Part 2

It is difficult indeed to assign any limits to the intrusion of this singular influence in the domain of psychical research. In one remarkable instance a London barrister of recognized standing and enjoying a large income from his profession posed for some time in private circles as a physical medium. He claimed inter alia the power of causing the partial levitation of a table by placing his hands on the top. Yet at a sitting conducted by members of the S. P. R. this gentleman was easily detected in the childish trick of having inserted inside his cuffs two small pieces of wood, which were thus introduced under the table’s edge! On another occasion I found during the investigation of a case in Hampshire that a maid-servant, possibly in collusion with her mistress, was producing luminous crosses by rubbing moistened matches on the furniture and walls――there being no conceivable motive for this transparent deception beyond the desire to be regarded as a successful “medium”. Much, if not all of the story of the Rev. Stainton Moses’ career can probably best be explained as an amazing example of spiritual megalomania. Such a theory of course involves the disagreeable conclusion that a clergyman and a public-school master, endowed with a kindly and generous disposition, must have spent years of his life in the systematic deception of his most intimate friends and, later on, of the public at large. Nevertheless, all said and done, the moral miracle in this astonishing case is, as Mr. Podmore suggested, more easy than the physical one.

The extraordinary poltergeist cases――cases by no means infrequent and widely distributed――in which furniture is violently moved, windows and crockery smashed, and pictures thrown down, can usually be traced to the furtive trickery of little boys, or more commonly little girls, who do not scruple to destroy their parents’ property and peace of mind in order to secure for themselves the secret satisfaction of some megalomaniac impulse.

Apart from the deliberate imposture, due more often than we suspect to the megalomaniac impulses referred to above, there is some ground for believing in the existence of a still more subtle form of apparent fraud. It is frequently asserted by mediums of repute that they are unable to do justice to themselves or exercise their gifts to good purpose because of the unsatisfactory influence of one or more sitters of an aggressively sceptical type, a curious parallel――be it said in all reverence――to the strange remark of the Evangelist that the miracles of Our Lord were sometimes actually prevented by the disbelief of His hearers.

But may the disbelieving sitters, in some instances, go further than a mere hindrance of genuine phenomena and actually cause the production of trickery and fraud on the part of the medium? Given a medium susceptible to telepathic suggestion, and one or more sitters suspecting or convinced in advance that all they will witness at the séance will be an exhibition of trickery, it is easy to see that telepathic suggestion of fraud, conscious or unconscious, from the minds of these sceptics may result in trickery which is primarily due not to the medium but to themselves. This risk is obviously accentuated when the medium falls (as, for example, in Mrs Piper’s case) into a cataleptic condition or some form of ordinary hypnosis.

In any case it is confidently asserted by psychical researchers of capacity and experience that the same medium may be fraudulent at one moment and genuine at another. Such a thesis is doubtless hard of acceptance to ordinary men or women, however disposed they may be to an unprejudiced consideration of psychic phenomena; and it was, in fact, rejected by the original founders of the Psychical Research Society, who definitely refused to include within the area of their investigations the alleged phenomena of any medium once detected in the perpetration of fraud. Further experience, however, has apparently modified this once inflexible attitude, and at any rate a majority of the Council of the S. P. R. are now willing to hold experimental séances with mediums against whom fraud has been openly alleged or actually proved. The writer shares the view of this majority, for, as far as he can judge from personal experience or the definite testimony of others, a medium like Eusapia Palladino was, sometimes, indubitably guilty of patent and childish trickery (which she would subsequently admit quite shamelessly), and at other times produced valid phenomena of amazing interest under the strictest test-conditions.

We need not devote much time to the deliberate fraud and trickery which have always been admittedly associated with certain manifestations of mediumship and have frequently inspired such disgust and contempt in the minds of would-be investigators that they have abandoned the quest altogether. Those who have persevered in spite of discouragement know what it is to find oneself in uncomfortable and ill-ventilated rooms, holding the hands of unknown persons in the dark, tortured by the metallic music of a cheap gramophone, or compelled to join in discordant renderings of revivalist hymns or dreadful ditties like “Where is now the prophet Daniel?” And one realizes all the time that the music is meant to drown the noise caused by a fraudulent medium in wrapping himself in muslin or adjusting a false beard, and further that one will have to pay a guinea for this wretched exhibition! What researcher, again, has not experienced the boredom of public or private sittings for “delineations”, when a medium, after a few spasmodic twitchings, “passes under control” and proceeds to describe the appearance of the deceased relatives and friends of the members of a credulous audience, which will subsequently contribute to the “silver collection”? Who, too, has not reflected with amazement upon the staggering credulity of men and women who accept the delineated “old gentleman with white hair” or the “old lady with grey hair parted in the middle” as unquestionably their late father or mother; or, in a materializing séance, believe that the same piece of butter muslin waved in one direction is a lost grandparent and waved in another direction is a little child? Such wearisome and sordid experiences form the via dolorosa of researchers, who are prepared to seek for gold even in the muddiest streams, and sometimes find it; for, even if ninety-five per cent. of the alleged phenomena are explicable by trickery or deception, the remaining five may defy all such explanations.

The student of psychical research is confronted at the outset by a considerable volume of reasoned and unreasoned opposition. Persons who in other directions are entirely opposed to each other’s points of view combine for a common assault: uncompromising materialists and devout evangelical Christians form a strange alliance against what they vaguely describe as “spiritualism”. An even more curious dislike comes from large masses of our population who, without any deep convictions or reasoned arguments for their hostility, are irritated by a movement which appears to upset the even tenor of their mental conservatism. Even cultured people are not proof against this prejudice: at many dinner tables any sustained reference to the alleged phenomena of mediumship would be regarded as “bad form” and thoroughly objectionable. When the writer entered the House of Commons he was informed by the chairman of his Liberal Association that his membership of the Psychical Research Society would “do him harm in the constituency”. This unintelligent aversion to spiritual novelties, which almost wrecked the Salvation Army in its infancy, secured the triumph of the Dayton “fundamentalists,” and now, though happily with diminishing force, assails the study of clairvoyance or telepathy, seems analogous to that primitive instinct which impels wild birds to combine for the destruction of an exotic parrot which has escaped from its cage.

Even as regards the more serious of his opponents, the apologist of psychical research is entitled to object at the start that comparatively few of these are adequately equipped for their task. It is lamentable that our hostile critics have for the most part scarcely taken the trouble to understand our position or furnish themselves with more than a quite superficial knowledge of the facts. What a sorry figure would be cut by most of our lay and ecclesiastical opponents were they set an examination paper on the evidences accumulated by the Psychical Research Society, to go no further! One of the best known opponents of the phenomena of mediumship has admitted that he has never made any personal investigation of the claims of any prominent medium, British or foreign, and a brochure distributed to his audience exhibits an amazing ignorance of the subject matter against which his platform diatribes are directed. There is another reason for popular hostility. Much of the fraud which admittedly exists is of a peculiarly heartless character, for its exponents derive their resources largely from bereaved men and women who fly to spiritualism for tidings of their lost ones and for solace in their grief. The natural indignation felt against such traffickers in human sorrow undoubtedly predisposes many superficial critics to assume in their haste that all public mediumship is fraudulent.

Apart from the more or less unintelligent prejudices of the public generally, the scientific investigation of the phenomena of mediumship is hampered by the professional antagonisms of the Church and the Law. The menace of legal proceedings, while a terror to the fraudulent, is also a deterrent to the supply of genuine phenomena. Mediums are usually persons of a very sensitive and nervous temperament, and the fact that at any moment a Mrs Leonard is liable to the same legal procedure and the same conviction as the most insignificant fortune-teller is not conducive to the regular supply of those supernormal facts which form the subject-matter of scientific psychical research. From time to time, and apparently by concerted action, legal proceedings are set on foot by the authorities against public mediums. The requisite evidence is furnished by detectives or journalists who have secured sittings with the defendants, and the prosecution takes place under an Act of George IV, directed against “vagabonds” and “fortune-tellers”. Our magistrates usually maintain on these occasions that the essential part of the legal offence is the medium’s claim to “foretell the future”, and this is apparently accentuated and aggravated by the “intention to deceive” or the acceptance of money or reward. During an epidemic of legal medium-baiting in 1917, men and women were sentenced to heavy fines, up to £50, or imprisonment, because of their claims to foretell the future. Yet a little reflection might have caused our magistrates to remember that all the official representatives of organized religion are regularly engaged in foretelling the future and are paid――and quite rightly――for their services in this respect. The so-called “sport” of the race-course is――as many of us know to our cost――built upon an elaborate and extensive system of prophecy for payment――whether the forecasts are made in the columns of the most respectable newspapers or in the circulars of professional tipsters. Nor, indeed, can one wholly dissociate those manifold pledges which disfigure our political elections from the same suspicion; for these prophetic anticipations are made in order to win votes and so secure the social and pecuniary rewards which result from electoral success.

Some of the magistrates who tried and condemned these mediums displayed a pitiable ignorance of the whole subject of psychic phenomena. Almost anybody indeed appears to be considered competent to dogmatize about theological or psychic matters without any credentials in the shape of adequate study or experience. The following extract from the well known “Brockway” case serves to illustrate the mental equipment of a magistrate for a trial of this character:

“The Rev. G. H. St. John Mildmay stated that he had had two sittings with the defendant and was amazed that she could tell him names that he had written in a paper which was then folded up and held in her hand.... He was convinced that she was perfectly genuine.

Magistrate: You have, I suppose, seen conjurors taking cards out of people’s hair and such things? (Laughter).

Witness: There was nothing resembling that.”

A subsequent reference by one of the witnesses to the possible influence of “lying spirits” was followed by this edifying dialogue:

“Mr. Barker (prosecuting Counsel): I object to such ridiculous questions.

Mr. Wild (for the defence) asked the magistrate to rule whether such a question was ridiculous.

The Magistrate (with emphasis): I certainly think it is ridiculous.

Mr. Wild then said――with justice――that it was evidently waste of time to go on, and left the Court.”

The antagonism of the Christian Churches, a damnosa hereditas from the unspeakable records of past centuries, is now a waning force, chiefly confined to the ranks of what the late Dean Rashdall rather roughly called “the inferior clergy”. There are some exceptions. The distinguished Dean of St. Paul’s, a devoted student of the obsolete fantasies of Neoplatonic philosophy, seems quite unable to dissociate the serious study of psychic phenomena from the fraudulent banging of tambourines or the wearing of false wigs. He is ready to consider the unsupported assertions of Plotinus, that that third-century mystic on one occasion enjoyed some form of beatific vision in the “contemplation of the One”; but on the other hand the more recent and infinitely better supported testimony of a Lombroso, Crookes, or William James as to the occurrence of a psychical or clairvoyant phenomenon is contemptuously ignored. Now and again sincere representatives of medieval Christianity like Lord Hugh Cecil are to be found who ban the séance-room because they are convinced that clairvoyance is a form of necromancy and ‘controls’ like Mrs Piper’s “Phinuit” or Mrs Leonard’s “Feda” demoniacal agencies totally unfit for Christian intercourse. The more general and more enlightened attitude of at any rate the Anglican Church is embodied in the Report of the bishops at the Lambeth Conference of 1920:

“We say without hesitation that we welcome scientific investigation: we recognize the patience and the skill with which members of the Psychical Research Society examine the mass of evidence of all kinds submitted to them, and above all the unmistakable desire to safeguard the inquiry against illusion or fraud, to arrive at truths, and to interpret scientific facts correctly.”

Yet side by side with this moderate and reasonable resolution we find that the Conference registered a very strong warning against “the habit of recourse to séances and mediums”. Here again is revealed once more the ignorance of many well-meaning and able critics who possess a merely superficial acquaintance with the subject. How, for example, can we study scientifically the phenomena of clairvoyance without recourse to clairvoyant mediums? Such an embargo would――to go no further――have robbed us of the profoundly interesting records of Mrs Piper’s trance-mediumship, or the striking results contained in Dr Osty’s volumes. One might almost as well approve of the scientific study of anatomy and forbid recourse to the dissecting-room.

* * * * *

At this point, and in view of the admitted imperfections which mark the course of our inquiry into supernormal phenomena――the fraud and credulity and malobservation which so easily beset our work――the question may fairly be asked: “Has psychical research really any future?”

To such a query I have no hesitation in giving an emphatic “Yes.” One may go further and say that at no period since the subject was seriously studied have we had better reasons for such an answer. Within the last few years a veritable revolution has occurred in the general attitude of science towards the phenomena of the universe. In the light of Einstein’s discoveries the dogmatism of the materialist has become obsolete. The old scientific outlook has been undermined and superseded by scientists themselves. Atoms and electrons are no longer regarded as ultimate realities. According to Professor Eddington, “there is nothing to prevent the assemblage of atoms forming the brain from being itself a thinking machine in virtue of that nature which physics leaves undetermined and undeterminable.” Not only the ‘laws of Nature’ but space and time and the great globe itself may conceivably be mental phenomena, themselves the creations of mind. And so it has come to pass that such an utterance as Professor Clifford’s: “The Universe is made of ether and atoms and there is no room for ghosts” remains only a fragment of an outworn scientific creed. The division of the external world into a material world and a spiritual world is now held by scientists to be superficial. No inherent impossibility rules out of court the possible manifestations of other minds than ours, functioning apart from our own brains and bodies. “We may doubt,” says Professor Eddington, “whether there is any branch of knowledge from which exact science is excluded”: there is “room for ghosts,” and room for other supernormal phenomena hitherto ignored or denied by scientists in general. The fact of telepathy indicates the existence of other methods of mental communion outside the recognized channels of sense, and for that reason is rejected a priori by some of the more conservative representatives of science. “Such a direct transmission of ideas from one mind to another” writes Dr Jodl, “without any perceptible physical method of communication would indicate the presence of a crack in the very foundations of all our views on nature, and, if proved, would lead us to a complete revision of fundamental principles.” Dr Henning declares that “psycho-physics, yes, even psychology, as a science, must be utterly wrecked before we have recourse to telepathy.” How different in tone is the statement of one of the most acute among our younger thinkers, Professor Broad of Cambridge, who not only tolerates the existence of a spiritual world but postulates the actual necessity of a “psychic factor” in order to provide a coherent explanation of the universe and ourselves.

The Mind and its Place in Nature, 1925.

Since the advent, then, of a new scientific revelation the field lies open for further work and further advances in psychical research. No longer denied access to the precincts of orthodox science or received with a dubious welcome, the professed student of supernormal phenomena can claim and receive a definite status as the representative of an acknowledged branch of scientific study. But in realizing this, he must realize too the responsibilities of a position so assured. Two objects must be permanently kept in view――the accumulation of fresh facts, and the exercise of rigid control and accuracy in our experiments.

In the discovery of new material we are, of course, faced by the irritating and disappointing character of the phenomena with which we deal. They are often spasmodic, sporadic, irregular. They do not occur in any fixed sequence nor can they be predicted. Even when our experiments yield obvious success, we are ignorant of what the conditions of such success may be: no satisfactory experimental control of these wayward phenomena seems at present feasible. If they are reached through the channels of mediumship, we are again exposed to the varying and uncertain influences exercised by the physical or mental condition of the medium at the moment. It is quite clear that these ‘sensitives’ are in almost all cases persons of a definitely neurotic or hysterical temperament; indeed, if we can ever establish the actual connection between these pathological conditions and the production of supernormal phenomena we shall have gone a long way in unravelling the tangled skeins of psychical research. The discovery and classification of fresh psychic facts may mean the expenditure of long and tedious hours, but without the renewed exercise of “recherche lente, persévérante, obstinée” we cannot hope to convince ourselves or to speak with our enemies in the gate. In this department of research more than all others our facts soon become more or less obsolete, or at any rate lose their compelling force. No one now alludes to the careful mechanical safeguards against fraud devised by Sir William Crookes in the eighties. Our generation has almost forgotten the convincing experiments in telepathy carried out by the Sidgwicks and Professor Barrett, and no longer quotes the Stainton Moses phenomena which Myers accepted. The call is for the production of fresh data collected by our own contemporaries. Without therefore troubling ourselves unduly for the time being with explanations and theories about the facts, without intruding into the work the will to believe or disbelieve, let us devote ourselves to experiment and empirical facts. Surely among the thousand members of the Society for Psychical Research, to go no further, enough recruits could be found to supplement adequately by their own unselfish efforts the splendid work of our own pioneers in Great Britain and America.

Further, in the process of accumulating and systematizing our facts we must accept as an axiom of unquestioned validity that natural and normal causes must be eliminated before we have recourse to the supernatural or supernormal. In other words, we must regard it as prima facie more probable that the medium is consciously or unconsciously fraudulent or that the sitters are the victims of credulity or malobservation than that men and women possess a capacity for acquiring knowledge or influencing matter which transcends the recognized facts of ordinary experience. Our course then as psychical researchers is clear. We must exercise such drastic and complete control over the whole course of our experiments as to render deception an unthinkable hypothesis. That such methods of control exist and can be applied is indubitable: that they are occasionally absent from séances conducted by scientific and educated persons must equally be admitted.