It was Lazarus and not the rich man that found happi- ness in the next world, and I believe it was Dean Swift who said that God shows what estimate he places on money by the kind of men to whom he gives it. Wealth brings what is called refinement and cul- ture based upon the exploitation of the unfavored classes; but the milk of human kindness is not so warm and healthy as in the spontaneous helpfulness of the poor. It makes a virtue of charity, but this is quite as often a sop thrown to Cerberus to prevent him from swallowing us, as it is a wise philanthropy. It is all very well for the rich and cultured to tell us we should have no personal interest in a future life and thus appear to be very disinterested in their views of life, when the fact is that this is only a subterfuge to escape the duty to share with labor and suffering the fruits of a selfish exploitation of them. The truth is that men never became stoical and pre- tentiously virtuous about immortality until they be- came convinced that it was not to be had; and then to placate the poor they begin teaching them the duty of sacrifice in this respect while they make none themselves in the field of wealth until they have satis- fied all their Epicurean desires. But they will learn in the dangers of a social revolution that the poor will not sacrifice both wealth and immortality. These will ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 355 insist on sharing one or the other. They were prom- ised immortality by Christianity and they were told at the same time that all men were brothers and that society should be constructed on the basis of this moral relationship. The church has succeeded in allying itself with riches and abandoned the brother- hood which was the raison d'etre of its existence; scepticism, in which the church is fast coming to share, has robbed them of hope; and they are not likely to contemplate with complacency or composure admonitions of stoicism in the loss of a boon more priceless than wealth, and at the same time display no envy when fortune distributes her rewards without regard to the share of labor in producing its bounties. I shall agree with the secularist with some quali- fications. I accept the ethical maxim that my duties are found right in the environment in which I am placed. I cannot regulate my concrete duties by ends of which I know nothing definite. The absorption of the middle ages in the other world which they could only imagine was fraught with untold errors and disastrous consequences. But this neither excludes a legitimate place for such a world in our ideals, if we rationalise its relation to the present, nor forbids a place for it in the actual qualification of morality. All that a future life does in ethical conduct is to lengthen the time considerations for duty and multi- ply the conditions under which moral law is impera- tive. Our duties may lie, as I think they do, right in the present environment, but this does not prevent them from being as much determined by the future life, if it be a fact, as they are determined by to- S56 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE morrow or next year. We cannot draw an absolute line of distinction to indicate when morality ceases to command, if we continue to exist and to retain our identity beyond the limits of bodily existence. Our physical duties may lapse but our moral never, except with annihilation. The very essence of moral law in our physical life is that which looks farthest ahead. The man who lives only for today is irrational and may be a criminal. He who does not look to the morrow is at least imprudent ; and yet the talk about our morality being determined by the present may as well apply to the present hour or minute as to the whole of the present life. Indeed it is in a measure true that we have duties referring only to the present moment or hour and that do not extend beyond the moment. But there are also duties that have to keep an outlook on the future of the present life and to reckon with the lapse of time while conditions remain the same. The highest prudence and the highest vir- tues are connected with this previsional spirit and motive. It therefore only awaits the proof of a fu- ture life to make it actually imperative to take it into the scope of our moral law. The retention of personal identity after death implies the same moral nature and would carry with it the same connection of virtue and vice with such a being as we should find in its intellectual qualities. We are, of course, not to live only for that future, but to apply the moral law in the present so that its effects will not conflict with the larger outlook that the cosmos may provide. But we cannot limit morality and its mean- ing to the present unless we deny the fact of survival ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 357 after death. We should have to deny the validity of the moral law altogether and to consider only the in- terest of the present moment in aU our action, neglect- ful of the permanent facts in nature which determine duties of an equally permanent sort. But I may be told correctly enough that I have no duties where I have no knowledge, and perhaps in- correctly that I have no knowledge of the life which is here supposed to affect morality. The appeal will be made to the silence of nature on the existence of a future world and life. But this silence is an imag- inary-fact, if the work of psychic research is to be accredited with any evidential value, and it is ap- parently only a small modicum of phenomena better attested than the immense quantities of it pervading history. I must wholly deny from my standpoint the absolute silence of nature on the matter. The silence is on the part of those who are wilfully ignor- ant of the facts in the case. The residual phenomena of human experience have been neglected and their significance ignored. The blame must not be shift- ed upon nature, but upon the pride and stupidity of the respectable classes. They fought Copernican astronomy, Newtonian gravitation, Darwinism, the existence of meteors, and hypnotism. Then when they were proved they appropriated them as their own and made it the mark of intelligence to believe them. The more the respectable change the more they remain the same. They will pass through the same development in psychic research and when sur- vival after death is proved in spite of social ostracism it will be the respectable thing to believe and to 858 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE teach. But the plea of nature's silence on the matter cannot be made beyond the point that its revela- tion on the subject is not so clear as that of the bodily life. Moreover it is true that knowledge is excluded to that extent which makes any definite conception of a transcendental life at present impossible or im- probable, and just to that extent the obligations of morality are unrelated to it. But ethics can well admit that the whole of our morality as based upon a physical environment is limited to the present, and yet contend that there is an inner life of the " spirit " or mind that has its value for the present and for the future as well, if that future can even be conjectured. But after all this is not the point at which the belief in a future life touches the problem of ethics. Its relation to morality depends upon very different considerations. The question is not always what con- stitutes the moral law, but what means have we for making it effective. What motives have we for in- ducing men to act according to this law or ideal ? All action is based upon some end to be attained, and the more consonant it is with the more permanent laws of the world the more imperative it usually is. We always work for rewards, be they good or bad. We may not call them rewards, but if we do not it is because we limit the meaning of the term. But as every act has consequences we have to take them into account, and it will be only a question whether we are aiming at those consequences consciously to decide the matter of calling them rewards. These consequences aimed at are ideals of some kind. The most impor- tant of these ideals are those which look to remote ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 359 ends. There are occasions when a nearer end is so imperative that it cannot be sacrificed, but this will not interfere with the constant pursuit of the remoter end, which may only be temporarily sacrificed. But aside from explanations and qualifications our ideals are not only or always of merely present rewards but also remotely future rewards. Or if rewards is an invidious term, as the mediaeval theory of respon- sibility has made it, consequences may be substituted in its stead. That is, we work for remote future ends quite as necessarily as for the present, and those ends will be rational precisely in proportion to their moral ideality on the one hand and to the measure of our knowledge on the other. This is as true in the eco- nomic as it is in the ethical world. The one question to answer after this is that which asks for the relative value of consciousness in the world of existence. There are always two things that interest us. They are external reality and our inner life, matter and consciousness. When pressed to its ultimate meaning even matter interests us for its ef- fect on consciousness. We do not value the ma- terial world for itself, but for its relation to our ideals. Every use we make of it is in the interest of some pleasure or perfection. It is a means to our ends, instead of our ideals being means to matter as an end. We assign our states of consciousness a superior value in comparison with mere matter. Consequent- ly we very naturally raise the question whether the order of nature accepts that estimate of the case. When theology made matter a created and phenome- nal substance, an ephemeral reality coming into exist- 360 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE ence and passing away at the will of the creator, and made spirit the permanent eternal reality, it pro- vided a perfectly natural and rational solution of the question proposed. But its fundamental difficulty is that its evidential support was too weak to enable it to stand as defended in earlier times. But its concep- tion of the cosmos was a rational one in its main outlines, though terribly distorted and abused in its applications. It conformed to the estimate which every man and woman must place upon the life of consciousness, if he acts according to his ineradicable instincts at all. These may be summed up in the law of self-preservation, which is only a name for the preference of a life of consciousness against an inani- mate existence. Expanded into the higher ideals this law becomes the recognition of superior value of the intellectual, the emotional, and volitional functions of human nature in science, philosophy, art, religion, morality, and politics, as against the vegetative life of an animal. Culture, refinement, humanity and sympathy, intelligence, high moral aims and enthu- siasm, rational religious emotion with its accompani- ment of moral passion for the true, the beautiful, and the good are all the forms of consciousness that sane, rational men exalt beyond the swinish life of " na- ture " and mere material comfort. This is assigning a value to states of consciousness which is not naturally assigned to dead matter, and it is as natural as it is rational for ethical natures which so estimate the higher ideals of life that they should measure the cos- mic order by the standard which their morality im- poses upon themselves. They may not be convinced ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 361 that the cosmic order respects the moral ideals which they are compelled to recognise, but they will ap- prove or condemn it according as it does or does not tend toward the realisation of the moral law, by which they feel obliged to regulate their lives. The older philosophical and theological views of the world gave a metaphysical basis in conformity with this interpretation of things. This was based upon the permanence of spirit and the transient or phe- nomenal nature of matter, the passing away of the material universe and the survival of the spiritual. But the discovery of the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy disturbed the com- placency of this view, and in fact apparently or really reversed our way of looking at things. They showed the permanence of the dead material world and its mechanical activities, while they showed the apparent phenomenal, dependent, and ephemeral nature of the world of consciousness. In modern conceptions mat- ter and its phenomena of motion, heat, light, and electricity, if the latter are material phenomena, are permanent and indestructible, while consciousness seems to be a transient incident of composition in mat- ter. The situation which this creates for the older morality is perfectly clear. Materialistic science at least apparently shows us that nature appreciates dead matter more than it does the permanence and superiority of consciousness. All our morality com- pels us to estimate consciousness at a higher value than dead matter. Have we any obligations to rise higher than nature intends we should? Our morality says we must regulate even our present lives on the 362 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE basis of the superior excellence of consciousness and its ideals, and we must naturally ask whether nature intends to give the same permanence to personality that it gives to matter. If it does not it shows that its estimate is in favor of the permanence of the less important as necessarily conceived in our practical morality, and we can hardly expect intelligent men, when they discover that nature does not encourage the realisation of remoter ideals, to persist in their cultivation. They will accept the sensuous view of life when they find that the spiritual is not favored by the cosmic order. If the materialistic theory be true man is not above nature, but its creature, and has no obligations which the order of the cosmos does not favor. If it makes dead matter the permanent thing and consciousness phenomenal and transient we must expect human nature not to take any higher concep- tion of its duties and ideals. It wiU not sacrifice its present pleasures to an ideal which it is sure will never be realised. If morality requires respect for the permanent, as we are always told that it does, we must expect man to idealise the mechanical world and to eschew as inferior the transient world of the spiritual. But if he has reason to believe that, after all, nature intends to preserve personality quite as fully as it does matter and energy it will discover a perfect conform- ity between its ethical ideals and the cosmic order. Morality will thus be encouraged by the scientific fact that nature respects what our ideals oblige us to re- spect in our conduct, namely, the superiority and deserts of personality. If personality is a mere bub- ble on the surface of existence we cannot expect to ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 363 get men to estimate it as if it were permanent. If it is the primary object of the world to develop per- sonality and to give it permanence we have a leverage on the minds of men to respect it at the estimate placed upon it by nature. Otherwise not. They will take the good that the material life offers and make no sacrifices for a spiritual culture that depends upon a future world for its full fruition while the exist- ence of that world is denied. The shortcomings and failures of our actions to realise our ideals in the present will be perfectly tolerable if we can feel that nature will still give us a chance to pursue them, but if we are assured that the highest developments of consciousness and personality are not to be respected by the cosmos we are not likely to go on any fool's errands. The poor man cannot be expected to cul- tivate any high spiritual ideals when he has no prom- ise that the next world will give him what the present refuses. We can expect nothing but the Epicurean- ism in which Greco-Roman civilisation terminated, if the higher spiritual ideals of aspiration are to have no fruition. But if we can promise that the intel- lectual and emotional life of man, as exhibited in its best literature and moral activity, can continue its pursuits in a spiritual world where we are not tram- melled by the limitations and hindrances of sense and our physical wants the poor may well be repaid for what little indulgence they can give to reflection and high aspiration in the present, and the more fortunate can have a justification for their ideals which can- not be defended as a part of the ultimate end of the cosmos on the materialistic philosophy. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE I am well aware of the follies which might easily be aroused by the reinstatement of a belief in a future life, if that belief should become as badly abused as it has been in the past. But the dangers of abuse are no reason for trying to suppress facts. We can- not shy at the truth because some unwise people lose their heads about it. On the contrary our supreme duty is to appropriate that truth and to prevent its abuse. We only double our task when we ridicule facts until they get beyond our control. Our busi- ness is not to follow in the wake of movements we cannot control, but to give their truths sobriety and sanity. If a future life is a fact we cannot disprove it by laughing at phenomena that we do not like. Our esthetics have no more to do with the fact than they have with the eclipse of the sun or with the exist- ence of disease. Emotional contempt of the facts is no more legitimate than the condemned emotional in- terest in a future life, and if it be a fact we shall not escape it by cultivating indifference to its truth. It is the business of the intelligent and scientific man to command the subject, not to despise it be- cause it is not respectable. If nature has thrown in our way indubitable evidence of a future life, no matter what its character, if there is no escape from the admission of the significance of the facts for some large theory of the world, it is not only the scandal of science that the facts are not incorporated in its work, but it is also a reproach to our morals that we do not appropriate the facts in some rational and useful way. If we cannot deny them we must ar- ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS ticulate them with our rational life and see that they get sober instead of insane appreciation. There is in the very nature of the facts as recorded and the theory necessary to explain them the correc- tive of their dangerous use. The conditions under which " communications " purport to come from dis- carnate souls help to regulate the application of them to practical life. The diflBculties of "communicat- ing " and especially the abnormal mental conditions supposed to affect the " communications " show us the limits which must be placed upon any revelation of the life beyond, to say nothing of the impossibility of communicating supersensible experiences in sen- sible forms. The probable amnesia affecting the " communicator " in regard to both his normal life in a supersensible world and in regard to his past earthly life shut us out of clear " communications " about the past and a rational account of the spiritual world until " communications " may become clearer, and even then they must always be expressed in analogies. We thus seem shut off from the kind of knowledge which a morbid curiosity inclines to desire and seek, while we have the advantage of proving the fact of survival with the probability that the normal condi- tion in a supersensible world represents spiritual progress of some kind. We do not need to laugh at the trivialities, but to use them for curbing the insane curiosity and passions of men to peer into se- crets which our earthly morality may not require. If we can infect life with the belief that consciousness survives and that we cannot form an intelligible idea 366 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE of that survival without many centuries of scientific study we may get the combined advantages of the Greco-Roman devotion to science and art while we sustain Christian hopes and ideals. The mediation between the material and the spiritual life may be effected in this union. We do not need assurance of anything but the fact of a future life if we can accept and trust the lesson of evolution, namely, that prog- ress is the law of the cosmos. One thing in any view of it would be subserved by the proof of survival of personality. Nature would have been shown to be consistent with the estimation which our every day morality has to place on con- sciousness and its- development in scientific, philo- sophic, ethical, political, and religious life. There would be no disparity between our moral ideals in our present life and the possible realisation of the same in a higher degree in another existence. It was this apparent disparity which led Immanuel Kant to de- mand both immortality and the existence of God to satisfy the requirements of the moral law. He found duty demanding of men what it was impossible for them to realise in their earthly life and recognising the validity of that law he thought nature must give immortality or abandon the law. The existence of God was to him necessitated by the demand for a power to adjust the relation between virtue and hap- piness which he did not find adjusted in the present. I shall not defend the accuracy of Kant's doctrine, as I am not quoting it for its truth, but for its philosophic respectability, and if this school can ap- preciate and respect the demands of the moral law on ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 367 the consistency of the cosmos there should be no hesi- tation on the part of intelligent men in an investiga- tion which might lead to the establishment of that consistency in fact. A doctrine which " Hegel be- lieved, which Kant half believed, and about which Sir William Hamilton was curious," according to the au- thority of Mr. Andrew Lang, namely, spirit communi- cation, ought not to tax the patience of their admirers and followers. But I must close somewhere, and I know no more fitting language with which to terminate this brief discussion than that with which Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers ends his great work on Human Personality. He says : " I need not here describe at length the deep dis- quiet of our time. Never, perhaps, did man's spir- itual satisfaction bear a smaller proportion to his needs. The old-world sustenance, however earnestly administered, is too unsubstantial for the modem cravings. And thus through our civilised societies two conflicting currents run. On the one hand health, intelligence, morality, — all such boons as the steady progress of planetary evolution can win for man, — are being achieved in increasing measure. On the other hand this very sanity, this very prosperity, do but bring out in stronger relief the underlying Welt- Schmerz, the decline of any real belief in the dignity, the meaning, the endlessness of life. " There are many, of course, who readily accept this limitation of view ; who are willing to let earthly activities and pleasures gradually dissipate and ob- scure the larger hope. But others cannot thus be 368 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE easily satisfied. They rather resemble children who are growing too old for their games ; — whose amuse- ment sinks into indifference and discontent for which the fitting remedy is an initiation into the serious work of men. " A similar crisis has passed over Europe once be- fore. There came a time when the joyful naivete, the unquestioning impulse of the early world had passed away ; when the worship of Greeks no more was beauty, nor the religion of Romans Rome. Alex- andrian decadence, Byzantine despair, found utter- ance in many an epigram which might have been written today. Then came a great uprush or incur- sion from the spiritual world, and with new races and new ideals Europe regained its youth. " The unique effect of that great Christian impulse begins, perhaps, to wear away. But more grace may yet be attainable from the region whence that grace came. Our age's restlessness, as I believe, is the rest- lessness not of senility but of adolescence. " What the age needs is not an abandonment of effort, but an increase ; 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. For now the scientific instinct, — so newly developed in mankind, — seems likely to spread until it becomes as dominant as was in time past the religious ; and if there be the narrowest chink through which man can look forth from his planetary cage, our descendants will not leave that chink neglected or unwidened. The scheme of knowledge which can commend itself to such seekers must be a scheme which, while it ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 369 transcends our present knowledge, steadily cont'mues it; a scheme not catastrophic, but evolutionary; not promulgated and closed in a moment, but gradually unfolding itself to progressive inquiry. " 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.' " If the ideal is worth tolerating in philosophic re- flection at all the possibility of proving it by facts ought to be respected when any phenomena offer the opportunity or the hope of it, and the age which has exhausted its resources to study the origin of man might find it quite as respectable to examine into his destiny. Even our aristocracy has become recon- ciled to a simian ancestry, and why does it take such offense when we hint that evolution may not termi- nate in a fiasco, unless it is afraid of the humility which the cosmic order may visit upon it for its pride and arrogance. INDEX Abercromby, Blanche, 67. Aksakof, 65. Apparitions, 41—65, 99. AnstoUe, VII. Balfour, Arthur J., 16. Baldwin, Prof. James Mark, 210. Barrett, Prof. W. F., 16, 27, 70, 118. Blavatsky, Madame, 70, 116. Blodgett, Mrs., 187, 189-193. Bourget, Paul, 208. Bramwell, Dr. Milne, 16. Briggs, Mr., 203. Brougham, Lord, 11, 47, 48. Bute, Marquis of, 16, 54. Cahagnet, 13. Carpenter, Prof. J. Estlin, 53, 208. Christianity, 3-5, 342, 346. Cicero, 4. Clarke, James Freeman, 208. Consciousness, Unity of, 268. Cooper, Dr. Joseph, 281. Crawford, Harper, 222, 230. Crookes, Sir William, 16. Dante, 6. Darwin, 6, 11, 53. Davey, S. J., 70. Davis, Andrew Jackson, 13. Descartes. 6. Dessoir, Max, 11, 28. Doctor, 129, 274. Dramatic play of personality, 273. Edmunds, Judge, 13. Edmunds, Miss, 183, 184. Epicurus, 4, 74, 78. Ermacora, Dr., 65. Ether, 82. Ferrier, Dr., 54. Fiske, John, 88. Fraud, 101, 246-248. Future Life, 77. Gibbon, 349. Conner, Mr., 135, 187. Goodrich-Freer (Miss X.), 64, 159-162. Greek Philosophy, 74, 78, 841. Gurner, Mr., 18, 67. Guthrie, Malcom, 26, 26, 28. Hart, John, 194-197, 207, 324. Hegel, VII, 45, 367. Hodgson, Dr. Richard, 16, 03, 70, 71, 116, 124, 126-128, 162, 165, 166, 172-17S, 182, 190, 194-204, 207, 211, 212, 214, 231, 264, 275, 276, 324, 328. Hutton, Richard, 16. Hyslop, Robert, 216-225. Imperator, 129, 130, 214, 274, 278, 301, 315. James, Prof. William, 113-116, 162, 179, 189, 190, 208, 292. Jenner, Sir William, 49. Johnson, Miss Alice, 30, 71, 164. Kant, VIII, 14, 366, 367. Keulemans, Mr., 52, 53. Lang, Andrew, 11, 44, 60, 64, 367. Langley, Prof. S. P., 16. Leaf, Mr. Walter, 118, 149, 151. Liebeault. Dr., 62. Lodge, Sir Oliver, 16, 80, 118, 119, 136, 138-149, 151. Mabire, M. J. E., 29. Macalister, Prof., 163. Machines, 108. Marillier. Leon, 71. Materiahsm, 78, 85-94. McClellan, James, 226. McClellan, John, 227. McCreery sisters, 24. Mediumistic phenomena, 60, 100. MendeleyefE, 81. Milton, 6. Mistakes and Confusions, 280. Mitchell, Dr. Weir, 61, 210. Morison, James Cotter, 63. Moses, Rev. Stainton, 14, 15, 16, 65, 66, 67, 128, 129, 274. Myers, Frederic W. H., 15, 16, 18, 19, 44, 45, 61, 62, 63, 66, 71, 118, 122, 164, 162, 263, 329, 367. Neo-PIatonists, i, Newbold, Prof., 203. Newton, 6. Nichols, Prof. Herbert, 208. Norton, Prof. Charles Eliot, 210. 371 372 INDEX Osier, Dr. William, 89, 340. Pelham, George, 137-188, 130, 138, 265, 874-878, 314, 385, 333. Personality, Dramatic play of, 873. Personality, Secondary, 102—104. Pierce, Prof., 809. Pindar, 4. Piper, Mrs., 113-133. Plato, 78, 79. Podmore, Mr. Frank, 13, 14, 18, 19, 45. Prince, Dr. Morton, 71. Rayleigh, Lord, 16. Rector, 189, 814, 274, 275, 876, 878, 383. Reformation, 5. Reichenbach, 17. Religion, 73. Renaissance, 5, 344. Richet, Prof. Charles, 16, 28, 161. Ripon, Bishop of, 16. Roentgen Rays, 81. Romanes, G. J., 11, 49. Sage, M., VII. Savage, Dr. Minot J., 54, 181, 188 Savage, W. H., 181, 188. Schmoll, M. A., 89. Secondary personality, 103—104. Seneca, 4. Sidgwick, Mrs. Henry, 70, 71. Sidgwick, Prof. Henry, 15, 89, 30, 71, 118, 164. Sidis, Dr. Boris, 284. Smith, Mr. Goldwin, 349, 353. Socrates. 4, 8, 9. Speer, Dr., 14, 67. Spinoza, 6. Spencer, Mr. Herbert, 48, 43, 83. Spiritualism, 41. Stewart, Prof. Balfour, 16. Stoics, 4. Stout, Prof., 34, 853. Supersensible world, 78-85. Sutton, Mrs. Catherine Paine, 207, 208. Symonds, John Addington, 50, Telepathy,- 83, 33-41, 104, 111, 845-166, 894. Thaw, Dr. A. Blair, 29, 306. Thompson, Prof. J. J., 16. Triviality, 860, 298-303. Trowbridge, Prof. J. T., 310. Tuke, Dr. Hack, 64. Underwood, Mr. B. F., 65. Unity of Consciousness, 368. Vance, Mr., 196. Verrall, Mrs., 150, 161, 156. W- -, Miss, 166-173. Wedgewood, Mr. Hensleigh, 16, 53, 68. Wild, Miss Hannah, 189-193. Witchcraft, 10.