Part 4

“There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave To shew us this.”

But what are we to say to similar phantasms when the person they represent has passed through the gates of Death? With the special significance of these cases we shall deal later.

It seems clear, then, that the student of psychic phenomena will find many promising lines of research in the ample field covered by telepathy, clairvoyance, and the varied activities of motor automatism. Fresh facts must be accumulated and sifted, fresh efforts made to co-ordinate such facts and discover the laws through which they work. Nevertheless, there remains another area of supernormal activities which cannot be neglected――the physical phenomena alleged to occur from time to time, almost invariably in the presence and apparently through the mediumship of certain individuals. In this obscure region, however, the opportunities for fraud have been so great, the detection of trickery so frequent, and the general character of the mediums often so indifferent, that, even with the experiences of a quarter of a century behind them, many careful and able researchers find it difficult to give any definite opinion either for or against the existence of such startling phenomena as “materialization,” “ectoplastic” extrusions from the body, or the movement of material objects without physical contact (telekinesis). The only excuse for offering my own personal views is the fact that I have over a long period of years had sittings with some of the world’s best known “physical” mediums including Mrs Corner (née Florence Cook), Eusapia Palladino, Eva C. (Marthe Béraud) and Willi Schneider, and a considerable number of less known sensitives, and I am unable to endorse the opinion recently suggested by a body of able and experienced German investigators, Drs Gulat-Wellenburg and Rosenbusch and Graf v. Klinckowstroen, that no scientific evidence exists for the occurrence of physical phenomena. On one occasion I have witnessed the production of a complete, visible and tangible figure which certainly was not the medium herself: that it was a confederate――the only other normal possibility――was ruled out by elaborate and convincing precautions. Despite the open readiness of Eusapia Palladino to cheat when left without control, many of the positive results secured through the mediumship of this Neapolitan peasant-woman under test-conditions appear to defy any normal explanation. The sceptic has still to explain how after a searching examination, medical and otherwise, Eva C. under stringent conditions of control and observation was able to exude from her body solid and fluid masses of so-called ectoplasm, the existence of which was duly recorded by photography. No reliable evidence exists to disprove the claim made on behalf of D. D. Home, that he was never detected in any kind of mediumistic fraud, and much of the evidence resulting from the personal experience of cultured and educated persons with this medium is staggering in its completeness. “On that very hearthrug where you are standing,” said the late Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., to me, “I saw Home raised eighteen inches from the ground in broad daylight and verified the phenomenon visu et tactu.” “I do not say,” remarked this same great scientist on another occasion, “that these things are possible――I only say they happened.”

Telekinesis (the movement of material objects without personal contact) in full light has been attested by men of unimpeachable honesty and acknowledged ability――like Professors William James, Lombroso, Schiaparelli, and Richet. Mr Dingwall quotes two axioms of the professional conjurer――Never tell your audience beforehand what you are going to do, and Never perform the same trick twice on the same evening. But Mdlle Tomczyk of Warsaw repeated the same form of telekinesis more or less continuously for six years. Is it conceivable that throughout that period various groups of educated and experienced investigators should have utterly failed to detect the use, say, of threads or filaments however fine? It is childish and unscientific to ignore sound testimony and regard every account which comes to hand of supernormal physical phenomena as little else than the tale of an idiot signifying nothing.

There is indeed ample work in this dark and dubious region for those who have time, patience, and opportunity for the investigation of the rare cases of well attested physical mediumship. In view, however, of the more immediate results of real value which may be secured from a study of the subjective phenomena of psychical research it is obvious that, unless a physical medium is willing sooner or later to submit himself frankly and honestly to every reasonable test proposed by the best scientific minds, it is comparatively useless for a researcher to spend his limited time in inconclusive sittings for the alleged marvels of telekinesis or materialization.

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We have sketched the main lines upon which the psychic student of to-day is working, and the question which remains is simply Cui bono? What is the practical, or even the theoretical value of our research? Several adequate replies may, I think, be given.

The results secured by psychic research in Great Britain and various other countries possess, first of all, a real historical value. The attested phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance, and physical mediumship throw a clear light upon many dark corners of the past.

The Sibylline and other oracles uttered by the entranced priestesses of old, and many of the features of medieval magic, have their unmistakable counterparts in the experiences of modern mediumship. The appalling records of the most devilish machinery ever devised for the torture of mankind, the witchcraft persecutions (not of the Dark Ages but of the Renaissance), possess an added horror when one realizes that the offences alleged against the nine million persons burnt to death in two centuries were to a large extent the outcome of psychic forces and conditions whose character was totally unknown to either the victims or their tormentors.

The sacred books of Christianity and other religions speak of visible and audible phenomena of supernormal character which have their obvious analogues in the psychic experiences of our own days. The messages revealed in the shining Urim and Thummim, the quaint telepathy of Jacob’s sheep-farming, the phantasm and the voice at Endor――these things appear no longer as the isolated happenings of a remote and dissimilar past or of a special dispensation. In the pages of the New Testament, too, the healing touch for the sick, the rescue of the possessed, the experiences of the first Eastertide on the way to Emmaus or on the Galilean beach, the testimony of the “five hundred brethren at once,” the sudden conversion on the Damascus road――such records are indeed “worthier of all men to be believed” because they are no longer relegated to a far-off “age of miracles” but are repeated and exemplified in the phenomena of modern research.

Apart, however, from the question of historical interest, is it too much to hope that we may sooner or later succeed in controlling and utilizing to a vastly greater degree than at present those new forces which our researches have brought to light? Mr. H. G. Wells, in a prophetic page of When the Sleeper Awakes pictures a Harley Street of the future occupied by the consulting-rooms of telepathic specialists, and there can be little doubt that the valuable work even now accomplished in cases of nervous derangements and mental pathology by suggestion, hypnotic or otherwise, is capable of still further expansion as fuller information accumulates and earlier prejudices subside.

The employment of suggestion in the education of the young is a field at present almost unexplored, although suggestion is so obvious a factor in the “endless imitation” of childhood. The increased application of psycho-analytic methods may in the future not only relieve to an infinitely greater extent the maladies and distresses of the ordinary individual, but revolutionize our attitude towards the criminal. Just as the treatment of hysteria has already advanced far beyond the beatings and cold douches of our grandparents’ days, so do our methods of handling the criminal become ever more curative than penal; nor is it probable that fifty years hence civilized nations will still regard the rope or the electric chair as the only possible fate even for the murderer.

In another direction psychical research may stretch out a helping hand to reinvigorate the failing forces of religion. The structure of organized Christianity to-day exhibits all the signs of gradual but inevitable decay. Even of those who may be willing to render lip-service to the formulae of orthodoxy few ever enter a church or chapel. The forces of Christianity appear to exercise little control over domestic politics, and none at all over the international conduct of the nations, which so often displays a complete contempt for the precepts of either religion or morality. While the organized religion of Christ has still a message for the individual and can still guide His faithful followers in life and cheer them in the hour of death, the despairing cry of the Saxon chronicler might well be uttered over the masses of “Christian” mankind to-day: “Christ and His saints sleep.” Faced with such hard facts, thoughtful men are beginning to realize that some reconsideration and restatement of the Christian position is inevitable. In such enterprise valuable data would be provided by the results of scientific psychical research. One of our best known psychologists has indeed gone so far as to declare that no other power than psychic research can hope to arrest the advancing forces of materialism. The acceptance of the fact that communications and influences can reach us which are manifestly not the product of human minds nor conveyed through the ordinary channels of sense would stultify any a priori denial of the possibility of that “spiritual communion” which is an essential feature of religion.

In the second place, psychical research is, in the view of many, already able to endow with a measure of precision and certainty those vague and tremulous promises of a future life which are offered by the Churches. Owing to the rapid decay of religious forces in the western world this vital doctrine of a personal survival has for the vast majority even of so-called Christians lost any real significance. In answer to the query “Do you desire a future life whatever the conditions may be?” which appeared in a questionnaire circulated by the American Branch of the S. P. R. in 1900, “noes” numbered no less than 78 per cent. of the total replies received (3321)――many taking the form of “not at all,” “not in the least,” “never think about it.” And although the results of an investigation within such narrow limits cannot be regarded as decisive, it is probable that the note of scepticism or indifference which runs through the majority of the replies reflects to a large extent the attitude towards a personal survival adopted by the average man or woman of the present day.

Against the advancing tide of unbelief or indifference the modern presentation of religion seems wellnigh helpless. Nevertheless, if this spirit of blank negation or complete indifference continues to make headway, it is difficult to see how either moral or religious sanctions can retain their authority. If annihilation be our fate, any moral guidance of the Universe must appear to many minds almost inconceivable. And if the moral guidance of the whole collapses, schemes of morality for the parts become a reductio ad absurdum: the Divine sanctions of the Sermon on the Mount are replaced by systems of glorified Police Regulations imposed by the shifting decrees of a human majority.

Within the narrow limits at our disposal we can only indicate very briefly the main lines along which psychic research may serve to establish the fact of a survival. The cumulative effect of the evidence offered is very great and may avail――in Glanville’s words of old――“to secure some of the out-works of religion and regain a parcel of ground which bold infidelity hath invaded.”

(1) Various forms of automatism and certain well attested physical phenomena indicate the existence of discarnate intelligences.

(2) Telepathy proves that thought can be conveyed apart from the ordinary channels of sense, and, if telepathy be accepted as the cause of apparitions of the living, it would seem that the dead whose phantasmal forms appear to us are also capable of volition. The apparition (seen simultaneously by two witnesses) of a dead mother bending over the cot of her dying child “with a look of infinite love and tenderness” is deeply significant. Of even greater evidential value are the well-attested accounts of apparitions seen by dying children or their young brothers and sisters who were present at the deathbed.

(3) Many of the communications which reach us from tried and tested mediums, like Mrs Piper, appear to be what they claim to be, actual messages from deceased persons.

(4) It is virtually impossible to attribute some of the ‘cross-correspondences’ recorded by the S. P. R. to any other agency but the conscious and detailed activity of a discarnate personality.

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And so our patient work continues. The men and women who forty years ago served faithfully as the pioneers of modern psychical research have nearly all passed away. There can be little doubt that they had pitched their hopes too high. So deep was the devotion inspired by these new labours, so large the mass of facts offered by a veritable cloud of contemporary witnesses, that leaders like Myers and Sidgwick and Gurney hoped with confidence that in their own days the compelling force of the facts they had gathered would bring intellectual conviction and change the whole outlook of mankind. Such clear certainty came to few men in the ranks of these pioneers themselves and most of them died “seeing the promises from afar but not having attained unto them.” But fresh recruits have filled the gaps in our line, fresh channels of research have been opened up, and fresh facts recorded: modern science tends rather to clear our path than to close it, and the light of that earlier hope still shines brightly. Amid the limitless possibilities of the next fifty years――great developments in surgery, bio-chemistry, television, lighting, and transport――it may be that not the least of the discoveries which glorify the new age will come from the scientific results of psychical research. “Hardly as yet,” said William James a year before he died, “has the surface of the facts called ‘psychic’ begun to be scratched for scientific purposes. It is through following these facts, I am persuaded that the greatest scientific conquests of the coming generation will be achieved. Kühn ist das Mühen, herrlich der Lohn!”

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Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (italics).

――Obvious punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.