Chapter II: Part 2

The messages which we receive from clairvoyant experiments with entranced or controlled mediums, table tiltings, planchette, ouija boards, etc., present a bewildering congeries of good sense and stupidity, relevancy and irrelevancy, truth and falsehood, sobriety and flippancy. Such communications possess two marked characteristics. They display intelligence, however low the level of that intelligence may sink; and they invariably claim to proceed from the surviving minds of dead men and women, or at any rate from discarnate beings or “spirits”.

These messages fall into two classes; in the first place, the most important of them, which offer evidential matter either spontaneously or in compliance with a sitter’s request. In such dark and unaccustomed paths the thoughtful researcher must walk warily and form his judgments dispassionately. Suffice it to say that persons of real ability and calm judgment are to be found who are intellectually convinced that in certain instances the agencies which have communicated with them through mediums are actually what they claim to be, the surviving personalities of dead friends or relatives. I found it difficult during some sittings under an assumed name with Mrs Piper to resist the belief that I was being addressed by two lost friends, so amazing was the relevancy of a single message in the one case, and the force of accumulated details in the other. Of a communication through the same medium given to his sister-in-law for transmission to himself Professor William James of Harvard writes as follows:

“The point is that the message is an allusion to a matter
known (so personal is it to myself) to no other individual in
the world but me――not possibly either to the medium or to my
sister-in-law; and an allusion so pertinent and intimate, and
tender and helpful, and yet so unhelped by any actual earthly
knowledge on anyone’s part, that it quite astounds as well
as deeply touches me. If the subject of the message had been
conceivably in my sister-in-law’s mind, it would have been an
interesting but not infrequent case of telepathy; but as I say
it could not possibly have been, and she only transmits it to
me after the fact not even understanding it.”

The second group of messages possess little or no evidential value with regard to the personal survival of individuals, though they too always claim to proceed from “spirits” of some kind. Trivial, vulgar, and unworthy as they often are, these communications cannot be ignored by the student of psychical research. When we have eliminated trickery, collusion and self-deception from these experiments, there remains a residuum of communications more or less intelligent which obviously do not proceed from the normal consciousness of either sitter or medium; in most cases, indeed, there is no medium employed, for the messages are spelt out through movements of a table or an instrument of the planchette type.

Many of these messages are of a perplexing character. Some show indications of a rather colourless goodwill, others are freakish and deceptive with a flavour of feeble practical joking. Occasionally they are blasphemous or indecent. A very common feature is the giving of addresses connected with the sitter or with the former life of the alleged spirit-communicator. Full names of individuals, the names of streets and the numbers of houses are freely given. Nevertheless, in nearly every instance it is found that the facts as given are partially or entirely inaccurate. The whole procedure is baffling and obscure. If on the one hand the false information is due to the conscious action of any of the sitters, why does not the person in question take the trouble to provide a more complete deception? How easy it would be for such devotees of trickery to equip themselves with a stock-in-trade of really accurate names and addresses from any list of obituary notices contemporary or of older date. If these tiresome and misleading statements proceed from the subliminal consciousness of the sitter or medium, it is obvious that this entity is unable to secure various simple items of current information; and in that case, again, what is the motive of such transparent deception?

Nor, indeed, if the subliminal consciousness be accepted as the source of such perplexing messages, can we feel altogether happy in the possession of a secondary self or subconscious mind which is admittedly guilty in many instances of trickery, evasion, flippancy, deliberate and often cruel deception. Any clouds of glory that such a self may have trailed behind it are at times sadly tarnished, nor is the conviction either agreeable or inspiring that we harbour within us a force capable of præternatural knowledge and amazing achievement and yet characterized at times by conduct which the ordinary mind of any decent person would utterly condemn; for such a secondary self is frequently exhibited as “repressed, conative, infantile, unreasoning, predominantly sexual” and, one may add, sometimes fraudulent and usually non-moral. So many difficulties, indeed, appear to be involved in connecting these messages with any conscious activity that some investigators take refuge in the view that they consist only of the “stuff that dreams are made of,” proceeding from the lumber-room of the mind, and no more fraudulent or immoral than the elusive vagaries and incongruities of some fantastic dream.

One other source of the perplexing messages under discussion remains for our consideration. There is, as we have said, a feature common to them all: they invariably claim to proceed from disembodied personalities.

If the devotees of the ‘subliminal self’ hypothesis persist in bringing these agencies also within the broad compass of the human mind, conscious or unconscious, it may, I suppose, be urged that the claim to discarnate existence put forward by these _animulae vagulae, blandulae_, is a delusion which is built upon the accumulated mental experience of the human race, always believing, or striving to believe in a life beyond the grave. From the dim recesses of our racial history this pathetic protest against annihilation has, as it were, become a stereotyped portion of the human mind, and so it comes to pass that while the normal self may reject a personal survival, faint and fleeting echoes of the primaeval faith still rise from the depths of the unconscious self.

If it really be the case, however, as suggested above, that no activity of the human mind, whether normal or subliminal, can furnish an adequate explanation of the communications in question, we are left to face the facts and ask ourselves whether, after all, the claim put forward by the agencies involved may not be a valid one, viz., that they are what they invariably allege themselves to be, the product of discarnate intelligences. It is easy for those unacquainted with the accumulated phenomena of automatic writing, the planchette and ouija boards, and so on, to sneer at such an interpretation of the facts. But sneers have often dogged the earlier footsteps of scientific enterprise, and in any case――sneers or no sneers――the scientific researcher must, if he can, provide a solution of the phenomena which in this department of his work are so abundant and so easily repeated, that nothing else is needed beyond a careful sifting of the material, and above all, a mind as free as possible from any conscious bias towards either a normal or supernormal explanation. Once it is accepted that modern science does not necessarily preclude the existence of intelligences independent of those associated with the functions of the human brain, we may frankly admit that the theory of spirit-agencies in the case of these erratic messages does at least fit the facts. The existence would seem to be suggested of those alleged unseen entities, sometimes described as “elementals,” an order of low-grade spirits, able and apparently eager to communicate with us. The presence of such beings around us has, in earlier centuries, been widely accepted by a veritable _consensus gentium_; and the general characteristics of the communications in many a table-tilting or planchette experiment would seem to correspond closely to those of the fairies, efrits, demons, gnomes, “little folk,” _et hoc genus omne_――an intermixture of good humour and mischief coupled with a limited intelligence and the almost complete absence of any moral standard.

Before leaving the subject of telepathy, one more reference to this force as the origin of psychic phenomena must be briefly considered. The well-known “Census of hallucinations” conducted by the Society for Psychical Research revealed the fact that (a) 9.9 per cent. of the 17,000 persons questioned declared that they had at one time or another seen an apparition, (b) that very few recognizable phantasms were seen after the lapse of one year from the day of death, (c) that of the veridical cases the vast majority coincided more or less accurately with the moment of death. Modern research has also revealed a fact never before established, that phantasms of the living are far more frequent and generally far better attested than those of the dead. In summary, it may be claimed that men and women with sound minds in sound bodies do occasionally see phantasms of both living and dead persons under circumstances which entirely preclude malobservation or deception. No fact could, indeed, be better established than that ghosts are seen now as they have been seen all down the ages. What, however, is new in respect to this interesting phenomenon is the modern explanation that a ghost is a subjective impression conveyed to the mind of A by a conscious or unconscious suggestion from the mind of B. Deeply interesting as are the well-established and comparatively numerous telepathic images conveyed from the living to the living, these do not lead us outside the range of ordinary telepathic activity:

“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.